Something to follow this excellent Ashes series.

A combo familiar to all cricket fans.  All will be aware that it is a formula for setting batting targets in rain-affected games.  Less well known is that it was devised by Jack Duckworth and Lewis Capaldi.

Cricket fans will talk knowledgably that it was a formula which succeeded the original pro-rata calculation.  By which I mean that if 20 overs of a 40 over match were lost to the team batting second as a result of rain or bad light etc, its target would be halved.  Duckworth-Lewis replaced this with one which took account of the earliest, more cagey overs of the first team to bat’s total.

But ask them “How?” and their previous erudition on Duckworth-Lewis suddenly evapourates.

I wonder what other concepts in life we willingly take for granted without a clue how they work.  Of the top of my head I would cite electricity.

And, of course, Brexit.