How many monkeys does it take to write a Bible

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How many monkeys does it take to write a Bible

Postby at1with0 » Tue Dec 28, 2010 11:36 pm

What are the odds that a googol monkeys will write the king james version of the holy bible?
I think the problem can be reduced to the following form:
If a googol monkeys each type one character per second indefinitely, how long would it take for the "expected value" of "the number of bible's written" is 1.
As an example, for coin flips, the time at which the expected number of heads is 1 is two seconds.
Of course, "END DOCUMENT" will have to be one of the keys on the keyboard.

Order of magnitude calculation.
Assuming the Bible has about 4million characters, and a googol characters per second is 10^100 c.p.s., then I get that the number of seconds after which we'd expect 1 document is going to be the Bible is about 1 with around 5.7 million zeros after it seconds.

The age of the universe, if 13.7 billion years, is, in seconds, a one with 17 zeros (roughly).
"Be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove."
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