Monkeys + Typewrites = Shakespeare

[ViperMagic]

I was reading [b[worth[/b]'s sig about monkeys and typewrites and shakespeare as i was waiting for OT to load, and it got me thinkings...... assume, 1 monkey with 1 typewritet (limited to 26 keys, well say), pressing 1 key every second, and the works of Shakespeare are, say, 4000 words long, and for the sake of arugment, each word is 4 letters long, and every letter is used evenly. How long would it take?

 

[ILikeSprite]

about the time it takes for hell to freeze over

 

[b0mbrman]

Ok...well here's how you do it

 

[b0mbrman]

To get the story right, it would take a 1/26 shot coming true 16,000 (4x4,000) times straight.

That's (1/26) ^ 16,000

or, as Monsieur Calculator tells us, 2.67 x 10^-22640

Call this number m = probability that monkey gets it right on the first try
Now, let's say this is a super-monkey who can type those 4,000 words in one hour (at 66.66 word/minute) I bet you're wondering how many monkey-hours it would take before it becomes *likely* it's gonna happen (over 50%)

The answer to that is x where x is a number, expressed in monkey-hours, that satisfies the inequality:
(1-m)^x < 0.5

 

[Jimbo]

One question that really has my mind spinning is: If you had an unlimited number of monkeys, shooting at an unlimited number of road signs, how long would it take for them to finish the entire works of Shakespear in braile?

 

[DanFungus]

<< One question that really has my mind spinning is: If you had an unlimited number of monkeys, shooting at an unlimited number of road signs, how long would it take for them to finish the entire works of Shakespear in braile? >>


depends on the kind of gun, duh!