Quote:
It has been said that a million monkeys typing on typewriters would eventually type the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this to be false.
UB Law Class of 2008
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While watching an episode of Nova a couple of months ago, I heard this thought about in a different way.
Let's say that the odds of a monkey randomly hitting keys on a keyboard and typing a perfect version of Hamlet can be demonstrated by the equation below:
10^x; where, lim x--> -()()
and yes for goodness' sake I'm using ()() as the sign for infinity...
That is effectively saying the odds are just about zero. But let's use the analogy 100% odds represents all matter in the universe and 0% is absolute nothingness.... that equation would represent less than one sub-atomic particle. (Is that clear? I tried...
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Well, with infinantly many monkeys hitting keyboards for eternity, I think that the x value would be brought back to the realm of real numbers, and thus it may be possible for a version of Hamlet, as well as perhaps Galileo's Principia, and even every Dr. Seuss book to be typed quite perfectly.
What do you think? I'm a little new with calculus and limitations, but I think I hit the nail in the wall here; though, I did mention infinite monkeys instead of millions, as stated in the quote, but the concept is the same.