Friday, May 23, 2008

In other news: some guy makes rough estimate

BikePortland had a story the other day about the Obama rally at Waterfront Park.

Although the crowd was a little too big for any real hobnobbing with Barack, it was still a worthwhile way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

The sheer number of bikes parked down there, in particular, was pretty neat to see. At the time, I did a very rough estimate of the number of bikes parked along the stone railing, and posted it (and my method of coming about that estimate) in the comments of the bikeportland story (I post over there under the screen name Qwendolyn.)

Well tonight I was browsing streetsblog, and came across this story about the Portland Obama rally and Sam Adams having won the mayoral race.

What took me a little by surprise is that Streetsblog repeated my 8000+ estimate of the number of bikes parked at the rally. They didn't say where they got that number but when I took a look back at the BikePortland.org story it had been updated with my estimate in the actual story.

I obviously don't care whether or not I'm credited for a rough estimate that took me 2 minutes to calculate, but it should at least be noted that it may not be the most accurate estimate in the history of mankind.

I suppose the moral is that a healthy dose of skepticism should be applied whenever you see people throwing out numbers without explaining where they got them.