I'll have to find the reference to the short story where some scientists set up a row of monkeys to actually test the theory ... they become quite disturbed when one monkey starts typing out Hamlet, another some famous novel, and so on ....
Yes, every match is with the beginning of a play - because that's what they search for. Not much use the monkey getting the middle of the play right, if it doesnt get the start of it! So, the page only needs to look for 37 strings, not the thousands (or millions) it would have to look for if it tried to match ANYTHING ANYWHERE.
However, there's only so many random characters that can be checked in a second, and I think this site exceeds that amount.
So, what I think the site does is calculate the CHANCE of matching X letters in a second (based on number of monkeys, etc), and rolls a dice. If your 'roll' is enough to match, say, 6 letters, it picks which play to use, types out the first 6 letters, then types out a random string of characters. After all, look at the random characters after the matching ones - doesnt look like you'd match anything, does it?
Some students in our theatre department here at Utah State University are doing a short play in which three monkeys do this, and discuss the ramifications as they do so. It's called "Words" I think. I've seen it before, and it's mighty funny.
Probably about as difficult as before. The # of monkeys is increasing too, remember, so we'll see more characters being typed. It'll be interesting when the number of monkeys really gets way up there.
Originally posted by sleekr:
Well, they've finally updated their records, new record now is 10 letters - that will be hard to beat!
I'll have to find the reference to the short story where some scientists set up a row of monkeys to actually test the theory ... they become quite disturbed when one monkey starts typing out Hamlet, another some famous novel, and so on ....
I'll have to find the reference to the short story where some scientists set up a row of monkeys to actually test the theory ... they become quite disturbed when one monkey starts typing out Hamlet, another some famous novel, and so on ....
