"Virtual monkey" on Amazon trying to print the complete works of Shakespeare

Anyone familiar with the popular expression "10 000 monkeys a typewriter, sooner or later write works of Shakespeare." US programmer Jesse Anderson decided to check whether this is so.

For the experiment, he created several million "virtual monkeys." In the role of monkeys are the computer programs on the server Amazon. Initially, the aim was to test Anderson software tool Hadoop servers and Amazon. At the same time the programmer wanted to make sure of the validity of the aphorism. However, in the "chaotic shlёpayuschih the keys of a typewriter" programs have a number of conditions, without which the experiment would have been impossible.

The experiment suggests that the "virtual monkeys" regularly reproduced random phrase of a certain number of letters. Each sequence must consist of nine letters. The computer program compares it with the Shakespearean text. If this set of letters not found in any of his works, it is simply discarded. If a random set of letters was quite reasonable sentence, fully coincides with the Shakespearean expression, then took another step towards the reconstruction of the great playwright. To facilitate the task of the text have been removed all spaces and punctuation.

As mathematicians say, the restrictions stipulated by the program Anderson, indicate that the project can be completed in the foreseeable future.

If the programmer made reservations and imposed restrictions will be removed, the problem will not be possible: the experiment would take longer than the period of the universe.

via factroom.ru