wizarding numbers

[Mikael Raaterova]

No: HPFGUIDX 83025

Newbie Apology: I realize that my original post may have sounded a bit 
offensive, since i presented my views without reference to earlier efforts 
on this topic. I simply assumed that the most recent posters that I read 
were aware of earlier efforts, and formulated my response to what was said 
in their posts. I am sorry about that.

I wrote:
> >I've been thinking a bit about the number of wizards, and the posts I
> >found when I searched to see what people had already come up with
> >weren't satisfying.

This is the bit I'm referring to as possibly offensive. I only read the 
most recent posts, and they seemed to have overlooked a few things. I 
didn't mean to heap abuse on earlier efforts. My apologies.


Anyway. Ffred wrote, in reply to me:
>Your assumption about whether it's particularly dangerous to be a wizard is
>thought-provoking. One thing that we do know is that although accidents are
>more frequent, wizard physique is more robust than muggles so that survival
>rates are also high, except in unexpected circumstances such as the
>Voldemort rebellion.
>
>I've suggested to the list that it's reasonable to conclude that the normal
>wizard lifespan is roughly twice the muggle one and that therefore the 11-17
>year olds are around 5% of the population.

Seems reasonable enough. I think my own reasoning was a bit flawed. Given 
that people like Marchbanks and Dumbledore are probably not unique (unlike 
Flamel), the mortality rates need to be waaay high to bring the mean age 
down to something comparable to UK or Sweden. And i don't see the WW being 
inordinately lethal. So, your figure should be closer to the truth than mine.


>Somewhere (I'm not sure exactly where), JKR has said that 25% of the
>Hogwarts students are muggle-born.

Very interesting. I can't recall coming across that statement. Does anyone 
know where it's from?


> >Hogwarts' "drainage basin" that would otherwise go to Hogwarts. The
> >larger the fraction of non-hogwarts children, the larger the maximum
> >population of wizards is. So I assume 50 % to not underestimate the
> >pop size.
>
>Some theories assume that the Hogwarts population is a lot lower than this.

Fair enough. Personally, I can't see the attendance being lower than 50 % 
without making it extremely odd that Hogwarts is the only mentioned school 
(in the British isles, that is) in the books. Given what you say about the 
infrastructure in your post, i see a risk of circular reasoning here. 
Tailoring the calculations to snugly fit the notion of a population larger 
than a first-glance analysis of the number of students would warrant (such 
as having a low Hogwarts attendance) is risky. If we design the explanans 
to fit the explanandum we implicitly assume what we are trying to prove. 
I'm not saying i don't suffer the same problem; just that it *is* a problem.

I'd say that there are hints of the wizarding population being smallish. In 
relation to the Black's family tree, Sirius talks about all the pure-blood 
families being interrelated, which may indicate that there are problems in 
finding pure-blood marriage partners. If pure-bloods are a big fraction of 
the population, it would point to smallish size. If pure-bloods are few, 
and half-bloods are a big fraction, it'd still point to a small size, 
because half-bloods only add one parent to the population.


>It's not I think a discussion that will ever generate a consensus!

I'll drink to that. An interesting point here is that if JKR *isn't* 
consistent wrt to issues of populations and wizarding society, then a 
consensus is in fact impossible. If she *is* consistent, it strikes me that 
there can very well be explanations for the WW having a small population 
and yet have an intense infrastructure. If I'm allowed a RW analogy, I'll 
point out that Putnam's studies of democracy in northern Italy show that 
small populations can have an extensive and intensive, in terms of the 
amount of work needed to keep it going, infrastructure if a big enough 
fraction of the population actively participate in and contribute to it. 
Also, given magic-as-time-saving-devices and house-elf slave labour, we 
don't know how much work the infrastructure actually demands.

Do I make sense at all, or am I simply deluding myself?

/ Mikael