Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] fun math thing

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Mike Miller wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>
> > Another point of discussion - it is theoretically a certainty that if 
> > you give a monkey a typewriter, and an infinite life, that eventually 
> > it will type the complete works of Shakespeare.  But it is practically 
> > impossible that this will ever happen.
>
>
> You have to make an assumption about the way the monkey will use the 
> typewriter.  For example, if it types random keys, it will eventually do 
> as you say.  It will also do it infinitely many times.  Sometimes, when 
> it types Hamlet, it will get every single bit of it just like the 
> original except that it will type "To be or not to banana?" in the 
> soliloquy.

Except that if you do the calculations and make very rough estimates of 
how long it will take for the monkey to get even the first 100 letters 
of any of the plays, you will find that we are dealing with gadzillions 
of lifetimes of the universe - even the very particles of which the 
monkey are composed are going to fall apart long before any decent 
semblence of a work of Shakespeare is going to appear.  And replacing 
monkeys with super fast and reliable computers isn't going to help - the 
kinds of times and reliabilities required are quite simply beyond 
possibility.  To get Shakespeare in this way is completely impossible.

Stephen

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