January 22, 2010
This is going to take a while…
How long would it take all those monkeys to type the complete works of the bard?
There are about fifty keys on a standard typewriter keyboard. Even ignoring capitalization, the chance of a monkey typing “h” is one in fifty. The probability of typing “ha” is one-fiftieth of one in fifty, or 1 in 2,500. The probability of typing “ham” is one in fifty time fifty time fifty, or 1 in 125,000. The probability of a monkey typing out a phrase with twenty-two characters is one divided by fifty raised to the twenty-second power, or about 10^-38. It would take billion billion monkeys each typing ten characters per second, for each of the roughly billion billion seconds since the universe began, just to have one of them type out “hamlet. act i, scene i.”
…and they wouldn’t even capitalize properly.
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This many-monkeys-typing-Hamlet thing has always interested me for oblique reasons. What are the odds that a person would arrive at the point of thinking about monkeys or randomness in this way? And what happens when we throw in the probability that monkeys would evolve over a few billion years of typing? I know I know, that’s not the question being asked. But it reminds me of many aspects of complexity theory (Santa Fe Institute, et. al.), and the notion that growth toward complexity isn’t just a curve of the most basic incremental steps, given that whole ordered parts may be assimilated along the way. Instead of giving them typewriters, read and perform Hamlet for the monkeys many times. Soon you would see great “To Be, or Not to Be” poses all over the place, and wonderfully elastic lip movements.
Daryl, that appeals to me tremendously. I want to write a grant for funding that will allow me to perform “Hamlet” for monkeys in zoos and labs. Seriously. Kinda.
Oh, and given the fluid nature of Shakespearean texts, who is to say that what a gang of monkeys were to type might not be a perfectly valid version?
Sheila–I’m sure we could get a monkey to like Hamlet more than most middle school students do. We could ask monkeys to “write a paper” about Hamlet. My money is on the monkeys.
We could be to primate labs and Shakespeare as Rick Cluchy was to prisons and Samuel Beckett.
I like where this is going. I think the original scenario posits untrained monkeys. I can find no definitive word on whether they are using typewriters or computers, and nothing substantive on operating systems, word processors, or familiarity with stage and screen. I suspect they are not familiar with opera as I have never seen a monkey wearing a tuxedo (funny that they call them “monkey suits”), but Shakespeare was purportedly writing toward a more pedestrian audience. There is the possibility that I need to consort with a better class of monkey.
[...] Daryl Scroggins: This many-monkeys-typing-Hamlet thing has always interested me for oblique reasons. What are the odds that a person would arrive at the point of thinking about monkeys or randomness in this way? And what happens when we throw in the probability that monkeys would evolve over a few billion years of typing? I know I know, that’s not the question being asked. But it reminds me of many aspects of complexity theory (Santa Fe Institute, et. al.), and the notion that growth toward complexity isn’t just a curve of the most basic incremental steps, given that whole ordered parts may be assimilated along the way. Instead of giving them typewriters, read and perform Hamlet for the monkeys many times. Soon you would see great “To Be, or Not to Be” poses all over the place, and wonderfully elastic lip movements. [...]
[...] Joseph Logan: There is the possibility that I need to consort with a better class of monkey. [...]
The probabilities mentioned also posit an equal likelihood of hitting every key. Keys closer together are probably more likely to get hit simultaneously, and keys towards the middle of the keyboard may be more likely to be pressed than those towards the edges. Frankly, the only way I can think of to prove this out is conduct the experiment.
Anyone have a spare monkey? I’ll donate a laptop.