4 ms·

If I were to dumb this down (so I can understand it), is this a fair analogy to the adage "give 1 million monkeys 1 million typewriters and they'll eventually t

If I were to dumb this down (so I can understand it), is this a fair analogy to the adage "give 1 million monkeys 1 million typewriters and they'll eventually type the entire works of William Shakespeare"? Somewhere in pi (at some insane offset) is the entire work of William Shakespeare. Is that the basic idea here?

j_walter 3y ago
Bingo
jadbox 3y ago
Technically 1 million monkeys with 1 million typewriters could type for a million years and yet still not produce a work of William Shakespeare. In theory (as I understand it), pi at some index contains all permutations of sets of values. I'm not a mathematician and only know this by hearsay.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > Technically 1 million monkeys with 1 million typewriters could type for a million years and yet still not produce a work of William Shakespeare You have to calculate the probability of a monkey coming up with a work of Shakespeare, and then subtract that from 1 to get the probability of a monkey coming up with anything other than a work of Shakespeare, and then figure out what power N to raise that to (N attempts) for it to cross below some confidence value, like 0.05 ... then subtract that from 1 in order to get the probability of a monkey coming up with a work of Shakespeare after that many attempts. (no matter how high N is, you will never get 0, so no matter how many times you attempt, you always "could" still not produce a work of Shakespeare, because there's always a chance that none of those attempts worked) Then calculate how much time that might take (actually, you might even have to account for failed attempts that are shorter or longer than a work of Shakespeare, so you might even have to start with time rather than number of attempts, but I digress) and you have a possible figure for "how much time it would take to have a certain probability of a monkey having come up with a work of shakespeare" and oh dear I may have missed the joke
paddim8 3y ago
I don't think an infinite amount of monkeys with an infinite amount of time are guaranteed to write a work of Shakespeare. If they acted completely randomly it would be, but they don't. They're monkeys. They follow certain behavioural patterns. Just because they have an infinite amount of time doesn't mean they're going to try everything there is to try.
- sn0wf1re 3y ago
  It's a theorem. And yes, it requires the monkeys to be random. And yes, it was tested with monkeys and the results were mainly the letter 's' repeated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
  - brookst 3y ago
    Really all this proves is that if you had infinite Shakespeares and infinite time, one of them would write his complete works using only the letter 's'.
- oneshtein 3y ago
  I have random number generator which produces exact copy of a work of Shakespeare every time when I call it. '-)
- mwcremer 3y ago
  As you note, the real issue here is that the problem is poorly framed. Let's instead consider spherical monkeys in a vacuum...

j_walter 3y ago

Bingo

jadbox 3y ago

Technically 1 million monkeys with 1 million typewriters could type for a million years and yet still not produce a work of William Shakespeare. In theory (as I understand it), pi at some index contains all permutations of sets of values. I'm not a mathematician and only know this by hearsay.

LoganDark 3y ago
> Technically 1 million monkeys with 1 million typewriters could type for a million years and yet still not produce a work of William Shakespeare You have to calculate the probability of a monkey coming up with a work of Shakespeare, and then subtract that from 1 to get the probability of a monkey coming up with anything other than a work of Shakespeare, and then figure out what power N to raise that to (N attempts) for it to cross below some confidence value, like 0.05 ... then subtract that from 1 in order to get the probability of a monkey coming up with a work of Shakespeare after that many attempts. (no matter how high N is, you will never get 0, so no matter how many times you attempt, you always "could" still not produce a work of Shakespeare, because there's always a chance that none of those attempts worked) Then calculate how much time that might take (actually, you might even have to account for failed attempts that are shorter or longer than a work of Shakespeare, so you might even have to start with time rather than number of attempts, but I digress) and you have a possible figure for "how much time it would take to have a certain probability of a monkey having come up with a work of shakespeare" and oh dear I may have missed the joke

paddim8 3y ago

I don't think an infinite amount of monkeys with an infinite amount of time are guaranteed to write a work of Shakespeare. If they acted completely randomly it would be, but they don't. They're monkeys. They follow certain behavioural patterns. Just because they have an infinite amount of time doesn't mean they're going to try everything there is to try.

sn0wf1re 3y ago
It's a theorem. And yes, it requires the monkeys to be random. And yes, it was tested with monkeys and the results were mainly the letter 's' repeated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
- brookst 3y ago
  Really all this proves is that if you had infinite Shakespeares and infinite time, one of them would write his complete works using only the letter 's'.
oneshtein 3y ago
I have random number generator which produces exact copy of a work of Shakespeare every time when I call it. '-)
mwcremer 3y ago
As you note, the real issue here is that the problem is poorly framed. Let's instead consider spherical monkeys in a vacuum...