Posted on 09/12/2009 8:05:13 PM PDT by speelurker
I've put together a Google Spreadsheet with a calculation of a minimum number of people who could have attended today.
Density Calculation Spreadsheet
This is based on analyzing what the camera that was looking down Pennsylvania Avenue saw throughout the event. Here's a snapshow when it's empty:
Here's an analysis of the width of that street using Google Earth:
“BTW, the crowd was instructed to text in to an announced phone number so the organizers could get a count.”
I never heard of that, the size of the crowd was so large that most never heard those who were speakers... I only caught little pieces all day...
I’ve seen crowds in excess of 100 thousand, and this march seemingly dwarfs them. I’d guess easily over 500k.
You can fit 110,000 people in your typical college Bowl stadium and that is just the people in the seats.
You had at least a mile of people 100 yards wide. If you give all of them a square yard to stand in, you are looking at a minimum of 176,000 people. This doesn't count the people on the side streets.
I'd personally estimate the crowd at at least 5 college stadiums packed with people.
Great find! I just added an analysis of that video to the spreadsheet.
The minimum has jumped to ~250k.
I spoke to a capitol police officer who was behind the stage(with Dick Armey).He said there was a bigger crowd than th”million man march”. HENCE; The crowd was bigger than one million!
.................I’d go for a hundred and fifty grand, but the one odd thing is that the time lapse has the flag at half staff, and the webcam has shown it at full staff most of the day. Odd, that..........................
Certainly odd that the flag position changed! Why, on the same day - Day after 9/11 mourning; after the Swimmer had been planted!
Do we have a potential credibility problem???
In a few days we can check Metro ridership numbers and compare them with the inauguration and other Saturdays:
http://www.wmata.com/rail/disruption_reports/viewReportArchive.cfm?Archive_Date=92009
Ok, but the people weren’t just on Pennsylvania Avenue. They spilled over into other areas, quite a few of them actually and Homeland Security(according to a UK paper)says UP to 2 million. I think at least 200,000 and it could have been many more, people kept coming and going also, not to mention those that were turned away because the cops said there was no more room for them.
“Great find! I just added an analysis of that video to the spreadsheet.
The minimum has jumped to ~250k.”
Okay, now remember...there was a substantial amount of people who did not take that route to the mall. Many were dropped of in buses near the mall...many simply went to the mall by another route. Not sure how you can figure that out...
It was not a static crowd. People appeared to be arriving and leaving throughout the duration of the event. From my perspective there were significant numbers along the length of the Mall. Also, two nearby Metro stations service the Capitol area. All of which complicate crowd assessment. I agree, I would lower bound the number at around 500,000 but 2 million does seem a bit high (this somewhat based upon my recollection of aerial images of past events).
Measured straight across the street, the distance would only a bit over 27 m instead of the 31.35m you’ve indicated.
Would that make a difference in your results?
See post 30 for the latest analysis taking into account people walking down the sidewalks.
This Jan MSNBC article provides some history on crowd counting in DC...
Could 2 million jam into the mall?
Happily for the District of Columbia, the inauguration crowd certainly won’t reach electoral landslide dimensions. But if people jam into the 81 acres of the National Mall between 1st and 14th Streets Northwest at a tight 5 square feet per person, about 700,000 could squeeze in. The open area around the Washington Monument between Constitution and Independence Avenues, back to 17th Street Northwest, could wedge in another 700,000 at the same density. And assuming a looser crowd far back from the inauguration stand on the steps of the Capitol, perhaps another half a million could be milling around in the Mall area in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Therefore, it is at least physically possible to pack something approaching 2 million Americans into the 2.1-mile stretch between the Capitol steps and Lincoln’s feet.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28662672//
A method for mob measurement
Even absent publicity-driven pressures to hype the size of a public gathering, no crowd that doesn’t go through a turnstile can be counted without some margin of error. (And as recent election recounts have proved, even counting something as simple as a stack of ballots can have a considerable margin of error.) But some fairly simple math can be used to make defensible estimates of crowd sizes.
The method goes back to the late 1960s and a University of California at Berkeley journalism professor named Herbert Jacobs, whose office was in a tower that overlooked the plaza where students frequently gathered to protest the Vietnam War. The plaza was marked with regular grid lines, which allowed Jacobs to see how many grid squares were filled with students and how many students on average packed into each grid.
After gathering data on numerous demonstrations, Jacobs came up with some rules of thumb that still are used today by those serious about crowd estimation. A loose crowd, one where each person is an arm’s length from the body of his or her nearest neighbors, needs 10 square feet per person. A more tightly packed crowd fills 4.5 square feet per person. A truly scary mob of mosh-pit density would get about 2.5 square feet per person.
The trick, then, is to accurately measure the square feet in the total area occupied by the crowd and divide it by the appropriate figure, depending on assessment of crowd density...
Wow, that’s some good numbers to work with.
I used 1 person/meter squared. Is there anyone who was there that can read through your post and help us come up with a better number for how dense the march was?
Is it possible to come up with a percentage that the people we see in the video represent compared to the entire event?
I.e. what percentage of people who attended did the actual march versus arrived at the event a different path. If we guess that it was 60%, then the current minimum of 250k extrapolates to a total attendance of 250K / .6 = 416K.
I don’t know. It may have just been the events you mentioned resulted in it being raised in the afternoon, and by then nobody was left on the street.
March starts at c. 42nd frame of time laspe and ends at c. 96th frame, making for a minimum of 54 minutes from start to finish on PA Ave.
Let’s see if this works. Let’s survey Freepers who attended today and see if we can come up with this percentage:
http://www.micropoll.com/akira/mpview/664114-202735
I’ve got an analysis of this video in the spreadsheet now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sjvc6baor8
That indicates 94 minutes long. Any idea where the discrepancy is?
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