The alpha male bashed hell out of the computer with a stone and the others did little but urinate
WORLD OF SCIENCE - BOB BROCKIE
The Dominion Post, April 16, 2007 linked by davidgallaher1
They say that given a hundred typewriters and enough time, a hundred monkeys will write Shakespeare's complete works.
To test this idea, a team at the University of Plymouth, England, got a (PndStlg)2000 grant from the British Arts Council, shut six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys with a computer keyboard in an enclosure at a Devon zoo for a month, and filmed what happened.
The alpha male bashed hell out of the computer with a stone and the other monkeys did little else but urinate and defecate on the keyboard. Nevertheless, the monkeys did produce the equivalent of five pages of type with a predilection for the letter S. One researcher said that proved the monkeys were not hitting the keyboard at random, so were part of the way towards literacy. Defending the expenditure, a lecturer said the filmed experiment made very stimulating and fascinating viewing and was cheaper to produce than reality TV, but there was no sign of Shakespeare.
These typing monkeys were the brainchild of French mathematician Emile Borel back in 1909. He introduced us to dactylographic monkeys in his book Statistical Mechanics and Irreversibility. Borel thought the monkeys would help readers envisage the unfeasible improbability of certain physical events, such as the random movement of all the air molecules to one end of a room. You can safely bet that the monkeys are unlikely to write Hamlet. You can similarly bet that air molecules will remain evenly spread through a room and not all move to one end by chance.
In 2003 a more realistic experiment was started called The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator. The programme simulates a vast number of monkeys typing at random to see how long it will take them to produce a Shakespeare play.
To date, the cyber monkeys have not done very well. It has taken them the equivalent of 2,737,850 million billion billion billion years to produce a phrase from Henry IV, Part 2: RUMOUR. Open your ears . . .
One mathematician calculates that if the universe contains 17 billion galaxies, each containing 17 billion stars, each containing 17 billion inhabitable planets, and each planet supported 17 billion monkeys all typing a random line of type per second for a billion years, their chances of producing To be or not to be, that is the question is almost but not completely zilch. You stand a much better chance of winning the lottery a hundred times in a row.
Despite this, probabilists figure that, given enough time, it is not only probable but inevitable that the monkeys will write Shakespeare. They also argue that if the monkeys had started their project far enough back in time, they would have written the plays before Shakespeare himself.
In The Simpsons, one of a thousand chimps shut up in Montgomery Burns' house has nearly written the first sentence of Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities - It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times. "You stupid monkey!" says Mr Burns.
Romeo and Juliet by William Monkey? Don't hold your breath.
The Dominion Post, April 16, 2007 linked by davidgallaher1
They say that given a hundred typewriters and enough time, a hundred monkeys will write Shakespeare's complete works.
To test this idea, a team at the University of Plymouth, England, got a (PndStlg)2000 grant from the British Arts Council, shut six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys with a computer keyboard in an enclosure at a Devon zoo for a month, and filmed what happened.
The alpha male bashed hell out of the computer with a stone and the other monkeys did little else but urinate and defecate on the keyboard. Nevertheless, the monkeys did produce the equivalent of five pages of type with a predilection for the letter S. One researcher said that proved the monkeys were not hitting the keyboard at random, so were part of the way towards literacy. Defending the expenditure, a lecturer said the filmed experiment made very stimulating and fascinating viewing and was cheaper to produce than reality TV, but there was no sign of Shakespeare.
These typing monkeys were the brainchild of French mathematician Emile Borel back in 1909. He introduced us to dactylographic monkeys in his book Statistical Mechanics and Irreversibility. Borel thought the monkeys would help readers envisage the unfeasible improbability of certain physical events, such as the random movement of all the air molecules to one end of a room. You can safely bet that the monkeys are unlikely to write Hamlet. You can similarly bet that air molecules will remain evenly spread through a room and not all move to one end by chance.
In 2003 a more realistic experiment was started called The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator. The programme simulates a vast number of monkeys typing at random to see how long it will take them to produce a Shakespeare play.
To date, the cyber monkeys have not done very well. It has taken them the equivalent of 2,737,850 million billion billion billion years to produce a phrase from Henry IV, Part 2: RUMOUR. Open your ears . . .
One mathematician calculates that if the universe contains 17 billion galaxies, each containing 17 billion stars, each containing 17 billion inhabitable planets, and each planet supported 17 billion monkeys all typing a random line of type per second for a billion years, their chances of producing To be or not to be, that is the question is almost but not completely zilch. You stand a much better chance of winning the lottery a hundred times in a row.
Despite this, probabilists figure that, given enough time, it is not only probable but inevitable that the monkeys will write Shakespeare. They also argue that if the monkeys had started their project far enough back in time, they would have written the plays before Shakespeare himself.
In The Simpsons, one of a thousand chimps shut up in Montgomery Burns' house has nearly written the first sentence of Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities - It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times. "You stupid monkey!" says Mr Burns.
Romeo and Juliet by William Monkey? Don't hold your breath.