Counting the RWC’s waterfront party-goers
The estimate of 150,000 to 200,000 revellers at the waterfront for Rugby World Cup’s opening night has been dismissed by a statistician who calculated that it was a physically impossible to fit that number in the downtown entertainment areas.
Government and council officials said this week the waterfront was swamped by up to 200,000 people on September 9, leading to crowd control problems and transport failures.
Statistician Tony Cooper, the managing director of research company Double Digit Numerics, found the true figure was probably less than half that number. He estimated a maximum of 70,000 revellers in the lower CBD area.
Read more of this Weekend Herald story (17 Sept 2011) here …
Atakohu Middleton is an Auckland journalist with a keen interest in the way the media uses/abuses data. She happens to be married to a statistician. See all posts by Atakohu Middleton »