As mentioned in my introductory post, a monkey could allegedly write the complete works of Shakespeare given enough time, due to random key bashing. Given infinite time and pure randomness then all and every event can and will happen, as infinite is never ending.

However, I have a problem with this theory. You see I don’t think a monkey could hit keys purely randomly, just as people cant. For example ask someone to pick a number between 1 and 10. A big proportion of people pick the number 7 straight away. Why? Because they like it, and it is very often a persons “favorite number” and is considered lucky by some. Most people do not pick the number 1 or 10 because they don’t consider it in the range of 1-10, however, clever people will pick these numbers to try and catch you out. After 7 people tend to pick other odd numbers, in my experience 3, 5 and 9 are the most common. People tend to have a blindness to the number 2 and the numbers 4, 6 and 8 aren’t picked very often. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself, ask someone. First of all think about the sort of person they are, are they likely to be the sort of person who would pick 7 straight away? If they are not, are the likely to be clever and pick 1 or 10? Already we have narrowed down the probability from 1 in 10 to 1 in 7, and with a bit of guess work we can narrow it down further. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule.

Another question to ask people is “Think of a Jungle Animal”. If you can pressure them to answer quickly they are quite likely to pick a Lion, even though Lions don’t live in the jungle. Similarly “Pick a garden vegetable” tends to result in the person choosing “Carrot”. Its a great little party trick!

My point is people don’t do randomness very well, the human brain is actually trying to emulate randomness but is a slave to previous ideas and experiences. A monkey has similar thought processes and is no different in respect to randomness.

Ok then, if we can’t use people or animals to create the pure random factor needed for our Shakespearian plays, then we could use a computer couldn’t we? No, computers cant do random either. When a computer program executes a random function, it is actually just picking a number from a very long list of numbers or a mathematical algorithm which appears random. Such functions are called pseudo-random number generators.

Even if you shake a dice or flip a coin, its not really random, as the outcome is determined by many factors such as the position of the dice before you throw it, the speed in which it is thrown, the temperature and pressure of the air around it to name but a few.

So, how do we get randomness? Some natural events are completely random such as radioactive decay. Measuring such things can give you true randomness. This is not to say a monkey or a computer couldn’t write the complete works of Shakespeare, it just means it wouldn’t be done in a  completely random way.