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!

The Hotel industry is un-predictable at the best of times....

Just watched a program on coincidence on BBC4 and it inspired me to share something that happened to me recently! I'll try to explain it is well as I can.... I work on the reception desk of a hotel. This hotel is called the 'Royal Hotel' in Oban and it is owned by a company called 'Strathmore Hotels'. (They have another 6 hotels in the company) I had just started work at 2pm and was going through the arrivals due to come in. I had noticed the name 'Mr Hume' amongst my arrivals. Knowing that there was a Mr Hume that was a manager at one of our other hotels in the company, I asked my manager "Is this Brian Hume, the general manager of one of our other hotels." My manager replied "Not that I'm aware of". (At this point I should note I have never met this 'Brian Hume - I've worked for the company for 15 years and had merely heard is name often enough to remember it!) About half an hour later someone approaches the desk and hands me a laptop case and asks me "Could you please pass this on to Mr Hume...".

Stunning telphone coincidence.

Several years ago I was sales manager of a used car dealership. </p> <p> We had just bought in about a dozen one year old cars from a local company. </p> <p> It was my job to decide what to do with these vehicles , I decided to sell a few of them on to another dealer for a small profit and keep the others to put in our showroom. </p> <p> Looking through my little notebook of contacts I saw the name and telephone number of a dealer that I hadn`t spoken to for at least three years but I knew he could be a buyer of the sort of cars i was offering. </p> <p> Picking up the phone to call him I realised there was no dialling tone -- somebody was on the end of the phone. </p> <p> Suddenly a voice said " Hello , is that you Graham , this is Trevor " </p> <p> I was stunned .

Same name same date of birth

I was travelling on the British Plymouth ferry to Roscoff in Brittany in the summer of 1973 when I heard my name being announced asking me to go to the pursers office where a passport had been handed in. When I got there I found another chap with the same name, Alan John Collins. This was not particularly surprising (I have found out that there are two people in the town where I now live with the same three names as myself), but I was surprised when I saw the same date of birth on his passport: 2nd May 1944. I don't think he was born in the same place, however; or else I would have remembered that, I'm sure!

1. Same house 2. SanFrancisco pub

1. I rang a friend's shop in Inverness to tell him I had moved house from Edinburgh to Temple in Midlothian. His assistant answered and offered to take a message. I started to tell her that the house was called 'Russell Cottage'; she interrupted and asked if that was 24 Temple Village. I said it was and asked how did she know. It transpired that she used to live there and the house was called after her brother. 2. My wife and I had just finished a walking holiday in the Sierras in California; on getting to San Francisco we really fancied a pint of beer. We walked into the first pub we saw. My wife went up to the barmaid and said:'Oh hello Jane'. They used to work together at the Open University in Edinburgh.

George Box & Bayes.

Kind of sad. I gave talk in Madison, WI April 4, 2013 on Bayes's Theorem History, & mentioned local history of George Box, in my PowerPoint, and There's No Theorem Like Bayes's Theorem, Valencia song as best ever, to me at least. Next day his obituary appeared; he'd died Thursday week before, at his home near Madison. Obituary mentioned There's No Theorem Like Bayes's Theorem.

A colleague in Cambridge sold land to my friend in Sussex

My life long friend married a solicitor who worked on divorce settlements. They live in Sussex. When I started a new job in Cambridge, a work colleague told me she used to live in Sussex. 'Oh', I said my friend lives there, then she told me the area, my friend lives there, then she told me the road, my friend lives there. She told me as part of her divorce settlement she sold some of her garden to her solicitor, the one who is married to my life-long friend. My lifelong friends built there house on the land and the colleague's daughter lives in her Mum's house next door! This was in 1985 and both families are still there.

Sisterly love

My sister was at University in Sheffield. I was at our parents home in Newcastle, feeling very depressed being in a post-university jobless, moneyless state. I decided to call my sister because I was feeling really miserable and she was the only person I could think of. I rarely call my sister, at that time mobile phones did not exist and our relationship, although intimate when we met, was not at all close in terms of frequency of contact. I phoned her at the shared house she live in. Her housemate answered and said she wasn't in. Five minutes later my phone rang. It was my sister calling from Sheffield. She had been walking down the uni corridoor between lectures and 'had an urge' to phone me. It was totally bizarre - we very very rarely phoned each other as I mentioned.

Reoccuring "coincidences"

i'm a female. My best friend (who is male) and I keep having these simultaneous events. for example if i were to check my laptop once in a while and i had opened a chat with him, it would say that he's either typing or has sent a message the minute i checked my laptop. We also finish tasks at the same time and if i had a certain food for dinner, within a day or two he'd have the same thing (this would be without either of us having any knowledge of what the other had eaten). Does this mean something or is it just pure coincidence?

Valedictorian and salutatorian -- 2 of the same

Lived in Illinois until I was two and then moved to Iowa when my parents got divorced. My family (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, dad) all remained living in Illinois. At 14 my mom remarried and we moved back to the school district I use to live in that was in Illinois. Always had been a decent student (A's and B's) but I never worked harder than I had too. After my freshman year of high school I got my report card and saw I was ranked first in my class and shared it with 12 other people who also got perfect gpa's. Over the next 3 years I remained ranked first with a perfect gpa, but the list of people at the top dwindled until with one semester to go it was only me and one other person left in the race for valedictorian (both with perfect gpa's). I went to a small school and so I knew my challenger well but as the last semester went on we found out some interesting similarities. Both named Josh, born on the same day, in the same hospital in rooms right next to each other. We both are runners, math and science was our specialty, and in the end I edged him out by .00343 points on the gpa scale (we were born 3 hours and 43 minutes apart)!

Chance in a million

When my father was alive he spent his retirement on the Hamble at Warsash to be closer to the great love of his life: boats. Whilst seldom getting around to paying his own boat much attention he was always involved with other peoples, helping them with various jobs on their vessels which is what seemed to please him most. One evening a yacht hove into view crewed by a single man, dad leapt at the opportunity to help him tie up at the visitors jetty and learned that he had come up the Spanish coast and was heading up the west coast of England into Scotland, then back home across the Atlantic to Canada. He obviously appreciated the help Dad had provided and took him to the quay side pub for a pint by way of thanks. By the time Dad made his way down to the jetty to following morning the chap had departed. About a month later the Canadian was tying up on the Isle of Muck having made his way up the coast as planned. One of the locals came down to help him and as they were securing the yacht, the Canadian took a long look at this man.

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