Popular ‘monkey Shakespeare’ theory debunked… sort of

An entire universe will perish before a monkey recreates the works of William Shakespeare by randomly typing on a keyboard, according to a new study.

In fact, there’s only a 5% chance that a monkey would type the word "banana" in its lifetime – even if it dedicated every moment of its existence on Earth to the task.

The “infinite monkey theorem,” as it is called, claims that a monkey hitting keys at random on a keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely produce any given text, including the complete works of Shakespeare.

The thought experiment has long been used to explain the principles of probability and randomness, finding its way into popular culture through references in television shows like The Simpsons and posts on TikTok.

However, the theorem is misleading, if mathematically true, according to two Australian mathematicians Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta, both from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

The infinite monkey theorem “only considers the infinite limit, with either an infinite number of monkeys or an infinite time period of monkey labor," according to Woodcock, who is an associate professor at UTS.

"We decided to look at the probability of a given string of letters being typed by a finite number of monkeys within a finite time period consistent with estimates for the lifespan of our universe," he said.

The study, which was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Franklin Open, assumed that a keyboard that would be used by a monkey contains 30 keys that include all the letters of the English language in addition to common punctuation marks.

The mathematicians based their calculations both on a single monkey and on the current global population of around 200,000 chimpanzees. For the purposes of the study, a typing speed of one key every second until the end of the universe was assumed.

The results revealed that, even with all chimps enlisted, the Bard’s entire works – which contains around 884,647 – would “almost certainly” never be typed before the universe ends.

"It is not plausible that, even with improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, monkey labor will ever be a viable tool for developing non-trivial written works," the authors said in a paper.