The problem of illusory coverage
In the “Cheese Shop” sketch from the old Monty Python comedy series, John Cleese plays a customer trying to buy some cheese from “Ye National Cheese Emporium, purveyor of fine cheese to the gentry (and the poverty-stricken too)”. The cheese shop proprietor, played by Michael Palin, seems to have no cheese in stock, not even common varieties like cheddar. Cleese keeps trying, by asking for different and increasingly obscure types of cheese, but Palin only…