0 Votes
RE: Shakespearian tragedy!
I am wrong! My monkey is equally unlikely to type any manuscript of the same length, because he has know idea of what he is typing.
So if the 14 episodes of 2 1/2 men add up to the same length as Hamlet, he is just as likely to type Hamlet first.
In reality there would be far too many spaces in the Monkeys work because that key is the size of at least 6 other keys and so has a much higher probability of being struck.
RE: Shakespearian tragedy! by scottb
So if the 14 episodes of 2 1/2 men add up to the same length as Hamlet, he is just as likely to type Hamlet first.
I think the normal view on this is that the monkeys generate an unending string of characters (usually with uniform probability from a fixed alphabet), and the stream is checked to see if a particular document appears anywhere within it.
In an infinite stream, every single work of Shakespeare (and of every other author. of course) eventually appears. That’s just part of the weirdness of infinities.
The more interesting view of the question of 2½ Men compared to Hamlet is to ask how many episodes of Men are likely to appear in the stream before Hamlet does.