Class size discrepancy of DADA & Relative School SIze

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67"
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:

> 
> Carol adds:
> You're right, they, don't (share DADA with other house)--unless the 
> policy changed in Harry's fifth year. But the only students who 
> speak up in Umbridges are the Gryffindors we've always known 
> --Hermione, Harry, Dean, and Parvati. 
> 
> So how did we get from ten Gryffindors in Lupin's DADA class in PoA 
> to thirty in Umbridges? 
>
> Is JKR trying to "fudge" the numbers to make the number of students 
> add up to 1000?
> 
> Carol

Asian_lovr2:

I think we need to be careful not to be too literal. People frequently
speak and think in generalities, and more importantly, in exagerations.

I can remember coming home from the local swimming pool on a hot
summer day and telling my mother 'there must have been a million kids
at the pool'. Of course, I'm merely saying the pool was crowded, no
reasonable person would think a pool in a town of 1,500 would have a
million people in it. 

So, while it's best not to take these things too literally, JKR would
have certainly done us all a favor by having Harry think 'a dozen'
rather than 'thirty'. 

I believe Harry also used the number 30, when refering to the number
of DE's in the graveyard, but that respesents a preception under
pressure, not an exact count.

As far as the school having 1,000 students, I think we are facing the
same thing; we take that too literally. When this subject came up
before, I looked up the historical enrollment figures for the
University of Minnesota and it's enrollment has fluctuated by about
30%. Given it's enormous size, the vast pool of students it draws
from, the quality of the school, and the stability of our local
economy, 30% is probably a pretty modest change.

In a small selective school like Hogwarts, student enrollment is
likely to fluctuate significantly. Illustration, I grew up in a small
town, average class size just under 25, yet there was one grade level
that only had 15 students (>40% variation). 

When JKR said Hogwarts was 1,000, I took that as the relative size of
THE SCHOOL itself, or I guess you could look at it as the enrollment
capacity. So, she is commenting on the size of the school, not the
size of the student body. Those two are not one and the same. 

So, that doesn't mean that the current enrollment is 1,000. We know
from reading the books that there are several rooms/classrooms all
over the castle that are currently unused or little used.

Also, the 10x4x7=280 assumes uniform size of all Houses and all years,
and that is very very unlikely. I have always speculated the
Hufflepuff house had the largest enrollment, Ravenclaw second, and
Slytherin & Gryffindor nearly tied for fewest number of students per
house. 

We have too small a window into size of individual class years, but
it's illogical to assume they are identical. 

Even given all this, you will have a hard time coming up with numbers
to justify 1,000 enrolled students. For me that's not a problem,
because I don't think the school is enrolled close to capacity. There
is too much evidents that sigificant parts of the school are unused to
assume full enrollment. 

I've always thought 400 (avg 14/year/house) to 600 (avg 21/year/house)
was a fair estimate. For reference, using my premise, the capacity is
36/year/house.

Just a few thoughts.

Steve/asian_lovr2