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!

On the bus to Fort Dix

At the end of April, 1963, I was called by the draft board to report to the US Army center on Whitehall Street in Manhattan for a physical exam. I was told that if I passed the exam, I would, the same day, be transported to Fort Dix, New Jersey to begin basic training. I passed the exam and was soon on the bus to Fort Dix, with about another 20 men who also had passed the exam. One individual, who had a strong Italian accent, was loudly complaining that he had just put down a large deposit on a suit and he didn't know how he was going to get it back. It seemed that he didn't know that if he passed the physical that he would immediately be off to basic training. </p> <p>In June, 1992, my wife (who I had not met until July, 1967), my son and I went on a three week vacation to Italy. Midway in the trip, we visited a small town in Sicily. My wife's maternal grandparents were both born in this town, married and lived there and later immigrated to the US and settled in New York. My mother-in-law and wife were subsequently born in New York.

Cooking class run-in

I was in a cooking class in Barcelona, a small 12 person meet-up type class. Towards the end of the class I was chatting with one of the girls while doing dishes. We got to talking and found out that she went to school in Texas and was studying veterinary medicine. We then found out that she was studying in the same program as my sister and it turns out their assigned seats in class were right next to each other. I was making dinner with a girl who had sat by my sister all year in class. Small world.

Car help/Lost Dog/instant kharma

I was coming home from work on a snowy day in January, 2011. The drive was miserable due to poor weather conditions, and when going up the hill to get into my community, I became hopelessly stuck and could not move my vehicle an inch in any direction. A pair of strangers happened by, a man and a woman. The three of us were able to rock my car and push it into a safe space to park it. I was very thankful and remember saying and meaning, "If there is anything I can do to help..." The man produces a 'Lost Dog' flier with a picture, name and number. "We lost our dog, he got away during this weather and we are worried sick! If you see him, please call us." I thank them again, promise to call if I see the dog or any sign, and make my way back to my stairwell. I climb to my floor, and sitting on the landing, leash all wrapped up on the railing outside of my door, is the dog in the picture on the flyer. I call the number not even three minutes after first taking the flier. "You're never going to believe this.

Is this 3155 Main Street, Apt. 2?

I met my boyfriend at the bar next door, a few months after moving to New York - he was a bartender there and had been for 5 years. The first time he came over to my apartment, it was late at night and he slept over. In the morning as he was getting ready to leave, he gathered up the courage to ask, "Is this 3155 Main Street, Apartment 2?" "Yes...why?" I said, thinking he was just trying to figure out where he was in relation to where he had to get. "OK please don't think this is creepy or weird, but I used to live here, 12 years ago. This was my bedroom," he said. He had moved a few times since then and lived in Times Square at that point. Yes, he worked next door, but he hadn't gotten that job until a few years after he moved out of the area. But 12 years previously, he had lived in the exact apartment, the exact bedroom that I moved into - my first New York apartment.

The Day It Became Legal to Be a Jew in Spain Again

As I was researching historical facts to color the setting of my hopefully soon to be published novel, somewhere between writer's block and progress, I spotted it, my birth date, December 16, 1968. It's the exact day that the edict of expulsion against the Jews of Spain, the Alhambra Decree, was officially annulled. I interpreted that as the Divine wink I needed to complete my first novel, to give voice to Sephardim from the Middle Ages and to Israelis of today, with a sense of seriousness and playfulness, mindfulness and celebration.

long lost cousin on a plane

My last name is unusual. I'd say there are maybe 3 or 4 dozen people in the country with it, based on some googling. It's not even a very common name in the region my family came from. One day I was on a flight back from a conference on an airline with open seating. It was a two leg flight, both on the same plane. Between legs, the flight attendants take a head count to make sure they have the right number of through passengers before letting the new ones on. The count that day was off, so they needed to check names against the manifest. When they came to my row, the woman about my age seated next to me, whom I had not spoken to, and would not have otherwise, had the same last name as me. It turned out our great grandparents had been cousins, had a falling out, and the branches of the family hadn't spoken in 70 or 80 years. And we were seated next to each other on a two leg flight, where the passenger count happened to be off and they needed to check names.

Triple birthday coincidence

In the late 1980s, I worked behind the front desk at a small boutique hotel in Toronto. In total, there were 6 of us on staff who manned the front desk at various times, no more than 2 at a time. It came up in conversation during a shift that it was my birthday, and my co-worker said, "no way, it's my birthday too!" She showed me her driver's license to prove it because that seemed like a big coincidence. At the end of our shift when the night guy came to take over for us and asked what was new, we told him, still reeling a bit in amazement, that we'd just discovered that it was both of our birthdays today. He said, "No way. It's my birthday too." And, of course, we demanded to see his i.d.--and it was true.

Las Amarillas Calandrias

I drew this self-portrait to give to my friend Daniel the last day I saw him, to remember me by, when I graduated from university. I had drawn myself releasing yellow birds from a cage and flying to him and singing along with his guitar-playing, as he sat inside the moon, above a desert night scene. I was purposely doing the picture of myself in the style of Frida Kahlo's magical realist self-portraits. I chose to draw myself releasing yellow birds on purpose because I knew Daniel likes the Harry Potter books; in the sixth book, Hermione conjures up yellow birds when she gets angry that Ron is hooking up with the other girl, and she has them torpedo his face. That was nearly six years ago. I now live in the Boston area. Recently the Museum of Fine Arts acquired its first ever original Frida Kahlo painting. It's extremely rare and unlikely that Boston MFA would get a Kahlo original, because the Mexican government guards the paintings it knows about jealously. They are not allowed to leave Mexico.

An Irish-American in Paris

I am American and have worked in Paris for several years in real estate. I just started working at a new agency and was assigned certain neighborhoods to work on. I recently came into contact with a very good client,"Mrs. Cooper", a French woman who was married to an American, and had already sold property with our agency before I arrived. She now had another fabulous apartment to sell, an inheritance, that happened to be on one of my assigned streets. Before going to meet her for the estimation, I dug up her old file from the sale of her first apartment : property titles, etc. I discovered that her father was American - and that her maiden name was the same as my own (a good Irish last name--I have absolutely no French heritage)! We were also from the same region of the US, she was born in the same city as my mother, and currently lived within 2h of my father's family in the south of the US. We had a surprising number of things in common....strange for a big city, in a foreign country, where I have a very finite area in which to sell property, that my first client could be a distant cousin!

Fancy Meeting You!

On a flight from Florida to Heathrow (UK), I told the pleasant stranger seated next to me that I was from the Isle of Wight, whereupon she said that her best friend lived there. Thinking I might know the friend, I asked where she lived; my seatmate named my home village & proffered her friend's name--which I immediately recognized as belonging to someone I did indeed know: my father's cousin. In similar vein, a visitor at the company where I worked, mentioned that she had lived in the town where I was currently residing; without my asking, she told me her old address: it was mine.

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