PLEASE NO SPOILERS Instead reminisce about your favourite typewriters, or tell me an interesting fact about monkeys. Imagine that the monkey has been typing for such a long time that both ‘abracadabra’ and ‘abracadabrx’ have appeared many times on average, how long did it it take the monkey to type each of these words?) The question is asking what will happen in the long run. (The question is NOT asking which word the monkey will type first. Yet this observation does not entail that they will occur on average after the same amount of time. Likewise, the word ‘abracadabrx’ has 11 letters, and also has a probability of (1/26) 11 of appearing during any 11 second spell. The word ‘abracadabra’ has 11 letters, and therefore has a probability of (1/26) 11 of appearing during any 11 second spell. It favours no letters: all letters at any second have a 1/26 probability of being typed.Ī) the average time it will take the monkey to type “abracadabra”ī) the average time it will take the monkey to type “abracadabrx” The monkey types at random, with a constant speed of one letter per second.
A monkey is sat at a typewriter that has only 26 keys, one per letter of the alphabet.
