Yo, statboy
While you've got to go through a bunch of hoops these days to read it, Salon has a great piece on the numbers game of protest marches. I've always wondered where the organizers of some of these events got their numbers of people attending their events, and many times they sound a lot like Dr. Evil (we had one million people). The mathematical formula used makes a lot of sense and reminds me of how people would use similar numbers to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar (and often be right). I'm surprised more people don't use it when estimating crowds at rallies, but then again just like everything else, the numbers game is political. Of course, if sports teams can fudge attendance numbers (and they have tools to measure the numbers precisely -- ticket stubs/turnstiles), why can't some group trying to prove everyone not in the Bush administration is against the war?