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!

Mothers

This isn't my coincidence, but I witnessed it. I've changed the names, including that of the famous actor in the story. We had a party. Two guests were Adriana and Ruthie. Adriana is my wife's friend and Ruthie is a former high-school classmate of mine. They had never met, but started talking. Ruthie started asking Adriana questions that revealed quite a bit of private knowledge about Adriana and her family, eventually asking, "Didn't you have a great-aunt who married Gregory Peck?" It turned out that she had, and Adriana turned pale (which tough for an Armenian) and almost started shaking. Adriana asked "Who... who are you!!!???" I confess that Ruthie kind of enjoyed playing the clairvoyant, but she eventually told Adriana that some years before, while visiting her mother at the old-age home where she lived, she met another woman who was visiting her own mother. The mothers were room-mates.The two girls started chatting, and learned quite a bit about each others' families. At the party, Ruthie thought at first that Adriana was the other girl, because she looked so much like her and had the same accent.

Meeting someone that lived in my bedroom

I grew up on a farm near Hawley MN. Moved to Seattle. My girlfriend invited me to Christmas dinner at her family's home. I sat at the dining room table with her family, including an aunt by marriage. Aunt: "Where are you from?" Me: "Northern Minnesota." Aunt: "Me, too. What town?" Me: "Near Fargo Moorhead." Aunt: "Me, too. What town? Me: "Hawley, my family bought the old Luthi farm." Aunt: "I'm Pat Luthi, what bedroom was yours?" Me? "The northwest bedroom." Aunt: "That was my bedroom."

Reunion with Rose

I worked in a law firm in Los Angeles in the '90s and became friends with a fellow female attorney in our Washington, DC office when we worked on a case today. After leaving the firm in 1995, she and I stayed in touch but our interactions dwindled to yearly Christmas cards. I was married and had a child, she stayed single but adopted two girls from China. I knew that she was now working for the government and living with the girls in Central America. But at some point, we lost touch and even the Christmas card exchange ended. Flash forward to 2014 and I flew to Paraguay to spend a short vacation with a high school girlfriend of mine who was working at the embassy there. While there, my friend got a phone call from a fellow embassy worker, asking about a local restaurant. I was just half listening to my friend's side of the conversation, and then I heard her say "you know, I haven't been to that restaurant, but you know who would know?" . . . "Rose Rakas". Well that was the name of my long ago Washington DC buddy. When my friend hung up, I quizzed her - "is Rose American? - Answer: "yes".

A Bluegrass Connection

I love Bluegrass and early country music and am something of an aficionado. I attended the first few multi-day Bluegrass festivals, centered around the career of Bluegrass founder Bill Monroe, in Fincastle, VA in 1965 and '66. A few years later, as an undergraduate, my room-mate and I attended Bill Monroe's "Brown Country Jamboree", in Bean Blossom, IN, one week-end. A surprising thing happened at Bean Blossom. We arrived in the middle of torrential downpour. We parked and started slogging our way through the mud toward the stage area, when whom should we see but James Monroe, Bill's son, coming our way. He stopped and asked me if I could do him a favor. I said "Of course". He pulled out a wad of paper money about 5 inches thick and said, "Could you bring this over to the attendant at the parking lot? He's out of change." Of course, I did it, but I marveled that James Monroe would trust some long-haired, long-bearded hippie kid with a wad of money. Maybe he thought I had an honest face, or maybe he recognized me from Fincastle a few years earlier. Either way, I felt honored. We now fast-forward about 40 years.

A malfunctioning auto saved my career from disaster

April, 1978. I was still in graduate school. I had promised the company I had accepted a job with that I would start work on this date. There was only one problem. My doctoral dissertation (in chemistry) was incomplete. I thought, "Oh, well, I'll finish it in the evenings after I start my new job", but secretly I feared that I never would. Still, I had promised, so, with a heavy heart, as the sun went down, I climbed into my MG Midget and headed toward the Pennsylvania Turnpike for my trip West. Now, at this time, I did my own work on my cars, and this car required a lot of work. I knew it backwards and forwards. Still, just a few miles out of town, It started banging on only one cylinder. I spent some time with it, trying this and that, trying to figure out what the problem might be. I could not. With an even heavier heart (and fear of a broken promise), I hobbled to a closed mechanic's garage, left the car with a note, and called a friend to pick me up. In the morning, as I prepared to call Mike, my boss-to-be, to tell him I wouldn't be showing up that day, I had a thought.

"Could that possibly be true?"

One night my then-wife told me a story about a spiritual experience she once had. It was a strange and vivid story that involved her (and the people with her) feeling that she was emitting or transferring what could be called a "divine energy." She left the room, and I puzzled over it. I was sure she was telling the truth about what it felt like to her, but she made no claims about whether it was "real" or not. But I wondered: could that possibly be true? As I pondered this, I was setting the clock radio alarm. I always use a music station as the alarm, and always flick the radio on for just a moment to check the volume. In that particular moment, I heard a bit of a lyric. I didn't even grasp what I had heard until after I had turned the radio off. What I heard was a woman singing: "Yes, it's true." I've had other coincidences, but that's the one that sent chills up my spine.

Found the pilot

In 1971 I was a Dallas policeman working the evening shift (3:00pm - 11:00pm) in early summer. Near the end of the shift a call came out at Redbird Airport regarding a young boy who was beheaded while riding his mini-bike down the runway. The runway was dark and he was struck by one of the propellers of a twin engine plane that was landing. After the the shift ended I learned the details of the accident from the officers that answered the call. In 1986 I boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from Dallas to San Antonio at Love Field. The plane was packed but I found a seat. As the plane began taxiing I struck up a conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me. After a short time our conversation turned to aviation and I told him the story about the decapitated boy riding the mini-bike 15 years earlier. He looked at said and said "You're not going to believe this, but I was flying that plane".

Lost ring

Several years ago I was creating a new native plant garden with my significant other.The new garden was lawn before I scalped it and started putting in native plants. I was digging the holes for the plants and my SO was planting them. She got to one hole and reached in and pulled out her deceased husband's wedding band that he had lost several years before his death. When he lost it, they searched for days. I had dug a small 6 inch hole exactly where it was, out of an area of 150 sq ft.<br />

coPINcidence

My family was checking in at a Hilton in St. Louis in 2001/2002 there was a long line. I went to the ATM & put in my pin combined with my student ID # (8 digits total) just to waste time. Much to my surprise, people's account information came up. There was a scroll bar on the right & 3 people the on screen at a time like so (ish): Name Bank name Account # Balance Last Transaction Amount, Time, Date It is not like the people who came up were relatives, just the last people who had used it. But it amazed me that there are 100million combinations & by dumb luck I picked what had to be the banker/programmer code. It is certainly possible there are multiple codes, but still. People generally only put in 4 digit pins so I suppose they figure 8 would be safe. However there was no other identification (I did not put in a card or doing anything but enter the pin) to gain access to everyone's information. I was only 12 at the time so had no way of buying a lottery ticket.

Two near-disasters

I spent a weekend on retreat in a small cabin with no phone, computer, or other communication. I went for a walk in the afternoon. A big storm came up, the sky turned green, I heard a sound like a runaway train, and thinking it might be a tornado, I ran back toward the cabin. As I was crossing a road, a very large tree fell. The trunk hitting the ground ten feet from me made the ground shake; a nearby truck was speared by a branch; but I was not hurt. I left the cabin and went back to my room; I listened to my messages and found that, at the same time the tree fell, one of my adult children 3,000 miles away was taken to a hospital in a psychotic state. (The child was, eventually, OK).

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