The odds of writing Paradise Lost…

...by drawing the text letter by letter (and word for word) from a bag containing the twenty six letters of the alphabet, each letter being replaced after being drawn.

For anyone planning to attempt this, John Venn (the guy who invented Venn diagrams) helpfully calculated the odds in his 1888 book The Logic of Chance.

The odds come out to 1 in 26^350,000. In other words, not impossible. So start picking those letters!

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Alex - Fri Nov 11, 2016
Category: Literature | Books

Comments

"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out." :lol:

Posted by KDP on 11/11/16 at 09:14 AM

Imagine a scene with an editor:

"you worthless simians. We've already got 'Twelth Night'"

Posted by crc on 11/12/16 at 06:28 AM

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