No wonder the Order is so fucking useless!
ROFLOL. I love the concise use of language.
Another comparison: imagine that all those Jedi were gathered together on Earth. The total population of Earth is about six billion, making for one Jedi per 600,000 citizens (a pretty low ratio in itself). To achieve the same ratio of Jedi to non-Jedi in a population of 10 trillion, you would need about seventeen million Jedi, well over 1000 times the official figure.
I'm the first to agree with you that numbers are important. However, I also love how history has its moments that while seldom they make sense, they make for a great story. In ancient Greece, it was said that the failure of the Sicilian Expedition (when Athens tried to increase its empire by taking control of Sicily and its vast food supplies) was due to the fact that Sparta (Athen's enemy) did not send an army to help Sicily; they sent a single spartiate -- Gylippus -- who helped organize and mobilize the Sicilians and enemies of Athens. Of course, the story is an exageration. But what a great story: that a pair of Jedi might thwart the might of the Federation army at Naboo.
If I had been making the PT, I would have done just the opposite. I would have had only a dozen Jedi, and each one would have been super powerful, the equivalent of an OT Darth Vader.
In LOTR terms (I just saw the movies again so this is on my minds), the Jedi should be the equivalent of the wizards. Saruman leaving the reservation was a big deal, and given how much power he potentially had his temptation was believable. Gondor, Rohan, etc. had armies of their own, they didn't rely on Gandalf and Saruman to run around everywhere settling trade disputes. Likewise in Asimov's Foundation series, the Second Foundation gets by with about a dozen scholars.
Wizards. Yes, pretty cool. The Order of Istari was supposed to be a council of elders who, despite their numbers, would play a pivitol role in Middle Earth. But it's Tolkien's own story which puts the role of hero on the least impressive of Middle Earth's inhabitant's -- hobbits. Maybe Frodo was to Mt. Doom as Luke was to the Death Star. Helena also has some good observations.
I always had assumed there were only a few hundred Jedi running around before the "purge"...maybe a thousand, tops. Like people are saying, having fewer of them works better to prop up the idea of how powerful idea they are and why people in the OT act as if they're so removed from the rest of the galaxy and mysterious. There never should have been a Jedi council involved in the daily affairs of the government...they should have been in and out of society, wandering from planet to planet, like samurai.
The particular powers of the samurai have been greatly exagerated in contemporary history. Evoking the name samurai in modern usage implies the mastery of sword fighting arts. Movies would have us believe such. While there were such individuals, the samurai as a class was made up of all kinds of people -- educated, illiterate, refined individuals, and simpletons. The samurai was a class in society with particular privileges (and responsibilities) in society. They were not a super force, and they were not necessarily a very competent or well-trained military force. And within the samurai class, there were many levels; some of which barely made a subsistance living and might be more of a military servant, while others benefited from the highest level of individual training. Certainly it's clear on the samurai's influence on GL, but the concept of a Marshall coming to town also plays high on the cultural impact old movies (some would say classics) had on GL.
I fully agree that the Republic should have had its own army and police force, but that's not the point. Unless they were at war with the Sith ALL the time - over a thousand generations - the Jedi must have had other duties to attend to when they weren't helping to defend the Republic. It makes perfect sense for them to act as general-purpose troubleshooters - diplomats, peacekeepers, etc - even if they're not part of the Republic's government. Having them as a tiny band of wandering samaurai is a nice idea, but practically it simply does not work; a group like that would have about as much effect on the Galaxy as a drop of red dye in an ocean.
I rather like the idea of the Jedi having been a para-military force, as per some of conceptual drawings. They didn't have the Tatooine cloak, which is a major contuming inconsistency, but more modern uniforms. Less like monks, but more like an elite military academy which drew on an ancient background of religious or semi-religious knowledge of the Force. The Christian orders of knighthood in the Middle East were religious and wore contemporary clothing of the time. And even modern honor guards still carry swords at their sides as symbols of authority and an ancient tradition. The Jedi would have been the equivalent of a galactic G-man, but they also would have made a formidable military presence more akin to the Ghurkas in today's world. The mention of Ghurkas supposedly caused panic among Argentinian troops during the Invasion of the Falklands.
My question, however, wouldn't be "why so many Jedi?" or even "why so few" but, Why did they suck so bad on Geonosis?