🚀 go-pugleaf

In alt.folklore.computers Kevin D. Quitt <Ke...@Quitt.net> wrote:
: On 18 Sep 1997 15:37:56 GMT, tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) wrote:


: >Jacob Love (jl...@engin.umich.edu) wrote:
: >...given a long
: >: enough time, a monkey would produce the works of Shakespeare by banging
: >: on a typewriter.
: >
: >Thanks to Usenet, we know that this oft-repeated idea is simply
: >not true.

: Really?  And where on Usenet has that been disproven?

Numerous times.




From: Ian Stirling <000033904...@mauve.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <000033904...@mauve.demon.co.uk>

Brian {Hamilton Kelly} (b...@dsl.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <33887E99...@jbutler.demon.co.uk>
:            webm...@jbutler.demon.co.uk "Webmaster" writes:
: 
<snip>
: Brian {Hamilton Kelly}                                         b...@dsl.co.uk
:     "We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce
:      the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know
:      this is not true."            Robert Wilensky, University of California

I hate this quote, it's silly.
Assume each typewriter has 10 keys, and they need to get a thousand 
charachters correct, the average time it will take is
half of 10^1000/10^6 = 5*10^993 seconds in years about 5*10^985 years.
Basically, the same number of monkeys as atoms in the universe given
the life of the universe, have about as much chance as your car magically
appearing outside your garage in the morning.
If you don't have a car.

-- 
Ian Stirling.   Designing a linux PDA, see  http://www.mauve.demon.co.uk/
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