Both rooms are full of people talking to strangers. Only one of them keeps any of it.
Conditions are published figures or derived from them. Output is measured from a standard run — 1,200 people, 4 hours, fixed seed, identical for both rooms. A highlighted cell is only marked where “more” is actually better; density and volume are conditions, not scores.
A covered market is nearly three times denser than a conference floor — 1.3 people per square metre against 0.45 — and both are quiet rooms where speech carries more than two metres. Both consist almost entirely of strangers speaking to strangers.
The market produces 6.62 encounters per person per hour, the lowest of any standing venue here; the conference produces 12.0. And the market keeps 302 lasting ties against the conference's 533, with a connected group of 273 against 435.
Sixty percent of a market is in transit and half its available attention is on the stalls rather than on other people. Its contact is functional and disposable by design — a buyer and a seller who will not meet again. A conference is the same raw ingredients pointed at the opposite goal, and it converts roughly twice as well.
