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!

Unlikely meeting

In October 2011 my wife and I traveled to Auckland, New Zealand for the rugby World Cup. We were independent, not part of an organised group and on the day of our first game we took a public bus from our hotel into Aukland city centre. We obviously didn't know the city or the bus stops so we got off at a stop we felt was near the centre. There were other people on the bus and some got off before us, as I stepped onto the footpath and turned to my right I was confronted by two ladies walking towards me. As I was attempting to move out of their path I realised I recognised one of them and she recognised me. We had been work colleagues at least two years before and she'd been in New Zealand for twelve months, incredible!

A chance Paragraph

Dear Mr Spiegelhalter, I just watched the documentary "Tails you win", on television. I must say I found it extremely interesting, as a free lance musician I am destined to have performances where despite the years of honing my craft, I play less then what I am easily capapble of. Anyway, after finishing the documentary, I began to read my book, 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I quote; " This time the advance he sent Archimboldi was bigger than any previous advance, in fact so large that Martha, the secretary, before mailing the check to Cologne, brought it into Mr Bubis' office and asked (not once but twice) whether the sum was correct, to which Mr Bubis answered yes, it was, or it wasn't, what did it matter, a sum, he thought when he was alone again, is always approximate, there is no such thing as a correct sum, only Nazis and teachers of elementary mathematics believed in correct sums, only sectarians, madmen, tax collectors (God rot them), numerologists who read one's fortune for next to nothing believed in correct sums. Scientists, meanwhile, knew that all numbers were only approximate.

Malt Whiskey and Christmas Trees

Last Wednesday (3rd December 2015), whilst working in Speyside, Scotland, I visited a local shop where I bought a bottle of relatively unheard of (at least by me and possibly outside of Scotland) bottle of Malt Whiskey called Glendronnach. When in Rome?! I am not a particularly frequent whiskey buyer or drinker which makes the following even more coincidental. I returned home to Swadlincote, Derbyshire on Friday 5th December and on the Sunday afternoon called a friend to enquire as to his general health and to catch up on news. He advised me that during the previous week (whilst I was in Scotland), he had taken his wife to visit Bakewell, Derbyshire to exchange an incorrectly sized pair of boots she had received for her birthday. Whilst there, they explored the town and came across a Whiskey Shop called "The Wee Dram". They went inside, spoke at length with the proprietor and having sampled a number of different brands they purchased a bottle of....yes you've guessed it, Glendronnach! What made it even more unusual was that during the telephone call, we passed one another driving on opposite sides of a local road.

GRAVEYARD PLOT FIND CHANCE

Hi David Have just watched your excellent program on BBC4 and wanted to share my chance/psychic? /unknown? experience with you. I have had many coincidence stories, even as many as several a day when I was younger. But this is the most recent and stuck in my mind . I regularly visit Kensal Green Cemetery ( where my parents are buried). I also take an interest in the notable people buried there. The only notable person I couldn't find the plot for ( square/grave number) was the late clothes designer, Ossie Clark ( despite asking staff on a couple of occasions). One Friday I visited the graveyard ( which is approx. 77 acres) and thought about the great explorers, and said to myself that I would make it my objective to naturally find the grave by chance however long ( days/months/years) it would take. I begin walking, and after five minutes - suddenly stopped, turned to my right and was drawn to a stone 10 metres away. To my surprise I found Ossie Clark's grave in square 162. Kind regards-Steve

Finding money

Whilst walking down the road past the entrance to a school I felt a sharp pain in my foot. Stopping and inspecting my foot, I found that I had stepped on a drawing pin. This had pierced my trainers, as I looked on the ground attempting to remove the pin I noticed a pound coin, I can't recall ever before or since having a pin pierce my trainers and I can recall very few times that I've found money on the ground.

Reserved seat!!!

My mum lived in Brigjton and my Granny in London, both hardly ever used the train for travel. My mum decided to visit her mum in Yorkshire (she'd always previously taken her van but decided to take the train for once). </p> <p>My mum brought a ticket and sat in what she thought was an available seat. </p> <p>As the train passed through London, more people got on. An old women (who had previously reserved a seat) approached the reserved numbered seat to find my mum in it. She politely began to explain how she had reserved that seat when my mum looked up and saw my Granny who shrieked!! </p> <p>I often would pick up the phone at the exact time my Granny had called but before any rings were heard, but this event makes even those occasions pale into insignificance in terms of coincidence. </p> <p>My mum and granny both told me about this and were equally amazed.

Ambigram All Around

I am in the hospital right now, being kept overnight for observation. I have a nurse and a tech. The tech was showing me her tattoos, including one that reads the same backwards and forwards. I told her I have been doing this for people for decades, before they had a name (they're called ambigrams). Then the nurse comes in and he starts talking - completely without having heard the earlier conversation - about how someone once wrote his name out so it reads the same upside-down as right-side up.

307

I was born 4-30-1978..in high school I started using a pager. The code I used for people to recognize me was 307. 307 was the closest to Joe I could get, which is my first name. Years later I had used 307 many times over, tagging and writing 307 in different ways..I even tagged a shirt in numbers on the back which read 43078 representing my birthdate..I never realized until that moment how 307 was in the center of my birthdate when written in short.

telepathy and einstein

My old friend from Oxford emailed me recently a passage from Life and Fate by Grossman, "There is nothing more difficult than to be a stepson of the time; there is no heavier fate than to live in an age that is not your own. Stepsons of the time are easily recognized: in personnel departments, Party district committees, army political sections, editorial offices, and on the street. Time loves only those it has given birth to itself: its own children, it own heroes, it own labourers. Never can it come to love the children of a past age, any more than a woman can love the heroes of a past age, or a stepmother love the children of another woman." I replied very shortly, "how much time does it take for a paper to be forgotten?" To which he replied, "Are you thinking of Einstein's 1905?". Shockingly, I had just been reading Einstein's On the Electrodynamics of moving bodies. </p> <p>Now, I am not a physicist and I don't usually read Einstein or theoretical physics. I am a biochemist, and I strictly read research papers pertinent to my work with the occasional philosophy or history text for amusement purposes.

My brain made the coincidence

Once I had a new L reg car which was 10 years old (new to me, not an oxymoron). Just by naturally observing all the cars passing me (when on foot) it seemed that about half of them were an L reg. Obviously it was impossible for half of all cars to be exactly 10 years old, so I started to pay attention to every car that passed: AN LREG, no, no, no, no, no, AN LREG, no, no, no. This illustration shows how my brain noticed all the L reg cars and ignored the rest. I never did measure the actual frequency, I just established it was well below 50%.

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