Distribution of students in houses (was: Dorms)

[frantyck at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 26095

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., blpurdom at y... wrote:
> Denise wrote: 
> 
> I too assumed that the houses were all the same size. That could 
also 
> explain the reason why Griffindor & Slytherin are placed in classes 
> together. 
> 
> Barb now:
> 
> While I think the classes of kids born during the Voldemort years 
> stand a good chance of being smaller (birth years 1972-1981--1970 
and 
> 1971 seem too early for people to panic about having kids, even 
> though Voldemort was active for those two years) I think that
> these years would have fewer kids across all four houses and that 
it 
> is unlikely that most of the students are Ravenclaws and 
Hufflepuffs.
> 
> My reasoning lies in the House Cup competition.  If there were more 
> students in the other houses, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff would have 
> more opportunities to acquire points through academic excellence, 
> among other things (especially the brainy Ravenclaws).  As
> the competition usually seems to come down to Slytherin vs. 
> Gryffindor, which under this theory would have the fewest students, 
> an imbalance of students in the houses seems unlikely.
> 
> --Barb


That's a subtle point. No, that's two subtle points. I'd just like to 
draw attention to a point made by borg3892000 in message 26014:

"In reading COS again, (for the umpteenth time), it hit me that 
perhaps the houses aren't the same size.  I've always assumed that 
Gryffindor had 1/4th the students of each class. It could be that the 
bulk of the student population is in Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, with a 
small segment for Gryffindor and Slytherin.

It makes me think of a parabolic curve, with the rarer personality 
types in Gryffindor and Slytherin."

I know it's not possible to do a distribution analysis of how many 
students enter which houses based on the Sorting Hat's choices, but: 
since each student is assigned to one of the four houses based 
exclusively upon his or her own character and potential, there seems 
to be no reason to conclude that each house receives an equal number 
of students every year. Are exactly one quarter of the new students 
going to be power-hungry seekers or followers? Or stubbornly brave 
and noble children who know how to sift the fundamentally right from 
the fundamentally wrong?

And: do we know many Ravenclaw boys? I get the feeling that we know 
more Ravenclaw girls than we do boys, what with Penelope Clearwater 
and all the Ravenclaw girls who made eyes at Viktor Krum in the 
library (GoF). I hate to bring up this ancient and worn-shiny issue, 
but could this possibly reflect the ordinary (and probably mistaken) 
assumption that girls are generally more studious than boys?

I do wish Rowling would do Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw justice. Perhaps 
we will see more individuals from these two houses in OoP, as the 
fight against Voldemort gets underway.