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!

Sea Mail

In the mid eighties I moved to the Netherlands, a couple of years later my father found a crude toy boat in his workshop which I (or possibly one of my brothers) had made as a child. Having hollowed out the deck he then placed a letter to me, sealed in a glass tube, in the cavity and covered it with an aluminium plate which had my Dutch postal address punched into it. Once the boat had been fitted with a rudimentary plastic sail and painted bright red, it was launched from the coast of Suffolk in a light westerly wind. Speaking with my father on the phone he would somtimes jokingly enquire if the letter had arrived. Then one day, about six months later, the head of a fishing fleet from Urk rang the doorbell of my postal address in Amsterdam (I didn't actually live there). He delivered the letter and the boat! One of his fishing boats had hauled it up in the nets from the bottom of the Northsea on the Dogger Bank, about 130 miles northwest of the Netherlands. I didn't live at my postal address but was "coincidentally" there that weekend.

Would a falling branch make a sound if nobody heard it?

On a summer afterrnon I was walking in Epping forest. when there was a rustling, crashing noise in the canopy about twenty yards in front of me. I looked up and watched a large branch fall to the ground in a couple of seconds, maintaining a horizontal orientation all the way down. The brach was about two feet thick at its base. What are the chances of me witnessing the fall? If a two feet thick branch is fifty years old, is it 2 seconds in fifty years? What are the chances of the branch not snagging or tipping on the way down?

Vicar appears on television - twice!

I was using a TV to watch back a film that I was editing. I finished editing at the end of a speech given by the parish vicar. When I turned off the editing software, the picture of the vicar was replaced by the picture being broadcast on BBC1. The very same vicar was delivering a sermon on "Songs of Praise". For a little while, I was trying to remember where I had shot the footage!

Meeting someone 100 years older than you. To the day!!

My daughter was born 29/9/03. My wife brought her into work to show my colleagues after three days. (I work in an operating theatre) As my wife walked out of the door and I checked in my next patient I was stunned to learn that my next patient was also born 29/9/03. Basically on her 100th birthday she had slipped and broken her hip. So what are the chances of meeting someone exactly 100 years older than yourself or your daughter? Please help me to work it out Thank you Chris Dobbs Chrisdobbs16@gmail.com

Citroen DS4 with personalised number plate.

I bought a Citroen DS4 demonstrator for my 70th Birthday to my amazement the 4 initials of my name were included in the number plate. That car was certainly meant for me. What was the odds of that happening?

Consecutive birthday dates in a family

My susters birthday is on the 27 th May & My mums birthday is on the 28th June, my brother is the 29th July & mine is the 30th of March. What is the coincidence of this ???

Meeting a person randomly around the world

Whilst traveling the world, my wife and I learnt to scuba dive in Phuket, Thailand. We spent a week with another chap from the UK. Months later we went skiing on a whim in southern Argentina right on the tip in a place called Ushuaia. We bumped into Dave again as he walked past us. Not necessarilly that extraordinary. However we managed to do it AGAIN in the Gallapagos months later. These are not common places for tourists to meet! What are the chances of that?!

Which co-incidence is less likely - a family at war!

My Brother-in-Law (Trevor) and I often trot our two co-incidences out and ask anyone who cares to listen, which is the least likely. Mine: I live in Cheshire and I was talking to a friend of mine, an amateur film maker, who was describing his latest script. To get a better understanding of the characters, I asked him who he saw as the male lead. He said the actor John Thompson. The next day I was walking down the front at Blackpool (on an annual trip) and I, quite literally, bumped into John Thompson. B-i-Law: Trevor was working at a house in his home town. The phone rang, the homeowner answered and said to Trevor, "it's for you!" It was a friend and after they had their conversation Trevor asked him how did he know he was at this particular address. The caller, a friend of his, said he didn't. It turned out that the caller had mis-dialled by one digit and reached Trevor on the one occasion that he was at the mis-dialled number. I can not tell you how much I would love to know the chances of both these, but particularly if mine is less likely.

Meeting a childhood friend in a remote location

In 1983 I was serving with the RAF in the Falkland Islands, my service had it's own messing location but one day I happened to be on another part of the island when someone I knew from my hometown of Barrow, who had joined that area's local infantry regiment, strolled into view to have lunch. We hadn't seen each other since joining our respective armed forces some ten years earlier & then met 8000 miles from Barrow! I've never forgotten what is probably very co-incidental.

Late Announcement

2012. While I was clearing out my loft (I live in North London), I noticed a piece of newspaper poking from under the insulation. It was attached to the rest of a whole newspaper, a Croydon and Surrey local from 1942. Many of the pages included sponsored ads urging donations for tanks, which would bear the borough's name. There were also pieces on rabbit, bee, veg and hen keeping clubs, and other activities giving a strong flavour of life and times of the 40's. I gave it to my mum for nostalgia and she rang me a few days later; rather excited. She had read every inch that I had passed by, including the extensive personal columns where she had found the announcement of her late sister's wedding. I am certain that I had never seen it before, and it had been my mum and her sister who had cleared my late aunt's flat when she died, and they hadn't seen it before either.

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