It's not really that simple: there are various ways of counting of the wizarding population, as well as JKR's various interviews, and they all conflict with each other.

If we were to believe JKR alone, we'd "know" that wizarding Britain has about 3000 wizards, and that Hogwarts has around 1000. So the students at Hogwarts take up one third of the population? Unlikely. So JKR's numbers even conflict with each other, never mind bringing the books into it.

 

She later stated that only about 250 students were occupying Hogwarts in response to this miscalculation. Though yes, when Rowling wrote the series she showed great negligence to the economic system of the wizarding world. As well as to it's demographics.

 

::cough::Children's novel::cough::

 

@Reyhkt: If you know that not every young British male goes to Eaton College, you can safely assume that not every young British wizard goes to Hogwarts. There are probably other institutions/methods of education, otherwise there wouldn't need to be Ministry-standard OWLs or NEWTS.

@Wheezy: We know. Thanks.

Here's another one: muggle clothing vs. wizarding clothing.

Mrs. Malfoy made it seem like there's a difference in quality between robes from Malkins and that other shop they went to instead (can't be arsed to find it). I always thought that the cost difference should be in materials alone: tailoring should be pretty much standard, since magic could make anyone have custom clothing. Just because Ron Weasley and Remus Lupin weren't smart enough to think about tailoring doesn't mean they had to look like raggamuffins.

Or wizard vs. muggle vacation: who has the better deal? I'm in the "journey not the destination" camp, so I don't know if I'd take portkeys everywhere, but not having to deal with airline troubles would be a huge bonus. But there must be something unnecessarily preventive about traveling, otherwise all wizards would be extremely well-traveled.

Here's yet another: wizarding vs. muggle communications. If Arthur is aware of the telephone, they must know how much more comfortable it is than squating in front of a fireplace with your ass in the air, or waiting for an owl to swoop in/shit on you/eat your bacon/fucking peck at you, all in the name of receiving your mail. Are they simply gluttons for punishment, or is there a difference between a messaging patronus and a dementor patronus?

(That's another sort-of plot hole: how can you think happy thoughts if you have to send an unhappy patronus message?)

 

A cushioning charm actually would make spending the time at a fireplace much more comfortable. Harry was just moronic not to use one while in Umbridge's office in OOTP. Though I think most wizards do not actually use the floo most of the time for communication. Unless they are too lazy to get off their ass and floo or apparate to their friend's place.

Who ever said wizards weren't well traveled?

Nope. I remember one time when Rowling stated during an interview that there was no university after Hogwarts.

 

I think it's simply fallen out of fashion. In DH, it was remarked that it was traditional in Dumbledore's time for students to go on a trip around the world after leaving Hogwarts, which means that it's perfectly possible - people just don't want to do it, it seems. Which I'm not entirely unsympathetic of. I'm not one for tourism, myself, preferring the comforts of home.

 

I've always gone with the fanon theory that clothes can only be modified a few times before it gets too worn to be repaired perfectly.

 

I always just figured that the clothing issue was another of JK's plotholes.

 

I'm going to guess that, along with food, clothes, knowledge, money and magic make up the 5 exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration (or whatever the name was), which says what cannot be conjured (though it doesn't say anything about transfiguration).

The reasons for these guesses are that we've all seen them in canon. We know you cannot create gold without an extremely rare, one of a kind, magical artifact. We know you cannot create clothes from one of JKR's interviews. We know you cannot create food from DH. We know you cannot create knowledge from the fact that otherwise there'd be no need for school, other than to teach conjuration. And we know you can't conjure magic because if you could, then it would be possible to conjure objects that are already enchanted (e.g. wands, brooms, other magical artifacts) and magical creatures, which you (apparently, from what we see in canon) cannot.

Of course, food, clothes and money make no sense, as they are, essentially, just atoms like all the other objects you can conjure. This was obviously done for reasons of plot rather than creating a consistent and logical magic system. Knowledge and magic are more sensible.

Regarding wizarding vs. Muggle communication:

Wizarding has the more potential, as the Protean charm (which I suspect was used to create Sirius' and James' mirrors, as well as wizarding radio) is really a very useful bit of magic with many applications for communication. With it you can replicate the effect of instant messaging, email, video calls, and a host of other things (such as the ability to summon the Death Eaters). However, despite this NEWT-level charm that would make wizarding communication so much better, the wizards for some reason do not use it widely - another way JKR messed up the magic system and society for the sake of an easy plot.

It is for this reason that I prefer the magic vs. technology debate to the wizards vs. Muggles debate - you don't have to deal with the ways that obviously useful uses of magic have been ignored by JKR when making her society, just so that her plot could proceed without her having to rethink it so it could work WITH a consistent magical world, rather than in spite of it.

 

What makes clothing different from furniture? Does Dumbledore conjure those chintz chairs, or is it a "reverse banishing" of an already extant object, or a sleight-of-hand transfiguration of those damn lemon drops?

 

The differance is that JK didn't make a furniture plot hole.

 

The difference is that JKR Rowling needed clothes to be impossible to conjure in order to give people like the Weasleys and Lupin tatty second hand robes, and Malfoy nice ones, whereas armchairs aren't important to the plot like that.

As I said,

Even still, you should be able to transfigure them, so it's just a plot hole in the end. We know that Gamp's law applies to only conjuration and not transfiguration as you can transfigure animals, and animals are food, thus the law that says you can't make food out of nothing is only meaning conjuration.

 

I don't believe it would be possible to make the muggles forget about being in the middle of the war, or even the existence of magic. Why? Physical Reminders. Even if those 300 000 (With probably only one in a hundred knowing how to erase memory) people somehow managed to wipe the memory of 6+ billion people in the world, there would still be newspaper articles, internet reports, forums, videos and even notes from class! And in those there must be mention of the possibilty of mind magic. Even if its only a forum post, because wizarding existence would stir up alot of conversation.

 

Rowling said there was no other wizard school in the British isles.

 

I don't remember that, but even if we have to accept one of JKR's reverse-logic canon induced plot holes (sigh,) it doesn't mean that no one is home schooled, or apprenticed, or that there aren't small private academies, run by just a few professional teachers. Considering the Voldemort-paranoia just before Halloween'81, and after the Second War really kicks off, I wouldn't be surprised if some children aren't even registered births in high-risk families.

The States have been committed to total literacy for generations, but children still slip through the cracks.

Besides, the OWLs and NEWTs are administered by professional examiners. That implies Full-Time jobs - which would be out of the question for approximately a hundred students a year total.

 

Did you not see the "/methods of education" part? Home schooling qualifies. And even if she said that (find the quote), s'not logical; either there are other schools or a helluva lot more students than implied.

 

Or a very low population. JKR has said that pretty much all magical children in Britain go to Hogwarts. One to two may not go every few years, but not any significant number. This is one of the ways to get total population.
Hogwarts = 280.

280/7 = 40. Thus 40 magical people born each year.

Average magical person lives to (and this number is the arbitrary bit) 110.

For each of these 110 years that people live for, there will have been 40 people in that age group.

Thus, total population = 40*110 = 4400. Rather close to JKR's figure.

There are other ways of calculation, including taking the 280 kids in Hogwarts and scaling it up to the total population number, proportional to the number of kids to adults ratio in Muggle UK.

 

Yes, it would seem that you are only thinking of the basic memory charm. We have of course seen the fact that wizards can make an entire house vanish along with every piece of physical evidence about where it was if they are so inclined to do it. I mean come on imagine how easy it would be to place protections around magical areas that simply remove all physical reminders of them. It isn't that they don't exist more like when you look at the paper you see something else instead of the evidence that was previously there or you remember you forgot to do something and are never able to actually look at the paper. We have to assume that muggles are easier to manipulate than wizards due to their lack of magic. I mean they can't even see creatures that don't have charms on them simply because they lack magic, and if magic users can muddle around with the memories of other wizards it should be mere child's play to mess with muggles on a large scale.

 

necroposting is forbidden
But to adress your point it wouldn't be mere childsplay both sides have inherent benifits, most wizards, as illustrated by book one, which is canon still, have little logic, there is also the simple fact of numbers, there aren't enough wizards quantity is a quality in and of itself.

 

As for the necroposting comment, I looked at the date of the last post incorrectly earlier otherwise I wouldn't have posted. If you consider the population numbers and the intelligence of muggles when the split happened I don't think it would have been too hard. I mean it may have taken a few years to organize, but it would be possible, and I think maintaining the split would be very easy.