I’ve interviewed Nassim Taleb of “Black Swan” fame three times on the NewsHour — here, there, and back here. Sadly, we never had time for his wonderful monkey example. Here’s an early version, from his book “Dynamic Hedging”:

“If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of (strongly built) typewriters and lets them clap away (without destroying the machinery), there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the ‘Iliad.’ Once that hero among monkeys is found, would any reader invest his life’s savings on a bet that the monkey would write the ‘Odyssey’ next?”

via Which Economists Can See the Future? | PBS NewsHour.