Monkey Business Illustration 2008

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Monkey Business Calendar Illustration for corporate calendar 2008

Monkey Business is based on the philosophical/mathematical hypothesis The Infinite Monkey Theorem: give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, and eventually they will, almost surely, have produced the entire works of William Shakespeare. Or, as Wikipedia puts it:

In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey; rather, it is a metaphor for an abstract device that produces a random sequence of letters ad infinitum. The theorem illustrates the perils of reasoning about infinity by imagining a vast but finite number, and vice versa.

The probability of a monkey typing a given string of text as long as, say, Hamlet, is so tiny that, were the experiment conducted, the chance of it actually occurring during a span of time of the order of the age of the universe is minuscule but not zero.

Quote "I have wasted time and doth time waste me" is courtesy of William Shakespeare.