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

submitted 23 hours ago by VantaBrandon@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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

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[–] SimpleMachine@lemmy.world 20 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 hours ago

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.