2mo ago

Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds

phys.org Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds

A new study reveals it would take far longer than the lifespan of our universe for a typing monkey to randomly produce Shakespeare. So, while the Infinite Monkey Theorem is true, it is also somewhat misleading.

The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

You're viewing a single thread.

190 comments

Ignoring the obvious flaw of throwing out the importance of infinity here, they would be exceedingly unlikely but technically not unable. A random occurrence is just as likely to happen on try number 1 as it is on try number 10 billion. It doesn't become any more or less likely as iterations occur. This is an all too common failure of understanding how probabilities work.
- The results reveal that it is possible (around a 5% chance) for a single chimp to type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime.
  That sounds a little low to me. B and N are right next to each other, so I'd expect them to mash left and right among similar keys a lot of the time. Then again, I think we're expecting some randomness here, not an actual chimp at a typewriter, but that's probably more likely to reproduce longer works than an actual chimp.
- I get annoyed when websites say something like, ´Using a password of this strength will take a a hacker one million years to brute force.´
  No, it’ll take a million years to try every combination and permutation of allowed characters. Chances are your password will be tried much sooner than that.
  
  When they say such things, the are probably talking about the expected value, where those chances are taken into account, just like the number calculated in this article.
  
  And apparently monkey is only the 6th password attempt to try:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_the_most_common_passwords&action=edit&section=3

190 comments