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!

Met People on the same Paris trip as myself, on an online server with thousands of people.

My friends and I play Minecraft. We were on one of the biggest servers with hundreds of thousands of people, at which point we joined a random lobby. We were chatting to a random girl, when we found out that she and her friends lived in the same city as us. Not only this, we found out while trading social medias that we went on a school trip to Paris at the same time in October half term 2019 and were in the SAME HOTEL.

Old coin showed up at my house in Utah and my parent's house in Texas

My grandfather collected coins. Seven years after he died, I bought a house in Salt Lake and had little more than a sleeping bag and a couple pieces of furniture to move into my place. On the third or fourth day in my home, there was nickel in the center of my living room dated 1918--the year my grandfather was born. I thought this was a strange coincidence, so I called my parents in San Antonio, Texas and was excited to tell them about this weird thing that had happened. When my parents answered the phone, I said, "I have a very strange story to tell you." My mother and father immediately cut me off and said, "No, we were just about to call you, we have a very strange story to tell you." We argued over who should go first, with me thinking, "Let me hear about a discount you found at Costco, and then I'll tell you my awesome story." Their story: That morning they were going to go for their morning walk around the neighborhood, and when they raised the garage door to leave, on the inside of their door was a 1918 Silver Dollar.

Met old neighbors decades later

I grew up in New Jersey, then joined the military and moved around to many different places. 20 years later I moved to Las Vegas and joined a local artist cooperative. The first meeting I attended there was an older couple I thought looked familiar. When I introduced myself we realized they were my neighbors from my childhood home in New Jersey.

Zodiac killer message decoded

I read a current news article about how one of the letters the zodiac killer sent was recently decoded. Just a few minutes later I was doing a crossword puzzle, and one of the answers was "zodiac" and the very next clue was "decoded"

Birth Coincidence & Number Re-Ocurring

My Eldest son Peter was born on the 07/09/1987, he shares this date with 2 ancestors, one was the birth and one was the death. Mabel Victoria Baldry Born - 07/09/1897 Harriet Hoggart - Death 07/09/1920 there is also another cousin born on 07/09/90 all 3 are female, but this is on the Paternal side of my family. And also seem to have the number 7 in many area's of my life. my children's birthdate's are 7th September 1987; 14 December 1989; 21st March 1991 house number is - 52, 5+2=7; there are so many instance's of where the number 7 shows up, that i know its not my imagination. !

Times 3

Ok so I have 3 that are related. In high school I dated this guy. Then I got married to someone else, then divorced. 22 years after I graduated, I was at church. When the service was over and we got up, he was in the seat behind me. A year later we were married. His birthday also happened to be the birthday of my oldest child’s boyfriend and the adoption date of my youngest 2 children. Less than 3 years later, my husband was killed in a motor vehicle accident. My husband hit a tractor and was killed instantly. The date that he died was the 32nd anniversary of the death of a close friend of mine. When I was 11 my friend, also 11, ran his dirt bike into the side of another vehicle.

Notebook index coincides with life index

I number my notebooks. Prominently and quite artistically on the front cover. The day I turned 50, I started notebook No. 50. I filled no. 49 to the last line, but, honestly, I did not cheat this.

RJKIV

There is this guy...after meeting we discovered that our lives have many parallels. He’s a IV like Sr Jr III Then IV. My father is III and my brother is a IV. My grandfather is a Sr...and my cousin is an IV. We live in the same city and we both moved here 10 years ago but a month apart. Him from Buffalo and I’m from Philadelphia. I lived in Buffalo before my family moved to Philadelphia. I currently live on Buffalo Dr. and moved there 2 months before meeting him. We are both the youngest of 3 children. There are a lot more parallels between us but they are very personal so I won’t share them. But the craziest one is we met 2 years ago but 5 years ago my manager actually hired his daughters mother to be my work partner/counterpart. As she used to work in the same field as me but she didn’t take the job.

Hear/read same word.

I have had the seeing/hearing words at the same time for about 20 years. Twice I have written them down. Initially it averaged about 3x's a week. Currently, it is averaging more than once a day. 309 times in the last 273 days. An example that I use to explain to others; I was typing the name of the color paint to the builder of our house, corral fence. On tv, a story of penguins. Evidently a group of penguins is called a corral. ( While I was just now typing this, it froze up on the word house (hous). I started watching tv and the word house was used. I looked down at my phone and it was unfrozen...house.

Once in a lifetime and not a good thing

My boyfriend has a habit of lying. And he isnt very good at it. My job is to investigate fraud so I am adept at spotting cues. I found out by accident he took viagra. He buys 2 packs of 4. They last approx 2 months. Last month he stopped buying 2 packs and seemingly only had 1 pack of 4. I thought this was unusual and suspected he was keeping a pack out of the house. I suspected recently he might be cheating. But dont have any real evidence just my instinct and my cues. And the changes in his behaviour regarding the viagra. Then he brought home 2 different brand packs each with 4 tablets. They do not contain the boxes. He disposes of them before he comes into the house. One was his old brand and another was a new one. Odd i thought. But dismissed it. On the same day he bought them he bought his bottle of whiskey from a shop near the house. A few days later i needed to post some parcels from this shop. I dont usually go to this shop. There are 3 ways to get to this shop. I chose the way i wouldnt think of going. In doing so i walked past parked cars. Then there was a gap. There by the side of the road was an empty box of the same brand viagra. The new one.

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