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!

Of all the books in all the libraries in all the world, she picks mine.

I was in the Bodleian library being inducted into the cataloguing system, about 15 years ago. The induction was being given by one of the staff and there were about 15 people in the group - people from a wide variety of humanities disciplines including languages, history, philosophy, theology and the Arts. She demonstrated us how she moved through the layers of cataloguing organisation on the computer, down through ''Literature'' through "English literature", and so on through the genres, each time choosing at random the next menu item to click on. Eventually she chose 'Jane Austen', and clicked down and down through the intricate sub-layers to pick on one particular work of criticism. At which point a member of the group piped up in stupefaction, 'I wrote that book!' I want to know whether the probability for this coincidence might be worked out - if you knew the number of books in the library, and the numbers of people being trained in any one day, and other crucial data. A friend of mine who is a mathematician didn't think this was a particularly startling coincidence. But I still think it was. Amazing!

birthdate and high school coincidence

I met a women in a meet-up group. I liked her comments, thought we were about the same age and of similar ilk, so being relatively new to the area (Portland, OR) asked her to meet for coffee, suspecting a new friendship could be developed. She is not a native Oregonian either. We did and got to talking and she mentioned growing up in Phoenix, AZ. I lived in Phoenix for just a few months as a teen, so she asked where I went to high school. I told her Thunderbird HS, to which she replied that was her alma mater. We then talked years, discovered we were both born in 1970, then dates, and to our incredulity, were both born on August 5! What are the odds of meeting someone with the exact same birthdate, who attended the same high school, in a different state, 30 years later?

Exact Match

The Numbers Game is a lottery game where you pick 4 digits and hope the numbers that are drawn match your choice, either in exact order or in any order. So, the four winning numbers in the midday drawing on Thursday, August 14 were, in order, 4821. The coincidence? If you placed a one dollar bet to get all four of those numbers in that exact order, you would've won exactly \$4821, i.e. the number drawn is an exact match to the prize amount. And just so we're clear, this is not how the prize money is determined, i.e. the amount won in dollars does not match the numbers drawn -- woe to the person who picks 0002 as their selection! So, this is a pretty wild result when you think about it. Most "exact 4" prizes range in the vicinity of \$4000 - \$6000 (with a few outliers), so it is possible (though with very low probability) that when the winning numbers start with 4, 5, or 6 that the prize could match the numbers drawn, in order. I do not know how the lottery determines the prize value for each draw, since it varies from one result to the next.

Contact

Just as I finished reading astrophysicist author Carl Sagan's novel Contact and was closing the back cover, the radio news announced his death at that precise second.

Birth dates and death dates

Different family members have birth date and death dates (never the same year) that are the same. 1. I was born on May 22 which is the same day my great aunt died years before 2. My sister was born on April 16 and my great-grandfather died on her first birthday 3. My father was born on August 24 and my 2nd cousin was born on the same day 4. Both of my maternal grandparents died on August 12 - one in 2012 and one in 2014 5. My step-son's birthday is Nov 4 which is the same day my paternal grandfather died 6. My father-in-law's birthday is March 6 which is the same day my paternal grandmother died

My elementary school(grade 4-6) best friend and junior high best friend became best friends in high school and college!

My definition of "best friend" is a friend you hang out with the most during a period of time, not necessarily always being your closest friend throughout. I grew up in WuHan, one of the most populated cities in China. I went to two different schools from grade 4-9. Grade 4-6 I was in Huaao and grade 7-9 I was in Huayi. Those were boarding schools, they weren't close to each other and students were from all over the city. Wherever I was, there was always one friend that I spent the most time with. It's probably because we had something in common, either we liked the same music or movie, stuff like that (It could also be the fact that we were cool and cool people hang out together, at least that's what we thought). In Huaao it was Lee and in Huayi it was Long. Although we're best friends, we're are terrible at keeping in touch with each other. After I left Huao and went to Huayi, Lee and I couldn't really get a hold of each other and never hung out again throughout junior high. Long was my best friend at the time and we hung out a lot until I moved to California to go to high school there.

lost phone coincidence

Hello, This happened in 9th of August, 2014. I studied all night for my exam, then left home early to catch my exam. I was waiting in the bus stop for my bus, when this beggar came and asked for money saying he needed food. I usually either say no to these kinds of things or just neglect them. But that morning I felt like helping to that dude, so I went and bought a bagel for him, he thanked me, while eating the bagel. He sat next to me and we had a little chat about his daily problems, then my bus arrived and I left for my school. I took the exam. After the exam I felt kind of sloppy due to not getting any sleep last night. I went to the bus stop to wait for my bus to return to home. While at the bus stop, I made a phone call. After the call, I accidently put my phone to the bus stop instead of my pocket. Then my bus arrived and I left forgetting my phone on the bus stop. When I got home I realized that I didnt have my phone with me but my home mate opened the door talking to a person who found my phone and asked me to come and grab the phone. So, we decided to meet at a place and I left home.

Small world San Jose

I was traveling for business to Monterey, CA from my office near Las Cruces, NM with flight in/out of San Jose, CA. While refueling the rental auto at a gas station very close to San Jose Airport, I looked on the other side of the pump and there was one of my co-workers from NM -- also refueling his rental auto. However, he was not on business, he was about half way through his two-week vacation driving through various wine-making regions of CA. We just happened to pick the same pump, same gas station, same town and same time.

Birthday coincidence

In light of the familiar birthday problem I often share a wonderful coincidence of birthdays in my family. My sisters were born on the same day of the year seven years apart. My wife also has siblings, not twins, who share a birthday--the same as my sisters'.

Coincidence

Today I was thinking of making website that would collect people's coincidences.

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