zeroinspiration.com

Shakespeare's Monkey

“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 a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

“In this context, ‘almost surely’ is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the ‘monkey’ is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor for an abstract device that produces a random sequence of letters ad infinitum. The theorem illustrates the perils of reasoning about infinity by imagining a vast but finite number, and vice versa. The probability of a monkey exactly typing a complete work such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time of the order of the age of the universe is minuscule, but not zero.

“Variants of the theorem include multiple and even infinitely many typists, and the target text varies between an entire library and a single sentence.” (Source: “Infinite monkey theorem”. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem. Retrieved 2010-03-09.)

Lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth wanted to test the claim that an infinite number of monkeys given typewriters would create the works of Shakespeare.

A single computer was placed in a monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo to monitor the literary output of six primates.

But after a month, the six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys – Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan – had only succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and producing five pages of text which consisted mainly of the letter “s”.

“The project, by students from the university’s MediaLab Arts course, received £2,000 from the Arts Council. The work was interesting but had little scientific value, except to show that the ‘infinite monkey’ theory is flawed.” said Dr Amy Plowman, Paignton Zoo scientific officer.

(Source: “No words to describe monkeys’ play”. BBC News. 2003-05-09. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3013959.stm. Retrieved 2010-03-09.)