An easy-to-understand interpretation of “Infinite monkey theorem”

measure-theoryprobabilitysequences-and-series

This wiki page gives an explanation of "Infinite monkey theorem".

Suppose the typewriter has 50 keys, and the word to be typed is banana. If the keys are pressed randomly and independently, it means that each key has an equal chance of being pressed. Then, the chance that the first letter typed is 'b' is 1/50, and the chance that the second letter typed is a is also 1/50, and so on. Therefore, the chance of the first six letters spelling banana is

$(1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) × (1/50) = (1/50)^6 = 1/15
625 000 000 $
, less than one in 15 billion, but not zero.

From the above, the chance of not typing banana in a given block of 6 letters is $1 − (1/50)^6$. Because each block is typed independently, the chance $X_n$ of not typing banana in any of the first n blocks of 6 letters is

${\displaystyle X_{n}=\left(1-{\frac {1}{50^{6}}}\right)^{n}.}$

As n grows, $X_n$ gets smaller. For an n of a million, $X_n$ is roughly 0.9999, but for an n of 10 billion $X_n$ is roughly 0.53 and for an n of 100 billion it is roughly 0.0017. As n approaches infinity, the probability $X_n$ approaches zero; that is, by making n large enough, $X_n$ can be made as small as is desired, and the chance of typing banana approaches 100%.

"an n of 100 billion it is roughly 0.0017", does this mean

assume there are 100 billion monkeys, each of them is sitting in front of a typewriter and randomly typing, about 83% of them will type "banana" in their first 6 letters.

Is this interpretation correct?

Best Answer

No, $X_n$ is the chance that in $n$ monkey-blocks there will not be a 'banana' that we recognize. If we have $100$ billion monkey-blocks, either from $1$ monkey typing $600$ billion characters or $100$ billion monkeys typing $6$ characters each the chance that there is no recognized 'banana' is $0.0017$. That means the chance we do have at least one recognized 'banana' is about $1-0.0017=99.83\%$

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