It is widely recognised that there are more people than ever playing the uilleann (or oilenn!) pipes. Anyone ever counted how many?
There are currently 1247 people actively playing the UPs. This is official.
djm
How did you arrive at this seemingly accurate estimate?
Chuck
Piper/Mathematician John Walsh has determined the number. It is a very long, and funny process that he went through. It might have been printed in The Pipers’ Review. I think it was posted on this board at one time too. Try a search.
t
… lots and lots of serious medication. 
what i know is that there will be soon one more piper !
Good for you, Birl. Congratulations! But that hardly balances the three others who will decide these things are too damned hard to play and put their Pakistani sets up on eBay.
djm
I believe the phrase is “I don’t currently have the time required to dedicate to this fine instrument” 
I am doing a counting. Only some Uilleann pipers answer me. At this time we are 60 uilleann pipers living in France. But I think that the real number could be 100 uilleann pipers.
At the end of this counting I will do a map of France with the number of the players.
Be interesting to see the map Sylvian. Whose your tip for the Tour de France by the way.
Anyone know the membership nos of NPU. It’d be a good indication, probably add 20-25%or so and come up with a rough figure?
You’ve miss-spelled it…over here we call it the Tour de Lance
(Sorry, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use that one! All in good fun)
Welcome to the board Sylvain. Perhaps if we got everyone on the board to count the number of pipers by country, we could total them up and then we’d have a rough estimate.
In the US, we each pretty much know who the other pipers are by region of the country or by state, so it shouldn’t be impossible.
-g
This was posted by Terry Moylan at NPU to the Uilleann Pipes Mailing List on Thu, 19 Jun 2003:
"NPU does not have every piper in the world on our books, and every
‘piper’ on our books might only have a tenuous hold on that title.
Nevertheless, here are our figures:
Ireland: 906
USA: 524
Britain: 442
Australia: 101
Germany: 75
France: 64
Canada: 56
Italy: 29
Spain: 29
New Zealand: 28
Japan: 24
Netherlands: 24
Switzerland: 21
Sweden: 20
Belgium: 16
Denmark: 9
Finland: 5
Norway: 5
2 each in Oman, Luxembourg, Argentina, Brazil, Greece and Israel 1 each
in Uruguay, Bermuda, Croatia, Czech Republic, Singapore, Hong Kong,
Russia, Portugal, Pakistan, Malaysia, Mexico & South Africa.
A total of 2,402 I believe.
Terry Moylan"
Then followed brilliantly by John Walsh on Fri, 20 Jun 2003:
"Hi,
Now wait a minute… We don’t need to count them all up, we can
just take a random sample and use the magic of statistics to estimate the
total.
Somebody mentioned that there are ten pipers in Texas–now there’s
a random sample for you! Texas has an area of 267,338 square miles. That
makes .0000374 pipers per square mile. And the world has a mean diameter
of 7918 miles, which means a surface area of…wait a second here…about
196,960,000 square miles which means…hmm… .0000374 times
196,960,000…carry the two…Aha!
There are 7367.3 pipers in the world. (Don’t know about that .3
piper.)
Oops, I forgot—most of that area is water, we really should only
count the pipers living on land (the others’ reeds are too wet to sound.)
Now the land area of the earth is 57,506,000 sq miles, so…hmm…try this
again… .0000374 pipers per square mile times 57,506,000 square miles
is…wait a second, I almost have it… Yes! 2151.
So there are 2151 pipers in the world.
So the NPU is about right. (Well, plus or minus a few, of course.
This estimate is good to within 47 percent nineteen times out of thirty
seven.)
As Mark Twain said, isn’t it wonderful to get such remarkable
conclusions from such a trifling investment of fact?
Cheers,
John Walsh"
Sorry, but I find this sort of creative accounting a bit misleading. I believe that if anyone bothers to do the footwork, you will find my number is closer to the mark.
Yes, I know many of you are itching to know how I arrived at my number. Well, I have been studying esoteric arts for many years, and have applied time-honoured yogic principles to make contact directly with my inner child to ask the really big questions, like “How many people in the world play UPs?”. You may try this if you wish, but I should caution you that there are significant dangers, and that you should know in advance and accept responsibility if you attempt my method on your own.
First find a quiet place where you will not be interupted. Stand straight on both feet. Find and maintain your balance. Slightly shift your weight forward onto the balls of your feet. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Hold the breath, click your heels together three times and chant “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” Magically, the number will appear behind your closed eylids, glowing in a sort of orangey pink aura and … oh, here comes the nurse!
He plays a bellows only
And I thought the topic of this discussion was going to be:
“How many uilleann pipers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
That is funny, in any case. My question is, however, has he taken into account inhabitable landmass? I think that would affect the figure even further, not to mention a slew of other criteria that would make it even funnier.
Only one, but it takes him/her 21 years to learn how. But by the end of that time, they know how to add colour to the lightbulb.
7 years to learn the shape of the light bulb
7 years to learn the correct twisting movement
7 years to find the switch
plus a ten year waiting list for the bulb.