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Nine women.



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.


The original poster is correct: human gestation is about 10 months (from conception). Most women would be aware of their pregnancy for only nine of those months.


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.




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