 
Subscribe

This is a preview of the full article

New Scientist full online access is exclusive to subscribers. Registered users are given limited access to content, find out more. To read the full article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist.

Home | Opinion

Letter: Counting them in

Pictures of spreads from New Scientist magazine

I should like to add the following comments to Tam Dalyell's Thistle Diary (31 March) on attendances at the National Museum of Science & Industry.

The method of counting visitors in the free admission period resulted in a significant exaggeration of numbers. This is a characteristic of many free admission museums. Although there was an initial drop, numbers, as we expected, are now steadily increasing. 281 000 schoolchildren, with escorting adults, visited the Science Museum in 1989, the largest number ever recorded. None of them paid to come in because admission for pre-booked school groups is free. Numbers in free admission school groups are also counted accurately.

Since charging, the Science Museum has used some of its additional income to open on Sunday mornings, making a total of 55 hours a week. Access is free from 4.30 in the afternoon until closing time at 6.00, 10.5 hours per week. 34 ...

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

To continue reading this article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist

save 67%

  • Print
  • Web

$24.75

12 issues for $2.06 per issue

with continuous service

save 71%

  • Web
  • Smartphone
  • Tablet

$21.25

12 issues for $1.77 per issue

with continuous service

save 78%

  • Print
  • Web
  • Smartphone
  • Tablet

$32.50

12 issues for $2.70 per issue

with continuous service

30 day web pass

  • Web only
  • Explore New Scientist online for 30 days. Our web pass gives you instant access to this article and 20 years of the archive, allowing you to access the latest news in science.

$49.00

Prices may vary according to delivery country and associated local taxes.

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12617146.700-letter-counting-them-in.html
www.newscientist.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-41
26035
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:AEXHLBX7KKGKNNWRMBIJRIWIUWJ6QKJW
<urn:uuid:57dcf78c-984f-474d-bea3-ee7420192a92>
2014-09-21T02:35:40Z
54.76.199.115
sha1:WDORH4FNPKRSJMVGATSY7GJENQTDZF53
<urn:uuid:3a58d282-2205-46bb-9486-3c653efdd6c5>
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12617146.700-letter-counting-them-in.html
length
response
<urn:uuid:c0cb34e0-4ebd-44c8-a726-73abdbdc7fdc>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-41
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for September 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf