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!

Tuned in radio

My name is Paul, and on my return from a particularly difficult day at work, I opened the door to my two up, two down house and picked up the remote control for my radio. As it took a few seconds to come on, I proceeded to the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge. As I put my hands on the door of fridge, I heard a female voice from the radio suddenly announce "Paul, please don't have a drink, you know you only drink when you're unhappy". The radio play moved on whilst I froze. It's almost enough to put you off your beer...

Regular Jury Service

Shortly after my 18th Birthday i was selected for Jury Service at a crown court. Six months later i was summonsed again (and elected to serve despite the option not to) on the second jury another juror had also served with me on the first jury AND the judge and advocates were the same. I was then called again aged 20 so what are the chances of being called three times before age 21 and on two of those times meeting another juror called for the second time and having the same judge and same advocates for the prosecution and defense?

The red passport

In 2005 I married an English man who I believed to be my soulmate. The night we married he 'changed' and became quite diabolical. I realised I had made a terrible mistake immediately. But I had resigned from my job, which was professional - and to this day the best job I had ever had, in order to be close to his child and ex partner with whom he shared custody with. My seven year old son, my new husband and I moved 800km then, with my life possessions on a removal truck to this isolated coastal place where my new husband also worked, two months after the marriage - as planned. The year that followed was sheer hell. He psychologically and physically abused me, quitting his job (as a child therapist for mental health services) almost as soon as I transferred my life. I had a full time job teaching prearranged and for nearly a year I saw it through. The year in many ways was remarkable; a remarkable series of horrors as my new husband showed his true character. To make matters worse he had misplaced his English passport, meaning he was unable to renew his work visa. This required a trip later that year to Immigration in a city 300 km away from where we lived.

Old friend AND birthday coincidence

In the early 1970s, I did a 3-year spell in the RAMC. The first 18 months, I was posted with 24th Field Ambulance in Catterick, where I struck up a friendship with Geoff. I was then posted to Tidworth Military Hospital and we didn't keep in touch. Geoff had joined earlier than I so he had left the army a year or so before my term was up. I came out in early '74 when My wife fell pregnant. We did not yet have our own place and were living with my wife's mother. My son was born later that year.<br /> It was a slightly difficult birth so my wife was kept in. I was visiting the day after the birth and ran into Geoff, who was outside having a smoke. He had decided on a whim to look me up and traced me to my last know address, which was my parental home. My mother had told him that Anne (my wife) was in hospital having just had a baby so he came to visit. He cut the visit fairly short because of this but left us his phone number. However, we didn't keep in touch.<br /> A year or so later, I found the number he'd given us and decided to give him a call. However, the number was no longer active.

Coincidences of the Third Kind

Here is a series of related coincidences connecting ten people over four decades and half of England. I am John from Lytham St. Anne’s who went to school with Frank and Steve 1968-75, then shared Liverpool University digs from 1975-77 with Ged from Newcastle. In 1976, travelling to the NUS Motorcycle Rally in Cambridge, I over-nighted in Leicester University Halls. I spoke briefly to a random student while we waited for a kettle to boil in a communal kitchen of the grim sort often created by 18-23 year-old male undergrad’s. Turns out the ‘randomer’ knows Ged as the paper boy who lived two streets away from him in Newcastle! By 1981 I’m working in London. Dawn, a kind and gorgeous Halifax lass, and Nige a kind.....of junior Bruce Springsteen, move into the flat above mine. Nige, it transpired, was not only from Lytham St. Anne’s, but had worked a hotel summer job there with Frank and Steve, my old school mates! Around this time I also met Dawn’s younger brother, Pete, for about 15 minutes......... In 1984 Ged, and his pal Simon, stayed with me in London whist attending a Neil Young concert.

Hello Vancouver, Twice!

Whilst travelling in Australia in 2007 I had the pleasure of helping a Canadian guy, whom I'd met for the first time that evening, back to his room after he'd had a few to many to drink. Fast forward four years later to be again away on travels. On this occasion I found myself hungover underground in a cave system under Budapest with a group of other tourists. As we journeyed some of the others were sharing stories of their travels, the subject turned to drinking stories and a man behind me was talking about how he'd once been found in a lift, in his underwear, curled up in the foetal position and having been helped to his room by a fellow guest. I couldn't believe my ears, I sense checked his accent - it fitted, then the story, a lift in a Sydney hostel - it fitted. There was one slight discrepancy however, the Canadian I'd found in the lift wasn't wearing any underwear!

Meeting with a folk singer

In the 1980's I went to a gig performed by a well known English folk singer. After the gig I chatted to him, and asked where he had played last on a recent world tour. He said he had just come back from Auckland, New Zealand. I told him I had a mate there called Bev, who would have enjoyed his performance. He said "well you must be Dave". He was right. Bev had attended his gig in Auckland, and Bev had asked him where he was playing next. The musician told him his next gig was in the Isle of Man, where I lived at the time, and my friend said that I was bound to go and see him. Bev and I hadn't communicated with each other in any way in the interim. There have been many more instances of coincidences in my life. These have mainly come about because I like to chat to interesting looking people, ask what they do, what interests they have, where they come from etc. If you have lived in as many places as I have, and are basically a nosey sod, the odds are not so long that you will know someone that a random stranger in the street also has connections with has also met, and remembered.

Meant to be

My black West Indian father died in a road traffic accident in Yorkshire when he was 25 years old, he was driving a van (I later found out he was the leader of a steel drum band and permanently kept the band's equipment in the back of the vehicle). I was only 5 weeks old at the time of his death. My white English mother and I went to live with her father after his death. Due to various family issues my mum moved away when I was still a toddler, remarrying and starting a new family. She had never really got to know any of my dad's family very well as they had disapproved of the mixed race relationship, as did her family and they were essentially runaway lovers. I was subsequently raised to adulthood by my maternal grandparent and we had no contact with my mother until many years later.

Meta Coincidence?

Reading the BBC News website tonight (29/05/2015) there was an article called "Spiegelhalter's: The ultimate symbol of holding out." </p> <p>Then I watched Ian Stewart's 10 things about tsunamis on BBC iPlayer, which I've seen before. When that ended I was presented with the option of watching "Tails You Win....". Which I may have seen before over a year ago. </p> <p>Just after the intro it clicked that I had seen the name of the presenter before: "Spiegelhalter". </p> <p>Having read Arther Koestler's: Roots of Coincidence many years ago, I thought to write to tell you about it. Then I thought I'd not bother. </p> <p>Next thing you are shown on a radio program talking about coincidences and how there is a website where people can tell you about their coincidences. So here I am. </p> <p>Was some BBC web designer or journalist having a bit of fun? Or was some unconscious memory influencing my behaviour? I swear I've not registered your surname before.

Falling vase

Above my bed i have a shelf and on that shelf i have had, for years, a pottery vase. I tend to change the end of my bed i sleep at every now and again and at the time i was sleeping with my head below the vase. For a couple of months i slept with my head at that same end of the bed but then one night i woke up and for some reason changed the way i was lying in my bed. The next morning i woke up and was feeling really tired when suddenly i was woken by a massive crash as the vase fell off my shelf, shattering exactly where i had been lying when i went to bed that night. If i hadn't changed the end of my bed in the night i could have suffered serious injury. What is the chance of the vase falling on that night and me being fine?

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