Friday, April 04, 2008

An infinite number of ________

I'm sure you are familiar with or at least have heard of the Infinite Monkey Theorem that states if "a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare." Because of its dealings in the infinite this is obviously more of a mental exercise than a testable hypothesis or idea, but it is still interesting to think about. One of my favorite Molson Canadian beer commercial series used this idea, and plays on the sense of Canadians lacking an identity. Where "an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually define all that is Canada." (After much searching, I can't seem to find these commercials on the web anywhere).

I was thinking the other day about some other theoretical variations of this, and one idea crossed my mind that might be interesting to try. If your shoes are untied and you walk an infinite number of miles your laces might just up and tie themselves. This would be useful if you didn't want to tie your shoe, but I'm a little scared to think how many times one might trip waiting for your laces to tie themselves. I guess the question we all have to ask ourselves is "Is it worth it?"

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I would love to find this commercial somewhere. It's hilarious.