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!

Twice in ten minutes

About fifteen years ago I was sitting in a very small cafe called the Honeydew in Pushkar, India and the man sitting opposite me was reading a book. The book had a beautiful blue binding and decorated cover. I commented on this to the man and struck up a conversation. He was American and told me that it was a book of poetry by Rumi. I had never heard this name before so he spelled 'RUMI' in capitals on a piece of paper and placed the paper on the table as I thought that I might take it to a book shop and perhaps buy one for myself. He left. A Japanese woman came into the cafe and sat down opposite me where the American had been sitting and looked at the paper. She seemed confused and a little scared. I said, 'Hello...' and picked up the paper. She replied, 'Hello... my name is Rumi...' We both starred at the piece of paper. Spooky!

Other side of the world, same house / girlfriend.

I was traveling in Australia and sharing a house with two local women. I was walking in the town with one of my housemates when she stopped and called out a friend who was passing. She intorduced me to Matt, who was also English and had recently vacated the room that I now occupied. On speaking to Matt, whom I had never met before, I discovered that he not only came from the same city as me in the UK (Southampton) but that we had also, both had a relationship with the same woman (Helen) in the UK.

Birthday and birth place coincidence

In 1986 I went to work in Xian, China. I met a man with whom I subsequently had a 22 year relationship. In the early days of our relationship we discovered that we shared a birthday (August 17th). I was born in 1946 and he was born on my 14th birthday in 1960. When I saw his passport I discovered that he was born in Aylesbury, where I was born. On our return to England our mothers met and discovered that they had both had their babies at the Gables Nursing Home.

I in 8 million meeting

I was crossing Leicester Square in the centre of London, and was - quite literally - thinking to myself how nice it was to be in a city where the sheer number of people meant it was so extra ordinarily unlikely that you could possibly just bump into someone you know that it wasn't necessary to consider the possibility and how nice it was, for once, to be part of an anonymous crowd. I live in a small town in Scotland and was enjoying the contrast. I heard a shout behind me. A shout of my name. I turned to find someone I had worked with more than 10 years earlier, who I had not seen or heard of since and who was also wandering aimlessly across Leicester Square. They had just been thinking how odd it was to be in a city of 8 million people and have no chance of seeing a known face. We spoke for a few minutes, catching up on our lives and ending by agreeing that if bizarre coincidences didn't happen it would be a far stranger Universe than it is.

Someone from home at Suva airport

In 1986 I was travelling home from Papua New Guinea via Fiji, Hawaii, California and New York. There was a delay of several hours in Suva airport. A fellow passenger asked me where I was going. I was going to stay with a friend in Hawaii. He said he was going back to his house in England. I asked where he lived. He lived in the same village as my parents - Butlers Cross in the Chilterns. He offered to deliver a letter for me the following day. Some years before, in 1972, I had met some people with a Butlers Cross connection in a place far from home (Brazil). Butlers Cross is a small village.

Someone from home in the Amazon

In July 1972 I was travelling alone in Brazil. I got a passage on a cargo barge carrying jungle rubber and billiard tables travelling from Porto Velho to Manaus on the Rio Madeira, a tributary of the Amazon. There were a few other paying passengers. I struck up a conversation with an elderly Brazilian couple. They asked me where I came from. When I said England they asked which part. When I said Bucks they asked if I knew a town called Princes Risborough. I told them my parents lived in a small village a few miles away, Butlers Cross. They brought out a photo to show me. It was a picture of their son with his English wife and parents in law. They were standing outside a house within walking distance of my parents' house.

Car Registration Plates

I bought my car in 2005 and my son bought his in 2011. Both vehicles have same last 3 letters in the registration number : WXD

Phone coincidence

About ten years ago, my mobile phone was unlocked in my pocket and it typed in a random number and called it. i only realised what had happened a few minutes later, when the person I had called by accident decided to phone me back to find out who I was and what I wanted. I was surprised enough to think that I had randomly typed in a working phone number in my pocket and then called it, but as I was speaking to this person, I also recognised the voice and realised that it was somebody I knew - an old school friend of my sister. There was never any point when I had her number, and I could see from my call record that the number had been inputted accidentally via the keypad, not accessed from my contact list.

long lost key

Early in 1990 I started a new job in Cumbria which came with a ground floor flat. This flat had a door of a shared hallway and a back door out onto the street which had no key to its Yale lock. No one had seen this key as the flat was converted as part of the re development of the site (which used to be a Brewery) many years previously and so I only used the door as an exit as I couldnt regain entry. Later the same year I joined a team of volunteers in the town (which I'm still with!) and made many new friends, one of which was the Team Leader who was a BBC Local Radio broadcaster. One day we agreed to meet up at my flat for a coffee and when I gave him directions he said that he knew where it was as he thought that he used to work there. On his arrival he confirmed that many years before, my flat was for a time, part of a small BBC radio studio and he used to work in it. On looking around he said he remembered that the back door was the one he used regularly and when I commented that I had no key, he laughed and said he would have a look at home.

Are you "Gas Man" or Mouse?

When I was a student, in the days before student loans and student debt, I rented a room in a shared house. It was very cheap. It had to be as we got very little grant money to live off. The result was plenty of sub-standard accommodation available for students. I think I paid about £10 a week. It was an old terraced house. Very draughty and no central heating. There was a one inch gap under the back door in the kitchen and a strange smell. We often had mice problems, one running across my bed with me in it on one occasion. The good old days, how we laughed. The gap under the back door saved our lives it later emerged, as the strange smell was a permanent gas leak emanating from the gas cooker. It became evident one day when I lit the gas and a tiny gas flare emerged from the side of the gas burner rather than the burner itself. I called the gas board out and the gas man took the cooker apart to find a dead mouse under the top panel that fitted around the burners. It was curled up in the insulation like it was asleep. Gassed to death. The gas man isolated the cooker and condemned it.

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