A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
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A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
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Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#2I always like these sort of papers. They signify some form of humanity among researchers. It is explainable to people outside of the research community and explores a comical topic while applying the scientific method.
It always makes for great examples of how to apply the scientific method.
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#3I always like these sort of papers. They signify some form of humanity among researchers. It is explainable to people outside of the research community and explores a comical topic while applying the scientific method. It always makes for great examples of how to apply the scientific method.
Yes, and I think of them as examples to grab interest, particularly of young people. Which is good, the world needs not only more scientists, but more people who understand and appreciate how it works.
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#4Yes, but as monkeys->inf then P(Shakespeare generated) -> 1 almost certainly (also in math sense).
The result depends on the relative rates that things go to infinity, just like lim (x,y)->(inf, inf) of x/y completely depends on the path (x,y) takes to (inf, inf)
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#5> Given the expected time until the heat death of the universe, we demonstrate that the widely-accepted conclusion from the Infinite Monkeys Theorem is, in fact, misleading in our finite universe
Maybe I'm missing something here, but wasn't the analogy used to describe the nature of infinity ?
The paper is pretty cool, but it gives a weird correlation between infinity as a principle and the heat death of the universe ?
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#6A somewhat popular variant I've seen of this problem of the infinite limit versus the real physical reality is people calculating the probabilities of some event occurring in some game with a fixed seed, as was popular in old games. Someone might start computing the probability that this monster has its rare variant AND the boss gets the maximum HP roll AND the awesome sword gets its lowest damage variant AND so on and so on... but if the game has a 32-bit seed that determines everything and the resulting probability is, say, one in a trillion, then the real probability is likely a straight zero, because none of the finite number of seeds will have the calculated outcome, even if a hypothetical variation of the game with a large random state space could.
Similarly, if you use a psuedo-random number generator and start trying to calculate how long it will be before it produces some string substantially larger than the side of its internal state, your answer will likely be incorrect as the answer is it will never produce the longer string, a flat zero.
Not consequential errors in most cases because it's fairly rare to exhaust the entire state space of a random number generator and be concerned about the result. (Unless you're a speedrunner. Or in the case of one recent YouTuber, just insane, in that good ol' hacker way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNMWkD5VsZ8 "Beating every possible game of Pokemon Platinum at the same time")
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#7As long as the implementation still confirms to RFC 2795
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#8It's too bad that they took the physicality of the monkeys into account, but assumed the key probabilities were IID. It would have been nice to see the effect of keyboard layout on the overall probabilities. Key mashing would clearly make nearby keys much more likely to be pressed in a sequence, implying that there might be an optimal keyboard layout for each phrase. And that’s before considering soft keyboards with autocomplete.
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#9It's too bad that they took the physicality of the monkeys into account, but assumed the key probabilities were IID. It would have been nice to see the effect of keyboard layout on the overall probabilities. Key mashing would clearly make nearby keys much more likely to be pressed in a sequence, implying that there might be an optimal keyboard layout for each phrase. And that’s before considering soft keyboards with…
How about I define a new language or dictionary where three letters written like "αηζ" is equivalent to all works of Shakespeare.
Then job would be easy.
Re: A numerical evaluation of the Finite Monkeys Theorem
#10> Given the expected time until the heat death of the universe, we demonstrate that the widely-accepted conclusion from the Infinite Monkeys Theorem is, in fact, misleading in our finite universe Maybe I'm missing something here, but wasn't the analogy used to describe the nature of infinity ? The paper is pretty cool, but it gives a weird correlation between infinity as a principle and the heat death of the universe…
I was also confused until I read the abstract. This is the FINITE Monkeys Theorem.
>Here, we consider the Finite Monkeys Theorem and look at the probability of a given string being typed by one of a finite number of monkeys within a finite time allocation consistent with estimates for the lifespan of our universe.
I misread finite as infinite multiple times.