sebastian waters, berlin

You’ve heard of the infinite monkey theorem, I’m sure:

“The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.”

There’s been plenty of statistical analysis of the theorem, that’s covered quite extensively on the linked Wikipedia page, but this site takes a more direct approach.

It generates a random string of letters over and over, in the hope of a random sequence occurring that produces the couplet “Can art by accident be bred / And if it were would Art be dead?”

Its closest match so far is “Cac bxm xm hqdhdlwg eu fzhd Ayb iv ct bete grrdd Uhg ys deal?” Which matches 13 of the couplet’s 47 letters. I’m not sure how long it’s been running (statistics for that, and the number of lines produced so far, and things like that might be a useful addition), but that’s moderately impressive.