87,000 or 1 Million?

[progressoid]

Counting Heads

Steve Doig


It’s not all porto and pastéis de nata for me here in Portugal. I spent yesterday doing journalism.

I was contacted a couple of days earlier by Curt Westergard, whose Airphotoslive.com company uses cameras on tethered balloons to produce high-resolution aerial photos. He had been hired by CBS News to get images of the crowd that gathered Saturday for the Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” Tea Party rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. CBS also wanted a credible estimate of the size of the crowd. That’s where I came in.

...

My estimate is that about 80,000 people were at the rally. Ryan Shuler, an Airphotoslive image analyst, used the same images and a different grid-density method to produce an estimate of 87,000. Considering the error margins around our separately-calculated estimates, they are statistically identical. CBS went with the 87,000 figure, which I certainly can accept.

Now the fun begins in the blogosphere. NBC News, the New York Times, and other large media outlets that didn’t attempt a scientific estimate uncritically accepted Beck’s claim of “300,000 to 500,000″. (At least Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s laughable claim of 1 million isn’t being treated seriously http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/08/bachmann-holds-a-rally-of-her.html)

The CBS News estimate immediately was vilified by conservative bloggers, and often rabidly-virulent comments from readers are being posted on news stories that mention the CBS estimate. I won’t post more links, but you can find plenty by Googling “beck rally attendance” and similar search terms.

...

I expect that kind of behavior from partisans on both sides. I am disappointed, though, by the many responsible news organizations that failed to produce their own independent estimates and instead reported only ungrounded hype. Their readers and viewers deserve better journalism than that.

http://stevedoig.com/archives/250



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CBS: Glenn Beck Rally Attracts Estimated 87,000

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014993-503544.html

[rucky]

1. It's one million, with a 92.3% margin of error.

[Soylent Brice]

3. LOL

[Javaman]

2. There is a lot of green in that shot.

(I'm aware of the reflecting pool, duh)

Looking at photos from Obama's inauguration and other various peace protests, they seemed to be much more tightly packed.

[mrcheerful]

4. Here is the 1963 photo of the MLK rally

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_Crowd_at_1963_March_on_Washington.jpg

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Try this one.

It was said to be over 200,000.

[JuniperLea]

5. Remember the Obama inauguration?

And the Million Man March?

Now those were crowds! This isn't much of a crowd... and they bused folks in!

[progressoid]

7. Yep, I remember.

http://www.wilanatr.com/pdo/community/tBlog/william-fennie/the-obama-inauguration/image

[Subdivisions]

9. I was at the base of the Washington Monument. The crowd that day

extended beyond the WM, toward the Lincoln Memorial.

[JuniperLea]

11. Wow! Lucky you!

It gave me goosebumps just reading that you were there!

[Subdivisions]

17. JL, my good friend, it was so cold that day that my goosebumps had

goosebumps. I'd like to refer you to a short description of that experience I had the opportunity to post yesterday:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9035962&mesg_id=9035989

Here's the entire comment:

"That was one of the coldest days of my life. And the warmest too.

Everyone was simply amazing that day. I walked 14 blocks from National Stadium, where the busses off-loaded, with thousands and thousands of people. At each entrance to The Mall, we were directed further down the street toward the Washington Monument. Young, old, black, white, walking together toward history and not a single complaint the whole way. We were finally able to access the mall at the WM itself. And when I made my way through the throngs collected below the Washington Monument to it's very base and then turned to look out toward the Capitol, it was truly breath-taking. I've never experienced such a site in my life."

[JuniperLea]

18. So very, very awesome...

It really nails down the perspective, doesn't it?

Beautiful.

[gratuitous]

8. There's an analysis at Daily Kos from the photos

Their estimate is that there is approximately 1 million square feet of space being occupied. To put that into more understandable terms, it's the area covered by about 33,000 queen-size mattresses. For the 87,000 person estimate, you'd be putting about three people per mattress in that area. For the 1,000,000 person estimate, you'd be putting about 20 people per queen-size mattress in that area. Take a look at the crowd again: See all that green space? Stand 20 persons on a queen-size mattress, would you expect to see much of the mattress? But if there were only three people standing on a queen-size mattress, how much of the mattress would you expect to see?

The lower 87,000 person estimate seems far more accurate.

[JuniperLea]

10. That's a very good explanation...

Makes a lot of sense... especially when you compare it to the pictures of the Million Man March, the Obama Inauguration, and other large events.

[progressoid]

14. Three people on a queen sized matress?

Umm...no sex threads.

Especially if it involves teabaggers.


;)

[gratuitous]

15. Well, if there really were a million of 'em, it'd be 20!

Talk about an orgy you really don't want to be part of!

But I thought the mattress analogy was quite useful. It's difficult to sort through the competing crowd size estimates, but an easily-visualized standard with an estimate of how much ground is covered certainly helps. The Kos post started out using airline seats as a standard measure, but it was a little trickier to visualize. The amount of space covered by a mattress? Real easy.

[progressoid]

19. Eek.

You are right though, the mattress analogy does make it easy to visualize. Too bad the M$M can't do something similar.

[Enthusiast]

12. Isn't it possible

to use the photo to do an actual count?

[MattyGroves]

13. My guess is the media will be accused of bias regardless of methodology

The park service stoppped doing these estimates because everyone disputed their numbers and they used the air photo method as well.

Beck and his ilk were claiming the media would downplay the numbers 2 minutes into the rally. Anything that totaled a number less than the minimum they said would show was going to be rejected so why bother?

[spanone]

16. our media is not interested in spending money on tallies when bullshit sells the same ads