The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_

infinite-monkey-theorem.rb

# A million monkeys
# at a million typewriters
# banging on the keys until they have
# the works of Shakespere
# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

puts "Randomly generate Shakespere"

# Number of randomly generated phrases
counter = 0

# Have we created Shakespere yet?
finished = false

# The word/quote/phrase to generate
search = "to be or not to be".downcase

# search all lowercase letters and spaces
chars = ("a".."z").to_a << " "

# calculate the mathematical probability of 
# the machine generating this string on any given run
probability = chars.length ** search.length

until finished
  counter += 1
  generated = ""
  1.upto(search.length) { |i| generated << chars[rand(chars.size)] }
  puts counter.to_s + " -- " + generated
  if generated == search
    puts %{
      The machine has randomly generated "#{search}"
      At an improbability rate of #{counter} to 1 and falling.
      The statistical probability of this occuring is #{probability} to 1
      
      Except in maths, nothing is impossible, just extremely improbable.
    }%
    finished = true
  end
end