Wizarding population of UK

[raolin1 at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 30223

This is probably a silly thing to do, but I found a government site 
with statistics on the UK population broken down by age group.  I 
decided I could make something of this of interest to the Harry 
Potter-verse, so bear with me as I explain what I did to try and 
estimate the population of the Wizarding world of the UK.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

I had to take at face value two statements made by JKR that may have 
been made on the fly, and may not bear out -- assuming she ever 
addresses them again.  Since at least one of those statements is 
controversial -- if not both -- that could skew the results based on 
what you believe.  The two statements are that the Hogwarts student 
population is about 1000 and that Hogwarts is the only school in the 
UK and Ireland.  Fron there, I was able to map out 1000 individuals 
to the relevant age groups, compare them to the percentage of the 
total in the statistical report and using some simple algebra, come 
up with a number of the total of the wizarding world.  Rounding to 
the nearest hunred (after all, JKR said *about* 1000) I came up with 
a number of 7700.

PROBLEMS IN THE PROCESS

However, there are a few things that will skew the numbers, so it 
can't be seen as anything more than a directional, best guess sort of 
thing -- useful only in the vaguest of surveys.  Some of these 
problems include: 

o  The statistics I used were for the UK excluding Ireland, while 
Hogwarts includes Irish students.  This would tend to skew the total 
significantly down from where I ended up.

o  The percentage of the population in the higher age groups drops 
off sharply soon after about 70 or so.  Since we know that wizards 
are longer lived, there should be more age brackets, and they should 
be more "filled out" than our Muggle numbers indicate.  This would 
skew the total significantly up from where I ended up.

o  Doesn't really make a provision for squibbs or others that for 
whatever reason don't go to Hogwarts.  We don't know if this is a 
significant portion of the population or not, or for that matter, if 
they really should be considered part of the wizarding population.  
Assuming that they grow up with wizarding families more in touch with 
the wizarding world than the Muggle world, then we should -- but 
that's a lot of fairly unfounded assumptions (although evidence from 
Filch and Neville corroborate it.)

o  As I mentioned, the the two crucial assumptions going in to the 
study (Hogwarts only school -- student body of 1000) are questionable.


OBSERVATIONS OF THE CONCLUSION

However, these numbers add a lot to what we see happening in the 
books, though.  Why is it that Arthur Weasley is able to come home 
and mention wizards by name that he had to raid as if pretty much the 
entire family should know who they are?  How is it that Professor 
MacGonnagal is able to pinpoint that Dedalus Diggle must be the bloke 
setting off fireworks at the beginning of PS/SS?  Only if you assume 
that the population is small, and most of them know -- or at least 
know of -- each other.  If Ron says that marrying Muggles was the 
only way the wizarding population was able to survive, it becomes a 
lot more than just the unfounded opinion of some 12-13 year old kid --
 with a population under 10,000 he's very likely entirely correct.  
Also, if 100,000 people got together for the World Cup -- granted, 
from all over the world, then that's a fairly significant part of the 
wizarding population!  In fact, given the percentage of Britain's 
population relative to the rest of the world, we can calculate a 
rough number of 800,000 for the total world-wide wizarding 
population.  Given the vagueness of the numbers we're working with, 
that's not a good triangulation, but I'd still venture that there's 
less than (or about) a million witches and wizards worldwide.

Joshua Dyal