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!

The Coincidence of Kes

an old friend who lives in London (I live in Canada) is a film producer, quite successful at this time. In the early days of her career (1960's), she was involved in the production of a black and white film about a boy and his hawk called Kes. It was an obscure film, probably lost forever now. I know about it because my friend told me about it and that it was, out of all her productions, the one she was most proud of. My friend and I talk about once a year by phone and catch up. Other than that, we are out of touch. One night a few years' back I was reading a biography of Eric Clapton and learned that he and George Harrison had gone out one night in the heady days of rock and roll London and had seen this very film, Kes. I was immediately reminded of my friend and decided to phone her the next morning, as we had not spoken in quite a while. Early the next morning I was woken by the phone ringing. It was my friend from London. She said that she suddenly felt a powerful urge to phone me and waited till morning in my time zone to call. We were both stunned at the coincidence.

Off-switch

My friends and I went to a birthday party at a friend's place. One of my friends was quite hyperactive that evening, jumping and dancing and doing his robotic break dance stuff for hours. After a while we started joking about it and someone asked where to switch him off. I just randomly pressed my finger into his belly, my friend played along and instantly stopped moving. At that exact moment, the music and all lights went out, too. The fuse had blown at exactly the same time as I pressed the "off-switch". That was the first and last time that fuse ever blew.

Not a chance its chance #3

How likely do you think it is that I would listen to a story: The Black Monk, by Moliere in which an idea is mentioned in the story line that ‘33,000 years of very great suffering can be compressed into 1000 years’ and then hear the same idea in an audio tape, in a different context within a few days? I borrowed The Black Monk on tape from the library and listened to it. On my way to return it I realized I had nothing to listen to so I picked up a tape that had been laying on the corner of the kitchen countertop. It had been there for some time for no apparent reason. I do things like that, it just was there. I took the tape and began to listen to it on my way to work. The story was Isaac Asimov’s Prelude to the Foundation. The book by Asimov had the same words in it ‘that 33,000 years of very great suffering could be compressed into 1,000 years under certain circumstances’. ( Isaac Asimov and I have the same birthday, January 2, but different birth years . I have read most of his science fictions, which do not seem fictional now. ) Wikipedia has a fine synopsis of the book and the origin of the idea.

The Red Carpet

My name is Sigmund Shonholtz I am a non-spiritual coincidentalist and S.E.E. "Irony is Destiny" in my world. I have been studying the phenomenon of coincidence since I was 17 years old after having an unusual event. It was 1971, I was driving home down Wilshire Blvd and I noticed a sign for a real estate company, Red Carpet Realitors, it read. I did not think the metaphore of a red carpet was a very good idea for a real estate agency. Ridiculously, I began to wonder what would be a better use for a red carpet for the name of a business. A few minutes later I was stopped at a signal waiting to turn left when I noticed a piece of paper "fluttering" in the wind. It was spinning like a whirling dervish. A car drove by and blew it away, strangely it started spinning towards my open window. I was transfixed by it. Another car drove by and blew it away, again it started towards my window and was blown away. Finally a third car drove by and I asked myself, "What is so important"? The little piece of paper was desperate to tell me something. It finally blew through my open window and fell in my lap. It was blue, I picked it up and turned it over.

Matching PIN code

Apart from my credit cards PINs, I have two PIN codes to remember at all times: My work's bike garage lock number, and my son's nursery entry code. Well, actually the same 4 digit PIN number!

Ward Buddies!

My husband was born with a hair lip and had to have numerous operations to rectify this during his childhood. During one of these stays in hospital for him a young 8 year old girl was having her tonsils out and staying in the same mixed children’s ward. I used to have to walk passed his bed to get to the bathroom. It was only years after meeting that we got talking about our stays in hospital as children that we discovered we were in there at the same time, sharing the same ward!

Same birthday and name

While working on my high school reunion committee, an aunt passed away. One of the classmates on my contact list called me to ask if that was my aunt. I told her yes, and she related that we shared the same Gt. Grandfather. She was researching that genealogy line as was I so we got together to work on it. We had gone through high school together but were only acquaintances and did not know we were related. Over lunch at our first meeting, we learned that our first borns were named Leslie and that they were both born on the same date but a few years apart.

family deaths on Oct 13

My parents first child died on Oct 13. My father died on Oct 13. The Hospice nurse had pronounced Dad around 2:00 pm on Oct 12, but then he drew another breath and made it to Oct. 13 around 1:00 a.m. One year to the day later, my sister died on Oct. 13.

great minds think alike

I went rock climbing with a friend last Saturday. The weird thing is that neither of us knew that the other one was going. We didn't even know that the other was into climbing. We independently picked the same instructor, who isn't based in our home city, and ended up going on the same day out of a choice of five. We were the only ones with him that day too.

I dream of Jeannie

I teach computers voluntarily in the local library system.

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