Jump to content

Talk:Infinite monkey theorem

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Former featured articleInfinite monkey theorem is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 31, 2004.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
September 28, 2004Featured article candidatePromoted
March 9, 2007Featured article reviewKept
October 4, 2012Featured article reviewDemoted
Current status: Former featured article

Monkey caption

[edit]

Previously, the caption said "A Chimpanzee probably not writing Hamlet." This was funny, but perhaps too humorous for an article. A user opted to change it to "a chimpanzee sitting at a typewriter," which, although changing the caption is reasonable, strikes me as redundant. Worth changing to something else? Delukiel (talk) 13:09, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to "A chimpanzee typing random characters", which seems to capture both the sense of the image and the article. — Loadmaster (talk) 16:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me! Delukiel (talk) 00:35, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This was discussed (briefly) in talk:Infinite monkey theorem/Archive 4#probably not. I still think it's fine to have it. It's a little bit The Economist-style, but I don't think it outrages the encyclopedic form. --Trovatore (talk) 00:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Either one works for me (admittedly, I prefer the original, but I love goofball captions), I just thought what it was changed to was redundant. Delukiel (talk) 01:12, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
+1 for the original, it really doesn't hurt anyone. Dialmayo (talk) (Contribs) she/her 11:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed it back to the original. Delukiel (talk) 06:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
:D Dialmayo (talk) (Contribs) she/her 19:47, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Now changed to "A chimpanzee writing Hamlet"! Didlidoo (talk) 01:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
too far, man Dialmayo 01:53, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can it stay, or do we need to get rid of it :( Didlidoo (talk) 02:07, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Didlidoo the edit was reverted 3 minutes after you made it Dialmayo 02:09, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
D: Didlidoo (talk) 03:27, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
an encyclopedia is supposed to not say stuff like that in image captions, this is only for non serious wikis like rationalwiki (wikipedia also is not serious but at least somewhat serious/trustworthy compared to rationalwiki) 2A02:3100:3A3F:7B00:55C0:7B8F:9CAD:F16C (talk) 03:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"A monkey, not an ape" is logically impossible. Apes are monkeys. An animal can be "monkey, not an ape" but the opposite doesn't exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4C4D:218C:E500:F1A3:78A2:B90F:685 (talk) 18:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is completely off-topic but indulge me for a moment. At first I thought the claim "apes are monkeys" was just obviously wrong. But I looked around our articles and apparently it's true for some value of "true". Apes are monkeys in the same sense that birds are dinosaurs and there's no such thing as "trees". That is, if you insist on a taxonomy where you consider only monophyletic groups, then you would say apes are monkeys. In normal English, though, apes are not monkeys. --Trovatore (talk) 20:45, 24 October 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Use of versus

[edit]

The math expression shown under "Infinite strings" section is a divergent series, but currently it is written as . I think this is incorrect because series do not equal infinity. It could be changed to or perhaps just remove the , since its divergence is already stated. Jordanmrfox (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that depends on how you formulate the notion of infinite sum. The statement as written is correct, if you use the appropriate definition. That said, of course in this particular case it doesn't matter much, because a probability can't be greater than 1, so it's already a contradiction once you get that far. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your response. I looked at the wikipedia articles for Series (mathematics), Convergent series, Divergent series, Infinite expression, and I do not see a use of anywhere.
The page Convergent series uses the arrow notation in expressions like
If one accepts that the means exactly the same thing as summation to infinity, then I think the arrow is the best choice.
However, Borel–Cantelli lemma, which this page cites, uses the notation a number of times.
Perhaps this is just a stylistic difference between pure math and statistics. I don't think anyone will be seriously confused about what means, but pedagogically I think we should try to all use the same standard. Jordanmrfox (talk) 21:11, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would actually be in favor of changing to "= ∞" in the "convergent series" page -- it looks weird to have a fixed expression, even containing an ellipsis, that uses the arrow notation. The thing that approaches infinity is the sequence of finite sums, but the left-hand side is an infinite sum, not a sequence of finite sums. --Trovatore (talk) 20:06, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You could simply argue that the sum of a divergent infinite series does not just approach infinity, but is equal to infinity (∞), since the sum exceeds any finite number. — Loadmaster (talk) 22:49, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]