I must be on a "lost causes" kick this year ( Read more... )

Trying to line up the contradictory statements throughout the series about average magical ability into something coherent is probably a lost cause, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

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I'm trying to piece together some muddled thoughts about wizarding population and society. This comes in two parts: concerning the population of wizarding Britain and Hogwarts, and concerning whether we can find wiggle room for non-Hogwarts educational options ( Read more... )

I recognize that this is several months after the fact, but as a Jew, I can't help but be a bit miffed by the fact that people felt the need to ask Rowling if there were Jewish students at Hogwarts. Surely that's something they could have inferred themselves, if they so chose? Yet, they were so thrilled to learn that Anthony Goldstein was Jewish ( Read more... )

By “matter,” of course, I mean earth.  Land.  Which is to say, geography.

You thought I meant something else?
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I've been playing around some more with numbers to try to estimate the percentage of muggle-borns in the wizarding world, and one of the problems I've run into is that I can't decide how many wizards and witches there are overall. I've read two excellent essays on the matter by Jodel and Whitehound. Jodel estimates that there are between 3600 and ( Read more... )