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!

AC 428 and Oil Rigs

When I was a teenager I used to have a fantasy about owning and driving a certain exotic sports car - namely an "AC 428". This was an extremely expensive and rather beautiful hand-made luxury car, with Italian bodywork and a huge American V-8 engine. Only about 100 were ever made, and production ceased shortly after the 1970's Oil Crisis. I was obsessed by thoughts of this car..... a bit silly, really ,,,, but my ambition of owning such a machine had a high priority. I desperately wanted one. One day an obscure advert in the press seemed to jump out at me. I sent off for an information pack about "How to Get Jobs in Oil Rigs", thinking that if I worked at this for a couple of years I'd be able to afford the car. The guide cost a couple of £'s. Now it so happens that I am someone who is probably the least likely person ever to work in such an environment. I just don't do that sort of thing, but the thought of buying that car sort of drove me. The advert just seemed to scream at me. I wanted that car so badly. The information pack duly arrived. I read it and forgot about it. Years later I moved to London.

Number 28

The number 28 has come up so often in my life it's very creepy. I was born on 2/28, my ss number starts out 028, address is 228, my anniversary w my partner is the 28th, whose birthday is 8/2. Weird ay?

Another lucky find

I have a few things stored in the crawl space under the timber floor of my home and while recovering something recently, I noticed a nail punch that was lying in the dust. It's quite possible that it had been there since the house was built in 1968. A little rusty on one side, but the other was still bright metal. I slipped it into my pocket and later gave it a superfical cleaning. The following weekend my neighbor asked if I had a nail punch I could lend her. "Funny you should ask!"

A lucky find

When I was about 15 I became ill with bronchitis and the doctor's advice was to stay in bed for several days. A neighbor was kind enough to give me a dozen old issues of the American "Popular Mechanics" magazine which I read from cover to cover. Among the hints in the magazines was to cut a short length from a garden hose, slit it along one side and put it over the wire handle of fuel and other large cans to make them more comfortable to carry any distance. Some months later, having recovered, I set about mowing the yard. However the mower fuel can was empty. There was a shop with a petrol pump out the front about a mile down the hill and so I walked down to it. About half way I recalled the hint about the piece of garden hose and the wire handle. I resigned myself to a sore hand on the way back and continued. At the bottom of the hill, just around the corner from the shop I noticed something colourful on the side of the road. It was a piece of garden hose, exactly the correct length and slit along the side. I slipped it over the fuel can handle and went my way rejoicing!

Over 5,000 miles away!

Circa 1980, I lived on the top floor of a London block of flats. The only neighbours I knew and regularly visited for afternoon tea was a family who lived on the ground floor. My work took me to Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia as it was then) for about a month. Sitting in a Harare bar, I was invited to join a group of local Spanish Africans where I struck up a conversation with a young woman. One thing led to another and we had a sexual relationship for the duration of my stay, during which time she invited me to a family party where, conversing with her mother, I discovered that I was ‘friends’ with my London neighbour’s niece.

Neighborly encounter

A few years ago I was in Italy for a week with a group of people from my college. While I was shopping in a small part of Rome that wasn't a very busy place to shop I ran right into a girl who when I looked up I noticed was my next door neighbor from my hometown. Turns out she was staying in Florence with a group of people from her school and they decided to go shopping in Rome for the day. Neither of us had any idea the other one was in Italy.

12.34

This morning I stumbled across a blog about looking inside people's bedrooms and finding out about their character and why they had certain belongings. The text attached to one of the posts talked about a guy who mentioned that whenever he checked the time during the day it always seemed to be 12:34, and since then he's taken a picture everyday at 12.34. I found this really interesting as I am an art student at Goldsmiths, currently exploring the realms of coincidence and synchronicity and trying to merge them into my art practice, so I made a note of it. I later went to the library to research/find more inspiration, only to check the time and see it's exactly 12.34! My heart kind of stopped slightly as I thought, that's weird... I then carried on researching and stumbled across a link to this website. I thought It'd be interesting to tell my little story, only to see on that on the opening page, is a picture of a digital clock reading 12.34! If that's not coincidence, I don't know what is!

friend email

Last night I couldn't sleep and was thinking about an old friend I drifted away from a couple years ago. I really wanted to email him, but I didn't because it was the middle of the night. This afternoon when I logged into my email, there was a message from him.

old colleague

A colleague asked me to check if I had a personal email address for someone we used to work with who left the job we knew him through 6 months ago. I typed his name into the search box in my email and was about to press 'go' when an email came in from him from his personal address.

Inevitable Romance

First Thursday: I don't go to the bar after work as I usually do with my coworker. The next day she says she met the man of my dreams and tells me his name. Thursday two weeks later: I go to the bar, see a cute guy, decide to go home with him. I think he'd been expecting his place to be empty, but his housemate who I immediately see and think is much more attractive than the housemate who'd I'd come home with was there and so introductions were made. I am floored by the fact that I've run into the dream guy on accident, because my plans were to go home with his friend, not find him. The 3 of us make small talk, and I ask him why he hadn't been at the bar earlier. His response was that he wasn't a fan of it, the time he was there two weeks ago was his first and last time going there. Now I'm amazed that we've run into each other at all, and it's clear to me that he finds me as intriguing as I do. Diego and I stay up talking through the night and we begin dating and it lasts for 2 years. We discover that prior to this "first" encounter, we'd actually met at a wedding 3 years earlier.

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