The Scale of Things

[bboy_mn]

No: HPFGUIDX 43298

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "prefectmarcus" <prefectmarcus at y...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL" 
> christopher_g_nuttall wrote:
> > But for the Wizarding world to be so large, the wizards must 
> > be at least one percent of the population (roughly 0.2 million),
> > and Hogwarts does not appear to be large enough to cater for
> > all their children.
> 
> > Chris
> 
> I once did some quick number extrapulations.  Rowling said there 
> are about one thousand students at Hogwarts.  (Yes, yes, the books
> don't tally, but I'm not going there for now.)  There are seven 
> grades so that means there about about 150 students per grade.  
> In today's culture, there are about 200 people in the population 
> for every 1 student in a given year.  Now assuming that wizards 
> live twice as long as muggles, make that 400 to 1.  That leaves a 
> grand total of 60,000 wizards in England.  That is only .3 of one 
> percent or 3 in every thousand Britians are wizards.
> 
> However you cook the numbers, there aren't very many.  However there 
> is enough to be orginized.
> 
> Mark

bboy_mn asks:

I'm curious where you (Mark) and Chris got their numbers. Especially,
Mark's student to population ratios. 

I'm not challenging those ratio; I'm just curious how you arrived at them.

To add more perspective, UK has a population of 60,000,000 (as of
2001). Using 200/1 ratio yields a wizard population of 300,000. Using
400/1, obviously, 150,000.

Using Chris' estimate of 1%, that obviously yields 600,000.

so.... 150,000 to 600,000

For reference - Luxembourg is about 450,000 people.

bboy_mn