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The infinite monkey theorem has been a recurring theme in popular culture for perhaps a century, although some of the occurrences are much earlier.

This is an unusual case of a mathematical proposition that admits a precise statement and proof being widely known among non-mathematicians because of its transmission through popular culture rather than because of its transmission via the classroom.

Literature

• Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1782) anticipates the central idea of the theorem, depicting a professor of the Grand Academy of Lagado who attempts to create a complete list of all knowledge of science by having his students constantly create random strings of letters by turning cranks on a mechanism (Part three, Chapter five): although his intention was more likely to parody Ramon Llull.
• In "Inflexible Logic" by Russell Maloney, a short story that appeared in The New Yorker in 1940, the protagonist felt that his wealth put him under an obligation to support the sciences, and so he tested the theory. His monkeys immediately set to work typing, without error, classics of fiction and nonfiction. The rich man was amused to see unexpurgated versions of Samuel Pepys's diaries, of which he owned only a copy of a bowdlerised edition. The story was reprinted in the classic four-volume The World of Mathematics by James R. Newman, published in 1956.
• Jorge Luis Borges' "The Library of Babel" depicts a library which contains books consisting of every single possible permutation of characters. The narrator notes that every great work of literature is contained in the library; but these are outnumbered by the flawed works (which are themselves vastly outnumbered by works of pure gibberish).
• In the one-act play Words, Words, Words by David Ives, three monkeys named Milton, Swift, and Kafka have been confined to a cage by a scientist until they can write Hamlet.
• In a humorous short story "Been a Long, Long Time" by R. A. Lafferty, an angel is punished by having to proofread all the output text until some future time (after trillions of Universes have been created and died) when the monkeys produce a perfect copy of Shakespeare's works.
• In Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, one character says, "If six monkeys..." and then cannot continue, as the characters are actually within Hamlet, one possible topic of this rule. He then finishes the sentence on a different topic.
• Michael Ende's The Neverending Story included a chapter in which some persons play a game with some dice with alphabetic characters carved on the faces. Rules are not clear but supposedly the dice are thrown and the results of them are the words, which are then collected. Sometimes, a coherent word or sentence will be formed and eventually all the stories of the world will appear in this game.
• In J.M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello Elizabeth Costello's son John thinks: "Sleep, he thinks, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care. What an extraordinary way of putting it! Not all the monkeys in the world picking away at typewriters all their lives would come up with those words in that arrangement."
• In Jim Cowan's short story "The Spade of Reason", the main character seeks to find meaning in the universe through text randomly generated through various means; the original program he uses to do so is something he dubs the "Motorola Monkey".
• In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur, while under the effects of the Infinite Improbability Drive, discovers an infinite number of monkeys and tells Ford of their intentions; " want to talk to us about this new script for Hamlet they've worked out."

Television and radio

• In The Simpsons episode Last Exit to Springfield, Montgomery Burns has his own room with 1000 monkeys at typewriters with the help of cigarettes, one of which he chastises for mistyping a word in the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities — "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times? You stupid monkey!"
• On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart promised that none of their material would be plagiarized (after a few stories on the subject) because their show would be written by monkeys. A monkey was then shown typing material for the show; Jon was handed the monkey's latest output, only to reject it.
• In June of 2006, The Colbert Report featured a humorous segment on how many monkeys it would take for various works. This was in response to comments made in the news on monkeys typing out the Bible or the Qur'an. According to Colbert, one million monkeys typing for eternity would produce a Shakespeare, ten thousand (drinking) monkeys typing for ten thousand years would produce a Hemingway, and ten monkeys typing for three days would produce a work of Dan Brown.
• In an episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Sheen makes a science project that is very similar: He puts a bug in a glass dome, and places it in front of a hungry lizard on a keyboard. The idea is that the lizard will hit the keys with its feet while trying to get the bug, and will eventually write a great American novel.
• An episode of I Am Weasel features a large room filled with several types of monkeys with typewriters who are working on a novel. When Weasel tries to pay them in bananas, they consider it an insult and quit their job, aside from Baboon.
• In an episode of the daytime soap opera Young and the Restless (broadcast February 2, 2007), when Colleen Carlton copies a scramble of letters obtained from the Grugeon Reliquary onto a dry board, Professor Adrian Korbel jokingly asks if she's testing the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
• In the 5th episode of the first season of The Ricky Gervais Show, a radio compilation put out by xfm, comedian Ricky Gervais to explain this theorem to Karl Pilkington, who refused to believe it possible. In attempting to explain the mathematics behind the theorem, Gervais eventually gives up and storms out of the room when, after a long explication by Gervais and Steve Merchant, Karl says "if they haven't even read Shakespeare, how do they know what they're doin?"
• In a sketch in the comedy show Attention Scum (BBC2 2001) Simon Munnery tackles the million monkey theory, his best line is; "the million monkeys were given a million typewriters... why that would be the internet surely?"
• In an episode of the tv-show Titus Christopher Titus states that "If you let Dave hit at a typewriter eventually he would type the word monkey. In fact, he would only type the word monkey. 'Cause that's his favorite word."
• In the Family Guy episode The King is Dead, Lois questions Peter's creativity, to which he replies, "Oh, art-schmart. Put enough monkeys in a room with a typewriter they'll produce Shakespeare.". The screen then cuts to several monkeys in a room, arguing over which flower is most appropriate in the famous line from Romeo and Juliet.

Comics and graphic novels

• In the comic strip Dilbert, Dogbert tells Dilbert that his poem would take "three monkeys, ten minutes".
• The Animal Man comic by Grant Morrison contained an issue including a monkey who typed not only the works of Shakespeare, but comic books as well. The TPB this is included in featured an "infinite" number of Grant Morrisons typing on the cover.
• In one strip of FoxTrot, Peter mentions the monkey theorem to Paige and tells her Jason wrote a program that generates random letters of the alphabet, adding "if it works for 'Hamlet' why not a 'Hamlet' book report?"

Stand-up comedy

• Comedian Bob Newhart has a stand-up routine in which a lab technician monitoring an "infinitely many monkeys" experiment discovered that one of the monkeys has typed "To be, or not to be; that is the gezortenblatt."
• Ross Noble incorporates the theory into his act, saying that he actually has 100,000 monkeys, but unfortunately only one typewriter.

Internet culture

• "It is said that if you place a million monkeys in front, of a million keyboards, they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. This is simply not true. They cannot even produce an encyclopedia." from Daniel Brandt.
• In 2000, the IETF Internet standards committee's April 1st RFC proposed an "Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)", a method of directing a farm of infinitely many monkeys over the Internet.
• WWDN, the blog of author and actor Wil Wheaton, uses the slogan, "50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters can't be wrong." His witticism won him a Bloggie in 2002 for the category "Best Tagline of a Weblog." Ironically,Mr. Weaton's blog was itself shut down for nine months when someone entering a comment typed a random series of letters which just so happened to be a signal used by his blogging software, causing massive server problems.
• Robert Wilensky once jocularly remarked, "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." In a similar vein, Mad Magazine stated, "If an infinite number of monkeys typed 24-hours a day on an infinite number of computers, the result would be not unlike an AOL Chatroom."
• Goats, a webcomic illustrated by Jonathan Rosenberg, featured a story line named infinite typewriters where several characters accidentally teleport to an alternate dimension. There they find that this dimension is populated by monkeys with typewriters, presumably typing the scripts of many other dimensions.
• In 2006 the Infinite Monkey Project was launched by predictive text company T9. The Europe-wide project sees users, unknown to each other, text a word of their choosing to the Website. The text message is free and as it continues the words are combined to form lyrics. The lyrics are then made into a song by the Hip Hop artist Sparo which will be released as an album. If any of the tracks becomes a hit the people who texted in the words for the lyrics will receive royalties from the project.
• Uncyclopedia often names its article improvement projects '10,000 Monkeys Typing Hamlet'. Its French counterpart "Desencyclopedie" claims to be completely written by an infinite number of monkeys typing on keyboards.
• Online there is a game mocking the theorem called "Mojo the Monkey", in which a monkey types random keys that show up on the screen. When the monkey types an actual word, you highlight it and save it to the website's server and highscore list.

Music

• The 1979 debut album by Leeds punk rock band the Mekons is called The Quality of Mercy is Not Strnen. Originally released on Virgin Records in the United Kingdom, its cover features a photo of a typing chimp (which, of course, is not a monkey at all).
• In 1983, the Windbreakers, a power-pop band from Mississippi, released an EP called Any Monkey With a Typewriter.
• In 1989, the band Negativland sampled Estus Pirkle on their album Helter Stupid saying, "If you get enough monkeys, enough typewriters, and enough bread, one of them will eventually come up with the King James Version of the Bible!!!" while to chants of "We don't have enough data. We just don't have enough data" said by a Japanese secretary.
• In 2007, Robot Goes Here, an electronic rock band on Infidel Records, recorded The Infinite Monkey Theorem featuring a chorus with the lyrics, "Got a pet monkey down in the basement, chained to a typewriter pounding away, churning out copies of the works of Shakespeare; halfway through Hamlet he wrote me this song."

Notes

1. S. Christey (1 April 2000). "RFC 2795: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)". Retrieved 2006-06-13.
2. "The articulate monkeys". Computer Music. Retrieved 2006-11-09.
3. "Infinite Monkey Project wants your texts". Pocket-lint. Retrieved 2006-11-09.
4. "The Infinite Monkey Project". Crossfire. Retrieved 2006-11-09.
5. Mojo the Monkey

External links

• The Parable of the Monkeys, a bibliography with quotations

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