"Hundreds of students"

[ILuvDarkMarks]

Originally Posted by Samuel5

Rowling was just never very good with Mathematics. I put this in the spoiler just in case anyone is interested in reading other number mistakes in her books I got from reading this site a long time ago:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...rsCannotDoMath

Spoiler: show

The Harry Potter series has many examples, generally called "oh dear, maths" moments after the World Book Day interview, where J. K. Rowling admitted she's not good at mathematics:
In Quidditch Through the Ages, it says that the first ever World Cup was in 1473, with a match being held every four years. Yet the World Cup in Goblet of Fire, set in 1994, is number 422. There can't be 422 world cups in 521 years with a four-year gap in between. Calculated correctly, the World Cup that the Weasleys, Hermione, and Harry attend is actually the 131st, and it would have been held in 1993 if not for having been banned for significantly more than four years before the 1994 event.
If you take every date in the books seriously, you're lead to the conclusion that Andromeda Tonks could have been at most twenty when her daughter was born. Not too unusual, but to make her that young you have to assume that Andromeda and Bellatrix are twins...
Sirius talks about Snape and Bellatrix belonging to the same crowd - Bellatrix is 9 years older than Snape, meaning they couldn't have gone to school together.
Then you have Tonks and Teddy. There is time for the pregnancy, but it's really squeezed in there. Tonks was either pregnant when she got married, or very soon after, and behaves as though she's aware of the pregnancy as soon as it would have started.
There is also the case of the girls' father, who according to the Black family tree would have been thirteen when he became a father for the first time.
The dates in the story must have been undecided-on until late in the game, because Dudley has a PlayStation in the fourth book (which would have taken place in 1994, before it was released in Japan, let alone Europe) - Rowling admitted she Did Not Do the Research with that one.
Nearly Headless Nick's death date, mentioned in the second book, fixes the present date as 1992. This contradicts a statement in the first book where an old book lists Nicholas Flamel as having "celebrated his six-hundred-sixty-fifth birthday last year." Flamel was born in the early 1330s, so even if the book had been brand new, the year would have to be at least 1995.
The most commonly noted example: It's implied (but never explicitly stated) that students are divided more or less evenly into houses. There are 5 Gryffindor boys in Harry's year, as well as 5 named Slytherin boys. That suggests there are roughly 40 students in Harry's year — and J.K. Rowling even has a notebook listing them. If we assume this is a normal year... we are led to the conclusion that there are no more than 280 students attending Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling has stated that she had just been so proud to have 40 rounded-out characters that she didn't do the math. She envisions Hogwarts to have somewhere around 750 students; and there is a line about "200 students in green" during one of the Quidditch matches, supporting the view of a larger student body.
But there's a more severe problem with the "large Hogwarts" view: there are fourteen subjects, just one teacher for each (so says Word Of God, with the exception of Divination after the events of the fifth book) and on several occasions it's mentioned that there are 20 students in each lesson. If there were 750 students, either the day would be two-thirds free periods or the teachers would all have to be using Time Turners to teach three classes at once.
The math is still weird even if you assume 280 and that each year has two classes, each with two Houses in it, which is what the book implies. And there are seven years, although it's likely that the last two years only have one class for each subject as students drop subjects and even drop out. This means each teacher teaching the five required-for-the-first-five-year subjects is handling 12 different classes of 20 students each, for a total of 240 students.
Sounds good, but then it gets weird, as there are five slots a day for classes, so only 25 slots each week. Assuming the teachers get at least one free period a week, that means that they can only have two classes for each grade a week. Which sounds workable, and even allows the 'Doubles' class periods which show up, but then blows up in your face when you realize five required classes, of two hours each is...ten hours. First years have an added flying class, although that can't add more than a few hours a week, and third years and beyond have two electives (Or more if you're Hermione), but second years apparently have a ten hour workweek!
Related to this is the fact that Umbridge could not possibly have had time to inspect so many lessons as well as teaching her own.
And speaking of the schedule, as class is an hour long, and they start a 9:00, there probably shouldn't be two classes, a break, and another class before lunch, as the break seems to be at least thirty minutes, possibly an entire hour, and logically pushes lunch to at least 12:30. Then there are a break right after lunch, two more classes, and then free time until dinner. It's not mathematically impossible, but it is a strange schedule, to say the least. Why not have one of those classes after lunch? And why have a break right after lunch? Of course, as statistically they only have enough teachers to be in class two or three of the five slots each day, it really doesn't matter much.
Additionally, there's the matter of Ron's older brothers, Bill and Charlie. Originally, JK Rowling stated that Charlie was two years older than Percy, and Bill was two years older than Charlie. However, Percy is in fifth year in "Philosopher's Stone", meaning that Charlie should have either been in seventh year, or just graduated. She later corrected this to Charlie being three years older than Percy - which is still impossible, as the Gryffindor Quidditch team has allegedly not won the Cup since Charlie stopped playing for them, and the period of time since Gryffindor has won is given in "Prisoner of Azkaban" as having been seven years, coming up on eight (or four years before the start of the first book). Charlie would have had to have left the team in his third, or possibly fourth, year for his age at three years older than Percy to be plausible - unlikely, since he was Quidditch Captain and "could have played for England".
Also, in Chamber of Secrets, Ginny mentions wanting to attend Hogwarts since Bill came. Bill is at least 11 years older than Ginny. So Ginny wanted to go to Hogwarts since she was born? It was also unnecessary because she has 4 older brothers she would've been able to bond with before they went off to Hogwarts. (She may just have exaggerated, though.)
Then, of course, there is the number of wizards and witches in Great Britain, which Rowling puts at around 3,000. That's all fine and good . . . until you start wondering how they support multiple professional, regional Quidditch teams, among other things, with a population that small.
If there are 750 students and 3000 wizards, then a quarter of the entire wizarding population is attending Hogwarts at any one time. Which means that at least a quarter of the population is between 11 and 18. "You Fail Demography Forever"?
If there are only 3000 wizards in all of Great Britain, how do they have such a sprawling governmental bureaucracy? There wouldn't be nearly enough tax revenue for what we see, not even close. Unless the entire Ministry isn't getting paid...Also makes you wonder how the economy works. How do the Malfoys have so much money? We never see their business, and there really aren't enough consumers for anyone to get very wealthy. It could be mostly inheritance, but that just pushes the issue back a few generations.
You could imagine any number of shady ways the Malfoys get their wealth, couldn't you?
A more minor error: in Order of the Phoenix, Harry views Snape's memory of sitting OWLs with "his fifteen-year-old father". Harry was 15 when he sat OWLs, but he's an exceptional case because his birthday is during the summer. James, born in March, would have been 16.
A possible explanation for that one, at least, is that it was Harry who got it wrong, not Rowling. Since he was 15, preparing to take his O.W.L.s, and seeing his father, who looks a helluva lot like him, taking said tests, it's not that impossible to imagine that Harry didn't take into account the difference in birthdays.
Not to mention that he's an orphan who has never been told (onscreen, anyway) his father's birthday. It's very likely that he only finds out exactly when James was born in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when he sees James' grave for the first time.

I let her mistakes pass because her books are meant to teach us morals and not teach us Mathematics.

Thanks for sharing!

This is one occasion where I don't mind inconsistencies and (potential) lack of realism. I find that I don't even care how their schedule works because I'm more concerned with Harry's story, only a small part of which revolves around his schooling.

Also, I agree with those who have stated that there are probably more unnamed Gryffindors. If they don't serve Harry any purpose, then it makes sense for JKR to leave them out of the story completely. It's like how we didn't meet Luna until OotP or hear of McLaggen until HBP. I know people have argued that we should have heard of them before, seeing as how Ginny seemed to know Luna and McLaggen is a Gryffindor and interested in Quidditch. But it stands to reason that Harry had no reason to have come in contact with either before.

[Gwendolen]

The last part of the last book was 19 years later and hasn't happened yet. We could assume that none of the books have been written yet, so by the time Harry gets around to writing things down he might have forgotten everyone's names.

[Wimsey]

Originally Posted by Quaphasia

Rowling herself said that there are about 40 students in Harry's year, with 10 belonging to each house.

Actually, what Rowling presented was a list of 38 names, 8 of which went to Gryffindor.

Originally Posted by Gryffindormagic

I agree with you. To me there is no reason why EVERY SINGLE student needs to be given a small biography in every book. Just direct my focus to the people that matter and that's all I need!

It would not be a question of characters discussed but characters mentioned. This is a simple sampling issue, and one can apply methods similar to those that literary scholars have applied to, say, poems thought to have been written by Shakespeare. There, the situation is more complicated: given the distribution of words used in Shakespeare's works, what is the probability that you'd get the word distribution in a poem thought to have been written by Willie?


Here, it is a lot simpler. Basically, how often are the known Gryffindor students mentioned? Remember, they are not mentioned because Rowling is developing them as characters: they are mentioned because someone did/said X, and Rowling plucks an appropriate name from her head.

If there were lots of "rare" Gryffindors, then what we should see is, say, Lavender Brown mentioned only once in some books and not at all in others.
A simple estimate of the probability of Rowling skipping a Gryffindor from a book would simply be the proportion of books in which a known Gryffindor is not sampled.

What we find is that ALL of the known Gryffindors are being mentioned in every book. That means that the sampling rate is 100%.


Now, you might object: Rowling is not mathematically inclined, ergo, it doesn't work that way! That's not the issue: the systems to which we apply this (frequencies of accidents in factories, sightings of endangered species, performances of professional athletes, sampling from the fossil record, etc.) all are unthinking processes. What we want to know is, how often are things being grabbed by these processes?

Ultimately, the probability of Kiera MacLeod, Gryffindor, being in Harry's class and somehow not being mentioned in all 7 books are so astronomically low that we should just abandon the idea that such a character might have existed.

[blknight7]

Originally Posted by Wimsey

Ultimately, the probability of Kiera MacLeod, Gryffindor, being in Harry's class and somehow not being mentioned in all 7 books are so astronomically low that we should just abandon the idea that such a character might have existed.

Pretty much where I stand on the issue, at least from the books. For me, the probability that a Gryffindor from Harry's class would go unmentioned for 7 books is so small that it is much more likely that the person did not exist.

The movies just scaled it up a bit, perhaps to make the setting more impressive (huge castle, large student population, etc).

[Quaphasia]

Originally Posted by Wimsey

Ultimately, the probability of Kiera MacLeod, Gryffindor, being in Harry's class and somehow not being mentioned in all 7 books are so astronomically low that we should just abandon the idea that such a character might have existed.

Not at all. We have a figural narrative perspective restricted to Harry, so the narrator is not at all reliable with regard to filtering information. If anything he didn't tell about didn't exist, we would more likely have a different narrative perspective. Also, that's simply inappropriate.

Plus, Rowling said at some point that there are ~1000 students at Hogwarts. I doubt every single one of them has been mentioned.

[Gryffindormagic]

If Hogwarts has about 1000 students (I thought I read this somewhere on facts about the series) and there are 4 Houses that would roughly be 250 students per House. If there are 7 years then each class or year would have roughly 36 students.

[Wimsey]

Originally Posted by Quaphasia

Not at all. We have a figural narrative perspective restricted to Harry, so the narrator is not at all reliable with regard to filtering information. If anything he didn't tell about didn't exist, we would more likely have a different narrative perspective. Also, that's simply inappropriate.

We do get Harry's subjective assessment of situations. However, how frequently different students speak up was down to Rowling: it is not as if she wrote a "real" version, and then Harry's incorrect memories later. (Indeed, if this was supposed to be Harry's "memoirs," then it wouldn't work like that: Harry would use a Pensieve, which shows correct memories unless Harry deliberately altered them.)

The 8 Gryffindor students on Rowling's list for Harry's year fall into four categories:

1. Protagonist (Harry);
2. Secondary Character (Ron & Hermione);
3. Tertiary Character (Neville);
4. Quaternary Characters (Sean, Dean, Parvati, Lavender).

Obviously, the story is about Harry, so he gets mentioned the most. Ron & Hermione are the two sidekicks and important foils for story, plot and theme, so they get mentioned a lot. Neville serves as a lesser foil for story, plot and theme, so he gets mentioned much less often than Ron & Hermione, but more often than the others. For the most part, the quaternary characters are there because says something. (Occasionally Dean is used to ask "Muggleborn Questions" instead of Harry.)

What gives us a feel for the "Extra" Gryffindors (Dean, Seamus, Lavender & Parvati and any hypothetical ones that Rowling somehow forgot to list) is how frequently Rowling uses them, especially in the first three books. And, of course, what we see is that all of the known Extras get mentioned multiple times in each of those three books. This shows that the pool of names in Rowlings head was (in all probability) exhausted.

Now, Rowling began to use them for other purposes in Goblet and later books: however, even that is even more evidence that she had exhausted her pool. Otherwise, Harry would consider a 4th or 5th Gryffindor Girl when worrying about the Yule Ball, or Rowling would have randomly grabbed one of the other names floating in her head to pair up with Ron in Prince. One of those others would have been used to show how different families were siding with/against Harry & Dumbledore in Order.

Now, someday, Rowling might give us two more Gryffindors and bring Harry's year up to 40. However, we'll know that those names didn't exist in her head while she was writing the books (as well as when she made out her list): otherwise, she would have used them when writing " gasped "Professor Moody is so weird..." (or whatever...)

Originally Posted by Quaphasia

Plus, Rowling said at some point that there are ~1000 students at Hogwarts. I doubt every single one of them has been mentioned.

Although people seem to like this number (provided around 2000 or so), Rowling herself later retracted it. In the 2005 interview made (in)famous by one of the reviewers referring to Harmonians as "delusional," Rowling admitted that "600" was way too many, and that the problem was that she just didn't think in terms of numbers. (The fact that she mis-remembered her earlier estimate by so much probably corroborates this! ) She admitted that if she had, then she'd have just multiplied the average class size (which we don't know, but her class list for Harry's year is 38 students) by 7. What is telling is that she didn't even try to do that in the interview!

If the average admission is about 40, the 38 would be a very common number: remember, Rowling's rules are that all Hibernians with magical ability are invited to Hogwarts every year. This obviously would vary a bit from year to year. Also, attendance was not compulsory: that would add further variance.

[Aksu]

It is mentioned in the 3rd book (In the match between gryffindor and slytherin) that Slytherin had 200 hundred students chhering for their team. So I suppose pretty much all of them were there watching the game, which makes the number quite accurate. That means that Slytherin has around 200 students + the ones who werent watching the game. 200 times 4 makes 800, which is already quite close to the thousand mentioned by J.K. Slytherin isn't probably the biggest house for obvious reasons (their scale of approval is tighter), which makes the other houses a bit bigger, and thus we get the thousand pupils mentioned. This on the other hand means that Harry's year is a bit smaller and is probably conpensated by the bigger amount of other agegroups.

[Goddess_Clio]

Originally Posted by Wimsey

Obviously, the story is about Harry, so he gets mentioned the most. Ron & Hermione are the two sidekicks and important foils for story, plot and theme, so they get mentioned a lot. Neville serves as a lesser foil for story, plot and theme, so he gets mentioned much less often than Ron & Hermione, but more often than the others. For the most part, the quaternary characters are there because says something. (Occasionally Dean is used to ask "Muggleborn Questions" instead of Harry.)

I think you answered your own quetion. The story is about Harry. The story is also 90% told from Harry's limited POV. Therefore we're only seeing characters that are important to the story. Ernie was important because he trash-talks harry in COS. Lavendar is important because she becomes Rons girlfriend. Parvati and her sister are important because they go to the yule ball with harry and ron. Who cares if JKR recycles characters? it didn't bother me in the slightest NOT to have a new background character popping out from behind every suit of armor or a new Ravenclaw girl answering all the questions in class. Having a core group of characters who names you knew and personalities you were introduced to kept the cast small and you get the feeling that these are the people Harry knows best.

Afterall, Harry didn't know Luna until book 5, she wasn't even mentioned until that book. If harry had been a minute faster getting off the train he - and we- never would have met her. We know Luna because Jo wanted us to know her. We DON'T know the other background characters because they were irrelevant to Harry's story. Simple as that.

I don't agree, tho, that the incoming class should be evenly divided into the houses. imagine being the last person to be sorted and finding out - "oh you have to go in Slytherin because we already have 8 students in all the other houses but slytherin only has 7..." what a bummer! I, personally, imagine many more students than are mentioned by name in books and Harry's class is disproportionately small because of the lack of worthy Gryffindors in his year.

What I find interesting is the total wizard population being only 3000 in Britain. I won't bore you with the math, but extrapolating from Britain's population increase projections (a meager 108% growth in the next twenty years) and working backwards, a population of 3000 wizards in the mid 1990's would mean roughly a 440-person population about the time Columbus discovers America and a population of about 100-150 at the founding of Hogwarts. Which means that there were probably only about 20-40 students in Hogwarts founding year. Interesting. (this would count Muggleborn witches and wizards but doesn't account for muggles like Ted Tonks who marry into the wizarding population but don't have magic themselves).

Yes, I have too much time on my hands at present. =^P

[ajna]

I have a question. In any of the Pottermore stuff that's been released, has any of this (Hogwarts and house populations) been covered and cleared up at all?

[captain_mills]

From what I've read (and I'm 99.9% sure I've read everything in Pottermore) there is not statement as to how many students are admitted each year to Hogwarts nor how many are currently attending... I know this doesn't add much, but I hope it answers your question. But, there may have been details that I missed or overlooked.

[Basilisk37]

I also have a question. Where do all these students sleep?!? Are there really 6 more dorms per House never mentioned? It seems that Fred, George, Percy, Oliver, etc. just show up in Harry's dorm depite their not being ANY place for them to sleep.....

[Wab]

Originally Posted by Aksu

It is mentioned in the 3rd book (In the match between gryffindor and slytherin) that Slytherin had 200 hundred students chhering for their team. So I suppose pretty much all of them were there watching the game, which makes the number quite accurate. That means that Slytherin has around 200 students + the ones who werent watching the game. 200 times 4 makes 800, which is already quite close to the thousand mentioned by J.K. Slytherin isn't probably the biggest house for obvious reasons (their scale of approval is tighter), which makes the other houses a bit bigger, and thus we get the thousand pupils mentioned. This on the other hand means that Harry's year is a bit smaller and is probably conpensated by the bigger amount of other agegroups.

In the game in question Gryffindor had 200 students cheering for them because in games involving Slytherin, all of the other students cheered for the other team.

[Goddess_Clio]

Originally Posted by Basilisk37

I also have a question. Where do all these students sleep?!? Are there really 6 more dorms per House never mentioned? It seems that Fred, George, Percy, Oliver, etc. just show up in Harry's dorm depite their not being ANY place for them to sleep.....

I've heard two theories on this:

1) Each house has two dorms for each year, a boys and a girls first year dorm, a boys and girls second year dorm, etc. so that in Harry's year there happened to only be five gryffindor boys in his same grade and that Fred, George and Lee would be in their own dorm together two grades above Harry and Ron...

2) The dorms are split up boys and girls with 4-5 kids per room so that there might have been boys in Gryffindor in Harry's year that weren't mentioned because they weren't pertinent to the story. The kids would still be separated by year, though, with fourth years in the same room and fifth years in the same room - it would be kind of awkward to be a sixth year and have a first year move in with you...

Both of these have different implication on estimates of student body.

[RemusLupinFan]

Originally Posted by Goddess_Clio

1) Each house has two dorms for each year, a boys and a girls first year dorm, a boys and girls second year dorm, etc. so that in Harry's year there happened to only be five gryffindor boys in his same grade and that Fred, George and Lee would be in their own dorm together two grades above Harry and Ron...

I actually think it might be the case that there were only five boys sorted into Gryffindor in Harry's year. I went through and counted a total of 21 students sorted in PS/SS (though I suppose there could have been some that went without being mentioned). With such a small number of first years, it's entirely plausible there could have been only five Gryffindor boys.

[ajna]

I believe in the books, Harry's year keeps their tower bedroom the entire stay in school. There just isn't a mention of where the other 6 years are. I assume in other towers?

[captain_mills]

Or, each of the house towers or dorms could be magically enhanced to contain more space than what is shown outside. There is only one tower mentioned for Gryffindor and for Ravenclaw. I believe that their common rooms are below the dorms, and the boys & girls rooms are each up different staircases that go up the length of the towers...

This brought up a question for me... I know that Gryffindor and Ravenclaw are each in towers and Slytherin is in the dungeons... but where's hufflepuff at?

[MerryLore]

Originally Posted by captain_mills

This brought up a question for me... I know that Gryffindor and Ravenclaw are each in towers and Slytherin is in the dungeons... but where's hufflepuff at?

I've heard it's near the kitchens.

[merrymarge]

yes, but where are the kitchens? are they downstairs, but not as low as the dungeons?

[captain_mills]

I did a search and found some info on the Hufflepuff commonroom in the Harry Potter wiki (link below). It still does not say anything about the number of students in Hufflepuff, but it does give some information about where it is and how to get in...

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Hufflepuff_Basement

(here's to hoping the content above is not illegal to post, lol)