Hey! He was taking into account the overhead of the distributed algorithm ;).

Yes, nine is the natural answer. The quote was explained to me in terms of ten women, so I went with that.

Nine, ten...the important consideration is the fallacy of assuming that increasing spend provides a commensurate yield in productivity and output.

The more appropriate analogy would have been Brooks's Mythical Man Month.

Actually, Brooks uses that quote in the book himself. :)

Ahh, good call!

If you can do it with ten women, you still win.

Human gestation is estimated as 40 weeks counting from the last menstruation. Conception is 2 weeks after that on average, so the actual time is about 38 * 7 = 266 days.

Dividing by 30, you get 266 / 30 = 8,866666666667 months (almost nine).

Oh sweet Jesus, you guys are missing the point in style.