A famous evolutionist once famously said that a monkey typing randomly would eventually pound out Macbeth. As famous and educated as he was, he was truly clueless about combinatorics. Yet the notion he espoused -- that anything can happen given enough random events -- is one of the key ideas behind evolution.
Someone with a bit more understanding of combinatorics did an actual calculation. I don't remember the details off hand, but it went something like the following. If you filled the entire known universe with one monkey per cubic yard and had them type randomly at a very high rate for the entire known age of the universe, chances are vanishingly small that they would ever get past the first page of Macbeth.
By the way, I scored a 4.0 in Probability and Statistics as an undergrad -- not bad for someone with "NO clue about probability"! I believe I was in the top one or two of a class of around 60. That was a while ago, however.
MONKEYS TYPE SHAKESPEARE PLAY
The classic puzzle about whether an infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite period of time would type a Shakespeare play has been answered in the affirmative. Researchers at the Raleigh Institute near Manchester, England, announced that the monkeys in their lab produced a perfect version of "Romeo and Juliet."
"We've been holding our breath for weeks," says Alan Ripshaw, the researcher in charge of the Monkey Project. "We knew the monkeys were getting close, but we've had a number of false starts.
"One time they got to the fourth act of Macbeth, before making a mistake. The monkeys also recently typed out a Norman Mailer novel, but that doesn't count."
Ripshaw says he began the project because he was intrigued with the controversy over whether Shakespeare really was the author of the plays bearing his name.
"Some scholars think Bacon was the real author," Ripshaw says. "That's when I had the thought, 'What if they were written by monkeys?'
Ripshaw assembled 5,000 monkeys and an equal number of typewriters. The monkeys were rewarded with bananas every time they filled up a page with letters.
"Ninety-nine percent of it was nonsense," Ripshaw says. "But one of the monkeys put up a blog on the Internet, and it has a big following."
But a researcher checking says the monkeys made a mistake. "In one reference, they called 'Romeo,' 'Romero.'"
Says Ripshaw, "I guess it's back to the drawing board."
-- JAKE ANDERSON of the Weekly World News
"A famous evolutionist once famously said that a monkey typing randomly would eventually pound out Macbeth."
If he is so famous, do tell us who *He* is.
"Someone with a bit more understanding of combinatorics did an actual calculation. I don't remember the details off hand, but it went something like the following. If you filled the entire known universe with one monkey per cubic yard and had them type randomly at a very high rate for the entire known age of the universe, chances are vanishingly small that they would ever get past the first page of Macbeth."
He's an idiot. You can't make a probability calculation on a process you have don't understand. It's impossible.
"By the way, I scored a 4.0 in Probability and Statistics as an undergrad -- not bad for someone with "NO clue about probability"! I believe I was in the top one or two of a class of around 60. That was a while ago, however."
You need to get your money back; you were swindled.
Huh. I read a while back that if 700 monkeys did type for 700 years one of them would turn out a work of Shakespeare. I think a prof at CalTech or Berkley crunched the numbers, but don't quote me on that.