Fun_People Archive
8 Dec
Astonishing results

Date: Wed,  8 Dec 93 17:56:48 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: Astonishing results

[The estimable Dr. Richard Crandall, at one point in his misspent youth,
 was known for calculating the probabilities of very improbable events
 and then embarrassing his classmates by asking them which of two they
 thought more likely to occur (and collecting the wildly wrong answers).
 Here is an example of one of his astonishing results.  -psl]

 From: crandall@reed.edu (Richard E Crandall)

I recall that to last unburnt until the next week's delivery,
the Sunday NY Times would have to be delivered to the Sun's surface
for as many years as one million monkeys require to write Macbeth
by flicking at parchment the bristles of toothbrushes dipped in India ink.

© 1993 Peter Langston