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!

Reappearing Book

During the 1960's, one of my father's books that I would occasionally read was "Electronics Made Simple" (Jacobowitz 1958). Jump ahead 4 decades. The daughter of a family friend and her husband were renovating an older house that they recently purchased. Behind some drywall they found some old books packed in, probably for sound insulation. One of the books was "Electronics Made Simple" with my father's name and address written on the inside. The odd thing is no one remembers throwing it out or how it got lost. Presumably the previous home owner recovered books for his use from where they were being discarded or recycled.

The ring wants to be found

When my (now) wife and I were dating, we were enjoying a stroll in a small park on a footpath that went around an artificial pond in the park's center. At one point, I stopped and looked down, next to a tree by the side of the path. There was a huge mushroom on the ground, and something glinting beneath it. I picked it up, and it turned out to be a silver ring, made to look like a ribbon wound in the shape of a heart. Since I'm generally rather observant, I gave it to my (at the time) girlfriend and didn't give it much more thought. A few weeks later, she was working in her chemistry lab when a lab assistant noticed the ring and mentioned that it looked just like a ring she'd lost in that very park months earlier, and had gone back several times to look for it. Not only that, but she was only temporarily in the US, and had bought the ring in Singapore, and never expected to see it again.

Two Countries to Tours

In the summer of 2013 I traveled with my family to Spain and Israel. We spent 5 days in Spain and took a wonderful 1/2 day Bike Tour of Barcelona. The tour was great! We then traveled to Israel and toured around the country for two weeks. We spent our last 5 days in Jerusalem. We thought we might take a free tour of the old city of Jerusalem in the afternoon, but at the last minute we decided to take the tour at 10 a.m. We met up with a group of strangers and after about 5 minutes, my ten year old son said,"Mom, I think that guy over there was on our 1/2 day bike tour trip in Barcelona!" I said, "NO WAY!" So we both walked over and asked him if he had taken the Fat Tire 1/2 day bike tour in Barcelona two weeks ago. He said yes, and recognized us as well. (a family of 4) There were less than 1ish people on each of these tours. We had not chatted with him while we were on the 1/2 day bike tour in Barcelona at all.

Running into child's teacher on subway platform in NYC

While on vacation in NYC from SC, I ran into one of my child's school teachers while waiting on the subway in the Upper East Side after visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Watch stolen and re-acquired after coincidental re-discovery

In South Carolina, in the early 70's, as a teenager, I made a leather watchband that, by the late 70's, bore a watch given to me by my girlfriend while I was in college. Within a few years, both the band and the watch's face had identifiable scrapes and scratches that I knew intimately. By this point, the watch was kept in my car on a dashboard shelf in plain sight. In the spring of 1980, I finished college and relocated to Warner Robins, Georgia for my first engineering job, taking an apartment in a complex along a street that skirted several complexes. My car, a modest VW Rabbit, was normally kept unlocked overnight in front of the apartment as I never kept anything of real value in the car. The watch was still being kept in the car, and still visible on the dash. Its value was sentimental, not monetary, really, and I wasn't worried about it. Having played a lot of basketball in the gym in college, I looked for and eventually discovered a court a mile or so away from my apartment, on which a good game of ball could be found most days, and I began showing up to play.

NC meets childhood friend in Mexico

This happened around 1998. I grew up and still live in NC. My brother was stationed with the Marines in San Diego. I went to visit him one summer and we decided to take a day trip to Mexico. We stopped in Ensenada and walked around the town, not even in a very "touristy" area. I hear this guy yelling "hey buddy do you have a dollar!". Turn around and it's a scraggly bum trying to get money. We keep walking and I turn around again and I tell my brother "hey I think that bum is Nathan". He says who? And I say it's Nathan, Christy's little brother. He says no way. I barely recognize him but it is definitely Nathan. We talk, he says he is Nathan and he is very drugged out and schizophrenic. He asks why we are following him and is saying the rapture already happened and all kinds of crazy stuff. I don't give him money but take him to lunch to feed him. We talk a lot and even before we ate lunch there was absolutely no doubt it was my old friend. I take a few pictures and then call his sister and mother when we get back to San Diego. They are crying and can't believe it.

Vacation overlap

My family was on a vacation to another province, a place about 2000km from where we live. We only had two days there, and we booked our one night's stay at a bed and breakfast out in the countryside, not a large establishment, and quite isolated, because most places closer to the capitol city were already booked up. While there, we found that a good friend of ours from university, whom we hadn't seen in years and who also lived far away, was staying there with her family. Apparently this B&B was a place she used to go with her parents as a child for summer vacations, but she hadn't been there in years and just happened to be there on a nostalgic visit at the same time we were visiting it for the first time. Neither of us remembered her ever mentioning the name of this place during the years we had known her, so I don't think it was influencing my choice of destination.

Dead grandfather mentioned in speech I attended

I went to hear a speech by an indigenous Australian man who had grown up about 500 km from where the speech was given. He spoke of the difficulties in his life and mentioned someone who was instrumental in his success, a white man who had given him a chance and a job in the 40s back when black men weren't even allowed to vote or go to the pub. Previously I had assumed my grandfather was at least as racist as his generation, so I almost fell out of my chair at the back of the auditorium when the man said, "That man's name was Morris Worrall". My grandfather had passed away the previous month so I became quite emotional and had to leave the venue and did not hear the end of the speech. I thought I was the first in my family to champion indigenous rights, pop had never spoken of this and the speaker had no idea I was in the audience until I introduced myself after the speech.

Fare Ther Well

I have an acquaintance, or a friend of a friend, that I rarely see.. Maybe once every five years for the past 15 years. He is a German immigrant with a thick German dialect that's hard for me to understand, particularly if he has been drinking. Through social media we both found out we would be attending, along with 70,000 other people, the Grateful Dead's supposedly last concert at Chicago's Soldier Field on July 2016. We exchanged cell numbers and said lets meet up. I called V on the way in in front Millineal Park. His accent and the background noise made him very hard to understand, but I gathered he was on a moored sailboat on the opposite side of the stadium, and my husband and sister-n-law scrapped that plan to meet up in favor of seeing their friends. After an hour and a half, the show was going to start and I felt a little bummed I hadn't got to hang out with V. We go through our last checkpoint, on the opposite of the stadium from the docks/lake, before entering the stairs and out of 70,000 people we run into V. We have a beer together. He says something understated and at the same time profound, like always and we say goodbye.

A story about Sam Leve

Sam Leve was a well known stage designer in New York in the 1930s and ‘40s. He was one of my father’s two best friends from childhood. He is now deceased, unfortunately, and I'm leaving his real name in the story in order to honor him. One day, in the 1980s, He told me this story. During the second world war, Sam approached the International Rescue Committee and asked if there was anything he could do to help. The Committee was formed to smuggle Jews out of Nazi-occupied Europe, and today is one of the best known organizations dedicated to helping refugees everywhere. He recounted to me that he told them, “I could never carry a gun. I am not that kind of person. I am an artist.” So they put him to work forging passports. To do this, he had to confine himself to making changes that were difficult to detect, like changing a P to an R. This resulted in some very unusual names. Sam had just attended a party where many of those present were holocaust survivors. On New York’s upper west side at the time, that was to be expected among Jews of a certain age. He was introduced to a woman with a very unusual name. Sam recognized the name.

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