A newspaper reported that the attendance at a football game was 16,532...?

Question

How many significant figures does this number contain?

Was the actual number of people counted?

After the next home game, the newspaper reported an attendance of 15,000. If you assume that this number contains two significant figures, how many people could actually have been at the game?

Answer 1

16,532 has 5 significant figures.

They may have counted individuals people, but more likely, this was the number of tickets sold (being massively more practical to count).

With a 2-significant figure estimation of 15,000, between 14, 500 and 15, 499 people could have attended the event.