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Crowd-counting science is far from exact. Much of it is based on examination of overhead photos to calculate crowd density and related statistics. It reminds us of the old intelligence agency practice of “shedology,” in which the Central Intelligence Agency and others estimated Soviet weapons numbers by looking at overhead photos of military sheds and calculating how many tanks they might hold.

Plus, numbers are inevitably colored by an estimator’s interest. Rally organizers usually say crowds were huge, bigger than expected. Critics will say the numbers were less than anticipated. That’s been the case for years.
That’s led to controversy in the past. In October 1995, the National Park Service estimated that about 400,000 people attended the “Million Man March” organized by the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. Organizers were so angry they sent lawyers to meet with the Park Service.

Shortly thereafter, the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing estimated that the crowd had been 837,000, plus or minus 20 percent. What was the difference? The Park Service counted via pictures taken from videotape. The Center for Remote Sensing used original photo negatives.
Photos of the Beck event clearly show a big crowd. The weather was great – whatever the exact figure, there were a lot of people there. The area along the Reflecting Pool stretching out from the Lincoln Memorial was packed. Groups were gathered under trees far on either side. Large conglomerations of folks gathered all the way to the Washington Monument.

The crowd was big enough to disrupt Washington's subway system, with service from at least 12 stops disrupted due to long lines for entry.
Given that context, let’s wade into the numbers.
Rally organizers, in applying for their permit, said they expected a crowd of up to 300,000. And on Sunday, after the rally, Beck himself said on Fox News that the event drew 300,000 people on the low end, and perhaps as many as 650,000 people on the high end.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota, at her own rally held on the edges of Mr. Beck's event, said, “We’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today because we were witnesses.”

However, a firm hired by CBS News to estimate the crowd put attendees at between 78,000 and 96,000. The firm, AirPhotosLive.com, had three estimators go over high-resolution aerial photos of the event, and then combined the three estimates.
These kinds of debates over crowd attendance go way back.

We’ll close with Joni Mitchell’s line: “By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong . . . "

Except they probably weren’t. Organizer Michael Lang later estimated the Woodstock crowd at about 400,000. Only half of those had tickets.

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The march was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history.

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The National Park Service issued an estimate of about 400,000 attendees, a number significantly lower than March organizers had hoped for. After a heated exchange between leaders of the march and Park Service, ABC-TV funded researchers at Boston University estimated the crowd size to be 837,000, plus or minus 20%.

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A study provided by the University of Pennsylvania in addition to aerial footage, photos, and other research data and information obtained from news and other sources indicates that the gathering drew at least 2 million persons.. Police sources gave numbers varying from 300,000 to 1.5 million.

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The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States took place on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. The inauguration, which set a record attendance for any event held in Washington, D.C.,

No official count was taken of the number of people attending the inaugural ceremony, although multiple sources concluded that the ceremony had the largest audience of an event ever held in Washington, D.C. Government agencies and federal officials, who coordinated security and traffic management, determined the attendance count to be 1.8 million people based on information collected by several cameras and individuals on the ground.

Stephen Doig, a professor at Arizona State University, estimated that 800,000 people attended the inauguration ceremony using the same satellite image.

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"I’m a rodeo clown," he said in an interview, adding with a coy smile, “It takes great skill.” He added later: “I say on the air all time, ‘if you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.’“

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I’m a rodeo clown,’ he said in an interview, adding with a coy smile, “It takes great skill.” “He added later: “I say on the air all time, ‘if you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.’“

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