Size of HW (was British school system)

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Terry James"
<terryljames at h...> wrote:
> 
> The enormous dining room ...; the "hundreds" of squashy 
> purple sleeping bags ..; the "fleet" of boats and "line" of 
> horseless carriages...all of the descriptions of all the students as 
> a group really  give me an image of lots of kids.  ...edited..
> 
> Terry LJ


bboy_mn:

Conclusions we've reach so far-

1.) it's impossible to accurately determine the number of student by
any means. Believe me, we have approached it from every possible angle
and it simply can not be accurately determined. 

Although, I personally suspect that enrollment tyically ranges for 600
to 800, with low end being 400 to 600, and peak enrollment being 800
to 1,000. 

2.) JKR said it was about a thousand, but I believe she wasn't stating
an exact number but indicating the general size of the school; more
than hundreds, less than thousands. So even with her statement, we are
wrong to conclude 1,000.000000000 students in the school. Again, it
simply indicates the general size of the school. 

3.) The houses are not likely to be divided equally, and the latest
book re-enforces that by indicating that Hufflepuff has no
requirements, Slytherin takes the cunning, Ravenclaw takes the clever,
Gryffindor takes the brave, and Hufflepuff takes all the rest. 

It seems reasonable that there are fewer diabolically cunning people,
so Slytherin would be small. It would seem that there would be fewer
substantually brave people, so Gryffindor would be small. However,
there are a lot of extremely intelligent people, so Ravenclaw would be
medium, and Hufflepuff taking everyone else would be large.

4.) No matter how you tweek the numbers, Harry's class is small, but
that is no guarantee that every single person has been accounted for.
There is some suspicious based on Lupin's Bogart class that there are
a couple of un-named students. And unlikely that the size of Harry's
class can be used to determine the size of all the other houses, 
classes, and/or years.

5.) JKR is not real accurate when it comes to numbers, and the numbers
she has constructed were never intended to be analyzed to the depth
that we here are analyzed them. 

Just a thought.

bboy_mn