Page "Interpolation search" Paragraph 10

The conversion of names in a telephone book to some sort of number clearly will not provide numbers having a uniform distribution ( except via immense effort such as sorting the names and calling them name # 1, name # 2, etc.

) and further, it is well known that some names are much more common than others ( Smith, Jones ,) Similarly with dictionaries, where there are many more words starting with some letters than others.

Some publishers go to the effort of preparing marginal annotations or even cutting into the side of the pages to show markers for each letter so that at a glance a segmented interpolation can be performed.