Talk:Infinite monkey theorem
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Infinite monkey theorem article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4Auto-archiving period: 2 months |
Infinite monkey theorem is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | ||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 31, 2004. | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Current status: Former featured article |
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Monkey caption
[edit]Previously, the caption said "A Chimpanzee probably not writing Hamlet." This was funny, but perhaps too humorous for an article. A user opted to change it to "a chimpanzee sitting at a typewriter," which, although changing the caption is reasonable, strikes me as redundant. Worth changing to something else? Delukiel (talk) 13:09, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
- I changed it to "A chimpanzee typing random characters", which seems to capture both the sense of the image and the article. — Loadmaster (talk) 16:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
- Works for me! Delukiel (talk) 00:35, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
- This was discussed (briefly) in talk:Infinite monkey theorem/Archive 4#probably not. I still think it's fine to have it. It's a little bit The Economist-style, but I don't think it outrages the encyclopedic form. --Trovatore (talk) 00:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
- Either one works for me (admittedly, I prefer the original, but I love goofball captions), I just thought what it was changed to was redundant. Delukiel (talk) 01:12, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
- +1 for the original, it really doesn't hurt anyone. Dialmayo (talk) (Contribs) she/her 11:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
- I've changed it back to the original. Delukiel (talk) 06:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- :D Dialmayo (talk) (Contribs) she/her 19:47, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- Now changed to "A chimpanzee writing Hamlet"! Didlidoo (talk) 01:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- too far, man Dialmayo 01:53, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- Can it stay, or do we need to get rid of it :( Didlidoo (talk) 02:07, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- @Didlidoo the edit was reverted 3 minutes after you made it Dialmayo 02:09, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- Can it stay, or do we need to get rid of it :( Didlidoo (talk) 02:07, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- too far, man Dialmayo 01:53, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- Now changed to "A chimpanzee writing Hamlet"! Didlidoo (talk) 01:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- :D Dialmayo (talk) (Contribs) she/her 19:47, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- an encyclopedia is supposed to not say stuff like that in image captions, this is only for non serious wikis like rationalwiki (wikipedia also is not serious but at least somewhat serious/trustworthy compared to rationalwiki) 2A02:3100:3A3F:7B00:55C0:7B8F:9CAD:F16C (talk) 03:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- I've changed it back to the original. Delukiel (talk) 06:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
- Because you enjoy a joke doesn't mean it overrides MOS. I am not the first editor you have reverted in order to keep the joke on the page. It is disruptive to readers who will not understand the joke. Please keep the humor to essay pages or other parts of the project. I am happy to propose an alternative caption, but the caption isn't a place for jokes or quips. Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 19:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- Apologies, above comment directed towards @Trovatore. Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 19:29, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- A caption literally describing the image is perfectly useless here; anyone can see what the image is, and the article is not about chimpanzees or typewriters. "Anyone can see" excepting of course our vision-impaired users, but for them there's alt-text, and I'd be happy for your description to go there.
- The "no-fun party" does seem to be in almost total control of Wikipedia, but it wouldn't hurt for them to allow this harmless deviation. However, if not, the remaining option, it seems to me, is to have no caption at all. I could live with that. --Trovatore (talk) 19:34, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- We should have a caption that follows MOS. This isn't about 'no-fun,' it's about making the article accessible to people who might not grasp the joke. I find it odd that you propose to throw out the caption all together if you don't get to have your fun. Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 19:36, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- OK, please remember that the MOS is a guideline. It should "ordinarily be followed". As I said, a literal caption is entirely useless for this image. --Trovatore (talk) 19:38, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- I agree that MOS is a guideline, but I don't think "because I think it's funny" is a compelling reason to ignore them or the handful of other editors that have rightfully fixed the caption in the past. There were better captions in previous revisions of the article. I'm happy to work on a new one that is helpful to readers. Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 19:51, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- I mean, the image itself is really there just to be funny. Or more precisely to provide visual interest that might attract attention and get people to think about the content of the article. It doesn't actually elucidate anything in the article, so it's not clear how a caption would help it do something it's not supposed to do in the first place. --Trovatore (talk) 20:04, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- Please review my attempt at a caption useful to readers. I am perfectly happy to have the caption blanked if you think better, though I do agree with you that there is an argument for visual interest (without a quip or joke) Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 00:32, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- Would it be reasonable to use the language "almost surely" in the caption as it is used in the lead? e.g. "A chimpanzee almost surely not writing Hamlet"? Dialmayo 18:11, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- Please review my attempt at a caption useful to readers. I am perfectly happy to have the caption blanked if you think better, though I do agree with you that there is an argument for visual interest (without a quip or joke) Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 00:32, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- Current version looks good :) Didlidoo (talk) 08:02, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
- I mean, the image itself is really there just to be funny. Or more precisely to provide visual interest that might attract attention and get people to think about the content of the article. It doesn't actually elucidate anything in the article, so it's not clear how a caption would help it do something it's not supposed to do in the first place. --Trovatore (talk) 20:04, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- I agree that MOS is a guideline, but I don't think "because I think it's funny" is a compelling reason to ignore them or the handful of other editors that have rightfully fixed the caption in the past. There were better captions in previous revisions of the article. I'm happy to work on a new one that is helpful to readers. Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 19:51, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- OK, please remember that the MOS is a guideline. It should "ordinarily be followed". As I said, a literal caption is entirely useless for this image. --Trovatore (talk) 19:38, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- Apologies, above comment directed towards @Trovatore. Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 19:29, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
"A monkey, not an ape" is logically impossible. Apes are monkeys. An animal can be "monkey, not an ape" but the opposite doesn't exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4C4D:218C:E500:F1A3:78A2:B90F:685 (talk) 18:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- This is completely off-topic but indulge me for a moment. At first I thought the claim "apes are monkeys" was just obviously wrong. But I looked around our articles and apparently it's true for some value of "true". Apes are monkeys in the same sense that birds are dinosaurs and there's no such thing as "trees". That is, if you insist on a taxonomy where you consider only monophyletic groups, then you would say apes are monkeys. In normal English, though, apes are not monkeys. --Trovatore (talk) 20:45, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Use of versus
[edit]The math expression shown under "Infinite strings" section is a divergent series, but currently it is written as . I think this is incorrect because series do not equal infinity. It could be changed to or perhaps just remove the , since its divergence is already stated. Jordanmrfox (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Well, that depends on how you formulate the notion of infinite sum. The statement as written is correct, if you use the appropriate definition. That said, of course in this particular case it doesn't matter much, because a probability can't be greater than 1, so it's already a contradiction once you get that far. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for your response. I looked at the wikipedia articles for Series (mathematics), Convergent series, Divergent series, Infinite expression, and I do not see a use of anywhere.
- The page Convergent series uses the arrow notation in expressions like
- If one accepts that the means exactly the same thing as summation to infinity, then I think the arrow is the best choice.
- However, Borel–Cantelli lemma, which this page cites, uses the notation a number of times.
- Perhaps this is just a stylistic difference between pure math and statistics. I don't think anyone will be seriously confused about what means, but pedagogically I think we should try to all use the same standard. Jordanmrfox (talk) 21:11, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
- I would actually be in favor of changing to "= ∞" in the "convergent series" page -- it looks weird to have a fixed expression, even containing an ellipsis, that uses the arrow notation. The thing that approaches infinity is the sequence of finite sums, but the left-hand side is an infinite sum, not a sequence of finite sums. --Trovatore (talk) 20:06, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
- You could simply argue that the sum of a divergent infinite series does not just approach infinity, but is equal to infinity (∞), since the sum exceeds any finite number. — Loadmaster (talk) 22:49, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- I would actually be in favor of changing to "= ∞" in the "convergent series" page -- it looks weird to have a fixed expression, even containing an ellipsis, that uses the arrow notation. The thing that approaches infinity is the sequence of finite sums, but the left-hand side is an infinite sum, not a sequence of finite sums. --Trovatore (talk) 20:06, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
New (and old) Articles in The New York Times
[edit]Just ran across this article in this morning's New York Times, "Could Monkeys Really Type All of Shakespeare? Not in this universe, a new study concludes." Nothing too startling; I think it's the second time this year I've seen something similar. Might be worthy of mention in this article, however. Not sure of the distinction between this article and the use of this trope in popular culture, which is a separate article. What brings me here, however, is a particular experiment involving this theorem that I read about nearly forty years ago, and whether there's a reason to mention it in this article or elsewhere:
In elementary school I obtained a used copy of Encyclopedia Brown's Second Record Book Of Weird And Wonderful Facts by Donald J. Sobol (Dell Yearling, 1981), which included at page 49:
A Yale University professor, Dr. William Bennett, has calculated that a trillion monkeys, each hitting 10 keys on a typewriter per second, would need a trillion times longer than the universe is old to reproduce Shakespeare's famous line, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." And how long for the answer?
And for many years, I thought that was the original source and version, mentally chiding every account that needlessly substituted "the complete works of Shakespeare", and forgetting all of the other details (I was astonished when I dug out the book a little while ago to see it was "a trillion monkeys"). Of course I found out a while back it was a much older idea!
The Dr. William Bennett referred to seems to be William R. Bennett Jr., and though his article on Wikipedia makes no mention whatever of monkeys, I did find a 1979 New York Times article about his foray into monkey typing probability using computer simulations: "Computer Says Monkeys Couldn't Write 'Hamlet'—At Least Not So Far", which includes samples of text produced using various iterations of his program, beginning with purely random key strikes, and progressing to variations in which letters are produced in frequencies approximating English, the language of Hamlet, and focused on shorter combinations of letters. The best efforts of the virtual monkeys, even with all these refinements, still failed to produce intelligible English (not surprisingly), but there were some intelligible strings of words, of which one sample was:
TO HOIDER THUS NOW GOONS ONES NO ITS WHIS KNOTHIMEN AS TOISE MOSEN TO ALL YOURS YOU HOM TO TO LON ESELICES HALL IT BLED SPEAL YOU
And the "winner" was:
TO DEA NOW NAT TO BE WILL AND THEM BE DOES DOESORNS CAI AWROUTROULD.
Which even as I've just summarized is probably too lengthy to include here or in the "popular culture" article, but maybe Dr. Bennett's experiment should be mentioned—and maybe its inclusion in Encyclopedia Brown would fit in the pop culture article. It's certainly the reason I know about this topic! I don't know—I think editors who are actively engaged in editing this and the other article would be better judges of the significance of the experiment in early computer research on probability, particularly as the researcher, the Times, and the book series citing his experiment, are all individualy notable. P Aculeius (talk) 18:23, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
- This is already treated in the "Probabilities" section. As for the NYT article, as far as I can tell there's nothing new there; the fact that they reported it as though it were some novel result is pretty embarrassing for them, or should be.
- It is true that we should probably mention this in the lead section. One sentence would probably do. I might take a crack at it later if no one else gets around to it first. --Trovatore (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
- UPDATE: I couldn't find a natural place to mention it in the existing text, and I was too lazy to rewrite the whole lead, so I made it an explanatory footnote. I didn't go into details about the observable universe and so on because I thought they might distract from the main point. Feel free to tweak if you can do better. --Trovatore (talk) 20:32, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
- Wikipedia former featured articles
- Featured articles that have appeared on the main page
- Featured articles that have appeared on the main page once
- B-Class mathematics articles
- Low-priority mathematics articles
- Featured articles on Mathematics Portal
- B-Class Statistics articles
- Top-importance Statistics articles
- WikiProject Statistics articles