HKU POP will conduct a headcount on February 1 rallyBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at The University of Hong Kong will conduct a headcount of February 1 Rally participants on coming Sunday, and release its preliminary results via the “HKU POP SITE” at http://hkupop.pori.hk in the evening, around 2 to 4 hours after the rally. Detailed results will be released next week, while video clippings will be released online some time later.

Since 2003, POP has been running headcounts out of intellectual curiosity. Albeit minor adjustments across the years, the method used is to split the road into lanes, then count the number of people passing through them during specific time segments, and then project the total number by the total time spanned as well as an adjustment factor to cover those not passing through the checkpoint. This method and all adjustment factors have been well documented. We welcome members of the public, especially reporters and teachers, to run their own count using this method.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, “POP’s headcount results may differ significantly from participants’ general impression, because such impressions have been affected by inaccurate figures for a long time, and it is difficult to grab the idea of tens of thousands of people. For this reason, POP hopes that members of the public can use simple scientific methods to do their own counts, in order to cultivate the spirit of scientific enquiry.”