Below are the raw figures for a count of the "Taste of Buffalo" crowd made by Longacres, Inc between 3PM and 4PM on Saturday, July 6^th.

CROWD TURNOVER - Based on the above length of stay figures it is reasonable to estimate that the counted crowd of 6,865 people turned over three times on Saturday, resulting in a total of about 20,600 different people attending the "Taste" on Saturday. If Sunday is about the same, the total "Taste of Buffalo" crowd is about 40,000. (Or one tenth the claimed 400,000 - very nearly the same crowd inflation percentage that we found when we studied "Allentown Art Festival" earlier this spring. Click here for our study of the Allentown Crowd.

The festival area was divided into grids bounded by the rapid transit line green power poles.

Each grid was approximately 150 feet long and covered one half of Main Street.

Two enumerators (counter A and counter B) counted the people in each grid, and those counts are included in the table below. Although the differences between the two counts occasionally approachs 25%, the total of all grids done by each counter is nearly identical (5 people off). Each counter feels certain that their margin of error was never great than 25%, and usually much better.

Late tonight, we will calculate an exact margin of error. Initially we assign an estimated margin of error of plus or minus 15% to this count.

NOTES ON MARGIN OF ERROR: Although the below table shows significant differences between two enumerators counting the same block (or grid) of people, those differences taken over a number of grid blocks tend to be self canceling. Note that the total counts of the two enumerators differed by only 5 people.

We are good counters, but not formally trained in statistics. There are different ways to calculate "margin of error", based on averages, "standard deviations", etc. The science of that discipline is beyond the scope of this study. For our own use, we announce a margin of error based on the average difference between the two enumerator's counts, expressed as a percentage of the average "grid count".

The average counted # in each grid cell at this event was 182.6 people

The average difference in count between two enumerators counting the same grid cell was 28.33

The two counters backed each other up and counted together one side of each "grid section" (one side of main street)

The "times two" column shows the total for that section, doubling the half-grid count to show the total for that section of the full width of Main Street.

There were three sections of Main street near the stages where the two sides of the street had very different crowds, and those were counted individually, the figures showing near the bottom of the following table.

Questions may be addressed to Thomas Kranz at 716-652-9495 or emailed to this website at: email link