It turns out a monkey – given an infinite amount of time and a typewriter – wouldn’t be able to write Shakespeare before the universe ends, according to a new study.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Speaking of improbable versus impossible, here’s a familiar thought experiment. If you had an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters, or one monkey with infinite time, would they eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare?
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE SIMPSONS”)
HARRY SHEARER: (As Charles Montgomery Burns) This is 1,000 monkeys working at 1,000 typewriters. Soon, they’ll have written the greatest novel known to man.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
“The Simpsons” pondered this. So did two mathematicians from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta calculated that based on the current chimpanzee population, it almost certainly wouldn’t happen before the universe is expected to collapse.
SHAPIRO: Their paper in the journal Franklin Open says the widely accepted conclusion from the infinite monkeys theorem is misleading in our finite universe. In fact, the authors found just a 5% possibility that a single chimp would spell out the word bananas within its lifetime.
SUMMERS: Which, I guess, itself is kind of bananas.
(SOUNDBITE OF GWEN STEFANI SONG, “HOLLABACK GIRL”)
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