Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, your statistical guide to the

numbers in the news and in life. In the US there has been much controversy this week

over some facts and some alternative facts.

Here's a little recap.

Before his inauguration, Donald Trump said this at a press conference.

The 20th is going to be something that will be very

very special, very beautiful, and I think we're going to have massive crowds because

we have a movement. It's a movement like the world has never seen before.

But on inauguration day, the media quickly started saying

that there had been more people at Obama's inauguration in 2009.

The internet was flooded with images of the two events. The next day the new

press secretary Sean Spicer spoke to the press and told them that they were wrong.

In actual fact, photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way in one particular tweet to

minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall

he went on to say,

This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,

period.

But that same day, protests were held around the world

in support of the Women's March in Washington DC.

Some commentators suggested that there were more people at the American Capitol's

protest than there were at the inauguration.

Today we're going to look at the difficulties of counting crowds and in regards to

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