To show that nonuniform distributions occur in real life, consider Americans with the uncommon last name of Shifflett. The 1997 Manhattan telephone directory, with over one million names, contains exactly five Shiffletts. So how many Shiffletts should there be in a small city of 50,000 people? Figure 2-4 shows a small portion of the two and a half pages of Shiffletts in Charlottesville, Virginia telephone book.
—The Algorithm Design Manual, page 39.