the sorting hat problem

[sidkrisha]

No: HPFGUIDX 54596

Hi 

 I am sorry if this question has been addressed before already;I 
tried looking, but couldn't find it. 

I was just wondering how the Sorting Hat works. Let me explain 
it in detail.  Say, we have 40 students entering Hogwarts each 
year (40 is just a number I picked for convenience) and they are 
gonna be sorted soon. With 4 houses in the school, I would 
assume that each house gets 10 people.  But that might not be 
the case, right?? What if 20 people among the 40 are brave and 
loyal and all deserve to be placed in the Gryffindor house.  That 
would mean that there could be an imbalance in the strengths of 
the houses.  Are the school authorities okay with it? 

Now, let us assume that there always should be a balance in the 
houses. How does the Hat decide? It should know before hand 
how many people are there to be sorted and then based on the 
dominant qualities, shoud place them in the corresponding 
houses, right? But then, how can it make decisions as soon as 
a person puts the cap on? Shoudn't it wait for everyone to wear it 
first??  But then, maybe there is an imbalance. 

By the way, based on the COS, I calculated the strength at 
Hogwarts to be 280 (which was why I decided on the number of 
students per year as 40), but in another book (POA or GOF, I 
forget which), there is a reference to 200 people in a house.  Can 
someone fill me on on this? 

Sid ; who shud probably be spending more time on his research