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!

Kay W

I was on a caravanning holiday at Loch Lomond, Scotland a few years ago. My sister was caravanning with her husband in Dumfries and Galloway (Southern Scotland). We both knew we were holidaying in Scotland but knew we were too far away from each other to meet up. One morning I decided to take the train to Glasgow to do a bit of sightseeing and shopping as my husband was fishing. I got off the train, came out of the station, walked up the street and stood looking up and down to get my bearings. As I turned I came face to face with my sister and her husband!! "It's amazing who you see when you're out without your gun!!" (as they say in Lancashire) were my first words. We had not been in contact by phone during the holiday and prior to leaving for Scotland we had not arranged to go to Glasgow or even see each other!!

spirits communicating ?

I had a group of 5 really good friends at university which continues to this day; except that 2 have died. I was in Torornto, Canada for my son's wedding saturday June 17th 2000. I was waiting to go out for the wedding at 3pm watching England play soccer against Germany - it was 8 pm in Europe. I suddenly had this overwhelmimg need to throw up, which I did. Then I carried on and the wedding went well. When I got back to the UK, I found that my friend Kathy had died at precisely that time. They were at a barbecue and watching the England game when she suddenly felt ill, collapsed from heart failure and died. Did she somehow communicate with me? My second friend Dot was ill with cancer and I had been to visit her in hospital in North Wales. The night she died I woke up about 1am feeling breathless, gasping for breath. It passed. Next day I found out that's the time when she died. is this a coincidence? did she communicate wiht me?

Paralell lives

I had a step sister who lived in the next town to me (10 miles away), but our parents divorced when I was 14 and she was 12 (1988) and we didn't see each other again until we got in touch through Facebook 21 years later. Later that year she went on a date with someone she met on an internet dating site. Back at his house she saw a photo of his 7th birthday party - in a frame in his lounge - and I am in the photo. He was in my year at school, although had moved out of the village that I grew up in. I have a similar photo taken from around the same time.

Kathmandu/Equador

Having met an anthropologist called Joe Reinhardt in Kathmandu, Nepal where we lived in the 70s, we lost touch over the years. About 15 years later I was asked to look at a wildlife tourism project in Ecuador, South America. One day whilst out tracking alone in the Rio Napa area, I walked into a clearing from dense jungle and had a 'Dr Livingstone' moment when who should I come face to face with but the very same anthropologist.

Holiday coincidence

My husband and i were on holiday in Tunisia in 2005, my husband remarked that one particular guest bore a striking resemblance to one of my brothers, him and his wife and 2 small children sat near us at breakfast each morning for the 2 weeks we were there, we could overhear their conversations and it was clear to us that they were foreign possibly German. About 4 years later whilst taking my husbands mum and dad out for the day to Cosford nr Wolverhampton, we were walking around the museum i turned round and nearly fell over the same man we had seen in Tunisia those 4 years previous, i found my husband who didnt believe me! When he saw the family he agreed it was them. What a small world!

Simultaneous event

Today at 12pm I was running some data at work - I work as a Fundraising Manager at a children's charity - and I wanted to write to some key supporters. I maybe write to this group personally two or three times a year. There are 70 supporters on the list and I recognise many of them by their names. I happened to notice that there was one particular supporter who wasn't on the list, and I went and corrected the data to include them. Then I noticed another was missing. I went to check his record and he'd been archived. I called over to my colleague - why has this donor been archived? As I asked her I received an email from a colleague downstairs letting me know that the donor had passed away. We have 200,000 records on our database, so to me that we a spooky co-incidence, to be told that he'd died as I was looking at his details on the computer.

Birthdays

I work on a shift of 20 staff and 3 of us were all born on the same day 20/09/1960. What are the odds of that !

dates - lucky number 7

My parents got married on 27 dec 1937. they were married 37 years before Dad died in 1974 Mum lived another 27 years before she died They both died on 17th of the month, and Dad was in the RAF 17th squadron during the war and though it was his lucky number as he survived the war.

Not just an ordinary shotting star!

About 20 years ago I had a strange but wonderful sequence of events that can't be easily explained. I was in student accomodation in Somerset. Our bungalow in a small cul-de-sac didn't have a phone (we didn't have mobiles then) so we all had to walk to the centre of the village to make calls. One evening I was walking to the phonebox when I looked up at the street light (it was autumn I think anyway it was at dark). The street light turned off, just the one I was looking at. That wasn't strange but what follows was, I saw a shooting star in the gap created by the turned off light. Then the light came back on. What is the probability of that? The fact that just one street light went off and on, the fact that I was walking then, the fact that there was a shooting star, that fact that I was at the right angle/place to see the shoting star, the timing of the light going off and duration. It was amazing and very special. May be a reassuring sign for a nervous young student many miles away from home in Northamptonshire.

same birthdays

While playing bridge at Bristol Bridge Club. i happened to ask my partner when her birthday was - yes - you guessed it - same as mine April 18th. An even bigger coincidence was the people we were playing against heard the converstaion and one of them said her birthday was the same. there were 20 odd tables playing that night and we as E/ W move around after every few hands. What is the coincidence of asking that question at that table !! Sheilah, Bristol

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