Saturday, July 6, 2013

The Incredible Shrinking Crowd

I tend to feel bad about how terrible I am at making estimates, but the Irish news websites today make me feel better. The Irish Times guesses that thirty-five thousand people marched in today's Rally for Life in Dublin, while The Irish Independent hikes that up to fifty thousand.

Somehow, I managed to not realize there was a rally on today. (I have just come back from a week on the continent, in my defence.) I was taking a bus into the city centre and didn't know why the traffic had been stopped. I had some business to do in O'Connell Street, and was there for about twenty minutes. In all that time, the flood of demonstrators heading to Kildare Street never slackened. After I had followed them there, someone announced from the stage that the march was still coming down O'Connell Street.

Bad at estimates as I am, I think it was a lot more than thirty-five thousand.

2 comments:

  1. If the IT admits 35,000, then it is a safe bet that the real number was twice that or more.

    Interestingly, for the 'Pride Parade' they reported organisers were hoping for 30,000 ... but their report on the actual parade strangely had no estimate of those attending, beyond a claim that it was 'thousands.' Make of that what you will.

    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/pride-parade-and-rally-to-mark-30th-annual-festival-1.1447931

    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/thousands-attend-dublin-pride-festivities-1.1447975

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  2. Ha ha, what an interesting discrepancy!!

    ReplyDelete