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!

Living down the street from myself.

I've lived in a small town in Alabama for 20 years. It wasn't till my last birthday, April 13th 2013, that a friend of mine came to me to tell me she almost got in a fight with a girl she works with over me. Not understanding I asked how. She said, that after she attended my birthday party she posted it on Facebook. The next day a co-worker started asking why she was attending a party she wasn't even at. My friend replied that she in fact did and showed her the pictures. The co-worker stepped back and said that's not possible. She asked why. The co-worker said my husband had his birthday yesterday as well. She went on to add that his name is also Brent Carlson. At first, I assumed this was a joke, but after she showed me his Facebook page I had to believe it. I contacted this other Brent and found out that he lived not more than about 15 min. away. This is still hard for me to believe since I've only know a small handful of Carlsons, an even smaller handful of Brents, and barely anyone with my exact birthday. The fact that these requirements all met at the same time is hard to believe, and that that person is right around the corner is even harder.

A spy or a crossword puzzle maker?

Sixty years ago today, a four-letter word appeared as a solution in The Daily Telegraph's crossword that was to have repercussions that have reverberated down the years to today. The four-letter word was Utah, innocent enough you might think, but in May 1944 a word pregnant with meaning. Utah was the codename for the D-Day beach assigned to the 4th US Assault Division. A coincidence, surely? Admittedly, in previous months the solution words Juno, Gold and Sword (all codenames for beaches assigned to the British) had appeared but they are common words in crosswords. But then on May 22, 1944 came the clue "Red Indian on the Missouri (5)" Solution: Omaha - codename for the D-Day beach to be taken by the 1st US Assault Division. On Saturday, May 27 it was Overlord - codename for the whole D-Day operation.

Gingerbread House

20:17 - the same evening as the Ginger Bread Man coincidence and the TV runs George Clarke's Amazing Small Spaces is on and guess where he visits - a 'Gingerbread House'..........I am beginning to think I maybe Hansel....

Godwin's Law

Following on from 'The Gingerbread Man' - my channel surfing other half switched channels to find THE BUNKER was on. During my conversation about vegetarianism I had alluded to the way animals are treated as being like the way the Nazi's treated the Jews,this also had cropped up in a previous conversation today about an artist pouring molten aluminium in ant's nests. Someone had posted that Godwin's law had been proven pretty quickly - that is - the propensity to bring up Hitler during an online conversation,which indeed I had done twice before THE BUNKER came on - which was indeed about Hitler! Oddly though I would only expect this sort of occurrence to happen once per year - it actually happened twice in one day - which tends to suggest that these situations occur more than we actually expect.

The Gingerbread Man

After a long winded and heated debate with a meat eater about vegetarianism - they decided they needed to attend to their gingerbread that was presumably cooking - I decided as a mocking end to the conversation to add a picture of a fearful gingerbread man being diced to death to show that 'even ginger has feelings'....!! At the very moment I posted the picture - FRED CLAUS the movie was playing where Vince Vaughn is snowballing Paul Giamatti and remarks on him stuffing gingerbread into his mouth! Strange......???!!!

Same bith-date in the family

My parents were married on 19th of Baishak, I was born a year later in 19th of Baishek, and my brother two years after in 19th of Shrawan.(Baishek, and Shrawn are first and fourth months in the Calender, Nepali)

Fancy meeting you here

This coincidence starts with myself travelling from Melbourne, Australia to My Thuan, Vietnam to visit a construction site where I met a man from New Zealand, who had been working in Sydney. Then we parted thinking we might never meet again, until... Twelve months later in Hong Kong for a stopver en route to the UK I went to a Rugby Sevens match with a friend who lived in Hong Kong. The Rugby match was in a stadium that seated 38,000 people and we had two seats in the mid-tier seating. The man from New Zealand arrived in Hong Kong for a weekend to attend the Rugby Sevens and had bought his ticket from Vietnam, and his ticket was for the seat directly in front of me (out of the 38,000 available for him to have been given). Perfectly possible but how to calculate the probability???

11.12

I don´t habitually look at digital electric clocks on walls of houses , but today one caught my eyes:12:22 ! I hardly had time to enjoy the fun of this coincidence (three "2"s! ) because the numbers immediately switched to 11.11. I did not believe my eyes until coming to awareness of the date: 11th of November. -First I thought this little story would be perhaps more impressive, if the time had been e.g. 22.22 or 11.11. But then I asked myself if it had been more, or less impressive if the clock first had shown, say, 10.00 or 03.33, and I decided: LESS. - For, as it ACTUALLY happened, the DECLINE from "2"s to "1"s (from the line of three "2" to four "1"s) simultaneously signified an INCREASE in density - a switch to a denser coincidence (first three same numbers, now four same numbers in a line. ) - It is in this "dramatic sense" (decrease= increase ) that I could hardly envisage any other four numbers than 12.22 as a "prelude", "leading note" to 11.11 . * ---This was the "story" that I published on the 11th November.

Meeting someone for the first time and finding that they knew one of our old friends

We went to dinner at the home of one of my husband's work associates. Also at the dinner were a couple of their neighbours, who we had never met before. The conversation turned to favourite holiday destinations. We told them about a place in France which is not a very well known area for British holidaymakers. It turned out that they knew the place and when we said we'd been introduced to the place by some old friends, it transpired that they'd been introduced to it by the same people.

simultaneous events/telepathic

have had quite a few, always involving something to do with calling someone/texting someone. I experience it more with mobile phones compared to landlines I think. Most recently, I phone my dad (I hardly ever call him as i normally only speak to my mum.) He said he tried to phone me at exactly the same time as I called him. The creepiest one was a few years ago I was at a tutor after school, sitting in the work room doing an exercise she had given me to do. I suddenly had a thought out of nowhere that a particular friend of mine called Jessica was trying to contact me at that exact moment. She hadn't told me earlier that she was going to try and phone me nor did she usually phone me as we'd normally only ever speak whilst at school. I looked at the clock, was about 7.15pm. When my mum picked me up later I asked her did my friend Jessica try and phone me (phone our house phone) at around quarter past 7. My mum said yes, she had phoned at that time asking to speak to me. Sometimes I get times when I know 2-3 seconds before I receive a text that i am about to get one, it's just a feeling that I get inside of me that I'm about to get a message.

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