[HPforGrownups] wizarding numbers

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 83063

Mikael wrote:
>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.

Agreed on that.

My answer to that would be that Hogwarts is the only mentioned school _of
Witchcraft and Wizardry_ in the Isles. That allows for there being other WW
children who for whatever reason (perhaps because they will go into the
family business) don't need a qualification in wizardry, but instead might
get a practical education from family or employer.

Muggleborns, of course, would always need to be invited to Hogwarts. The WW
has to be sure that they're properly acculturated otherwise they could end
up coming to grief (and the secrecy of the WW could be compromised).

Another explanation, which others have advanced, is that JKR's maths isn't
the strongest point of the books, and that attempts to argue from it are
always doomed to grief!

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

No, makes a great deal of sense!

Also, of course, a lot of the context within which the plot of the books
operates is shaded by your own mental picture of just how big the WW
actually is. A possible example: Dumbledore says that he doesn't mind losing
his various offices so long as they don't take his picture off the Chocolate
Frogs. Now that might just be whimsy. But if you assume the "large" WW, then
another implication might be that for most people, given that they _won't_
have been Hogwarts students, the Chocolate Frog cards are the _only place_
they'll have heard of Dumbledore...

Cheers

Ffred

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