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From: mmar@sphinx.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: looking for reference for "British Museum" quote
Message-ID: <1019@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Jan-87 18:51:24 EST
Article-I.D.: sphinx.1019
Posted: Mon Jan  5 18:51:24 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Jan-87 22:36:05 EST
References: <355@unc.unc.UUCP> <3800001@nucsrl.UUCP> <372@wheaton.UUCP>
Reply-To: mmar@sphinx.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Organization: U Chicago
Lines: 42

In article <372@wheaton.UUCP> stefan@wheaton.UUCP (Stefan Brandle) writes:
>In article <3800001@nucsrl.UUCP> ram@nucsrl.UUCP (raman renukanthan) writes:
>>>>re: Missing quotation, monkeys in the basement                          
>>>>                                                                        
>>>>"If a hundred chimpanzees were to be set before a hundred typewriters   
>>>>typing for thousands of years at random.  They would eventually         
>>>>duplicate all of the works contained in the British Museum."            
>
>Does anyone seriously believe this?  I don't make any pretense of being
>an expert on stats, but my little knowledge of combinatorics would
>indicate that the idea is crazy.
>
>Please set me right if I have missed something.
>
>Stefan Brandle                                 UUCP:  ihnp4!wheaton!stefan      



    The quotation doesn't seem sure how much time it's allowing.  If "thousands
of years" means 2000 < T < 1,000,000  (otherwise it would be "a million" or
"millions"), then it also strikes me as crazy (noting that it only calls for 
100 chimps).  But if we ignore the "thousands", or suppose that any large
number counts as "thousands", then emphasizing _eventually_ gives us unbounded
time, and it becomes not so crazy.
     In his book _One, Two, Three...Infinity_, George Gamow does an approximate
calculation of the number of combinations available for a single medium-length
printed line (I don't recall the details), and comes up with something huge
which he analogizes to all the atoms in the accessible universe (red-shift
boundary) computing it in parallel without duplication, at the rate of atomic
vibrations, ever since the big bang, they would not yet have made a sizeable dent
in the problem.
	The last time this came up on the net, people pointed out literary etc
allusions to the problem.  My favorite is a Bob Newhart routine (on one of
his early phono albums), in which he imagines that someone would have to be
hired to check the chimps' output.  The ending is roughly this:
           Hey, Harry, I think this one here has come up with
           something.   "To.. be.. or .. not .. to.. be.. that..
           is.. the..... gzornenplatz.."
-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar