Which is why nobody suggests such a thing in the first place. I'm rather amazed that this guy, for all his obvious mathematical ability, hasn't been able to spot his fundamental flaw, or that nobody's bothered to point it out to him.
Cumulative Selection - One of the most frequent arguments one hears against the theory of evolution is that complex forms and behaviors simply couldn't have evolved by ``random chance'' alone. The point we must often get across to students is that evolution does not, in fact, work this way; change is cumulative. Richard Dawkins, in his book The Blind Watchmaker, dispels the myth of random chance by using the very metaphor that opponents of evolution often turn to: the monkey at the typewriter. This program models his suggestion that, were a monkey allowed to type random letters, he would produce a work of Shakespeare very quickly if letters he happened to type in the right places were preserved with each attempt. With this program, students type in a phrase of their choosing and observe how long a random phrase takes to ``evolve'' into their target phrase. Below are some sample investigations...Joshua Coxwell, http://biology.uoregon.edu/Biology_WWW/BSL/Cum_Sel.html
Right. Of course, reality would lie somewhere between the two extremes: there exists positive feedback mechanisms, so that beneficial mutations are more likely to be propagated than bad ones, but some beneficial mutations won't be propagated while some bad ones are.
The $1,000,000 question, though, is whether there exists a sequence of mutations which could occur to go between major species with at most a few mutations not being beneficial in and of themselves. If there are sequences of mutations which would have to occur without the individual mutations themselves being useful, then those situations would represent the sort of improbability to which the author is alluding.
Personally, I suspect that the 'truth' of the matter is that evolution and natural selection account for some, but not all, of the diversity of life on this planet. The Theory of Evolution, while it does not explain everything, is nonetheless scientifically useful within those areas of taxonomy where it is effective. I find it puzzling that some would argue that even such a narrow-scope view of evolution contradicts the bible when there is far more biodiversity on this planet than could ever have fit within the Ark. If one is to accept as true anything even remotely resembling the story of the Great Flood, it would follow that some level of evolution must have occurred between then and the present day.
This program models his suggestion that, were a monkey allowed to type random letters, he would produce a work of Shakespeare very quickly if letters he happened to type in the right places were preserved with each attempt.
"Very quickly"? Highly doubtful.
Who or what intelligence determines the "right places" and who or what intelligence does the preserving?
Dawkins is a clever atheist ideologue, nothing more, and he has risen to prominence because he is an atheist, not because he has anything useful to say about Evolution. He is making an effective argument here for Intelligent Design.