Myth: anything can happen
extrasense
in Philosophy, Poetry, Politicks, Law,
Mathematicks and Theology, without the least Assistance from Genius or
Study. ", J. Swift, Gulliver's Travels
The pseudoscience still holds the believe, that Swift was writing
about. Like the claim, that if you give a monkey a typewriter, and let
here type in random, she will produce all conceivable works of arts and
sciences.
Well, let us calculate, what is the probability of producing a single
sonet during such an excercise. Lets say we employ 10**10 monkeys, each
typing 1000 srokes per second since the big bang.
Consider that the Universe is less that 10**12 years old, and year is
less than 10**8 sec.
The monkeys would produce at most 10**33 characters.
Let us estimate that total number of existing sonets is 10**6 per
person, so with population 10**10, we have 10**16 sonets,
each longer than 100 chars.
The probability of typing a particular sonet at position x would be
less than 10**-100. The probability of typing any of 10**16 sonet at
position x would be less than 10**-84. The probability of typing any
sonet at any of the 10**33 positions would be less than 10**-51.
So, the expected number of the sonets, produced in this fashion since
the Big Bang would be ZERO.
And it is nice to know.
ES