talkmagic.co.uk

I think this should be the right area to post in...

Anyway I'm doing a presentation at college about the history of magic and I would like to include some facts and numbers.

But I've been wondering about this for a while anyway.

What is the ratio of magicians to laymen?
Actual magicians, not if you know like one or two tricks.

1 : a few hundred?

Also how about the percentage of "magicians" in each category.
Er how shall I put this...
for example 30% close up 20%mentalist 10% stage and so on...

Hopefully that wasn't all too confusing
Thanks

Good luck with this!

Well, considering my cynical views on the qualifications of a 'layperson', which are, a layperson is anyone ranging from completely blinkered all the way to YouTube-ists.

Yes... that's right... I would consider anyone who sits and watches a rank-amateur (or Ellusionist demo) and drools to still be a layperson.

And I don't mean that nastily. I am jealous. I would love to see the 'sparkle' again.

You see... after a while, you become 'conditioned' to magic. Sort of, 'immune' to it's wonderment. You start to fail to see what the layperson sees.

The population of Earth, as I believe, is about 6.5 billion

I would guestimate that only about 1% are truly magicians.

I am not one of them. And in honesty, I can say that this forum is home to only a *handful* of real magicians... those who have earned the title, rather than given it to themselves.

I think it really depends on where you draw the line between magician and layperson.

There's no way that I'd class myself as a real magician, I just don't have the depth of knowledge that so many people on this forum have.

So does that make me a lay person, I don't really know. I know enough to be able to see the basic mechanics of most effects and have the skills to entertain a group of people for an easy half an hour.

So yeah, I guess it's all down to where you draw that line.

Good luck with it by the way

I think this is why the TalkMagic system works well, ie, putting AH, SP etc. in your profile. There are so many, many different levels.

I would say that someone like Dai Vernon, Eugene Burger, David Berglass, Paul Daniels, they are true magicians. Someone who has a deep understanding of their art, knows a great deal about its history, traditions, and skills, and is also a highly skilled performer themselves.

Personally, I would consider myself to be a magician, as far as technical skills are concerned, I would say I am at best very average, but I have quite a good knowledge of magic as far as things go.

I also have a sense of amazement. I try not to learn how tricks are done unless I am going to perform them, or buy them myself, so that I too can have a sense of wonder when I see something new.

The first question you are asking is really how many magicians there are. When you know this its easy to calculate the percentages. Usually around 8000 attend FISM the world congress for magicians. Maybe a thirds are professional, on the other hand most magicians do to attend each FISM, nut lets say only every third. Thus I would say there is around 8000 magicians in the world, i.e out of 1.000.000.000 adult potential magicians.
This means that there is roughly 8 magicians in a million.

This number makes some sense. This means there is around 40 magicians in London, around 200 magicians in the UK. Similar numbers for Spain and Italy and France while there is probably around 300 magicians in Germany.

If you then include people like me, who do say one full paid show every few weeks, but do not have magic as their main income, there is significantly more magicians. Maybe 40.000 worldwide.
If you then include hobbyists there is probably 100 times as many, I would say around 4 million.

To summarize:

Magician (with capital M) one in 125.000
magician (with lowercase m) one in 25.000
Hobbyist one in 250

I am not sure about the break down between different areas of magic, but
I think many hobbyists view them self as mentalists. This is usually just a delusion, (since they have the wrong impression that mentalism does not require any skills) and most have never really performed for an audience who paid a standard fee for the show.

seige wrote:The population of Earth, as I believe, is about 6.5 billion I would guestimate that only about 1% are truly magicians.

Certainly it can't even be close to that can it??? The math equals 650,000...I think that is waaay to high.....that would be 1 in 100 people and I can't fathom that being accurate at al....I would say that 1 in 1000 is still high. I live in a city of about 60,000 people and I know that there is nowhere near 600 magicians in our city.....even if you took the broad look at it and included school yard magicians, magic uncles, etc.....

moodini wrote:

seige wrote:The population of Earth, as I believe, is about 6.5 billion I would guestimate that only about 1% are truly magicians.

Certainly it can't even be close to that can it??? The math equals 650,000...I think that is waaay to high.....that would be 1 in 100 people and I can't fathom that being accurate at al....I would say that 1 in 1000 is still high. I live in a city of about 60,000 people and I know that there is nowhere near 600 magicians in our city.....even if you took the broad look at it and included school yard magicians, magic uncles, etc.....

650,000? I make it 65 million

Next stat....mathematicians vs. laymen....I know which category I fall into!.....and a little hint - obviously not going to argue the quality of my basic math skills! LOL

23% of the word's population are Magicians, the other 79% are mathematicians.....

And the other 1% are statisticians.

Paul Daniels was spot on...

"How many people are really magicians?"

"Not a lot!"

Yeah, I guess my calculation/statistic had more flaws than the empire state building (geddit?) but in round about terms I'd say the actual amount is probably very low.

(See... that's a good politician's answer... ambiguity maketh the man... )

Ahh I knew this topic would cause a bit of a stir of what the definition of a laymen and magician is

but thanks for the help.

Liking how complicated it got thought

How many people in the world are magicians?

TOO MANY!

Seriously, we can't judge whether or not a person is a magus by his income; there is only one judge of magicians and that is the view of the lay public.

Yeah Peter! This is completely subjective. It is like asking what is art?
Good luck with the original question though. I don't think you will find an answer, just a heck of a lot of opinion.