[ima_pseudonym]

...either that or I just haven't had enough sleep.


From the BBC http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pag...on/3013959.stm

No words to describe monkeys' play

A bizarre experiment by a group of students has found monkeys cannot write Shakespeare.

Lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth wanted to test the claim that an infinite number of monkeys given typewriters would create the works of The Bard.

A single computer was placed in a monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo to monitor the literary output of six primates.

But after a month, the Sulawesi crested macaques had only succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and mostly typing the letter "s".

The project, by students from the university's MediaLab Arts course, received �2,000 from the Arts Council.


Director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT), Mike Phillips, denied the project was a disaster and said they had learned "an awful lot".

He also denied it had been a waste of money.

He said the �2,000 was spent on purchasing the hardware to set up a radio link so the activities in the enclosure could be watched live on a website.

"Compared to the cost of reality TV, this was a tiny pinch of money," he said.

"It provided very stimulating and fascinating viewing."

The six monkeys - Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan - produced five pages of text which consisted mainly of the letter "s".

Book published

But towards the end of the experiment, their output slightly improved, with the letters A, J, L and M also appearing.

However, they failed to come up with anything that remotely resembled a word.

Paignton Zoo scientific officer Dr Amy Plowman said: "The work was interesting but had little scientific value, except to show that the 'infinite monkey' theory is flawed."

The results of the experiment formed part of a larger project developed by i-DAT.

They have been published in a limited edition book entitled Notes Towards The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

Published: 2003/05/09 12:28:05 GMT

� BBC MMIII

[Cipher13]

I know it's just a jab, but still. The "theory" holds strong. Until they get infinite monkeys, and don't make them SHARE one computer...

[mitchell_pgh]

Ugh, and there are people out there trying to preform legitimate research that can't even find �500 for office supplies...

F@#$ing computers and monkeys... what were they thinking...

Hilarious...

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Ugh, and there are people out there trying to preform legitimate research that can't even find �500 for office supplies...

Actually, it might turn a profit - they are selling copies of the monkey's book for �25.

[Misanthrope]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
I know it's just a jab, but still. The "theory" holds strong. Until they get infinite monkeys, and don't make them SHARE one computer...

Anything that involves the inifite usually includes anything. So if somehow an infinite amount of monkeys were to start banging away on some keyboards/typewriters, they'd eventually write everything that could be written with a given alphabet.

Awesome eh?

[Face Ache]

Superchic[k]en came close to spelling a word right the other day.

[Misanthrope]

Originally posted by Face Ache:
Superchic[k]en came close to spelling a word right the other day.

THE END IS NEAR

[Stradlater]

yeah, haha, the infinite theory is far from "flawed"... not a waste of money, indeed

[Mastrap]

Originally posted by Face Ache:
Superchic[k]en came close to spelling a word right the other day.

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by Misanthrope:
Anything that involves the inifite usually includes anything. So if somehow an infinite amount of monkeys were to start banging away on some keyboards/typewriters, they'd eventually write everything that could be written with a given alphabet.

They could only be expected to write every finite string, not all of the infinite ones too.

Don't forget that some infinite sets are bigger than others.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Misanthrope:
Anything that involves the inifite usually includes anything. So if somehow an infinite amount of monkeys were to start banging away on some keyboards/typewriters, they'd eventually write everything that could be written with a given alphabet.

Awesome eh?

Actually, that's incorrect. What if every monkey just hit the same key on the keyboard for an infinite amount of time?

[Peter]

The experiment would have worked if it was an Apple Mac. Poor monkeys, the thing crashed, so they pressed S to save and then got pissed and trashed it. Who can blame them?

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by Steve:
Actually, that's incorrect. What if every monkey just hit the same key on the keyboard for an infinite amount of time?

I think the original description of the scenario is supposed to be monkeys *randomly* pressing keys on typewriters. So just holding down one key doesn't count. Even then, though, there is no guarantee that they will do it - it is just that the chance that they don't becomes vanishlingly small.

[Steve]

Originally posted by ima_pseudonym:
I think the original description of the scenario is supposed to be monkeys *randomly* pressing keys on typewriters. So just holding down one key doesn't count. Even then, though, there is no guarantee that they will do it - it is just that the chance that they don't becomes vanishlingly small.

Well, there can be no "randomness" in what the they will do. The randomness could be the same key pressed for infinity. There is a probability attached to each key being hit, but each probability is independant and therefore could be zero in a particular case. In general, all we know is that the monkeys stab at the keys randomly and without understanding what they're doing.

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by PeterClark2002:
The experiment would have worked if it was an Apple Mac. Poor monkeys, the thing crashed, so they pressed S to save and then got pissed and trashed it. Who can blame them?

LOL

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by Steve:
Well, there can be no "randomness" in what the they will do. The randomness could be the same key pressed for infinity.

I think in this context, random just means that at any time there is an equal probability of them striking any key. You're right that that could result in them pressing the same key every time, but the odds of that are infinitessimally small (like flipping an unbiased coin forever and never getting tails).





{This post may finally get me out of "junior" status}

[Steve]

Originally posted by ima_pseudonym:
I think in this context, random just means that at any time there is an equal probability of them striking any key. You're right that that could result in them pressing the same key every time, but the odds of that are infinitessimally small (like flipping an unbiased coin forever and never getting tails).





{This post may finally get me out of "junior" status}

But that's not the nature of a monkey. They are not "random", which is the flaw in this "experiment" (errr, what should we call it? theory?)

And re: a fair coin. The coin has no past memory of what is has been flipped, so it *is* possible to have a coin flip for infinity and never land on tails.

(congrats on getting out of "junior" status )

[ima_pseudonym]

Yes, there is a chance that an unbiased coin could come up heads forever, it is just really really unlikely. The chance that it would happen is the smallest number you can think, divided by 2, and then divided by 2 again, and yet again, ..... (I believe that the chance of that happening is actually smaller than the chance that all of the oxygen molecules in your room will gather in one corner and leaving you no air to breathe, which could happen, but is not likely to before the universe ends)


I always though monkeys were a pretty good example to use for random key-pressers with the way they madly flail their arms around.

[AlbertWu]

how bout we run a computer program that "randomly" presses "keys" and tries to form a coherent SENTENCE =P

[Face Ache]

Originally posted by AlbertWu:
how bout we run a computer program that "randomly" presses "keys" and tries to form a coherent SENTENCE =P

You want to put superchic[k]en out of a job?

Besides, that would never attract funding.

[tintub]

Originally posted by ima_pseudonym:
I think the original description of the scenario is supposed to be monkeys *randomly* pressing keys on typewriters. So just holding down one key doesn't count. Even then, though, there is no guarantee that they will do it - it is just that the chance that they don't becomes vanishlingly small.

I think the point is, however long you wait, if they haven't done it yet then the experiment isn't finished yet, and if they have, then it worked. I think the reality is the monkeys would die before they had even got one coherent sentence out.

[Jim_MDP]

Originally posted by ima_pseudonym:
...I believe that the chance of that happening is actually smaller than the chance that all of the oxygen molecules in your room will gather in one corner and leaving you no air to breathe, which could happen, but is not likely to before the universe ends.

Not sure why, maybe now I'm tired...but that sudden mental image just made me laugh.

[Ghoser777]

Typing monkeys are silly.

Infinite Monkeys

Okay, so it's a misnomer and there is only one monkey, but you get the idea.

Matt Fahrenbacher

[ima_pseudonym]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
Typing monkeys are silly.

Infinite Monkeys

Okay, so it's a misnomer and there is only one monkey, but you get the idea.

Matt Fahrenbacher

Nice!

Now if you could just add 1) more spaces, and 2) a running filter against a spell check dictionary that would pull off each actual word as it appeared and append it to a different window, I would probably leave it running on for a few days and see what came out.

Hey, maybe this could be the next SETI or folding distributed processing project! Thousands of computers all over the world, randomly trying to recreate Shakespeare.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Misanthrope:
Anything that involves the inifite usually includes anything. So if somehow an infinite amount of monkeys were to start banging away on some keyboards/typewriters, they'd eventually write everything that could be written with a given alphabet.

Awesome eh?

Exactly.