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!

'He's my manager'!

I went to small grammar school in the East End of London. There were only about 350 boys and the same number of girls. When I joined in 1963, the boys and girls schools were separate, but occupying the same building! It wasn't difficult to know everyone of the other 349 boys by name and some were easier to recall than others, for a variety of reasons. Geology was a popular A level course and I took it myself. There was a boy a few years older than me (maybe 3 or 4) who took the course and I heard over the years that he had studied the subject at university and had gone on to become a practising geologist. Rumours were that he was working in Canada, but this was never confirmed and none of the former pupils that I knew were in direct contact with him, although some had also become geologists. I was never 'friends' with this boy, as he was older than me and I very much doubted that he would even remember me. In 1989 I went to Calgary in Alberta, Canada to visit my sister-in-law and brother-in-law (my wife's sister and her husband). These people were all from the North-East of England and the Canadian couple had lived there since the early 1960s.

two of each of us in the world

I have two cousins (brothers). I had not been in touch with them for many years as my uncle and aunt had divorced. My uncle remained apart from them too and had no contact with them, of these facts I am absolutely certain. I met my cousins (and their sister) at my Uncle's funeral, my uncle having re-established contact with them one or two years before his death. We discovered that my elder cousin had named his son Bryan (different spelling and it might be argued that he had a distant memory of me), but the younger cousin (born in November 1952, whereas I was born in February 1952) had named his first two sons James and Kristian, whereas my two sons were James and Christien! Taking into account our unusual surname there are (I believe) only two of each of us in the world!!

broken ringpull

As a student my flatmate had come across the word tolerance in a business textbook and had asked me what it meant due to the fact I was studying engineering. Being students I used the example of beer can ring pulls to explain. If the lid is stamped to thick the ring pull breaks without opening, stamped to thin and the lid breaks ruining the can before it leaves the factory etc etc etc. Of course my very first can that evening the ring pull broke without opening the can. </p> <p>Manufacturers will have data on how unlikely can failures are but I think I most enjoyed the indefinable juxtaposition of me using it as an example making this quite so coincidental.

Family connections 1 + 2 + 3

1. My second marriage is to a former mature student with whom I had no prior connection. She was born in the UK whereas I spent my first 20 plus years in South Africa and subsequently lived and worked in London. Sometime after being together we discovered that her first cousin and his wife in Canada had been having fertility treatment with my first cousin, a fertility expert, long before I met my wife. My cousin also grew up in South Africa and eventually emigrated to Canada in his late 20s. (Other detail not publicised here because for obvious reasons). 2. Also links emerging from my marriage. My wife has a second cousin in South Africa whose first marriage broke down. She eventually remarried and we met her husband-to-be on a visit to Cape Town. It turned out that her husband was the cousin of a South African whom I met for the first time in London and with whom I had shared a flat in north London, many years previously, when I was a fairly recent arrival in the UK. 3.

Multiple family events and apt anagram

(1) My maternal grandfather Albert JEPSON's two siblings (not twins) were born on 5Jun and his two daughters also on the 5th day of an even month (Muriel 5Aug, Elsie 5Apr). (2) Albert was born on 4Jun1896 (a leap year); he and his brothers Bert and Harry were all born on the same day of the year in different years. (3) My four grandparents died in the same month (October) in different odd-numbered years. (4) My mother's bus pass said 'EXPIRES 31MAR1994'. She died two days later at 2:15pm (+/-2 mins), precisely the same time of day that my Dad died in 1974. (5) My Aunt Elsie's three surnames (JEPSON/SUTTON/LENNON) ended with the same two letters and were the same length. (6) Born in a maternity hospital in November, I was unintentionally given a name with the apt anagram 'Feel foggy? Hurry home!'.

Astronomical ratios

Not a story but concerns three objects we are all familar with! (Gm = Gigametre.) Sun's distance / sun's diameter = 149.598Gm / 1.392686Gm = 107.42. Sun's diameter / earth's diameter = 1.392686Gm / 0.012742Gm = 109.30. Moon's distance / moon's diameter = 0.384399Gm / 0.0034742Gm = 110.64. Surprisingly close?! From 'Feel foggy? Hurry home!' (anagram)

Voynich Twice

I'm reading Dan Simmon's 'Olympos' which has robots called 'Voynix'. Yesterday I read the section where the character Harman asks himself what the antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich would have thought of the robots now named after him. I went off and read about him and the Voynich Manuscript. Today there is a BBC website article about the 'Voynich Manuscript', Which I think is a fairly obscure subject. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22975809

Leon Goossens and his dropped diary

I lived with a little old lady whilst at university and she kept a newspaper clipping; I can only vaguely remember it, but perhaps by posting someone else will know the story; it concerned the famous oboe player, Leon Goossens. The clipping told how, when hurrying to an appointment one day in the rain, he dropped his diary. It fell into a puddle and the binding disintegrated. In those days, newspapers were often used in bookbinding and, as the binding came away Leon found himself staring at the newspaper announcement of his own wedding a great many years before.

457 Royal Artillery

Circa 1950 in Portsmouth, Hants, I volunteered for and joined 457 HAA Regt RA (TA); HAA = Heavy Anti-Aircraft. I left when called up for National Service. In 2004, as a volunteer in Hillier Gardens, north of Southampton, Hants, I chanced to pick up a piece of litter close to the roadside. It was a formal, typed, Army Memorandum dated 22 October 2004, subject 'SIGNALS EQUIPMENT' from a senior NCO (named) in '457 (HY) Bty RA'. Google tells me HY = Hampshire Yeomanry (I had first thought it meant heavy), started in 1998 as a close air defence unit, using missiles, based in Sothampton: http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/457_(Hampshire_Yeomanry)_Battery Also, my 457 HAA had been disbanded on 31 March 1967: http://www.serfca.org/Default.aspx?tabid=122 ADDENDUM: I had kept the memo in a handbag I use in the Hillier Gardens for pencil, papers, tree label ties etc. In June 2013, just before I learnt of this website, I put the bag on the car roof and drove off from home. Some kind people noted it on the roadside, picked up papers which had blown everywhere, and returned it intact to my home.

Inter-rail connections

Summer 1977, I bought an Inter-rail ticket - one months travel on trains in Europe. On the train from Calais to Paris I met an Australian couple on a similar scheme. We went our own ways in Paris and I travelled round France, Italy and Germany. I arrived in Amsterdam about 3 weeks later and went to a small hotel. As I was checking in, a voice behind me said "Hello Malcolm!". It was the Australian couple from the first train journey and they were staying in the same hotel. It turned out they had chosen the hotel from a guide book - the same guide that I had looked at - loaned by a fellow traveller on the train into Amsterdam.

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