Interesting Animal - Monkeys write Shakespeare
Well, virtual monkeys. Seemingly a computer programmer, Jesse Anderson, programmed a few million virtual monkeys to randomly bash keys on virtual typewriters in an attempt to re-create Shakespeare.
(He set out to prove or disprove the long-standing saying of how an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time could write Shakespeare.
The virtual monkeys are small computer programs uploaded to Amazon servers. They regularly pump out random sequences of text nine characters long, each string of text is checked to see if it appears anywhere in the works of Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard. Using these constraints, mathematicians say it would take “far, far longer than the age of the Universe” for monkeys to write Shakespeare. I haven't got that long, so I'll stick with the original.)
(He set out to prove or disprove the long-standing saying of how an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time could write Shakespeare.
The virtual monkeys are small computer programs uploaded to Amazon servers. They regularly pump out random sequences of text nine characters long, each string of text is checked to see if it appears anywhere in the works of Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard. Using these constraints, mathematicians say it would take “far, far longer than the age of the Universe” for monkeys to write Shakespeare. I haven't got that long, so I'll stick with the original.)