The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Since the cleanup logistics alone of even a few billion monkeys makes testing this theory unpractical, we could test it with a powerful computer. This has probably been proposed already so here's the idea:
A selectable variable slider that allows you to pick what you're modeling, from "Actually going to get a Shakespeare play in a few nanoseconds." to "Might get something sometime between now and infinity."
First a little background. They actually gave a group of real monkeys a keyboard to see if anything useful got written. Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five total pages largely consisting of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. (Much like how they generate posts on Democrat websites commenting on Donald Trump.)
So a completely accurate computer analog of this model, while entertaining, probably wouldn't be of much use, however it would be one of the selections in your variable slider. So on the far left of your selector slider, you'd have a small amount, say a billion monkeys all just hitting random keys, but each simulated simian is assigned a place in the given Shakespeare play. So if a given play has say, 100,000 letters you'd be assigned 100,000 monkeys, each tasked with coming up with his assigned letter. So if the first line is "Who's there?" this line would be assigned 11 "monkeys". Each monkey would hit a random character until the appropriate one came up at which time it would be registered in its appropriate place. I believe with this method it would only take a few nanoseconds for the entire play to be "written".
Next position on the slider would be "Letter by letter in correct sequence, each letter has assigned monkey" so "monkey" 1 would have to "type" "W" and monkey (I'll drop the quotes, you get the idea) and monkey 2 would type "h", monkey 3 would have to type "0" or the whole process gets reset. I'm not sure what kind of results you'd get with this model, I assume a few words in a row possibly but of course, the longest string of words created with this model could be saved so you might be able to watch a sentence grow over time. So to clarify, to get "Who" you'd need monkeys 1, 2 and 3 to randomly type, in exact order, "W", "h" and "o".
The variables further up the line would get increasingly closer to the actual infinite monkeys model with corresponding longer computing time with worse results.
Point is, it would take a little thought to come up with this progression of variables and that would be the interesting bit. Might make an interesting homework project for a statistical mechanics computing class.-- doctorremulac3, Nov 24 2017 Yikes, this came out a lot longer than I anticipated. (That's what she said.)
Sorry 'bout that.-- doctorremulac3, Nov 24 2017 You realize Shakespeare himself is the monkey? It just took 13Billion years give or take a couple, and a few supernovas.-- theircompetitor, Nov 24 2017 Never thought of it that way. Only took one "monkey" a few decades to write all of Shakespeare's works.-- doctorremulac3, Nov 24 2017 LL.
Yes. Pretend primates, mockup marmosets, bogus baboons, counterfeit capuchins and no bonobos.-- doctorremulac3, Nov 24 2017 So, are you going to sing "Yes ! We have no bonobos !" for the audience, then ?-- 8th of 7, Nov 24 2017 The scary part is that I got that reference. Even read it in my head to the melody.
"... we have nooo bonobooos today!"-- doctorremulac3, Nov 24 2017 The best result you're going to get from this is a *pre-existing* Shakespeare play. Wake me up when you've generated a new Shakespeare play (as the Earl of Oxford said to Marlowe).
Oh, and I think it was originally donkeys, but there was a typo.-- pertinax, Nov 24 2017 There's an idea.
You could use this line of thought to write a pretty good scathing review of a play. "We may not know how many monkeys with typewriters it would take to write one of Shakespeare's plays, but we know it only took one to write this piece of garbage."-- doctorremulac3, Nov 24 2017 ^[doctorremulac] Not good. Let the idea lie. There might (same probability the monkeys can produce a sentence) be a gem in there somewhere.
Due to causality, the lateral contact of the direct contact of lateral the contract, this bash on the keys might be beneficial.-- wjt, Nov 25 2017 //the lateral contact of the direct contact of lateral the contract//
You don't have a pet monkey by any chance do you?-- doctorremulac3, Nov 25 2017 Perhaps a more apposite question might be "Who's pet monkey are you, [wjt] ?" ?-- 8th of 7, Nov 25 2017 The universe's.-- wjt, Nov 25 2017 You do realize of course that the analog version has already been done?
We evolved (entirely within the experiments original design parameters of course) & eventually one of us wrote the complete works of Shakespeare.
They'll be along to pack up the lab & equipment any millennia now.
They sent us all an office memo about it (earths impending destruction etc.) in 1980.
But due to some communication difficulties between hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings & (well..) us some of it was lost in translation & came out garbled, you probably now it as the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.-- Skewed, Nov 26 2017 Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets.
154 devided by 37 = 4.16.
154 sonnets, 1+5+4 = 10
10 x 4.16 = 41.6. Close, but not quite 42.
I think I might have found the problem.-- doctorremulac3, Nov 26 2017 No, what you've found there is the Answer. Now, you have to spend many millions of years working out what the Question was (or maybe just ask the mice ?).-- 8th of 7, Nov 26 2017 random, halfbakery