In the grand tradition of counting grains of sand with a magnifying glass, our current scientific method for estimating crowd sizes at marches, demonstrations, and open-air rallies resembles a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey played in a blackout. News media, agencies, and online keyboard warriors treat us to a dazzling display of numerical acrobatics, each vying for the gold medal in creative estimation. It’s like a circus where the lion tamer is also the tightrope walker and the clown moonlights as the trapeze artist.

Take the Bagong Pilipinas Kickoff Rally at Rizal Park, for example. How many attendees were there? It’s a question that sparks more debates than a reality TV show finale. The United States, in its infinite wisdom, entrusts the National Parks Service with the sacred duty of crowd counting, a model the Philippines desperately needs. Because nothing says accuracy like determining the population of a gathering with the same precision used to measure the circumference of a squirrel’s acorn stash. Let’s upgrade from the guesswork carnival to a scientific symphony – after all, if we can send a rover to Mars, we can surely count the heads in a crowd.