How to estimate crowd sizes
After the Cavaliers in 2016 delivered Cleveland its first major pro championship in decades, a huge parade and rally followed.
But what also followed were wildly exaggerated estimates of the crowd. Some media outlets, without any attribution, said more than 1 million people showed up. That was impossible, as we detailed. Read the explanation and a video demonstrating the fallacy of those predictions at this link.
There simply were not enough parking spaces, riders on public transit and hotel rooms to accommodate more than 1 million people. But beyond that, a detailed look as the space where a crowd has gathered can help determine a crowd size.
When available, aerial photography with a view straight down can be one of the best gauges. Photos taken from a low position at the most crowded portion of a gathering can be deceiving.
Another key is knowing how much space the crowd occupies.First determine the space covered by the crowd and then follow these guideliness:
A widely accepted method developed in the 1960s at the University of California at Berkley offers this approach to estimating how many people fit into a space. (See the video above for an examples of what these measures look like.)
- In a loose crowd, a person occupies roughly 10 square feet. This means each person is about an arm's length from the body of the next person.
- In a more tightly packed crowd, a person occupies about 4.5 square feet. This means each person occupies a square of about 25.5 inches from left to right, and front to back.
- In highest density level, each person occupies about 2.5 square feet. Think of being packed near the stage of a rock concert. In this scenario, each person gets about 19 inches side to side, and front to back.
None of this is exact, but can help bring some common sense to an unsubstantiated crowd guess.