The infinite monkey theorem holds that a monkey typing at random for an infinite amount of time will almost certainly produce the works of Shakespeare.

This may be true, but mathematicians Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta of the University of Technology Sydney find that it would take an extraordinarily long time — longer, in fact, than the life span of the universe.

Assuming a typing speed of one character per second on a 30-key keyboard, they find, a single chimp has only about a 5 percent chance of typing BANANAS in its own lifetime. And even the entire global population of 200,000 chimps will almost certainly never string together the 884,647 words that make up Shakespeare’s works within 10¹⁰⁰ years.

“There are many orders of magnitude difference between the expected numbers of keys to be randomly pressed before Shakespeare’s works are reproduced and the number of keystrokes until the universe collapses into thermodynamic equilibrium,” the authors conclude. “As such, we reject the conclusions from the Infinite Monkeys Theorem as potentially misleading within our finite universe.”

Speaking of Shakespeare: Grand Theft Hamlet is a British documentary about the staging of a production of Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto:

Winner of the Jury Award for best documentary feature at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival, it will be released in the U.K. in December and globally early next year.

(Thanks, John.)