Tested in the field: Will monkeys type shakespeare?

http://bakadesuyo.com/will-monkeys-really-type-shakespeare-if-given

by huangm • 17 years ago

2 12 17 years ago

People really, really don't understand the concept of infinity, nor the concept of "with probability 1." The most interesting point about the idea that people actually go out and try these things, is to prove that people just don't understand these things.

The conclusion that "the theory is flawed" shows they don't understand the theory.

The question I have is - should we care? Should we try to explain these things? Or should we just shrug and give up. How will it actually make their lives better? For some people it might, but then again ...

pp2• 17 years ago

While I certainly agree with you, I must admit that it never occurred to me that the whole monkey typist experiment depends on the assumption of the monkey's being able to actually hit each key. :)

abdulhaq• 17 years ago

Yes this small study does not disprove that, given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, a shakespearean play will be produced.

However, we need only look to the internet to see that the proposition is indeed false.

RiderOfGiraffes5• 17 years ago

Cute, but wrong (as you probably know).

Even the size of the internet and all the drivel on it is infintesimally smaller than infinity.

Ron Graham once told me that the problems we have in mathematics are caused in part by the fact that we only ever deal with small numbers, and he's the one who used Graham's Number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grahams_number

pp2• 17 years ago

On a serious note, have people been more educated in probability, the economic crisis might not have turned out as bad. Look at Nassim Taleb to see how far some probability consciousness can get you.

astine4• 17 years ago

If the probability of producing the desired result in any given attempt is zero, then the probability of producing the desired result given infinite attempts is still zero.

If monkeys are incapable of typing, then the probability is zero.

RiderOfGiraffes5• 17 years ago

  > If the probability of producing the desired result
  > in any given attempt is zero, then the probability
  > of producing the desired result given infinite
  > attempts is still zero.

This is a common misconception. Pick a point uniformly at random in the interval from 0 to 1. The probability of any given point is zero, but the probability of being in the interval [a,b) is b-a (assuming 0<=a<=b<=1). This is a case of infinitely many zeroes giving a non-zero sum, and why you need to deal carefully with infinities.

Yes, I know about countable and uncountable infinities. This is a big subject, and small comments here won't cover it. There are rules and exceptions.

Tested in the field: Will monkeys type shakespeare?

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