by Lore Sjöberg

The saying is as follows: if you take X monkeys, set them at typewriters, and have them type for some indefinite period of time, eventually they will compose Y, where X is a positive whole number -- generally a large one -- and Y is one or more of the works of Shakespeare, often Hamlet. That's leaving aside the whole "infinite monkeys" thing. Obviously enough, an infinite number of monkeys will instantly come up with Hamlet, along with every other piece of literature from the past, present, and future.

No, no, let's deal with the merely impossible: some definite number of monkeys pounding away like so many journalists in black-and-white 40's crime movies, working towards the Holy Grail of simian stenography, the text of Hamlet. But why Shakespeare? Why Hamlet? There are a lot of things that monkeys chained to typewriters can accomplish, let us not forget. Here, then, is a list of things our theoretical monkeys are -- mathematically speaking -- likely to come up with long before they finish Hamlet.