How many were at the rally?

I've decided to discuss the numbers again because the topic is so interesting and to help think about how many really were there.

First, a Taipei Times report from two years ago discusses a simple methodology for calculating crowd size.

Lin Ming-hua (林明華), director of the city police's Public Relations Department, said that they stopped giving out estimates of crowd sizes or marches two years ago when a march organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party was staged in front of the Presidential Office.

The demonstration was orchestrated to demand the "truth" about the election-eve assassination attempt, which many pan-blue supporters believe was staged by Chen despite any solid evidence to back up their theories.

Lin said that the city police originally refused to publicize the number of participants in Satur-day's rally on Ketagalan Boulevard, but they were told by the police chief at around 10:45pm to make it public.

Lin said that the official numbers were reliable because they were calculated using a formula.

Taking Friday's "siege" march as an example, Lin said that police estimated 40,000 people could fill 1km of the road that protesters walked down. As the march stretched more than 5.5km, the police estimated that about 220,000 people were on the street. On top of that number, city authorities figured that about 140,000 more were scattered along Ketagalan Boulevard and elsewhere, making the total number 360,000.

Two key points from this. First, the police say it is 40K to a kilometer on a street. I'm not sure about the size of the street, but that's comparable to my count from the other day, so I am greatly cheered.

Second, this article notes that the police stopped giving crowd estimates four years ago. So how did AP obtain a "police said" estimate of 40,000? It is possible that someone gave out information they were not supposed to, or that policy was contravened in this instance, both of which have happened before. But that estimate is so laughably low it stinks of a deliberate plant. It should be noted that the Taipei Times reported that the police would not give out an estimate. Even the KMT-supporting China Post had 50,000 people, a number not referenced and suspiciously, exactly half the DPP prediction -- almost a concession that in fact more than 100,000 turned out.

So AP, you got some 'splaining to do.

The pro-KMT side might deflate the numbers, but the pan-Greens are no better. The Liberty Times today dramatically reported that 300,000 people showed up. Check out the photo there. It is highly suspicious -- showing only the crowds from the south gate to the stage -- but on the ground, my photos show that the area to the south and east of the gate was precisely where the crowd thinned out -- and is the area not shown in the photos. Very suspicious. Note that it is still light when this photo is taken.

What would three hundred thousand or more look like? Here's a Taipei Times photo from the truly stupendous anti-secession law rally. See how jam-packed the area is? Google image search will give you more but they will all show that it was an unbelievable sea of humanity that day.

Now compare the dense ranks in the photo above to this CNA photo printed in today's Taipei Times:



If you look carefully, the density starts to peter out once you get past the south gate. It's far denser on the other side. It is easy to see that 300K is an inflated overestimate.

I'm not going to beat this dead horse any longer, but it should also be noted that the CNA photos don't have times attached. The marchers seemed to have already arrived in both the Liberty Times and the Taipei Times pics, and thus spread out near the old gate. In my photos the bulk of the marchers are still arriving, in my opinion. I should also like to add that there is no need to embellish the numbers. Leave that to the other side.

On to the videos. I shot two that were worth anything (yes, video is an art and I suck at it; be patient, it is going to be a long time).

This video I shot after we had started to line up to march but before we started moving. You can see that it was noisy and energetic, that there were thousands of people here, covering the sidewalks, the metro station plaza, etc.

This second video I shot right after we had arrived at the stage. You can see where we are. At this point the area between the stage and the old gate is absolutely packed but starts to thin out as the crowd reaches the old gate. You can get some glimpses of the massive crowd behind me. Plenty of good energy here.

Why is it so hard to get good estimates? Take this photo to the left. How wide is the crowd? How many to a rank? What constitutes a rank? Ok, let's say we're 40K to the kilometer in the street.....







...then what about these marchers -- four and five across on the sidewalks? If you only count the street, as you would certainly do in an photo from the sky, you'd have a 20% undercount, at least. I tried to include them, and that's how I came up with 50K with me. Depending on how you count, a rank had anywhere between 16 and 25 people, so conservatively 7 ranks was 100 souls, but in reality it was sometimes a lot less and sometimes a lot more. And then....


...what about these blackshirted fellows and the hundreds of others participating by yelling and waving flags from the sidelines, but not marching? Do we count them?








Here was another problem we encountered, though I don't really have a good picture of it. I started near the front of the march, but by the time we were halfway through, the march had elongated considerably and I was someone in the middle. People started to join from the front. You can see that it extends for a considerable distance in front of me.




As we walked down this large street, we look a little thinner in this photo, but actually, there are even more of us. Why?








As this important historical photo shows, large numbers of marchers "taking to the streets" are actually taking to the expansive sidewalks.








Another issue is resting marchers. You can see that in the park beyond many marchers are taking a break, as they did all along the way. Again, any count of "marchers" underestimates the crowd.







When you look at the photos by the old gate, you see the fantastic crowds, but you don't see these guys -- the ones sitting on the walls, standing on the sidewalks, and sitting in the park under the trees.

Finally, what is the correct time to sample the size? I can tell you how many I think marched with me (50K give or take) and you can look at the photos to see how many were there when I arrived. Is that the right time? Do we count only those who stayed the whole time to hear the speakers?

You tell me. But not all the crowd estimates are off by large percentages because the police are nefarious and controlled by the Dark Side. It's because counting the crowd is no simple task.

UPDATE: A commenter left this link to another discussion of the crowd numbers. It goes into great detail on the area that the crowd occupied and concludes:

就算一平方公尺以 4 人計算，新公園內的也不算、信義路與仁愛路上頭的也都不算。也不必以一平方 6人來高估。至少也都有 13 萬人了。
真不知官方的 4 萬多人是怎麼算的。

We calculate the one square meter contains 4 people, and we don't count the New Park, Hsinyi Rd, Aiguo Rd. We don't need to use the highest figure of 6 people per square meter. There were at least 130,000 people there.
I really don't know how the authorities arrived at a figure of 40,000.

That's similar to the number I arrived at. 50,000 with me, a like number in the other group, and 30-40K already present when I arrived. Then I factored in all the people in the park and elsewhere. Nevertheless, 130K is a nice conservative figure.

[Taiwan]