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!

Blood calling blood?

We sent our youngest son to a new school in Y3. He immediately made a new friend and they were soon inseparable. One day the friend's father told me he had an ancestor with our name and offered to show me his Family Tree. When he did I was shocked because it was MY family tree. It turned out that we shared an ancestor and that me and my son's friend were in fact 3rd cousins.

my best friend and me

About 30 years ago I was walking with my family in woods near our house in France, by chance we met another couple (he was english, she was french) and they became good friends over a period of time. One day , she told us about her year as an au pair in the UK. Turns out she was lodged in a house 500 yards from my childhood home. It was the house where my brother and I used to go and play with friends, and her bedroom was the room in which we used to play. Although I can't say that strange things happen a lot to me, they do to her. When my daughter was going through a very difficult time she rung me up to ask if there was a problem with my daughter, as she had been woken by the sounds of my daughter crying (my daughter being 100's of miles away at the time and my friend knew nothing of my daughter's problems).

Lynne Sproat

Talking to dog walking friends about a person that I hadn't seen for a few years - within minutes that person turned the corner. spooky!

long lost cousin

For about 20 years I have been trying to get in touch with my cousin, last known to be a G P in the Kingston upon Thames area. I've tried writing to his and his daughter's former addresses, looking in relevant telephone directories and searching in the 'lists of doctors' without success. For some unknown reason I decided today to Google his name, Dr. Charles Henry Wheatley, and straight away about 7 obituaries for him in various local newspapers came up on the screen. He died on May 10th, aged 89 and his funeral was today ! I am now trying to contact his family through the funeral directors in Poole.

Chance meeting in Canada

Between 1997 and 2003 I traveled around the world on my bicycle. When I was in Dakar, Senegal, people told me about a bar there that was owned by a Belgian, called The Blue Moon. Naturally, I went over there one evening and had a few beers with the owner. Two and a half years later I'm in the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec, Canada, it's freezing cold outside and I decide to not sleep in my tent that night but instead pick a random farmhouse and ask if I can sleep in the hay shed. A man opens the door, and after listening to my story we both have the faint impression that we've met each other before. The man turns out to be the same owner of that bar in Dakar, who had sold his bar the year previously and moved to Canada.

Holiday Neighbours

After receiving a very large holiday cottages catalogue with several hundred cottages in we decided to go on a family holiday. After much negioation we decide on one cottage in north Wales a long way from our house in London and after further negiatiation we decided on a date way in the future. When we got the to cottage, that was in the middle of nowhere, we saw the next door cottage was being moved into and said hello and asked them where they were from. Embarrasingly they turned out to be our new next door neighbours from home whom we had not got around to saying hello to, who had booked the next door cottage for the same set of dates. We got to know them a bit better that week.

University Groupings

When I started my undergraduate the whole of the 1st biology intake took part in a lab exercise. We were divided into groups of four seemingly at random and upon discussion I found that all four members of the group (including myself) lived currently in the same small village in Buckinghamshire but we had never consciously met before - indeed two of them had only recently moved there. No other group we asked had any geographical affiliations so this was either co-incidence or a we were grouped together by someone at the department who knew our addresses, though one of group had just moved from Italy and was pretty sure they didn't know his new address. I have never met anyone else - despite it being a common question to come up: where are you from? - who has even heard of my village.

Wrong number (or wright number?)

One Saturday night in the early 1990's I was calling my friend Dave to see if he wanted to go for a few beers. Instead of dialing **** 625184 as I had intended I was to discover I had made a mistake and dialed **** 625185. A woman answered which surprised me as we were both single at the time, after recovering from my surprise I asked if Dave was there to be told: 'no you must have a wrong number but you can talk to me instead' And so I did and after a pleasant few minutes that conversation ended and I called the right number. Some 9-months later I was out for a beer with the aforementioned Dave and some other friends when we became friendly with a group of girls, one of whom was called Ruth and needless to say we hit it off. Being young and more free in will and other commitments than in later life we became in-seperable; after a coule of days the penny dropped and I asked her, did you end up chatting with a chap who dialed your number by mistake last year... yes she had and recalled our conversation in detail. Simon.

Holiday coincidence

In October 2010 my husband and I decided to spend a week in a rented cottage in Wales. Just before we left I bumped into an old friend, Mildred, whom I hadn't seen for some time. I told her I was in a hurry as we were off to Wales and as I left her she called out "did you know Zara (her daughter) was expecting a baby?" We arrived in Wales late in the evening and decided the following day to make a trip to Snowdonia. As we passed through a small town I mentioned to my husband that we needed to buy a few things and asked him to stop at the first shop where he could find a parking space. He went in to do the shopping but because he was rather a long time I went in to see where he had got to. There were a couple of items that I had forgotten to mention that we needed so I picked them up and went to the check-out. As I went through the assistant said to me "oh, you look different today", to which I replied that she must be mistaking me for someone else as I had only just arrived in Wales. She looked puzzled and was obviously trying to think where she had seen me before.

Magic 6

This is very amazing co-incidence with my elder brother, the number 6. even i realized quite a late My birth day is on 15-feb, totals to 6 and his birthdate is 6-Nov!!! My Marriage took place on 31-Jan and his on 06-Feb, just 6 days difference in our Marriage days, not years. His first kid was born on 19-Dec and my first kid was born on 25-dec, again 6 days difference!!!.

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