HOW many classmates? All things are Relative

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 91558

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Elihu Falk <elihufalk at y...> wrote:
> Ffred wrote:
> 
> The actual numbers in the first 5 years would be larger than 1000/7 of
> course, because you have to assume that a certain number leave after
taking
> OWLs, so that years 6 and 7 will be smaller than years 1-5
> 

 
> 
> My (Elihu's) answer:
> 
> If you say the average year has 143 (exactly 1001/7), you can still
have some years smaller than others. lets say that in Harry's year,
slightly less than 1 quarter ended up being Gryffindors. You could
easily, in my opinion, from a group of 135 students, have 30
Gryffindors instead of 34.
> 
> Elihu
> 

bboy_mn:

Let me comment again, that I don't think JKR's statement of a student
population of 1,000 was actually intended to be a head count. I think
she was stating the relative size of the school. 

Hogwarts is a school with a relative capacity of 1,000 students; as
opposed to 100 or 10,000. A SCHOOL with a relative size of 1,000 does
not necessarily always have 1,000 students enrolled. We see from
Harry's roaming of the castle that there are several classrooms that
are used for storage. This would imply that the school is not
currently at it's maximum or typical capacity.

By my estimation, a school with a relative size of 1,000 could have
enrolements that fluctate between 500 and 1,200. 

In addition, it you look at the personality types of each house, and
relate them to real world examples, we see that these are not equally
balanced types. The world is overflowing with hardworking loyal
Hufflepuff types (labor/blue collar), and while there are a
substantial number of Ravenclaw types (intelligent, educated, college
graduate types, white collar, management), they are less than the
working class. 

In the real world, few people ever have their bravery tested, so it's
hard to tell how many Gryfindors there are, but we do know that people
of significant and substantial proven bravery are quite rare and
greatly admired in the real world, so I conclude far fewer Gryfindors
than Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. 

Now with Slytherin, we can again look at the real world and see that
while most people want to do well in life, few are driven by
unrelenting ambition (owners, executives, presidents, CEO). So once
again, far fewer Donald Trumps than Joe MiddleClass.

So, in order of size, based on transposing personality types into real
world examples, I say...

Greatest number = Hufflepuff
Somewhat Large = Ravenclaw
Small = Gryfindor
Small = Slytherin

Just off the top of my head, I would guess a ratio of 40H/30R/15G/15S.
I can't prove that ratio, so it's more of an illustration of my point
than anything else. 

Also, you can look at any real life school and see that each year is
not even. In our small school, grade sizes were typcially 20 to 30
with an average of 25. However, there was one class grade that only
had 15 students in it, and there was no logical reason or tracable
event to account for the small size; just a random variation.

So, one could assume or suppose that years above and below Harry could
be larger.

So we have uneven houses and uneven years, and a relative size of the
school that allows for a range of actual enrollment counts.

So, I guess part of my point is that we shouldn't take JKR statement
that the school is about 1,000 students to mean that the school is
now, always will be, and always has been exactly 1,000.0000000000
students. 

There are ways of explaining things like 10 Hufflepuffs and 10
Gryfindors in Herbology with uneven house sizes. While they are not
supported by direct evidence in the book, they are reasonable and
common methods of dealing with uneven class size in the real world.

For example; we could assume there are Herbology classes with ...

class 1: 10 Gryf/10 Huff
class 2: 10 Rave/10 Huff
class 3: 10 Rave/10 Slyth

alternately-

class 1: 10 Gryf/10 Huff
class 2: 20 Ravenclaw
class 3: 10 Slyth/10 Huff

In both cases, the smaller Gryf and Slyth have been combined with the
overflow from Hufflepuff and/or Ravenclaw. 

Note: multiplying the above by x10 would give us a school enrolment of
600 students, and a year average size for Gryfindor of 14.3.

Now, again, this isn't proven in the books, but there is nothing that
positively disproves it either. All we have are Harry's observations
of the world around him, and Harry tends to keep to himself as much as
possible. He still doesn't know the names of many of the students he
has gone to school with for five years. So Harry's view is far from a
complete view.

Just a few thoughts.

bboy_mn