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!

Choosing a password

Choosing a password: This happened several years ago. I was changing my password at work a couple of weeks ago and got perturbed because I've run out of easy to remember passwords. I simply could not think of a new password. My mind wasn’t a blank though. Somehow my mind swarmed with ideas that were mostly connected to a book I had just finished reading Occult Symbolism in Alchemy and the Arts by Herbert Silberer. It was a remarkable book, although it is a description of certain kinds of experiences that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone that hadn’t had them. I can remember when the book would not have had any meaning to me. Having had the experiences it seemed to me my mind formed 'kinship' between events that had happened in my actual life and the ideas in the book. It was a process that I observed, the way I would observe a movie, a detached kind of observer-ship of my body and mind. I’ve found out that it’s very difficult for me to put ‘that kind of experience’ into the kind of words this elite (to me) author had written but I did recognize they described the nature of my experiences exquisitely well.

Beethoven, Einstein and Mark Twain

In the late 1980's I was waiting for my bus, near a T-shirt imprint shop near the Pike Plade Market in Seattle when I noticed a large image of Einstein's head on one model. I'd begun to read some quantum physics authors (Paul Davies, David Bohn...) and had read 1,2,3, Infinity by George Gamow when I was in my mid twenties (1957) after my husband put it aside. But I had another reason for pausing to think about the 'head' of Einstein, so I decided to buy the T-shirt. As the clerk wrote the sales check I heard myself tell her that I'd had an unusual experience with Einstein, his name had begun to occur in my mind when I was very young when ever some association to Beethovens' name or his music played anywhere, came to my attention. But even odder was the addition of Mark Twain, so that I never 'thought' of Beethoven individually, three names occurred into my mind: "Beethoven, Einstein, and Mark Twain".

Late for Dr. Phil

Here's another one just for fun: This happened a few years ago: I was working then, on my way home, wanting to see the second part of a Dr. Phil program. but I was stuck in traffic. I glanced at my clock which read 3:14 at the moment. That's not unusual it happens so frequently. that I feel very odd that it just happens to be 3:14 when I glance at a clock. "Oh, well, I'm not going to make it." I thought, resigned but grateful that the show repeats later in the evening. Traffic moves ahead a bit and the auto next to me pulls ahead. his license tab is: 314 TOO. 314 TOO!!! HONESTLY! I'd like to know what his story about 314 is. 314 is the first numbers of pi.

When the world seems to know where you are, where you've been, where you are going, what you are thinking or have thought at some definite point in Time in your past.

When I was in my late 40's I was driving home from a basket ball game, late at night when a DEAD END sign ahead caused me to turn so that I drove onto a railroad exchange, totaling my car. My head was slammed against the top, all my inner soft content thrust upwards, against my throat, I couldn't breathe for a few minutes. Later, I had to figure out how I turned ONTO a DEAD END street rather than away from it, (for personal reasons it was important to prove I wasn't dumb) so I went back to the place and found out this was the only street end that didn't have a barrier to prevent someone from having the accident I had. The DEAD END sign was intended to prevent semi rigs from entering that short road end, because there was not enough space to turn around. I'd never taken that street before! That night several conditions existed that caused the street to look like any thru street. Those conditions only existed for a couple of days. I was told a huge pile of material had been removed from the street end; it has been there for more than a decade, but it had been removed the day before.

Parallel Lives

Started working with someone by chance and there was this immediate connection. Unknown to each other at first, we both brushed it off and then the coincidences shot off the chart. Now that we are actively sharing all of this information it's becoming mind numbing how wide and deep these coincidences have developed. This is what prompted me to start to research if there are others out there and i found this page. The only major differences right now are that I am male, she is female. Our birthdates are only days apart, yet 18 years separate us. It gets down to the level of we actually dress the same with the same quirky traits. Can almost finish each others thoughts, yet have only known each other for a couple months. I am trying to find any information I can to help us understand.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." ?

I have been living in G. for 20 years, but very often go back to H. I am often there, yearly 3 or 4 times... A year ago I went back - again; and there are some tensions in me, and some of these tensions surely originate from - have to do with - H. So i go back and would live there in a small flat. I feel very tense, I try meditation for about 20 or 30 minutes, it does not help at all and i decide: "you take a walk!" It is 1o o´clock in the evening, it is a small flat and I go out and decide to take a walk (what usually helps ). It is 1o o´clock an uphill way, uphill I walk. Nobody is on the street. It is a normal street , enlighted both sides, left and right by metallic electric lightning posts. So I go. It is enlighted both sides, the distance of electric lightning posts cca. 5o meters. It is summer and what makes me in the moment really nervous: the grasshoppers´ crrrp, crrrp, crrrp.. A tropic noise what could be a source of pantheistic joy , but in this moment: no. (Suffocating, boring. ) So I walk, I walk up .

Wish come true

Strange but true ------------- Twenty years ago I was in my house getting ready to leave for an important meeting which started promptly at 5pm. But since my car was in the garage for a few days I would have to walk. But as I left the house I noticed that it was already nearly 5pm, and it would take me at least 7 minutes to walk to the meeting -by which time the doors would be locked. Undaunted, I thought to myself: "If Nature wants me to get to this meeting (which was a group meditation session), then Nature will provide the means to get me there on time". So with that thought in mind I confidently strolled out of my house and started walking towards the main road. Minutes later a small white car came hurtling down the road and stopped just inches beside me with the passenger door open. Thinking it was a neighbour offering me a lift I looked into the car and said: "Thanks for stopping, are you going to the meditation centre?" To which this total stranger replied: "What meditation centre? No, I was simply driving down this road, and as I turned the corner my passengers door flew open and I'm stopping to close the door.

3 kids born the same day different years

my 3 youger children where also born the same day August 12 different years 1994, 1995 and 1997

A Curse on Your Family?

A distant relation of mine, a great, great... uncle was John Dalton, the famous scientist. A family tradition in the past was to name the first born, if it was a boy, John Dalton and our surname. </p> <p>My grandfather's brother, first born, was called John Dalton xxxxxxx and died as a young child. My fathers brother, again the first born, was called John Dalton. He died in a car crash on his honeymoon. </p> <p>His surviving widow, later married my dad's other brother and their first born was a boy. He was given the names John Dalton and he sadly died in his first few years. </p> <p>I only learnt of this co-incidence as a teenager when my grandmother told me one day and said she had begged her son not to choose that name and she regretted naming her own son John Dalton. She believed there was more than a co-incidence in the three deaths of first born males in three generations of our family.

Psychic arithmetic?

Last year, one Saturday afternoon, my wife asked me how old someone was if they were born in 1995. I subtracted 1995 from 2013. '28' years old I said. 'No, hang on, 18 years'. Her cousin's 18th birthday was approaching and she just wanted to make sure so she could buy a card. Later that day we were out shopping and I suggested going the opposite direction we were walking to go to another shop. It was then that I saw a banner outside a garden centre type shop, celebrating 18 years of being in business. '1995 - 2013. 18 year anniversary'. This was the simple sum I had thought about earlier in the day (and had got wrong at first). Very strange. What had made me change direction so that I would spot the banner? Pure chance. At the time though, I was convinced it was something more than that. That it was a psychic message of some sort.

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