Maximum size for a MySQL / Python / PHP course

How many grains of sand does it take to make a pile? Is one grain of sand "a pile"? Clearly not - but how about 2, or 3, or 4? If you tell me that 6 grains make a pile but 5 don't, I can quiz you as to what is the big difference made by that sixth grain, and you'll be hard pressed to give me a reasonable explanation. That same issue arises if you tell me that 7 grains make a pile and not 6, and so on. Yet clearly, somewhere, there's a turnover point - 1 grain is not a pile for sure, but 100 grains are.

What's the maximum number of trainees for a training course? For a public course, we've set the level as low as seven students - on a public course, our customers come from a wide variety of different backgrounds and we've chosen to impose this tight limit to ensure that we've plenty of time to ensure that everyone can get th ebest from the course. It's a bit like the "grain of sand" question though - and I'm sure we could easily expand to 8 or 9 ... except that doing so would put us on a slippey slope ...

For a private course, the "metrics" differ. A typical group is, once again, very wide ranging in its staring point. However, the group will all have similar work interests and a similar target for their learning, and they're likely to know each other well even before the course. For private courses, then, we'll routinely accept up to 10 trainees and - after a discussion with the customer - we can rise up and accept a booking for as may as 16 trainees; we do say that the tutor won't have very much one one one time, but in these circumstances he finds himself working with small groups rather than individuals, and he also finds that the more advanced trainees are tutoring the less advanced ones for their mutual benefit. After all, there's nothing like explaining something to check that you know it yourself.