Mark Clements wrote:
"Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net wrote
Mark Williamson wrote:
The thing about high schools is that they have alumni. A particularly large high school could have, I don't know, maybe 50,000 alumni? How off am I?
That seems high. If a school has 1,000 graduates each year it would take 50 years to reach that number.
Well, that seems reasonable, in fact in England (where I'm from) I imagine a high proportion of schools are older than 50 years. The two that I know about (mine - an inner-city comp, founded in the 19th century, and the school my Girlfriend teaches at, est. 1917) are significantly older!.
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)
It's a valid consideration. Still a school with a four year programme would have in excess of 4000 student to graduate 1000, allowing for dropouts. That's quite a big school. For older schools, the long dead alumni can no longer be considered alumni for the purpose of having interest in Wikipedia articles about their school. A more accurate estimate of the alumni might be obtained by applying actuarial tables at the age of graduation.
Ec