Chimpanzees Could Never Randomly Type the Complete Works of Shakespeare, Study Finds

Could a chimpanzee ever randomly type the complete works of Shakespeare? According to a pair of researchers in Australia, the answer is no.

Mathematicians Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta set out to test the “infinite monkey theorem,” a famous thought experiment that suggests that an unlikely event can occur, given an infinite amount of time and resources, because of random chance.

More specifically, the theorem states that if one monkey had an infinite amount of time with a keyboard (or if there were an infinite number of monkeys), they would eventually type any given text—including Shakespeare’s works.

Mathematically, the theorem is correct. But, practically, it’s “misleading” given the constraints of our finite universe, the researchers conclude in a new study published in the journal Franklin Open.

“Yes, it is true that given infinite resources, any text of any length would inevitably be produced eventually,” Woodcock tells CNN’s Amarachi Orie. “While true, this also has no relevance to our own universe, as ‘reaching infinity’ in resources is not something [that] can ever happen.”

The theorem’s origins are somewhat mysterious, but it’s usually attributed to French mathematician Émile Borel or English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. The concept may even have roots in Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

But Woodcock and Falletta—both from Australia’s University of Technology Sydney—wanted to put the theorem to the test. To do that, they ran a series of calculations using realistic but generous figures.

For example, they assumed that the world’s current population of chimpanzees—around 200,000—would remain constant for the duration of the universe. They also factored in the “heat death” of the universe, which they assumed would take place in around a googol of years (a large figure written as the number 1, followed by 100 zeros).

They decided to focus on chimpanzees, which they assumed could type one key per second on a keyboard with 30 keys. They also used the animal’s average lifespan of around 30 years.

Even if all the chimpanzees in the world typed for the entire lifespan of the universe, they would “almost certainly” never reproduce Shakespeare’s complete works, according to the researchers’ calculations.

Beyond that, a single chimpanzee has just a 5 percent chance of randomly typing the word “bananas” within its lifetime, they found. The odds of a chimpanzee typing a short phrase like “I chimp, therefore I am” are 1 in 10 million billion billion.

Put together, all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, plays and poems add up to nearly 885,000 words—and not one of them is “bananas.”

“We did the [math] from one monkey to the scale of infinity monkeys and we can say categorically it’s not going to happen,” Woodcock tells New Scientist’s James Woodford. “If every atom in the universe was a universe in itself, it still wouldn’t happen.”

Even when the researchers played with the variables—such as by increasing the number of chimps, or boosting their typing speed—they determined that chimpanzee labor will never be a “viable tool for developing written works of anything beyond the trivial,” they write in the paper.

Though the researchers’ calculations are sound, other mathematicians questioned the need for such a study in the first place.

The theorem “certainly didn’t need debunking,” says Martin Hairer, a mathematician at Imperial College London who was not involved with the research, to NBC News’ David Hodari. “It’s something everyone has known forever. The universe could die and be reborn millions and millions of times and it still wouldn’t happen.”

This isn’t the first time mathematicians have tried to test the infinite monkey theorem. About two decades ago, researchers in England gave a computer to six Sulawesi crested macaques living in captivity at a zoo. After nearly two months, the animals produced just five pages of text—and they had mostly typed the letter “s.”

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.