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Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds (phys.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by VantaBrandon to c/technology

198 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Well you're not supposed to just have one. It's supposed to be a thousand monkies at a thousand typewriters.

Now do the Mythbusters thing and figure out how many monkies and typewriters it would take for them to write Hamlet in just under a year. Don't just solve the myth; put it to the test!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I'm still mad we are giving them typewriters instead of keyboards. Think of the arthritis! Ergonomics please!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

As well as a single monkey, they also did the calculations using the current global population of around 200,000 chimpanzees, and they assumed a rather productive typing speed of one key every second until the end of the universe in about 10100 years.

They did 200k monkeys, so a little overkill from your expectations.

[–] PetteriSkaffari 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What if the monkeys evolve to higher intelligence as time passes by?

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot 1 points 3 weeks ago

You maniacs!

[–] pirat 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I thought it was supposed to be an infinite amount of monkeys, since it's known as "infinite monkey theorem", but apparently, according to Wikipedia,

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare. [...]

[...] can be generalized to state that any sequence of events that has a non-zero probability of happening will almost certainly occur an infinite number of times, given an infinite amount of time or a universe that is infinite in size.

However, I think, as long as either the timeframe or monkey amount is infinite, it should lead to the same results. So, why even limit one of them on this theoretical level after all?

The linked study even seems to limit both, so they're not quite investigating the actual classic theorem of one monkey with infinite time, it seems.