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Monkeys on a Typewriter: Difference between revisions
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One common joke is to assume that the number of monkeys required to write something is proportional to its artistic merit, so Shakespeare might take a million monkeys a million years, but three monkeys could write ''[[Atlanta Nights]]'' in half a day. This isn't actually true (in fact, all that matters is the length of the thing that the monkeys are replicating), but it is [[Rule of Funny|funny]]. When we start throwing infinity in it (which is implied by the "eventually" in the first sentence of this page), then either one monkey is enough given an infinite time, or among infinite monkeys typing (for example) 400 pages each, one will type a particular 400-page text on the first try.
While they are part of the most common descriptions of this idea, versions involving "thousands" or "millions" of monkeys may confuse someone into thinking there is some kind of ''practical'' possibility of producing Shakespeare with monkeys, if we could only wait for a few million years. Some paraphrases of the problem even forget to mention the "eventually" or "infinite" part and say that you just need "a million monkeys for a million years". In fact, even if you replaced every atom in the universe with a monkey and a typewriter, and they all typed a thousand characters per second, the odds of their producing ''[[Hamlet]]'' (as well as the odds of any other specific text of the same length) within an octillion octillion years are still incomprehensibly ''low''. However, such huge quantities of monkeys and time are no match for '''infinity''', which is where the magic happens.
The point is that the monkeys are flailing at the keys without understanding the point of the machine. Given enough time or enough monkeys, or both, one of them will accidently hit the keys in the order "[shift]T-o[space]b-e[comma][space]o-r[space]n-o-t[space]t-o[space]b-e..." There is also some non-infinite yet unimaginably large number of years within which typing ''[[Hamlet]]'' has a probability of 99%, but the chance still doesn't reach 100% until infinity.
Robert Wilensky complemented this with the statement that "Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." See also The [[wikipedia:Infinite monkey theorem|Other]] [[wikipedia:Infinite monkey theorem in popular culture|Wiki]].
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{{quote|'''Doctor''': You and I both know, at the end of a millennium they'd still be tapping out gibberish.
'''Tegan''': And you'd be right there tapping it out with them. }}
* In the ''[[That '70s Show]]'' episode "Battle of the Sexists", after Donna manages to score in a basketball game, Eric yells, "[[Last-Name Basis|Pinciotti]] actually scores! Hell freezes over! A monkey types Hamlet!"
* In ''[[Veronica Mars]]'', Veronica gets hauled into the police station for questioning about the death of "Curly" Moran, who she thinks she's never heard of. When she realizes that she actually does know him -- in a seemingly totally different context -- she [[Lemony Narrator|thinks]]:
{{quote|"Somewhere, those million chimps, with their million typewriters, must've written King Lear."}}
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* The ''[[I Am Weasel]]'' episode "A Troo Storee" has a scene where several monkeys with typewriters are trying to write a novel. Weasel manages to insult them by offering to pay them in bananas.
* In the ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "The King is Dead", Peter uses a monkeys-on-typewriters reference to belittle the importance of art. This is followed by a scene in which several monkeys argue over which flower would best fit in the "rose by any other name" line from ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]''.
* In ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'', "Cliptastic Countdown" combines this with [[Who Writes This Crap?]]. Major Monogram demands who wrote the lines, to which Carl the intern replies, "Agent M, sir." We then see a monkey in a fedora at a typewriter, causing Dr. Doofenshmirtz to complain how [[What Are Records?|none of the kids watching will know what a typewriter is]]. Monogram tries to excuse it by say it was cheaper that way, but Doof just continues ranting on the point that they would have to find a typewriter from an antiques dealer.
== Real Life ==
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