From: jellybean stonerfish on
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:29:05 -0800, Nick Keighley wrote:

> On 8 Mar, 14:44, jellybean stonerfish <stonerf...(a)geocities.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:56:54 -0800, Nick Keighley wrote:
>
>> > shakespere didn't generate his plays by random means.
>>
>> It was random that there even was a Shakespeare.
>
> only if you use an odd definition of "random"

I used a pseudo-random definition of random.

From: Frederick Williams on
Jens Thoms Toerring wrote:
>
> In comp.unix.programmer Karthik Balaguru <karthikbalaguru79(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > I came across the 'Infinite Monkey Theorem'.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
>
> > I wonder how can a monkey hitting keys at random on
> > a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will
> > almost surely type a given text, such as the complete
> > works of William Shakespeare ?
>
> What could be not in an infinite set? You will have not
> only the works of Shakespeare, but also all his works
> with all kinds of typos, readers digest versions etc.;-)

It is not an infinite set, it is an infinite sequence. If the
characters in the sequence are treated as digits and the sequence is
construed as a real number (with an invisible "decimal" point at its
left hand end say) and if that real number is normal in �mile Borel's
sense, then you'll get the works of Shakespeare. But does random equal
normal?

--
I can't go on, I'll go on.
From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard on
>
>>
>> shakespere didn't generate his plays by random means.
>>
> It was random that there even was a Shakespeare.
>
.... but not that there was an Isaac Newton. That is according to his
epitaph, at any rate.

From: Eric Sosman on
On 3/8/2010 4:56 AM, Nick Keighley wrote:
> [...]
> shakespere didn't generate his plays by random means.

True. His use of randomization was confined to the
spelling of his name.

--
Eric Sosman
esosman(a)ieee-dot-org.invalid
From: mike on
In article <4B97BED3.D3D182AA(a)tesco.net>, frederick.williams2(a)tesco.net
says...
> Jens Thoms Toerring wrote:
> >
> > In comp.unix.programmer Karthik Balaguru <karthikbalaguru79(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I came across the 'Infinite Monkey Theorem'.
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
> >
> > > I wonder how can a monkey hitting keys at random on
> > > a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will
> > > almost surely type a given text, such as the complete
> > > works of William Shakespeare ?
> >
> > What could be not in an infinite set? You will have not
> > only the works of Shakespeare, but also all his works
> > with all kinds of typos, readers digest versions etc.;-)
>
> It is not an infinite set, it is an infinite sequence. If the
> characters in the sequence are treated as digits and the sequence is
> construed as a real number (with an invisible "decimal" point at its
> left hand end say) and if that real number is normal in Émile Borel's
> sense, then you'll get the works of Shakespeare. But does random equal
> normal?
>
It doesn't require an infinite sequence, just a sufficiently long one.

The complete works comprise 888,429 words or approximately 4.86 million
characters so, even without compression, a random binary string of
around 10^(11,700,000) 0/1 characters should be long enough to almost
guarantee to contain an ascii representation of the works. Bigger than a
google, but much smaller than a googleplex.

Mike