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!

Small world

I had a change of manager start work whilst I worked in Birmingham in the NHS. I soon learned she used to travel every other weekend back to her home in Ireland to be with her daughter who was attending university there. In the week she stayed with her parents in Birmingham. After several weeks I had the chance to get to know her a bit better. I asked her where in Ireland she lived. I was surprised when she named the same county where my dad was born and grew up in the first part of his childhood. So I asked her what town she lived in in that county and it turned out to be the same town as my father, a very very small town in the north of Eire where everybody knew everybody. We were both surprised and excited and questioned each other further as we were sure our families must have known each other but we didn't seem to be able to make too many more connections, realising we were a good few years apart in age and we never really did care to listen to all the stories our grandparents and parents told us about the good old days in Ireland. Still, none of my close family live over there anymore. And my manager wanted to know where they moved to.

Bright side of life

Just thought of another coincidence. I shared an office with a colleague. We had a radio in the office that we sometimes turned on. I would always prefer the classical music station (ABC FM in Victoria, Aus) to work to while he always preferred one of the old eighties rock stations. This was a bit of joke between us and we'd tease eachother by turning on our preferred stations. One day we were chatting and joking around and started singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python's Life of Brian. My colleague suggested that there would be better singing on the radio and turned it on. It was on the classical music station and guess what was playing? - Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. In all the years I've listened to ABC FM I have never heard that station play anything but classical music. Needless to say we both were stunned.

Good taste?

I was looking for some earrings for my sister for Christmas. I went into a boutique store in Melbourne where I lived. The store sold specialty crafts and designs and had a range of unique earrings by local designers that I had never seen elsewhere. A pair of silver earrings caught my eye along with about twenty other designs from a particular designer. I looked at the other earrings by that designer but kept coming back to those earrings. I then walked around the store to look at all the other earrings by other designers but I kept being drawn back to this particular pair. I bought them for my sister thinking I'd love them for myself. Forward to Christmas morning in Adelaide. My sister opens the earrings I've bought for her. She looks at them and I tell her that they're good ones and not to lose them. She hands me a present and impatiently tells me to open it. I open the present to find the exact same earrings with the same design, except she bought them in a boutique store in Adelaide and had never seen them elsewhere. Shared good taste??? While I know families often share the same taste these earrings were not available in mainstream stores.

Toon night-out

An old friend whom I'd not seen for around ten years phoned to say that he'd be visiting another acquaintance and perhaps we could get together for a meal and some drinks. As I live on the outskirts of Durham and they would be in Sunderland, it seemed natural to agree on a Toon (Newcastle) night out. We agreed to meet in the bar of Newcastle Station's hotel bar at 7.30. I had a couple of ways I might get there. I could catch the bus into Durham and then get the train north. But I had vague recollections of another bus, the X25, that wound its way through a number of villages - including mine - to Gateshead interchange. Once there, I could hop onto the metro (underground system) train, only a single stop away from Newcastle Central rail station. I checked the bus timetable, found that it should work, and set off at the right time equipped with a good book - the bus journey takes the best part of an hour. Once arrived at Gateshead, I went down the escalator to the underground train platform. I could hear a train approaching, but couldn't see any direction signs. I decided to take a chance and jump on it.

Relations/names

I'm Ben SMITHY, 68, and married ROSEMARY in 1965. My mother is alive and my father died in 1985. I'm researching ancestry and bought a copy of my fathers Birth Certificate from Government records that arrived today, 23/04/2012. I specified the Registration District as Middlesbrough, the year and quarter of registration and gave the specific Volume and Page references. The Government Birth Certificate Order Summary shows the correct information but the actual Certificate shows the Sub District as Stokesley (now linked to Middlesbrough). Otherwise it gives my father's correct name , Quarter of Registration (Third) and year (1919). The coincidence is that the Mother's name is ROSEMARY SMITHY. There is no link between the two families.

A mistaken identity.

A couple of years ago I was shown an old photograph in my local newspaper. It was from about 1964-1965 and showed the teams from a school football final from that year. One team was shown above the other on the photograph. The person who had the photograph pointed me out in the line up but told me that the captions on the photograph were reversed and that each teams picture had the names mixed up. I thought no more about this until a few weeks later when my wife and myself were at some friends house. This couple are good friends and we have known them since about 1980. They showed me the same photograph and asked if I had seen it. I replied that I had but that the names of the teams were reversed. I was asked to look closer. Mine was not the only name I recognised on the photograph. On closer inspection I found that my friend and I were standing in exactly the same positions in said picture and that on the captions my photograph carried his name and vice versa. Spooky or what ?

Watch batteries!

A few years ago (can't remember exactly when, sorry) I was having a meal out in Ripon with my partner, Reg, and a good friend, Nicola and her partner Michael - when I noticed that Michael had an identical wristwatch to me (well, he had the men's and I had the ladies version - the only difference was the size of the dial). I showed him my watch for comparison and noticed that it had stopped. I said something about the battery having lasted quite a long time, and Michael said he'd never had to change his - he then looked at his watch and it had also stopped!

Enola Gay

A simple situation from a few years ago. I am sitting in my bank reading one of the newspapers provided for customers. There is piped music playing. As I read an item entitled ‘Enola Gay pilot dies’, I become aware that the tune I can hear in the background is Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s 1980 hit Enola Gay. This ‘surprising match’ had no personal significance for me, but it is interesting trying to work out the probability of such an obscure news story coinciding with a such a unique musical reference.

A painting and a postcard

In May 1999, I was involved in a reconciliation project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. A meeting had been arranged for our small team at the home of a local community leader in Nazareth. As we entered his typically Middle Eastern living room, I was interested to see something typically English in pride of place on the wall – a large print of Denham Lock and Mill by Constable. This was unusual, but the coincidence lay in something I had brought with me. In my bag I had some little gifts from home, including a small selection of postcards with English views. Most were photos but 3 or 4 were reproductions of paintings. I flicked through them and found that one was Denham Lock and Mill by Constable. I wrote a greeting on the card and presented it to our surprised host.

the universe provides...

I am growing a belief that when you are are on the right track, you are inundated with coincidences, but when travelling away from the right path, annoying or terrible things happen. The past couple of months have clearly illustrated this as I've had a terrible couple of years, feeling quite disappointed in human kind and fed up with myself for following false dreams. I took a punt and drove to a new town I'd never been to before, with very few possessions, and sleeping in the back of my car. Within days of arriving I was lent a tent and found part-time work. Over the following weeks, however, I merely needed to think of something and it landed in my lap. People would come over and offer me items or they would be left at the campsite by someone who had traded up. A TV, a radio, a fan, an oven, a caravan, a pair of shorts, a chair, a great permanent campsite, a fridge, a great paying permanent job.... the list goes on. My needs aren't great in the big scheme of things but the arrival of items has certainly boosted my standard of living and made me feel a great deal more positive about human nature.

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