I mean this is a really simply thing to work out. There are 30^n strings of length n that can be made by mashing a 30 key keyboard. The time to the heat death o

I mean this is a really simply thing to work out. There are 30^n strings of length n that can be made by mashing a 30 key keyboard. The time to the heat death of the universe is 10^100 years which is approximately 30^72 seconds. Your odds of getting a string of length n in the lifetime of the universe is ( number of monkeys * typing rate in characters per second * 30^72 ) / 30^n The authors plugged in 200,000 (=30^3.5) and 1, meaning their odds are 30^75.5 / 30^n = 30^(75.5-n) For a string of less than 69 characters, the odds are fantastic. For a string of more than 82 characters the odds are abysmal. At 69 the odds of the substring existing are roughly equivalent to losing the lottery, and at 82 the odds are equivalent to winning the lottery. Shakespeare's shortest sonnet, 126, is a string of 533 characters.