Number of Students (WAS Random ideas)

[Trond Michelsen]

No: HPFGUIDX 51819

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 10:45:04PM -0000, Steve <bboy_mn at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A few small weaknesses in your analysis. 
> I assumes relatively equal class sizes between house. 

It assumes no such thing. It assumes that the list is complete. Of these
41 students, canon (and these pictures) tells us explicitly which house 
32 students belong to. These 32 students just happens to be exactly
evenly distributed (8 in each house).

> The latest
> theory presumes that Slytherin and Gryffindor's are rare individuals
> and therefore, their houses are smaller. I like that theory.

Sure, the nine unknown students could all be in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.
Nothing wrong in that. But that's where the second and third
asssumptions kicks in, that there are no unknown Gryffindors, and that
the twenty brooms and earmuffs are exact numbers. This is what
distributes 4 students to Slythering, four to Hufflepuff and the last to
Ravenclaw. Still these assumptions could very well be wrong, but the
total number of students should still be 41.

> You assume you know all the students in Harry year, when in fact, you
> only know the characters. That is, students who take and active part
> in the story.

Oh absolutely. I think that this list is abolutely 100% utterly complete
with ALL the students in Harry's year. Do you really think that all of
these 41 students are or will become characters? There are so many of
them that hasn't even been mentioned once in the books so far, and 
others that we've only seen during the sorting sequence. 

Among the 41 students, I'd say that we've seen 10 characters so far.

Harry Potter
Ronald Weasley
Hermione Granger
Draco Malfoy
Vincent Crabbe
Gregory Goyle
Pansy Parkinson (OK, this one's a stretch)
Neville Longbottom
Justin Finch-Fletchley
Ernie Macmillan

I only included Pansy as she's Draco's girlfriend. I suspect she'll get
more screentime later.

The rest of the students are either unmentioned, briefly mentioned, or
they've spoken a couple of unimportant sentences without taking part of
the story. 

> The same hold true for JKR's list of students. It doesn't necessarily
> define all the students, it define all the characters who will be part
> of the story.

Well, in four books, 10 people have become part of the story. Do you
really think that the remaining 31 students will become important within
the next 3 books? 

> We know there are many Ravenclaws who have never been
> mentioned beyond a general reference to the group. Do we even know the
> names of any of the Quidditch team members? We know two, Roger Davis
> and Cho Chang, because the have an active presents in more than one
> book.

Uhm... So? Neither of these are in Harry's year. There are hundreds of
students not in Harry's year that we don't know the name of. That does
not mean that there are close to a hundred completely unmentioned
students in Harry's year.

> So the point is that the book probably defines all the active
> character and not all of the students.

I don't believe so. I'm convinced that the notebook lists all students
in Harry's year, active character or not. 

-- 
Trond Michelsen