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!

Chance meetings

My wife and I travelled some 50 miles to visit a garden in Yorkshire. Afterwards we went to a pub in Appleetreewick for a drink. Next to us were a family with whom we started talking. Upon discovering that I was from Bristol, the man asked if I knew Harveys of Bristol. I said yes and I worked for them in their warehouse at Whitchurch for 3 months after I left school before going to University. The man enquired when that was and I told him it was 1965. Apparently he was a wine buyer For Harveys at Whitchurch in 1965, but our paths never crossed as I worked in the bottling plant. Later in the day we went for a meal at a pub near Clitheroe. As we were having a pre-prandial drink, a cyclist came for a drink. We got talking and discovered he'd been at Clifton College in Bristol between 1958 and 1965 while I was at Bristol Grammar 1 Mile down the road at exactly the same time

Small World

Taking photographs outside St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow, just before entering the Cathedral. Absolutely unexpectedly, we met our friends who were just coming out of the Cathedral. Although they live only a few hundred yards away from where we live (Cardiff, South Wales) we don't actually speak to them often. Neither they nor we had any idea about the others' holiday plans. They were just coming to the end of their holiday - A river cruise from St Petersburg to Moscow. We were just beginning our holiday - A river cruise from Moscow to St Petersburg. We were on different cruise lines.

mrs dianne kaufman

this was more than twenty years ago. My husband was going to the USA on business and the weekend was free. He asked me "what will you do over the weekend" I replied I wanted to see Adrian and Sue, old friends we rarely saw these days, living some forty miles away the other side of London. Which I did. No sooner had I arrived when a neighbour of theirs knocked on the kitchen window holding some plants from the greenhouse. I was briefly introduced and he left. The following Thursday my husband is travelling on the plane from NY with colleagues. They are playing cards and a man stops in the aisle looking at the game. After that, my husband and he exchange personal info and when asked, the man says You wouldnt know where I live, it's called Hogspit Bottom, a hamlet in Hertfordshire. My husband said, I do know it, in fact my wife went to visit there last weekend to see old friends. The man said, I know, I met her, drives a red Ford Escort. He was that neighbour holding a tray of tomato plants.

The passenger on the bus

I was living on the South coast of England at the age of 14. That summer holiday, I spent a couple of weeks in a pub about 40 miles away as my parents were training to go into the tade. The pub was on a busy roundabout. One morning I went to the window and looked down. As I did, a coach went by and one of the passengers looked up and we made eye contact. He almost jumped out of his seat; he was a school mate who had no idea I was away for the summer.

Old friends meeting

My father-in-law was a doctor but while he was training during the 1940s in London he contracted TB and was a patient in the hospital he was training at. He then lived in London and later in Essex. In the 1990s, after retiring, he moved to Cheltenham to an old house divided into apartments. He went to introduce himself to one of the neighbours and immediately recognised her as a nurse who had looked after him in hospital all those years ago and he had never seen since.

Sade's album Diamond Life

My sister moved to live in France aged 18 (1968). In 1984 when Sade's album Diamond Life was released I dediced to send my sister a copy (cassette tape) from Ruislip where I was living at the time. I knew she would love it, posted it off and waited for her joyous reply. Just two days later I received a small package from France, on opening I saw Sade's debut album on cassette. I thought my parcel had been returned until I read the enclosed note saying, from my sister, she'd heard this music knew I would love it and sent it as a gift. The tapes crossed in the post and arrived at our respective homes at roughly the same time. Since my sister had lived in France neither of us had ever sent each other music or cassettes. Tears sprang from my eyes as I felt a deep connection to her telling me it was more than a coincidence.

mr

the moon is exactly the same size as the sun when viewed from earth

Odd place to meet

In 1967, while serving as a soldier, I was posted temporarily to Francistown in newly independent Botswana. After a couple of months there, I was drinking in the local pub (one of two) and was in the "back room", an invite only lounge. The room was quite dark and was fairly crowded. While talking to a friend, I heard a familiar accent in the crowd and found my way to the owner. "That accent sounds familiar" I said, "Are you from the Wirral?" Yes, was the reply, from a place called Bromborough and the other person named a street. I told him I used to go to school near Bromborough and one of my best friends at school also came from Bromborough. He asked me who and I gave him a name. The reply astonished me; "He is my next door neighbour"! 8,000 miles from home and I meet my friend's next door neighbour in a place with perhaps 100 British expats. Amazing!

old friend

went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for Christmas with my vegan partner. 2003. I wrote ahead to the Manager to ask if a vegan Christmas meal was possible, and then asked when we got there. It was suggested that we talked to the chef. After all sorts of dancing around, it truend out that the chef was the boy who lived over the road from me whenm I was young. We lived in Sowerby, a hamlet outside Sowereby Bridge. He was Catholic, and I wasn't so we went to different schools. We left Yorkshire for Birmingham in 1957, when I was 7. No contact with the area since. The coincidence was found because we talked. We each recognised the name , and then , gradually, the face. Maybe I have missed a million similar coincidences... He was ill the next day, Christmas Day, but the meal was fine. No contact since.

Rush hour meeting

Travelling at the height of rush hour I was on a crammed platform at Charing Cross, waiting for a Northern Line train which duly arrived and we entered the carriage in the usual crush. I was amazed to find myself face to face with my brother in law, who was already on the train!

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