Thread: You vs. an Author

so that must mean you spend 9 months elsewhere, apart from your 3 months in pattaya ?

Yes ned. I spend the rest of the time back in Blighty as I like to be close to the Grandchildren and early next year the first Great Grandchild will arrive.

what kind of books do you read on the way there ?

I read all sorts of books. I'm a book a week man.

Is that only during your three months in Pattaya, or do you get through 50 a year?

Originally Posted by Looper

Originally Posted by hillbilly

Yes, I know about the monkey eventually typing out the Bible

I think it was actually Shakespeare, but anyway it is not true.

Even if there was a monkey for every atom in the universe and they have been typing non-stop since the beginning of time (15 billion years ago) the probability that any one of them would actually complete any of the works of Shakespeare (at say an average length of 50,000 characters) is so tiny it would be invisible to the naked eye.

If it takes a monkey 12 hours to type 1 play then each monkey could have done 10^9 plays in 15 billion years.

There are approximately 10^68 atoms in the Milky way galaxy and almost certainly less than 10^12 galaxies in the universe so that would mean we had at most 10^80 monkeys working.

So the probablity that any monkey could have succeeded is

one chance in (26^50,000)/((10^80)*(10^9)) or (26^50,000)/(10^89)

The universe could go through a million big bang reincarnation cycles and the monkeys still wouldn't be anywhere near finishing a play and would probably run out of cigarettes before they did.

Nice. But most often it is phrased as either "an infinite number of monkeys" or "an infinite time".

If either of those are used in the original proposal, then there is an absolute chance of the event occuring.

infinite is not just a very big number.....

I could've written a long work on Thai politics.

I think I'd call it "copy and paste". A catchy title I reckon.

Originally Posted by Bingo wings

Yes. My wife has travelled down from her village last week to sort out a place to stay and get it ready. I will be flying in to Bangkok from old Blighty just after Christmas for my three moths of the year in Pattaya.

Now, if you could formulate it as well as Looper did, I might be interested in reading "The Tales of My 3 Months in Pattaya"