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!

Papaya Salad

This morning I threw on a youtube video while eating my breakfast. The video was an introduction to Hmong food. They mentioned a dish I had never heard of before: "Papaya Salad" . Less than two hours later I picked up a comic book I had never read before and what do the main characters eat in the first chapter? "Papaya Salad." Later that day I decide to treat myself to chinese takeout. What's on their menu? "PAPAYA SALAD." This dish popped up a lot in my day for something that I've never heard of before.

Nans funeral - watch stopped working

So today was my lovely Nans Funeral. My family were all waiting outside my Nans for the funeral procession to arrive. That morning I put my watch on, and notice it was half an hour late, on checking again the second hand wasn’t working. It had stopped at 10.30am. I thought “oh well I’ll leave it on”. While waiting for Nan to arrive my Sister who was standing next to me checked her watch to see how much longer we had to wait. My Sister started tapping her watch, and then said “my watch has stopped working”. I laughed and said “so did mine at 10.30am this morning”. My sister looked at her watch and then told me, “oh my god mine stopped at 10.30am as well”. I’ve no ideal what this means if anything at all. But what are the odds. I would love this to have been a message from Nan, but feel stupid even thinking that.

Meeting someone

I was taking the lift and this woman was waiting beside me. At the same time both of the lifts stopped at the level we were waiting at.I went into the lift at the left and the woman chose the left lift.Both of us alighted at the same level,going our seperate ways after reaching.I went to a bookstore and shortly after,the woman came to the bookstore too.I stayed put at the place I was while she went further back in the store.I decided to go to another section of the bookstore and saw her again,she was right beside the section where I was.However right after I went,she had got her items and left.After I decided to leave the store after a long time , I walked out and creepiest part is that I saw her again as she was walking towards my direction.This is just too scary because the probability of both of us leaving at different times and crossing paths at the same time is just too low but it happened.

Cursed First Love was Foreshadowed for a Decade

Finally, after being fed up with dating I met someone online. INSTANTLY, I felt extremely comfortable in his presence. That was rare for me — extremely rare. Chemistry was insane and we fell for each other very quickly. Two weeks in we discovered our link. When I was a child, my family went through this extremely messy affair/divorce with my aunt and uncle. She cheated on him and I had been used toward it, babysitting my cousins while she snuck off. My parents/grandparents strongly believe it all had been influenced by my aunt’s best friend in the neighborhood, who was also divorced and thriving in the single/divorced life. This woman had become a household/cursed name. I only knew the first name, not the last name. I heard awful things about her. Nothing ever ever good. I had met her once when I was babysitting and remembered her Polish accent. As for my aunt, it was a messy divorce. My aunt is now estranged from the family. I haven’t seen her, my uncle, or my cousins in over a decade. Two weeks in, this young man I was dating tells me that he had lived in this specific neighborhood. I told him the last name of my family members and he INSTANTLY knew who I was.

Car without plate

I was on the phone with someone who had just gotten a new car and I wanted to know if he has his license plate but didn’t wanna ask and be nosey. As we spoke on the cell he got stopped by a cop and left me on his Bluetooth. I can hear the cop ask him about his temporary plates. The phone call, My curiosity of wanting to know about his plates, and the cops stopping him all happened in about 3 minutes. My question was answered by the universe.

Fisherman's Friends

We just watched the film - Fishermen's Friends on DVD, a film about Cornish fishermen. It finished and the TV switched from the DVD player to live TV and the programme that is currently on is a documentary about Cornish fishermen! - 'Cornwall: This fishing life'

White hat

We lost our son's white hat last year. We looked for it for a while and asked around if anyone had seen it or if we had left it at someone's house but couldn't find it so forgot about it. We hadn't thought about it for months but last week I saw a picture of my son wearing it and said to my husband that it was funny it never turned up, we agreed it must have fallen out of the pram somewhere and been lost for good. 2 hours later I video called my mum and she was wearing the white hat! She had just found it down the back of a sofa in the room where my son had slept when he stayed at their house months earlier.

The football game.

My brother, who lives in a different city than me, had two tickets to the Buffalo Bills football game and he asked me if I wanted to go as I lived close to Buffalo at the time. I said yes, and we agreed to meet outside will call and then we would go in together. Well, I waited until kickoff and he hadn't shown up so I waited some more. He was nowhere to be seen so I thought I'd buy a ticket from a scalper and just go in and watch the game. I found a reasonable ticket and bought it and headed into the the game but right before I went in he came running up winded and said he was stuck in traffic. So my brother gave me his ticket and I proceeded to sell my other ticket cheaply to someone looking to get in. I asked the guy I sold my ticket to if he was a Bills fan and he said, hell yeah, and we laughed. My brother and I found our seats and sat down. Then I noticed someone sitting down right next to me and it was the guy I sold my scalped ticket to! He had the ticket right next to mine! The game was nearly sold out so everyone had to sit in the seat the ticket said. It seemed a very weird coincidence.

Jeopardy & English Class

For my English class, I had to read Robinson Crusoe. I listened to the audio book with my family, and we finished the book around 8pm. About 30 minutes later we started watching the episode of Jeopardy that had recorded at 7:30pm, and, lo and behold, there was a question pertaining to Robinson Crusoe. This wasn’t the only coincidence, though. This often happens when we watch Jeopardy, but it was even more strange that, along with the Robinson Crusoe question, there was another question that directly related to something my mom and brother were talking about earlier in the day.

Amazing Grace in Croatia

Summer 2018. I was travelling through Croatia with a friend, and we had arranged to meet my flatmate at the time, Seamus (I was living in London) and his friend in Split. We arrive in Split, meet Seamus and his friend and all go check in at a hostel. After a few days, my flatmate and his friend decide to leave Split to go to some music festival in a nearby town. My friend and I stay in Split and we meet this American girl, Grace, who had just checked in at the hostel. She’s really nice and we spend the evening with her. My friend and I were supposed to leave Split the next day to continue our trip, so we say bye to Grace and exchange each other’s numbers. Fast forward 2 weeks, I’m spending the rest of summer in France, where I’m from. One night, I get a text from Grace, saying she’s in my house in London!! Turns out, a few days after I left Split, Seamus and his friend came back from their music festival, checked in at the same hostel again, met Grace. Then, 2 weeks later, she was flying back from Croatia to New York, with a connection in London, but she missed her flight in London.

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