From: Michael M. Butler (mmb@spies.com)
Date: Sat Feb 22 2003 - 12:01:55 MST
Greg Burch wrote:
> sfgate.com article re empirical methods used to estimate the numbers at
> San Francisco's peace rally:
>
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/21/COUNT.TMP
>
> The methodology employed -- using aerial photos and a consistent grid
> system -- puts the number at 65K, instead of the 200k widely reported.
> FWIW.
>
> Greg Burch
> Vice-President, Extropy Institute
> http://www.gregburch.net
I'm removing the scareword from the header in my reply. The issue being
addressed by the tech can be completely separated from the current contretemps.
~
Over the decades, counting large crowds of demonstrators has been unreliable.
During the Vietnam era protests in the 1970s, newspaper editors often would
split the difference between protesters' high numbers and police agencies'
low estimates and print that figure as the crowd count, according to Todd
Gitlin, a professor at Columbia University's journalism school.
~
Let's hear it for LOS BRINISTAS OF THE SKY! Eyelevel estimates finally get
a reasonable challenge.
Bear in mind that a snapshot doesn't characterize the "churn" if any of the crowd.
To do that well, we would need to (oppressively?) track ins-and-outs somehow.
MMB
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