Crowd Counting

Thanks to our new President and his impressively thin-skin, crowd-counting and the science behind it is on of the top news stories coming out of the inauguration.

After multiple pictures juxtaposing Obama and Trump's inauguration crowds were tweeted out, the commentary on just how many people showed up began.

When looking at the two inaugural pictures, it seems obvious that the crowd for Obama was larger than that of Trump's - but by how much is the question.

Some sources claimed the crowd total was ~250,000 people, 1/7th the size of Obama's. However, Trump and newly appointed White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's had different accounts of the crowd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amz62uUYPeo

In his first ever time addressing the media as Press Secretary, Spicer went after the media for "deliberately false reporting."

Spicer went on to say that this was the biggest crowd for an innaguaral address in history. This statement earned him "4-pinnochios" from the Washington Posts' fact-checker.

All this conjecture may cause one to wonder, "How can we know, with a certain level of confidence, how many people were in the crowd?"

Sadly, there is no cut and dry answer to this question.

However, there are such things as "crowd-scientists" that use data in various ways to come up with calculated estimates.

The most common method for crowd-counting is "Jacob's Method."

Another technique that the L.A. Times used gathered statistics by using a combination of digital imaging, 3-D technology and hand-counting.



Camera Angles Matter

https://twitter.com/clintonyates/status/822443405473103872


All of this makes me wonder, does it matter?

It mattered enough for Spicer to lie about, so the answer must be yes, right?























Also, is it okay to punch Nazi's just for being Nazi's? My answer, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯