What's in a name?

As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.

understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

A few years ago, I was checking something on my computer just before bedtime when I noticed a piece of paper sticking out from under my desk. It turned out to be an old double page from a local newspaper that I had worked on about a decade before. I had laid the paper on the floor while decorating the room and somehow it had got left behind under my desk drawers. It still had a few spots of dried paint on it. I glanced at the paper before throwing it in the bin. It was a page of wedding photos, including one young woman who had married a man with the unusual surname of Sucksmith. I’d never encountered the name before, and its strangeness [and unfortunate schoolboy smuttiness] made me smile. I binned the paper and climbed into bed, looking forward to beginning the book that I had borrowed that day from the library, a paperback version of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. Before opening the book, I read the back cover. Along with the synopsis, it gave the name of the editor of that version of the book. His was called Harvey Sucksmith. I have always wondered if he was a relative of the bridegroom.
Total votes: 215
Date submitted:Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:27:43 +0000Coincidence ID:5384