🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MATT.92Apr12014558@physics1.berkeley.edu>
matt@physics.berkeley.edu writes:
[...]
>As a practical matter, of course, it is grossly unlikely that anybody
>other than the police and the rally organizers would be willing to
>take the trouble to do a careful estimate.  
>
>Actually, what I would like to see whenever crowd size estimates are
>reported is an error estimate as well.  

There are no "official" attendance figures at large public events that
take place in the open without controlled entrances and exits.
Everybody makes their own estimate.

The police don't really care how many people show up.  If it looks
like they need more police, they send more police.  If the cops are
standing around idle, they're reassigned elsewhere.

There's no official government office in charge of counting crowds, either.

There's probably money to be made here somewhere.  Perhaps one of the
big polling services could buy an airplane and camera equipment and
sell crowd-counting services to rally organizers.
-- 

Mark Draughn    | <draughn@iitmax.iit.edu> or <SYSMARK@IITVAX> on BITNET
----------------+ Academic Computing Center, Illinois Institute of Technology
+1 312 567 5962 | 10 W. 31st Street, Chicago, Illinois  60616