5 and 6 · 5:13pm Apr 26th, 2018
SPOILERS FOR NO NOSE KNOWS AHEAD!
[You're good if you have read it. 
]
... 31 years of collective overview in 3 days? I gotta do the math on this.
31 365-day years equals 271,560 collective hours of labor. Assuming every pony involved in the project chipped in 3 8-hour days, that's 24 hours per pony. With that in mind, it'd take about... 11,315 ponies to reach that much cumulative time.
That seemsslightlyabsurd.
If we assume 6-hour days, we're up to 15,087 ponies, and if we generously assume everyone gave 12 hours a day, we'd still need 7,544 ponies.
Now, let's see how few ponies we can actually get away with. At the point Celestia says the 31 years line, I believe that we can assume that the wedding is about 18 hours away, which means that 54 hours have elapsed since theBOOP OF DOOM. It's harder to grasp how many hours were lost in the beginning due to having to explain the situation to Baked Bean before sending the letters out, but I think it's safe to assume that 2 hours were spent between theBOOP OF DOOMand the letters being sent, leaving us with 52 hours. If every single pony that reviewed the Alicorn Law pulled a Twilight and completely ignored eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom during those 52 hours to review the law, we'd need at least 5,029 ponies.
tl;dr Celestiareallygets around.
—RP422
Should probably change that to “three o’clock tomorrow afternoon” instead.
—Mythic Night
I have to admit I'm amazed you all have stayed with this mess of a story that I created in the pre-editor days. Chapters of 5 and 6 have been cleaned up now, but I probably still need to do some work on them. The reference to 31 years has been replaced with just a mention of the intense review it received, and the time for their marriage is ambiguous now.
And in case you were wondering, I got about half of the next chapter in This Nose done. 
XD
Talk about talent!
Nice calculation :D
Amazing how much heaven and earth the civil service can move for their princess, and what a cutie mark in legal studies lets you get away with...
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This is also why Irrespective is not allowed to do any Math.
If something this important (i.e. regarding the forced marriage of their monarch) were to happen in Britain, I think you'd find a few more than 5,000 legal students and professors researching the law!
There are roughly 120,000 lawyers in England. Equestria is clearly not as populous as Britain, so we could drop that by 90% without a problem. Leaving 12,000 lawyers. On such an important topic I'm sure you'd get more than enough volunteers to hit you 5K target. And yes, many would skip eating and sleeping.
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That might get a bit interesting.
I should add I never really liked putting a specific number to the time spent researching. When I originally wrote chapter 5, I wanted to emphasize how much work had gone into the non-existent loophole, but it felt like I went overboard even then. I left it to make that point, but I think I've got the story worded better now so I don't have to do that.
They don't all have to be lawyer ponies... a lot of the lawyer ponies are probably on the faculty of law schools part time, and can hand busywork down to law student ponies.
And since student bodies of larger Us can run to the thousands...
Oh, hey, my comment got featured.
Having a solid grasp of mathematics kinda comes with the territory when you're a CS major. Being a stickler for details is also kind of a job requirement, so I just couldn't leave the 31 year comment alone after turning it around in my head for a bit.
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True. If Celestia asked every pony with some law experience to review her work, she probably could hit 31 years easily. But that's a lotta ponies.
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I'm always happy to admit that something I wrote doesn't make sense, and to give credit where credit is due. I'll defend when I can, but there was no saving that one.
And you math people scare me.
I really need to try harder to be friends with math. A whole world of wonder would open up if I could do so.
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Well, a lot of legal review is scutwork, looking through files and histories and comparing it to previous laws and contracts and precedents.
Basically, the kind of thing lawyers believe interns and law students were invented for! :D
And anything that eye-gougingly boring means the ponies doing it are going to be dragging their hooves, or multitasking, or overreporting the time they spend on it, no matter how much they luuurve their pretty pony princess bride-to-be.
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One can only take so much numbing busywork, right?
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Hey, Twilight is the exception that proves the rule!