How many Jedi were there, anyway?

[Lily Inverse]

Sure, 10,000 jedi is a considerable number when thought of as a cohesive unit. But 10,000 jedi is probably not enough to stick one on each planet of the republic, let alone the fact that there are hundreds if not thousands on Coruscant alone. Galaxies are big, containing hundreds of billions of stars. If only one in a million stars had habitable (by high tech terraforming type standards) planets, there would still be tens to hundreds of thousands of habitable planets. I realize that I'm just pulling numbers out of the air, but the point is that 10,000 is a miniscule number in astronomical terms. The jedi may very well be that elite, but they are hardly a peacekeping force to be reckoned with in that case.

They wouldn't NEED to be "everywhere at once" A 10-man SWAT team is a pretty tiny number by the standards of a city with 4-5 million people, but you still don't need more than one or two of them to service a city of that size. Why? Because you don't call out the SWAT club for every little dispute. Jedi are out and about even less often. They only come in for the RL equivalent of, say, one country attempting to invade another, much smaller, country, before the war actually starts. That, paired with the quick-travel and communications abilities of Jedi, makes it fairly clear that you don't need one or two Jedi per planet, or per star system. Again, when things are quiet, ten-thousand Jedi may actually seem like a bit of overkill. But AotC is hardly "quiet," thus the sudden need for an army where only a relatively small elite force is needed normally.