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!

password choice coincidence

As seen here... http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/cracking-pin-codeeasy-1-2-3-4-130143629.html contribution/comment from royalbird 4 days ago What's funny is that once I used four letters from the street name of an address I lived at as a little girl and the four digit number to that address. When I was helping my mom with computer stuff at that time, she had the exact same password. We hadn't ever discussed it and we had lived in a lot of places while I was growing up so it was funny that we'd both used bits of an address from the same place in the same order.

pool side coincidence

Last month, my wife and I randomly got a room at the hard rock casino in Biloxi Ms. I had to work the next day, and later on she decided to take the kids down to the hotel pool. There she started talking to a lady that was letting her child play as well, after awhile they started to chat. My wife asked where the lady was from; she said from a little town called pumpkin center about 150 miles away. My wife said that is where she was from, said her parents still lived there, and that her dad helped run a church in town. The lady knew the church, and knew my father in law also. The lady had then said that she and her husband had just gone on vacation. They had gone to Grants Pass Or, and the red wood national park for the 4th of july. We had gone to the red woods, and Grants Pass on the those same dates, 2000 miles away.

Playing a composers music and then reading about him in a magazine.

One day I was playing the piano. I have always loved the music of Chopin and felt that we had a connection emotionally. I was thinking to myself that if there is anything in Astrology, like me, he should be a Piscean. I rarely buy magazines and have no idea why on the day, having just finished playing a Chopin Prelude, I decided to go to the local convenience store and buy a magazine. When I got home I flicked through the pages and came to the Astrology predictions for the coming week. The head line was: "This week featuring Chopin - a Piscean".

Death could not be cheated.

In 1977 my parents had tickets to hear their favourite opera singer in concert in Bournemouth. They had never had this opportunity previously and had many of her recordings. On the way to the concert my mother was taken ill. My father vaguely remembered where there was a hospital, as we didn't live in Bournemouth, and managed to get her to casualty quite quickly. With a great deal of effort on the part of the doctors, my mother was eventually rescucitated. The concert tickets were given to the hospital staff. About ten months later the same opera singer was again giving a concert in Bournemouth, which was quite unusual, and once again my father bought tickets, but my mother was never destined to hear here as once again she was taken ill while away from home and died two weeks before the concert. I always thought that on the first occasion my mother had just cheated death and was never meant to go to that concert.

Bruge Hotel Manager turns out to be old colleague.

In 1974 I took my mother on holiday to Bruge for a few days. We stayed at converted priory near the centre of the town. At dinner on the first night my mother found a caterpillar in her salad and called the waiter over. The Hotel Manager came to our table to apologise. To mine and my mother's amazement he had been the manager at a large London Hotel during WWII where my mother had worked as a receptionist and despite the years that had intervened they immediately recognised each other. Following this, we had the most fabulous meals each night!

Holiday photo contains neighbours friend

On holiday in Prague in 1995 I took a photograph of Gold Lane. On my return home I was showing my photograph to the lady who lived in the flat below me when she declared:"Oh, that's my best friend in your photograph."

foretelling?

It was between 2001 and the end of 2003 that I used to attend with my little sister a couple of anime club meetings at a local movie theater that happened twice a month (on sundays). Now the anime crowd at my city in that time was not exactly a big one, there was about 4 or 5 clubs that would compeet for members and the regular meetings would be attended by a crowd of perhaps 150 at the best of cases, on a city of 8 million people. On those meetings I had made friends with hardly 3 or 4 girls and I would chat now and then with them through the internet. It was one of this girls that introduced me (through the internet chat room) to a boy that was part of one of this club´s organizers and this must have happened by the early 2002. I made virtual friends with him and we would talk regularly about our hobbies and lives and we would plan for a meeting that would always get postponed for one reason or another.

Unlikely meeting with old friend

I nearly always travel by bicycle in central London, but once in a while I use the tube. One day I took a train northbound on the Bakerloo line at Charing Cross station in the evening rush hour. When I entered the platform, it was very busy. A train came in, but it was heavily loaded, so I decided to take the next train, as it was shown as being only a minute behind. As the train doors closed, just one other person was left standing on the station platform, having also decided to wait for the next one. Extraordinarily, it was an old friend I hadn't seen for 5 years. We used to go to the pub to have a drink after choir practices, until he got married. He acknowledged that he also rarely uses that station. Ivan

Financial Risk

Dear Prof. D. Spiegelhalter, I acknowledge your great contribution to understanding 'Risk' in the different aspects of human life. I would like to know whether you have some recent work on financial risk management--A key element of concern for academicians and practitioners in financial markets modeling. Looking forward to attending your talk on the 25th of Sept. 2012, at AIMS. Thanks, Kind Regards. Michael Kateregga. AIMS Masters student.

Postcard

I was moving a friend into her new flat and at the same time helping a mate move his girlfriend to a new home. When we arrived at my mates girlfriends new home they were annoyed that the sellers had left furniture there. I thought it was quite good stuff so asked my friend if she wanted any furniture. She needed a bedside cabinet so I took one and delivered it to her. At the bottom of the cabinet she took out an old postcard that had been sent from New Zealand. It was a picture of a cable car in Wellington. She was excited as it was a cable car her dad used to take her on as a treat when she was a child. We then looked at the date the card was sent and, coincidentally, it was sent in 1987 - the same year she left New Zealand for the UK.

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