I can't believe it took me so long to think of this

[james_davis_nicoll]

There are many circumstances where we might need to count how many people are in the Theatre of Arts. It very belatedly occurred to me that there's a short-cut.



T of A is divided into clearly defined zones. If I know how many seats are in each zone, then it's possible to greatly reduce the amount of time needed for certain house counts.



For example, sometimes we rope off the sections at either side, which right there says there can be at most 246 people in the theatre.

Comments

[patrick_morris_miller]

I guess capturing a few, counting and tagging them, releasing them back into the wild, waiting for them to mingle, then capturing some again and seeing what proportion are tagged wouldn't work at the time scale involved, huh.

[james_davis_nicoll]

You've just described dance comps. Parents come and go, which means we have to do frequent house counts.

Early in my career, we had 800 or so people in Hagey. Now, while only 721 of them can fit into the theatre, it seemed unlikely all of them would want to at the same time. Except it turned out there was one production number with everyone's kids in it....

[sturgeonslawyer]

I think you made a typo; obviously you meant 246?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Whoops.

[conuly]

Are you counting the ushers?

[bolindbergh]

The usual punchline is "Just count the feet and divide by two!"

[thewayne]

This may be a silly approach, but if you know how many seats can be occupied, can't you just count the empties and subtract?

[james_davis_nicoll]

We do that, if the theatre is full(ish).

[scott_sanford]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of that.