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Jerry Roberts's avatar

haha...i stopped trying to explain discrepancies in crowd counts when I covered my first parade for the Old Chron in 1977...

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John Yewell's avatar

Jerry, the point of my question goes to the credibility of your story: Why should I believe it? Don't really appreciate you making a laughing matter out of it.

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Marie HK's avatar

Seems like the answer is “the number is my number but I don’t do numbers”

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Jerry Roberts's avatar

why we ran an authoritative piece from someone who knows from numbers...

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Jerry Roberts's avatar

erry Roberts

6h

Edited

Because I read the methodology of both and was more persuaded by the one I used. Decaf, man. And as your source wrote on FB: "Regardless of the final count because honestly, the exact number is secondary, the crowds were massive, and everyone who showed up knows it. Even the smallest towns had a presence. The tides in America are turning, and you can see it clearly when you compare it to Trump’s birthday parade." In covering our local protest on Saturday, I offered a crowd estimate of "more than 10,000" with this footnote: "1-A note on methodology. Crowd size estimating is a tricky and uncertain endeavor, although one in which your Newsmakers Protest Correspondent gained some proficiency during decades of covering political rallies, marches, parades, conventions, caucuses, and hotel roast beef dinners. We base our estimate on having walked the two-mile long stretch of the protest along Cabrillo Blvd., where thin lines of sign-holders at Castillo and the rally’s end across from the Chromatic Gate bookended throngs between Chapala and Santa Barbara streets. Since the protest ended, we’ve seen published crowd estimates between 4,000 and 20,000. Coincidentally, ours squares with that devised by the Indy’s Jean Yamamura, who gauged the crowd at 12,000, using a more sophisticated calculus." My point is that arguing about crowd estimate is a futile exercise because without definitive scientific aerial evidence, the correct answer is unknowable. That's why law enforcement long ago stopped providing crowd estimates -- which in my personal experience began with my 1977 parade reference, to which you took offense, but which, in fact contained a serious point: I put the crowd number the SFPD provided in my story which ran on P!, to which parade debate organizers took great exception, leading to several days of sturm und drang for the paper, my editors, and me, not to mention the cops, and every city leader who coud dragoon a TV camera, all of which was sound and fury signifying nothing except the Hall of Justice deciding to stop providing crowd estimates.

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John Yewell's avatar

Alt National Parks is reporting 13.14 million. Here is their post with an explanation of their method. Can you explain this large discrepancy? https://www.facebook.com/AltUSNationalParkService/posts/pfbid02vjTFCW46sGgWc9sdeUEfBzn8JN3aD3nBivTBntzg7sE4cewnTr3V1AereeFje8YFl

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