ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by animal art. [a lady scooping dog poop]

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And we're not talking about the sculpture our dog made on your lawn there.

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Uh, but, we're sorry. We'll pick it up. [clears throat]

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Check out the following passage. [a passage on screen]

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Although it sounds bizarre, the infinite monkey theorem is a

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theory in the field of statistics which states

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that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter

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for an infinite amount of time

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will almost certainly produce any work of literature [a man reading the passage on screen]

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already written, even the plays of William Shakespeare.

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In this theorem, the monkey is actually a metaphor

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for an abstract device that produces

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a random sequence of numbers - or characters - [faint music playing in the background]

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for an infinite amount of time. Hmm.

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All right, the word "abstract" [a cat meows]

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most nearly means, uh, what?

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, well, theoretically speaking, if we put monkeys in a room [image of a monkey, typewriter and a ticking clock in the background]

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with typewriters for an infinite amount of time,

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well, we'd probably end up with a bunch of broken typewriters

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and a very foul-smelling room. Yeah.

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But the infinite monkey theorem says [image of the novel Hamlet]

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through probability, they'd eventually write "Hamlet."

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The monkeys are being used to represent an abstract

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device that randomly generates numbers.

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Now this device doesn't actually exist. [a man reading an information leaflet]

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It's not something we can actually assemble like, uh, say from Ikea.

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So mechanical isn't the correct choice.

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And while we might wanna write off these hypothetical monkeys [a man watching a monkey play violin on television]

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and their random typing as irrelevant,

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the hypothetical device is relevant to the theory

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described in the passage.

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And sophisticated doesn't actually work, either. [a man showing a video to an audience]

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After all, a machine that just generates random numbers isn't really that sophisticated.

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One can generate random numbers by rolling dice and

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dice work without batteries. So D's wrong, too. [a man screaming and dropping a sheet of paper]

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What's important is that this device

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doesn't actually exist. It's just a representation

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of an idea, so C - theoretical is the best choice. [a woman screaming looking at a messy room]

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For our next work of animal art,

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we'll discuss the new sculpture our dog made.

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We'll call it "Shadows of Destruction:

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Death to Upholstery."

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[ boom ]

Full Transcript