Skip to main content

During the events of the Harry Potter series what is the total population of Wizards/Witches globally?


The question "How do Muggle-borns end up with magical ability?" got me to wondering how many wizards and witches there were on the planet during the events of the Harry Potter series.


Was there any information given regarding this, either in the books or from JK Rowling herself? If there is not, then a best guess calculation would suffice.



Answer



I'm guessing between 300,000 and 1 million world wide. I'll explain how I got these numbers in the next paragraphs.


We do have a few solid leads, as Ryan has pointed out. I'm going to take the numbers given by Ryan, and a few other things, and try to get some numbers straight.


First of all, the biggest point is the size of the World Cup stadium. 100,000. That means there is at least that many wizards in the world, or at least, human-type creatures in the magical world.


Hogwarts must have between 300-800 students, with a number of teachers as well. But, given that there must be between 40-100 per year, and a life expectancy somewhat higher than a Muggle (Let's say, 80-100 years), I'm guessing the English population to be around 3000-10,000. This seems to be fairly consistent with the number of shops in Diagon Alley, the number of people working for the ministry of magic, etc.



Further proof of this number can be found in the Goblet of Fire. It's mentioned there that there is 200 portkeys put around England for people to travel to the World Cup. The one that we see there had a total of 11 people gathered around it. Assuming that the average is about 10 per portkey, that gives 2000 people going to the world cup. That number seems consistent with the number of wizards in England at around 4K-10K, given that at most half of the population wanted to go to the cup.


In the year 2001, there were about 60 million people, according to UK census statistics. Given the assumption that the population is roughly equivalent in every country, and a world population of about 6 billion in that year, there is about 100 times more wizards in the world than there is in England. That brings the estimate to between 300,000 and 1 million wizards in the entire world.


This number is consistent with the world cup. Given that transportation isn't much of an issue, but there is no television, it's reasonable to assume that between one tenth and one third of the world population of wizards could in fact attend the world cup.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...
Post a Comment
Read more