An Interesting Aside: Infinite Monkey Theorem Has An Extensive Page On Wikipedia

[KittyWampus]

Maybe it's time to update that page to include this controversial cartoon which has spilled intentionally or not over the line from bad taste into racist symbolism.

Used to hang with underground comix people. Some specialized in the offensive. Although the point then, if you're going to offend, is to make it irrelevant.



Infinite monkey theorem
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem


Given enough time, a hypothetical chimpanzee typing at random would, as part of its output, almost surely produce one of Shakespeare's plays (or any other text). 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.

In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey; rather, it is a metaphor for an abstract device that produces a random sequence of letters ad infinitum. The theorem illustrates the perils of reasoning about infinity by imagining a vast but finite number, and vice versa. The probability of a monkey typing a given string of text exactly, as long as, for example, Shakespeare's Hamlet, is so tiny that, were the experiment conducted, the chance of it actually occurring during a span of time of the order of the age of the universe is minuscule but not zero.

Variants of the theorem include multiple and even infinitely many typists, and the target text varies between an entire library and a single sentence. The history of these statements can be traced back to Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption and Cicero's De natura deorum, through Blaise Pascal and Jonathan Swift, and finally to modern statements with their iconic typewriters. In the early 20th century, Émile Borel and Arthur Eddington used the theorem to illustrate the timescales implicit in the foundations of statistical mechanics. Various Christian apologists on the one hand, and Richard Dawkins on the other, have argued about the appropriateness of the monkeys as a metaphor for evolution.

Today, popular interest in the typing monkeys is sustained by numerous appearances in literature, television, radio, music, and the Internet. In 2003, an experiment was performed with six Celebes Crested Macaques, but their literary contribution was five pages consisting largely of the letter 'S'.<1>


The concept has been used extensively in Popular Culture (Simpsons, Family Guy):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem#Popular_culture

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. And what about the artist's comparison of homosexuality to bestiality?

Care to explain that one away?

[KittyWampus]

2. I'm not "explaining anything away".