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!

Finding a lost object

When I was a child I was staying with my family at an Aunt and Uncle's house in Clacton, Essex. They took us to a beach barbecue being held by the Gunfleet Boating Club. Part of the activities included a tug of war competition. While participating in the tug of war one woman fell over and put her hands out into the sand to save herself. She felt something hard in the sand and pulled it out. It was the engagement ring she had lost (and diligently searched for without success) on the beach a few years before. I think she may have lost it at a previous Boating Club event (but I'm not sure about that part.)

Meeting someone in an unlikely place

In 1979 I went on an inter-school coach trip from the UK to eastern europe. I knew none of the other people on the trip (I was the only person from my school) before I went and didn't keep in contact with any of them afterwards. In 1994 I was in London (I live in Norfolk) on a day-trip with a psychology evening class. We were travelling on the tube and boarding a tube train I bumped into one of the people who had been on the eastern europe trip, in the same carriage. He didn't live or work in London and was also just on an unusual visit, to do with his work. We briefly made ourselves known to each other (I had recognised him) then he had to get off at his stop. I don't suppose I'll ever see him again.

Birthdays

My daughter has the same birthday as my best friend from school; my son has the same birthday as her husband!

Stranger on a train

I was on the tube in London when I noticed that a man kept looking at me when I got of I made sure he wasn't following me as his stares had worried me. The following Sunday I went to my young nephew's birthday celebration which was taking place at the hospital where my Dad was. This man was there. He is my nephew's godfather and had been staring at me as he thought he recognised me. (We had only met once or twice some time before.) Had this event not taken place or had I not gone I would never have found out who the 'strange man' was.

Nearly missed dentist appt

4 jan 2012: I woke up early to do some chores before going to work. I was making good progress tidying my desk which had been neglected for about 8 months and so I decided to take the day off work to carry on [probably the only time I have ever done that; something I'd been planning to do over the xmas break]. One of the last items I handled at 2:50pm was a dental appointment card for my annual checkup at 3:45 the same day. I hadn't entered this into any diary or calendar and so nearly missed my appointment. As I was writing this down in my own 'coincidence list' at the time, I recalled that there had been some other surprising coincidence about 2h earlier in the tidying spree but I couldn't remember what it was. I realized that a job like tidying hundreds of objects / scraps of paper is probably a very rich hunting ground for coincidences.

Number coincidences

A work project involved extracting 3 items from a list of 1754 numbered items. Two of the extracted items were numbers 1749 and 49 [i.e. they have 2 digits in common]. The 3rd was number 617 and I noticed that 1749 is an integer multiple of 600 MINUS 17. [3 x (600-17)=1749]

Two people share same intials

The end result of a 3 month project at work (large global corporation) was purchasing several products. The purchase orders were issued by 2 different people, both with the initials L.M.

Lovers & Friends of December 1

Had no idea this guy was pursuing to date me. After the second time of hot pursuit of asking me out on a date We decide to date, little did I know that he was born & raised in the same place as my mother. To make a long story short, we have the sane birthday & exactly 10 years apart! Sweetest thing, we Truly Love each other & Engaged!! ♡

Dream Prediciton

My freshman year of college, there was an exchange student that I was dating. During our Spring Break, I went home to stay with my parents. Waiting for him to call me one day, I laid down on the couch to take a nap and had a dream. IN my dream, I was asleep on the same exact couch, and was woken up by a phone call. I answered it and it was the guy I was dating. What felt like a second or two later, I was really woken up and my phone was ringing. It was the guy I was dating. I have never really figured out why or how that happened, but it has stuck with me ever since.

winifred Atwell

My good pal Derek, and i were visiting the Somerset levels prior to this awful flooding, to do an afternoon of birding (we r not twitchers ),so we were randomly zig zagging the area around Shapwick and West Hay,and Tadham moor,during our drive we were talking about old sixties female boogie woogie piano players,and Winifred Attwell came into our reflections,as Derek mentioned the name, a smallish flat bed truck came around the bend and on the front was W.Atwell in very bold type,Whooaa,ok you may think,,,that was at about 10 in the morning,having mused on this for about 20 mins we continued our day and ended up about 4 ish on a new nature reserve near Catcott,sitting having an afternoon snack,and blow me a much bigger truck came by with the same logo.....what can you say?

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