Monkey Shakespeare Simulator

[Zipdude]

Hi folks,

I'd welcome some comments on my new Monkey Shakespeare Simulator applet (and also on the web page that it is embedded in, as it is all part of the concept). What I'd like to know is:

1) Is it easy to understand what the applet/page does?

2) If not, which parts are tricky to grasp?

3) Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

Here's the URL:
http://user.tninet.se/~ecf599g/aardasnails/java/Monkey/webpages/

Thanks in advance for your help!

Nick

[EgonOlsen]

To answer your questions:

1.) Yes

2.) --

3.) Make it possible to submit the results via the applet and not by copying and pasting it into a mail. I'm to lazy to do this...otherwise i would have been first place now with the first three letters from "The Comedy of Errors".

[tortoise]

Haha, this rocks

I especially like 'The current record is the first 2 letters from "Antony and Cleopatra"'. You guys have got a ways to go

I just got

the first 3 letters of which match "The First Part of King Henry the Fourth"

But yeah, I think the applet is well done. Have you considered making it along the lines of Folding@Home?

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Zipdude]

Make it possible to submit the results via the applet and not by copying and pasting it into a mail.

.

I've looked into this, and I can't think of any way of doing it as my web host doesn't supply any services other than basic page hosting.

Is there a way to "pre-fill" an email from an applet? Clicking on an email address on an HTML page brings up an email (usually), but can the content be specified by the applet?

Have you considered making it along the lines of Folding@Home?

Yes, if there is enough interest. But at the moment I think having it on the web is a good first step.

[Markus_Persson]

Surely that thing can't be correct.. I get about as many 1-rights as I do 2-rights, but shoudn't I get about n times more 1-rights, where n is the number of different characters the monkeys can produce?

[Mojomonkey]

All of you eat my dust! I got three! Runs great in Safari Mac OS 10.2. Very interesting concept. Does it only check for the first letters/numbers? Or if there is a right anywhere does it count it?

[nlmueng]

i got 4 now

After 4.19891e+7 pages in this session

[Zipdude]

Hi folks,

I've now figured out how to set up the email automatically with a button. It will be up soon.

Surely that thing can't be correct.. I get about as many 1-rights as I do 2-rights, but shoudn't I get about n times more 1-rights, where n is the number of different characters the monkeys can produce?

Good question. The answer is, actually, no.

Each bar in the graph is not an individual try, but the BEST single result from a whole day. The probability of a certain length after single attempt is not the same as the probability of getting a certain length after N attempts. As N increases, the probability of 2 letters increases accordingly.

[Zipdude]

Does it only check for the first letters/numbers? Or if there is a right anywhere does it count it?

It only checks up to the first incorrect letter.

[Markus_Persson]

Each bar in the graph is not an individual try, but the BEST single result from a whole day. The probability of a certain length after single attempt is not the same as the probability of getting a certain length after N attempts. As N increases, the probability of 2 letters increases accordingly.

Ah, ok. =D

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[AndersDahlberg]

Very funny - a great "waste of time"

poor monkeys though...

[Daath]

really nice little game .... hope there are no animal activists amongst us though .....

[swpalmer]

Some suggestions:

- Are you using a really good random number generator?
I suggest the Mersenne Twister found here: http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/research/

The Monkeys seem to type a lot of characters that require the shift key to be pressed.  I think the simulation would be more accurate if you made some assumptions about monkey typing.. e.g.  they type with two fingers and hold the key for n milliseconds on average.. thus to type a shifted letter they would have to hit a key while they were holding down the shift key.. just like in real life.

Comparisons to the original text might come in different flavours.. eg. case insensitive, allowing for extra whitespace etc..
The probability of hitting space might be higher than hitting other letters given the size of the space bar.  Perhaps each key should have a bias based on it's general size and location, e.g. the shift key is generally larger than others so it could be pressed more often.. combined with the suggestion above this may balance out the probability of getting capital letters and other symbols requiring shift to be held down.

I applaud you for tackling this long standing scientific conundrum.

[Zipdude]

- Are you using a really good random number generator?

I applaud you for tackling this long standing scientific conundrum.

Thanks for your excellent suggestions. Increasing the accuracy is a good thing to aim for. However the main point of this site is fun/education rather than scientific discovery, so I don't want to make it too complex. It is not really the same thing as Folding@home and SETI@home, because the solution to the typing monkeys question is already known - it is a simple matter of probabilities.

[swpalmer]

It is not really the same thing as Folding@home and SETI@home, because the solution to the typing monkeys question is already known - it is a simple matter of probabilities.

Oh, is it?  How many monkey will it take and for how long then?  

[jbanes]

What I want to know is, is it RFC2795 compliant?! (Yes, that is an actual RFC from the Internet Engineering Task Force. Evidence that the Internet really was constructed by monkeys. )

EDIT: Even more amusing is that Microsoft's Intellimouse protocol is called IMPS/2! Guess Microsoft couldn't follow standards, again.