- as Leonard Bernstein once said (about music):

Rejoice!

Given all poems a 'monkey-with-a-typewriter' might produce using a vocabulary of 10 words, all of which must be used once, and a length in words of 10 to 18 words:
How many different poems could they write (-neglecting line breaks or arrangement - just considering word order) ?

-Answer:

x = { 10! + (101 * 10!) + (102 * 10!) + (103 * 10!) + (104 * 10!) + (105 * 10!) + (106 * 10!) + (107 * 10!) + (108 * 10!) }






(   =  403,199,999,596,800   - or verbally "403 Trillion, 199 Billion,......" [...and, 10! = 3,628,800 ])






- Rejoice!

- there's just so much of it out there !!

[(C) Russell Hess, July 25, 1998.]



- Page created July 26 1998, updated May 11, 2000, by Mr. Russell Hess ( hess1@bigfoot.com ), Webmaster of 'UpSky'.

(P.S.:  Actually, what Leonard Bernstein said was, "Joy!", if I remember more correctly now... in a popular treatment of his on the possible variety of melodies to be obtained from a few notes... This page is meant to evoke the spirit more than the letter of such demonstrations... but if my arithmetic is wrong, won't you write and tell me?   - Thanks.)

                       
UpSky logo