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Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmail com> wrote:
> I love it. Flawed, as in he thinks nobody had ever noticed that an infinite
> number of monkeys would be difficult to arrange? Or does he really think that
> infinity can be approximated by eight? And whoever said it was a theory in the
> first place? :-D
Actually there's no law of mathematics or physics which says that an
infinite number of monkeys will produce the works of Shakespeare (especially
given that the problem is incomplete: The amount of time is unspecified).
One monkey and an infinite amount of time is closer, but still not a
guarantee.
A true evenly-distributed random number generator and an infinite amount
of time is a lot, lot closer to fulfilling the claim, and the probability
of the works coming up is unlimitedly high, but there's still no absolute
guarantee.
(Many people think that in this last case the works *will* eventually
appear with absolute certainty, but that's just the gambler's fallacy.)
--
- Warp
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