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.

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Well I Never!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

02

When the millenium dome opened in greenwich my daughter was a teacher and it was decided to take a couple of classes of children there. She decided to go with another teacher a few weeks beforehand to have a look round and to see what the children would be most interested in. As she was in the queue waiting to get in someone tapped her on shoulder. On turning round she saw her cousin who lives about 80 miles away and hadnt seen for a few years.

GREEK HOLIDAY

My brother & his girlfriend went on holidays to Greece. A week later I got a late offer of a cheap flight to Corfu,which I took up and flew to Corfu with a friend a few days later. After a few days in Corfu ,we took a flight to Athens where we stayed for a few days.We then took a ferry to IOS, an island in the Aegean. On the first night in the local town,we walked down the main street and just happened to look into a bar as we were passing, where we saw a woman reach down to get her handbag.She looked a bit like my brothers girlfriend .We went in, and it was her! together with my brother.We made no arrangements to meet,they did not know I was on holidays,much less in Greece. I had first flown to Corfu in the north of Greece ,had flown on to Athens on a whim, and equally went on to IOS on a whim. They were about to leave the bar,thats why she was reaching down to get her handbag, had we passed there 5 minutes later they would have moved on to somewhere else.

Distant relatives are friend's best friends

My father, who grew up in London, had a cousin from Cheshire who married a Welshman and settled in S Wales. We never saw them. I went to university in Cardiff and during the first week made friends with a girl from Sussex who shared the same lodgings. She started going out with a fellow student who she eventually married and we were all friends during uni. He was from south Wales and it turned out his parents were best friends with my father's cousin and her husband, and the two families frequently went on holiday together.

bicycle theft

i dreamed my bike, which i had locked at oxford rail station on the way to work, had been stolen. when i got to work i told my colleague my dream, and he mentioned he had found a bike saddle bag on the road on his way to work in london. no big deal. when i got back to oxford station that evening my bike had not been stolen, but the saddle bag with all the tools, had been!

Scorpios

In the 1980s I played in girl pop band. Three of the 5 of us were Scorpios. One year, at Diana the sax player's birthday party, the first 11 people to arrive were Scorpios! I was also born on my father's birthday so we are both Scorpios.

Spanish Police Station

In the 1980s I worked for Grove Dictionary of Music as a picture researcher and my job involved a lot of overseas correspondence. 10 years later while on holiday in Seville, our hire car was broken into. At the police station we met two American women who had also suffered a theft that day. In the course of conversation we discovered that one of the Americans and I had been in correspondence over pictures of the Composer Lou Harrison. We had never met so would not have recognised each other, but got talking and found our connection.

Decades

I took part in a weekend workshop on my 40th birthday. There were 42 people, men and women at the weekend. At one point I revealed my 'significant' birthday only to discover that among the group there were two other ladies with the same birthday. We were 40, 50 & 60 on the same day, it was a lovely coincidence. The workshop had no particular draw for significant birthdayers!

Workmates.

Over 40 years ago my mother worked with a young girl in an estate agents in Kent. This girl got married at the age of about 18 and had a son about a year later.She used to tell me about this and how the girl brought the baby to see her in the office. I lived 300 miles away at the time in Newcastle on Tyne where my daughter was born so never met them. Time passed and my mum lost touch with her. I moved back to Kent when my daughter was 5. About 12 years later when my daughter was about 17 she got a new boyfriend who she eventually married and had 2 children with. He turned out to be the son of the girl mum had worked with, so we became related through marriage. Unfortunately my mum died before they married but had got to know him and spoke to his mother on the phone. So now Nikki and I share grandchildren 40 years after my mum and her met.

chance meeting

In the 1980s I worked at West Midlands Blood Transfusion Service. I knew the director - an Iranian - quite well. I used to help with stats from the computer systems even went to dinner at his home a couple of times. In 2012 my wife and I (who also worked at BTS at that time) were at a Proms concert (Bach B minor mass I recall) when, in the interval, while we were taking some refreshment in one of the corridors, who should walk by but the director we had known all those years ago. We had travelled from Worcester, he from Tehran. We spoke for a few fleeting moments before separating for the concert to restart.

Storm Petrel

Some years ago a friend, then resident in New Zealand, visited Stewart Island off the foot of the southern tip of South Island. At the shore edge, he found a dead storm petrel, which had a ring on its leg. Being a bird enthusiast, he returned the ring to an appropriate authority in the UK. A few weeks later his parents, also bird watching fanatics, attended a weekend seminar for 'birders' at Aberdeen University. Over a glass of sherry at the welcoming party, they met a man who told them enthusiastically about his passion for bird ringing ..... and , yes, to cut a long story short, this turned out to be the guy who had placed the ring on the storm petrel ! The final twist, was that the ringing was not done in New Zealand, but in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, about 3 months before my friend found the bird dead.

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