{"id":19283,"date":"2025-01-03T09:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T10:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19283"},"modified":"2025-01-03T10:25:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T10:25:34","slug":"could-monkeys-really-type-all-of-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19283","title":{"rendered":"Could Monkeys Really Type All of Shakespeare?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Not in this universe, a new study concludes.<\/p>\n

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Science doesn\u2019t usually tolerate frivolity, but the infinite monkey theorem enjoys an exception. The question it poses is thoroughly outlandish: Could an infinite number of monkeys, each given an infinite amount of time to peck away at a typewriter (stocked with an infinite supply of paper, presumably) eventually produce, by pure chance, the complete works of William Shakespeare?<\/p>\n

The problem was first described in a 1913 paper by the French mathematician \u00c9mile Borel, a pioneer of probability theory. As modernity opened new scientific fronts, approaches to the theorem also evolved. Today, the problem pulls in computer science<\/a> and astrophysics, among other disciplines.<\/p>\n

In 1979, The New York Times reported<\/a> on a Yale professor who, using a computer program to try to prove this \u201cvenerable hypothesis,\u201d managed to produce \u201cstartlingly intelligible, if not quite Shakespearean\u201d strings of text. In 2003, British scientists put a computer into a monkey cage at the Paignton Zoo. The outcome was \u201cfive pages of text, primarily filled with the letter S,\u201d according to news reports<\/a>. In 2011, Jesse Anderson, an American programmer, ran a computer simulation with much better results<\/a>, albeit under conditions that \u2014 like the Yale professor\u2019s \u2014 mitigated chance.<\/p>\n

A new paper<\/a> by Stephen Woodcock, a mathematician at the University of Technology Sydney, suggests that those efforts may have been for naught: It concludes that there is simply not enough time until the universe expires for a defined number of hypothetical primates to produce a faithful reproduction of \u201cCurious George,\u201d let alone \u201cKing Lear.\u201d Don\u2019t worry, scientists believe that we still have googol years \u2014 10\u00b9\u2070\u2070, or 1 followed by 100 zeros \u2014 until the lights go out. But when the end does come, the typing monkeys will have made no more progress than their counterparts at the Paignton Zoo, according to Dr. Woodcock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not happening,\u201d Dr. Woodcock said in an interview. The odds of a monkey typing out the first word of Hamlet\u2019s famous \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d soliloquy on a 30-key keyboard was 1 in 900, he said. Not bad, one could argue \u2014 but every new letter offers 29 fresh opportunities for error. The chances of a monkey spelling out \u201cbanana\u201d are \u201capproximately 1 in 22 billion,\u201d Dr. Woodcock said.<\/p>\n

The idea for the paper came to Dr. Woodcock during a lunchtime discussion with Jay Falletta, a water-usage researcher at the University of Technology Sydney. The two were working on a project about washing machines, which strain Australia\u2019s extremely limited water resources<\/a>. They were \u201ca little bit bored\u201d by the task, Dr. Woodcock acknowledged. (Mr. Falletta is a co-author on the new paper.)<\/p>\n

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Not in this universe, a new study concludes.Science doesn\u2019t usually tolerate frivolity, but the infinite monkey theorem enjoys an exception. The question it poses is thoroughly outlandish: Could an infinite number of monkeys, each given an infinite amount of time to peck away at a typewriter (stocked with an infinite supply of paper, presumably) eventually produce, by pure chance, the complete works of William Shakespeare?The problem was first described in a 1913 paper by the French mathematician \u00c9mile Borel, a pioneer of probability theory. As modernity opened new scientific fronts, approaches to the theorem also evolved. Today, the problem pulls in computer science and astrophysics, among other disciplines.In 1979, The New York Times reported on a Yale professor who, using a computer program to try to prove this \u201cvenerable hypothesis,\u201d managed to produce \u201cstartlingly intelligible, if not quite Shakespearean\u201d strings of text. In 2003, British scientists put a computer into a monkey cage at the Paignton Zoo. The outcome was \u201cfive pages of text, primarily filled with the letter S,\u201d according to news reports. In 2011, Jesse Anderson, an American programmer, ran a computer simulation with much better results, albeit under conditions that \u2014 like the Yale professor\u2019s \u2014 mitigated chance.A new paper by Stephen Woodcock, a mathematician at the University of Technology Sydney, suggests that those efforts may have been for naught: It concludes that there is simply not enough time until the universe expires for a defined number of hypothetical primates to produce a faithful reproduction of \u201cCurious George,\u201d let alone \u201cKing Lear.\u201d Don\u2019t worry, scientists believe that we still have googol years \u2014 10\u00b9\u2070\u2070, or 1 followed by 100 zeros \u2014 until the lights go out. But when the end does come, the typing monkeys will have made no more progress than their counterparts at the Paignton Zoo, according to Dr. Woodcock.\u201cIt\u2019s not happening,\u201d Dr. Woodcock said in an interview. The odds of a monkey typing out the first word of Hamlet\u2019s famous \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d soliloquy on a 30-key keyboard was 1 in 900, he said. Not bad, one could argue \u2014 but every new letter offers 29 fresh opportunities for error. The chances of a monkey spelling out \u201cbanana\u201d are \u201capproximately 1 in 22 billion,\u201d Dr. Woodcock said.The idea for the paper came to Dr. Woodcock during a lunchtime discussion with Jay Falletta, a water-usage researcher at the University of Technology Sydney. The two were working on a project about washing machines, which strain Australia\u2019s extremely limited water resources. They were \u201ca little bit bored\u201d by the task, Dr. Woodcock acknowledged. (Mr. Falletta is a co-author on the new paper.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19285,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19286,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283\/revisions\/19286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}