Monday 2nd December 2024
Difficulty: Medium
Infinite monkeys (Quiz #745)
Photo by Utkarsh Singh (Unsplash)
Reported in The Guardian: Mathematicians have called into question the old adage that a monkey typing randomly at a keyboard for long enough would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. (Link at end of quiz.)
1. What is the chance that a single monkey would randomly write the word “bananas” in their lifetime (using a normal English typewriter, typing for 30 years at one key per second)?
2. How many times does the word "banana" occur in the complete works of Shakespeare (884,647 words)?
3. The reported study was based on 200,000 chimpanzees (the current world population of the species) typing at a rate of one key per second. What did it conclude would happen before the chimps produced the complete works of Shakespeare?
Privacy: we believe in respecting our users' privacy. When you click the button above, you'll get your score straight away. We won't request your details, or try to sell you anything, or ask you to subscribe.