10,000 or 100,000?

Estimating crowd sizes is a thorny endeavor, particularly in a country where they like to play fast and loose with numbers.

In our report on yesterday's rally, we pegged the number of protesters at "more than 10,000."

I stand by that estimate (I think 15,000 demonstrators was the maximum), arrived at through loose heuristics like average crowd density figures and calculating the area of Freedom Square. But there was considerable debate in our office about the turnout, and some readers have called to ask about or challenge the number.

Opposition leaders claimed 100,000, and rumors circulated that a satellite imaging company added up more than twice that. International media, meanwhile, tended to report the only quotable estimates they had -- local police, the usual source for turnout estimates, had nothing to say, meaning the opposition's rhetorical figures are all that get into print.

There aren't really any reliable methods available to us, besides eyeballing it and doing some rough calculations. But as one now-departed wag put it, the November demonstrations have suddenly turned us all into experts on estimating crowd size.

So how many people do you think were at the January 13 protest?