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!

My dream came true!

I suddenly dreamed about a friend I hadn't spoken to in about 6 months. I honestly don't think I've ever dreamed about him before or after. When I woke up I saw a message from him on my phone. What a coincidence!

Dec 10th

Dec 10, 2015 is the date that my husband of 30 years passed away. My younger sister had cancer and passed Dec 10, 2019. Tomorrow is Dec 1st and my mother is saying she is near the end. Her skin was pale and thin like paper today. Bruising on her thin hands. Will she pass on Dec 10th? I will write more if this happens. Giving me the shivers. I am getting anxiety over this. My old blind dog has got me through all this. Will he be there for me when my mother passes? LB

Birthday coincidence

My father’s birthday is Aug 9. His youngest brother’s birthday is also Aug 9. My father’s oldest granddaughter’s birthday is 4/18. His youngest brother’s, oldest granddaughter’s birthday is also 4/18.

Strange Timing, again

Thanksgiving day can be emotional for me. I have lost three important men in my life all within a week of thanksgiving. This year we lost our dog on nearly 17 years the week before. I’d been in good control of emotions most of the day and felt ok with the world. We watch tv a lot in the evenings but always try to be in bed by 10, we are rarely, if ever, up later than 10. Thanksgiving this year, 2020, our daughter left after dinner so my husband and I settled in to watch a couple episodes of new series. It was early enough and we wanted to squeeze in 3, but after 3 it was just after 9 so a third episode would put us around 10 for bed which was ok since we were off tomorrow. We started watching the third episode and about 10-15 minutes in decided I wanted a snack, a Klondike bar, my husband had just been thinking about getting an apple then changed his mind cause my idea was totally better. We pause the show and I get up and open the freezer to get the bars then out of nowhere a grief outburst hit me like a train and I sobbed uncontrollably for at least a half hour. I just could not regain my composure no matter what I tried.

Scientific publication synchronicity

While being a maths graduate student I was enrolled (as a participant) in a phase-3 clinical trial in 2006. Several years later, completely coincidentally, I had become a clinical trials statistician myself. In 2009 I was in charge of the data analysis of my first trial; a phase-2 clinical trial in a completely different field of medicine. The trial's results got accepted for publication in The Lancet in 2010. Reviewing the draft I accidentally discovered the results of the phase-3 trial were being published in the same volume of the journal. So I was in The Lancet at the same time for my first trial as an author and for my first trial as a study participant. Shame that the h-index only takes into account the former: the latter has nearly as many citations. I've not been published in The Lancet since, in either form. As an example of statistical synchronicity, I find this rather amusing.

I know when people will die but at the same time i dont its weird

so lets start with my grandma on my dads side so basically i rarely visited her but i started thinking about her dying for a week straight and i had no idea why i mean i had dreams and visions everything and then this one day on the morning of school i had this dream she passed away and when i got home my stepmother said she had passed and we sat at the top of the stairs crying and my stepmom was like why are you crying im surprised you care about her that much and i just stared at her i couldn't tell her that i was crying because I knew my grandma was gonna die because i had these visions she would have thought i was crazy. so a couple years pass and i visit my Cousin Rob on my dads side and it was his 30th bday and he had diabetes and i never knew he didn't take care of it or anything but anyways a month passes and im home ofc.

Death and Birth

Our mother died on September 11, 1995, which has since become a national day of mourning. Months after, while cleaning out her home, we discovered a sheet from the International Red Cross declaring that her younger brother, who was unable to leave Germany before the war, had died on September 11, 1942. On checking the Hebrew date of his death, it turned out to be Erev Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish year. Our first child was born September 16, 1974. The Hebrew date of her birth was Erev Rosh Hashanah.

Death Pattern?

My dad's dad died at 56 yrs old, my dad was 33 yrs old then My dad died at 56 yrs old , I was 33 then. My son was 19 when his dad died and I was 37. My son was 37 when he died and his son was 19 and I was 56.

Three consecutive births

The first three children in my family were born on the same day. None were induced or planned. 1945,1949 and 1952. We were from Manson, Iowa.

30 hours and three continents

Not one of the usual ones that spans decades, this is a series of coincidences that lasted only about 30 hours but spread across three continents... In November 2003 I got on a plane flying from Heathrow to LAX, where I was to catch a separate flight form there to the Pacific island of Samoa. I took my seat and a few moments later another person sat next to me. As the flight was long we struck up a conversation. He had been on a connecting flight from his home town in Germany but his English and my German were half-decent and we bonded over the coincidence that we were both called Tom (slightly different passport names of Thomas and Tomas). As the flight settled in we stopped talking and only picked it up again when we were on the landing path to LAX. He asked where I was going next and we both laughed at the next coincidence, that we were flying on to Samoa on the same flight As we both had to check in again and German Tom's English was not great under the pressure of post 9/11 US airport officials, we went to the flight transit desk together, which also meant we were able to choose to sit together again.

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