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!

Birthday coincidence

We bought a puppy the year after my father in law had died. When we got his certificate of pedigree, we found that he shared the same birthday as my father in law.

Maternity Home

My partner and I now live on the small island of Kos, Greece. We have been coming here for a number of years before retiring here and over a period of time became friends with a number of people who also holidayed here. One lady we became friendly with has become good friends of ours and is coming out to stay with us this year. Since becoming friends we have discussed various things and it turned out that she was born in the same maternity home in London as I was, albeit 6 or 7 years apart. She also remembers actually walking past the house I used to live in as a child and her mother bought her shoes from the same shoe shop as my mother used to.

Property coming back to you

Back when vinyl was king, after I started my first job in 1973, I started to buy back issues of bands I liked and as I used to the records to parties, I marked all my albums by writing my initials on the label in case they went walkabout. One of the albums I bought was "Through the Past Darkly" by the Rolling Stones which I lent to my boss Sandra in the office where I worked. She had it for a while, I left my job and forgot about it. When I remembered later, I went back to my old office to reclaim it, but Sandra had also moved on so I gave it up as lost. Twenty odd years later in the mid 90's, I was working as lecturer at the local college and I got chatting with a guy in my departmentabout bands we liked in common. The Rolling Stones came up and of course I bemoaned the loss of "Through the Past Darkly". He said he had a copy and offered to lend it to me. Imagine my surprise when I got it home and took it out of the sleeve to play only to find my initials on the label. The next day, a discussion with my colleague revealed that he had, by coincidence, married Sandra and thereby inherited my album - which I then got to keep!

Asteriod 65million years ago

In 1995 I wrote a novel based on the reported vanishings associated with the Bermuda Triangle. It attempted to support the theory of parallel worlds and involved an asteroid colliding with the earth in the area of the Gulf of Mexico some 65 million years ago. The detail of the novel is unimportant, however it was completed a few months before scientists discovered the Chicxulub crater in that very area, caused by an asteroid which they believe possibly wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago! I found this almost too much of a coincidence to believe!

Mrs Lesley P

In 1984 I worked for the London Evening Standard, part of Express Newspapers. I left there on the Friday to join the Financial Times newspaper and started work with them the following Monday. On the Friday I was invited to the pub with my new colleagues and was introduced to another new recruit who had also started on the Monday. When asked where he had worked before he replied, Express Newspapers. I then asked where he lived. Stanford-Le-Hope, the same town as me, and he lived just round the corner from me. Approximately 22 miles from London. Then birthday, 3rd February, same as mine but not the same year. Where was he born? South London, Streatham, I was born in Eltham, only a few miles down the road. So he left the same company on the same day as me, started with the same employer on the same day as me, same birthday as me Lived in the same town as me. I wonder what he is doing now! Lesley

Anglo/French

In 2002 My wife and I were on a river cruise on the river Li in South West China. There were lots of Tourists and we got chatting to a very nice French gentleman, at that time we was living in Exeter in Devon, to which he replied that it was a coinsidence that his daughter was studying at Exeter University, at that time my son was working in Versailles in Paris, I asked him where in France does he live, he replied Paris, Oh I replied, where abouts in Paris? he replied Versailles, I was astonished at the double coinsidence.

Job relocation

This story involves two coincidences. Coincidence 1: In August 2010 I applied for a job working for a plant science journal at Lancaster University and was lucky enough to get an interview. My decision to apply for the job was partly based on having done some work there in a laboratory for my PhD during the summer of 2008. I had vaguely kept in touch via facebook with the person I had lodged with during 2008 but hadn't been in regular contact. When I found out I had the interview and knew there was I chance I might have to move for the job as I was living in Wales at the time, I decided to contact the person I had lodged with previously to say I might need somewhere to live. Two hours beforehand she had posted a status update on facebook saying she was looking for a new lodger.<br /> Coincidence 2: One of the people on my interview panel for the job had been my external examiner for my undergraduate degree when I was in Reading, was at the university in Wales where I did my PhD and awarded me first prize in a poster competition at a conference whilst I was doing my PhD. I didn't realise until just before the interview that he was part of the panel.

dream

I had a dream and I was back at my old work place -we were made redundant 3 years ago - and some one said the only person they were concerened about was one of the men which they named but I only heard their surname. I went to the nurse this morning to have a routine blood test and there sitting in the waiting room was the twin brother of this person. They are identical and hard to tell apart. He had come off his bike and and was holding a bag of ice to a large bump on his head!!!!! I do have lots of other instances were I'm reading the newspaper and the same story comes up on the tv new even down to the point where I read the same word at the same time as the newsreader!!!!

school buddy/school colleague/hotel in Brussels

I commenced a new job in April 2010 in a Faculty of a university at the age of 53, my role was as a manager within the faculty (on the administrative side). There were a number of new managers joining during the following three months - one of these joined six weeks after I had. He was the Pro Dean of the faculty and as soon as I heard his name I knew we had been at the same school in the same class in the same year together in a small town 100 miles from the location of the university - and indeed it was him! My family had moved away from that town when I was 15 in 1972 and I hadn't really kept in touch with my classmates (all bar one) so I had not seen or heard of this person for 38 years! I have other co-incidences - a friend rented a cottage for a weekend through the internet in Suffolk for three of us and when we got there it emerged that I had worked with the owner of the cottage at a school in North London around 12 -15 years earlier and he remembered my surname as it is the same as a small town in that area of Suffolk.

Photograph coincidence

When I was 4 years old a photographer from the local newspaper came to my school to take pictures of our easter bonnet parade. The photographer decided to take a close up picture of myself and a class mate, which featured on the front page of the newspaper. Roughly 10 years later I went on a secondary school visit to the local newspaper office. Upon entering the main office I noticed several large photographs on the wall which looked familiar. When I looked closer I could see it was the photograph taken of me and my classmate many years before. Not only did it show the original photograph, but in order to show the process used to print photos in the paper, it got closer and closer to my face, until there were around 5 pictures zoomed into my face. I was as shocked as everybody else in the room at the coincidence.

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