the sorting hat problem

[Andrea]

No: HPFGUIDX 54598

*grins* I see "Sorting Hat" and immediately have to answer it.  Pet topic
of mine. ;)

--- Sid wrote:
> 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? 

I think this is one of those situations where everything eventually evens
up, even though each year might not be particularly even.  I don't see
anything in canon that would indicate there's a particular problem with
one House having a lot more students in any given year.  The reason for
double classes (Potions with Slytherin, etc) might be to account for
overflow from particularly large classes and filling up particularly small
ones.  Since we only hear about eight - ten Gryffindors in Harry's year,
in order to have that 200 people per House, you'd have to assume that
either there's a whole group of Gryffindors not mentioned OR Harry's year
is a small one for Gryffindor and they're thus given classes with other
Houses to fill in the gaps.  

However, I think that the system works itself out eventually.  If there
are a particularly small number of one House at a Sorting, the next year
might steer more borderline students (who would do equally well in more
than one House) towards the House that's a bit thin.  And along the same
lines, a House that was bursting with first years one year might have
borderline students steered away from it the following year, just to even
out the numbers.  Thus *overall*, the Houses are approximately equal in
number, no matter what the fluctuations from year to year.


Andrea

=====
"Reality is for people who lack imagination."

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