Numbers (Re: The Scale of Things)

[pengolodh_sc]

No: HPFGUIDX 43311

--- In HPforGrownups, "jferer" wrote:
> I had some actual figures to work with, to wit: My kids go to a
> seven year grade school (K-6). There's 466 students, and there
> 10 such schools in a town of 55,000. If each school had the
> exact same number (can't be true) they constitute .08 of the
> population. If Hogwarts had 1,000 students, at that rate there
> would be 11,800 some-odd wizards out there. If there are twice
> that many because of the longer life span, it's somewhere around
> 20,000. That's not much.

This agrees with what I found by doing comparisons to demographical 
data from Norway and Scotland about a year's time ago - the muggle 
data were taken from Scotland's Public Registry Office, and the 
Norwegian equivalent.  I then assumed linear relations, as there were 
not data to go on to provide fudge-factors to improve the estimates.  
While we know nothing of how long a witch will remain able to bear 
children, I do get the impression that most families have few 
children, the Weasleys being an exception.

> I think it's even worse. I'm not sure we can just double the wizard 
> population if the normal life span doubles, because we haven't 
> accounted for the fact an older wizard has twice as many years' 
> chances to get run over by a bus or something. And when Lily and 
> James are killed by Voldemort, he hasn't cut short 50 years of life 
> per victim, but potentially 120 years. Someone who knows about 
> population models could come up with a better estimate than we can. 
> On top of THAT, how do we count the Muggle parents of wizards in
> that wizard world population?

As far as we know, muggle-parentage is somewhat rare, so I think 
assuming (though it does create an inaccuracy) that squibs outweigh 
muggleborns in calculating the statistics, we can somewhat account 
for this.  The result will not be perfect, but I do think it will be 
close enough.  

> Here's another problem. She has Britain covered by Hogwarts,
> and the entire rest of Europe served by Beauxbatons and
> Durmstrang. If they are the only two wizard schools - and we
> haven't been told, but where were the others at the Triwizard
> Tournament? - then the population density of wizards in
> continental Europe is even worse than in Britain.

But we do not know how many students go to these schools, have no 
numbers to go on, and so can conclude little to nothing about the 
wizarding population-density in Europe.  And we do have very strong 
circumstantial evidence pointing to there being more than three 
scools of wizardry in Europe.  From GoF, Chapter Twelve - The 
Triwizard Tournament (Dumbledore speaking, on the page before he uses 
the term "of age", and only four-five pages before the end of the 
chapter):

"The Triwizard Tournament was first established some seven hundred 
years ago, as a friendly competition between the three largest 
European schools of wizardry - Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Drumstrang."

While this evidence is not rock-hard (i.e., it might only mean that 
back then there were other schools, of lesser standing than the three 
great, with these lesser schools having now disappeared), it does 
make it plausible and probable that there are more than three 
wizarding-schools in Europe.

Best regards
Christian Stubø