Infinite Monkey Theorem

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Royal
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Infinite Monkey Theorem

Post by Royal » Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:02 am

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey pressing keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular finite text, such as the bible. Let us consider a single biblical phrase, "In the beginning, God created Earth." How long would it take a monkey to type this phrase? Assume that there are 93 symbols on a keyboard. The phrase contains 56 letters (counting spaces and the period at the end). If the probability of hitting the correct key on a typewriter is 1/n, where n is the number of possible keys, then the probability of the monkey correctly typing 56 characters in the target phrase would have to try more than 10^100 times, on average, before getting it right! If the monkey pressed one key per second, he'd be typing for well over the current age of the universe.

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