Regular commenter on this blog Paul Fisher was the closest guess/estimate of the closing number of signatures for Gavin Gamble’s e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting which reached 48,123 (plus any remaining clicks on confirmation emails) signatures last night.
I’ll be sending Paul a signed copy of Remarkable Birds in the next few days.
Thank you to all who had a stab at the number – you were more optimistic than I was at the time of setting the competition (7 March when the total was 35,802 signatures). The e-petition grew by c13,000 signatures in those last four weeks.
The 17 estimates had a mean of around 46,000 and a median of around 43,000 so this wasn’t a great triumph for the wisdom of crowds but it was a jolly good guess by Paul!
| Name | Estimate | |
|---|---|---|
| Keith | 71604 | |
| Steven | 61255 | |
| Colin | 55155 | |
| Mike | 51345 | |
| Paul F | 47574 | |
| Jonathan | 45217 | |
| Adrian | 43527 | |
| Gerard | 42962 | |
| Ben | 42876 | |
| Paul | 42573 | |
| Owen | 42334 | |
| Alister | 42073 | |
| Hugh | 42042 | |
| Simon | 40107 | |
| Philip | 40040 | |
| Nick | 39987 | |
| Louise | 38012 | |
17 guestimates does not statistically qualify as a crowd, considering the votes cast (0.04%). I think the mean/median result is a highly impressive result considering the number of unknown factors and the minute size of the estimates…
Well done Mr F – on the money as usual.