Cambridge Coincidences Collection

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.

Well I Never!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

Triple Link

The person who used to live next to my best friend's apartment 16 years ago is my boyfriend's best friend(I met my boyfriend in 2016) and then I discovered he's also my colleague's brother. He lives abroad and the rest of the connections were/are all in different cities.

Twice same remote holiday locations

Dear Professor David Spiegelhalter, in 2000 I made a tour in Peru and one night in a small disco/pub of a remote Andes village I saw a lady whose face was not new to me. I approached her asking if by hazard she had studies at my same Sicilian university but she replied this was not the case, Further investigations made me discovered she (a total foreigner to me) had been in holiday in the same Sicilian sea resort as me in the previous summer. Two foreigners had chosen the same two remote holiday destinations for two consecutive years. Aldo

Another van story

I had just been thinking that my number plate coincidence below was the first I had experienced for quite some time, and now another one happens the following day... I was driving in to work this morning in Edinburgh and Radio 4 were airing a programme called "The Matter of the North" about the north of England and one King was mentioned a few times: King Canute. Exactly five minutes after the programme I am approaching a queue of traffic and there, a few cars ahead of me, is a big yellow lorry with the company name...Canute Distribution. Never heard of them before or noticed them, mainly because they are based in the north west of England. Similar to the Mulholland van coincidence I had(Music coincidence#1) I am beginning to thing someone really is playing games with me again. I have posted the following previously as I am wondering if some people are either more prone to coincidences, or for some reason notice them more: Numders(should have been numbers!) Music coincidence #1(more to come) A scary "Topic" Number plate

Number plate

I was thinking at the weekend about my first car, that I had in the late 1980s, for some reason. It had a slightly unusaul number plate. For a car registered in 1978 the format should have been 3 letters, 3 numbers then ending with an S. My car's plate was XED 5 S with just the single number. I looked in to selling the plate at the time but was only offered £200 and the DVLA wanted a fee for the privilege of trasferring the plate to another car. I ended up selling the car for £250 complete with the original plate. At the weekend when I was thinking about it the only thing I thought it would have been useful for was if someone had a Mazda Xedos, a car no longer in production. I then on Tuesday, had to tax my car and the reminder letter had a graphic of a number plate of my current car which then reminded me about what I had been thinking about. So, I googled the plate with the term "number plate" after it and only got one distinct hit in amongst random suggestions. A photo sharing site with a picture of a car...and it had my old number plate on it...and it was a 1998 Mazda Xedos!

Meeting someone in unlikely place

I went to live in Dublin from Cheshire England and was in a pub one night and a group of girls blocked my way whilst going up some steps .one girl talked to me and it turned out she was my mums next door neighbour in Cheshire , England , she knew me but I didn't recognise her and she told me she had seen my mum that morning before she left to go to Dublin . One of many that happen almost daily to me .

cannot possibly be random

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C16HNX6mQN4 I described 3 in a row that happened in one afternoon in my daily blog

Get it on

Whilst looking up Gary Numan on youtube I found there was a series of videos called 'What's in my bag?' where celebrities indicate what music has influenced them. Gary was in the midst of explaining how he had been influenced by Marc Bolan's T-rex,whereupon 'Get it on' was played on the video. At the very same moment, the TV was advertising 'confused.com' featuring James Cordern, the background track to the ad was 'Get it on' by T-rex!

A friend's neighbour I just met

I met a woman who was my friend's neighbour for many years but whom she rarely spoke to. This woman was born 7 years before me - a Cancerian, born 9 days before my birthday. Her family is from the same city in Poland, spent the war years in the same city in Uzbekistan which is an Asian Republic and returned back to Poland and the same time as my parents. The two families have the German name (although as far as we know are not related). Her family left Poland again this time 4 years before my family. The woman's ex husband's first name is the same as my husbands first name. Her youngest daughter's name is the same as my daughter's name. Her daughter is older. Her ex-husband is born the same month as my husband. Her daughter's birthday is one day before my daughter's. Her daughter went to the same primary school and university as my daughter. There are many other schools and universities in Melbourne that they could have chosen.

A scary "Topic"

I was at work and fancied a bar of chocolate from the corner shop. For some reason the advertising tag line for Topic bars came into my head. I said to my colleagues that I hadn't seen a Topic bar in years and reminded them of the tag line from the old TV adverts "Topic, a hazelnut in every bite!" So I then walked downstairs and along to the corner shop. I walked over to where the various bars of chocolate were, stacked up in rows, and went straight for a Mars Bars. As I fumbled for the bar on the top my hand slipped and knocked a bar of chocolate onto the floor from the stack of bars below where the Mars Bars were. I bent down to pick it up and there on the floor was the bar of chocolate I had knocked down.....a Topic bar! I actually stood up straight and looked around as I was sure someone was playing games with me...

Music coincidence #01

Ok so I am driving in my car. I am driving in the suburbs of Edinburgh and approach a crossroads. Tom Petty's Freefalling is playing on the car CD player. As the line "I wanna glide down over Mulholland" I look up and across the junction speeds a builders van, simple dark blue van with white lettering saying "Mulholland Contracts". At this point I feel like freaking out! Bear in mind Mulholland=Los Angeles and I am across the ocean in Edinburgh and there are not many linking themes here!

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