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.

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Well I Never!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

Singing coincidence

In 1982/3 while living in Hong Kong I sang in the Hong Kong Festival Chorus - a performance of Brahms' German Requiem to celebrate Chinese New Year in 1983. I returned to live in the UK later that year. In about 1992 I was invited to a 'Come and Sing Brahms' Requiem' in Cambridge. I couldn't find a copy of the score which I thought I possessed so hired one on arrival at the venue. I was sitting at the end of the back soprano line next to the basses. When a break came I noticed the bass singer next to me close his score and put it in his lap. On the front was written 'Sylvia Thomson: Hong Kong Chorus'. I had clearly hired a score when I sang the requiem in 1982/3 and it had travelled around the world as a hire copy ever since (part of the service that Brian Jordan Music of Cambridge provides). It was pretty tatty but I explained who I was to the startled bass singer who gave it to me at the end of the performance. Then Brian Jordan agreed to give it to me for the hire fee.

Third and Fourth generations meet

Having chosen (out of several possibilities) a school for our sons, my wife and I had an appointment to meet the headmaster. Introducing himself, he said "Yours is a very unusual name, I wonder if we are connected? My house is full of your family silver". Having arranged to visit his wife at their house, I found not only that there were items of my family's silver, but also portraits of my great grandfather and my great-great grandfather hanging on the walls. It turned out that the headmaster's wife is the great granddaughter of the eldest of four brothers, of whom my grandfather was the third.

Question out of the blue links two people

While chairing an international committee my brother used to make frequent trips to Singapore, where he always stayed at a particular hotel. One of my business partners stayed at the same hotel while attending a conference. As he was checking out, the clerk asked apparently without any particular reason, whether my partner knew a Mr. [let us call him X] who lived in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. X is my - and not unnaturally, my brother's - surname, and my partner, who had no connection with Beaconsfield, has indeed met my brother who was then living there. What might have prompted the clerk to ask one Englishman out of the blue whether he knew another Englishman, where there was no apparent connection other than England?

What placed us together at a lunch party in France?

I was a guest at a lunch party given by friends in France, and was seated beside a young woman who was present because she was staying with other guests of my hosts. When asked about my career I said that I had been a City lawyer. She spoke about a young City lawyer who was working punishing hours, who had just moved into a flat with his girl friend, a teacher. The description perfectly fitted my son, and as one could guess it turned out that my fellow guest was speaking of my son and his girl friend and has known my son's girl friend since she was a baby... Had she not been staying with my fellow guests we would no doubt never have met or known the connection, and had I not been seated next to her the conversation might never have taken place.

BOOK TRAVELS

Getting off an aircraft from Egypt at Heathrow several years ago, I spotted a hard-backed book abandoned on a seat. Intending to donate it to a local charity shop I picked it up and thought no more about it until the following day when I opened it and found it to be a book from my local library. I returned the book, related the circumstances and the librarian asked me to wait whilst contact was made with the original borrower. To my astonishment I spoke to a person with my surname who was just about to pluck up the courage to tell the library that he had lost the book!

sent scripture

One evening an elderly lady inquired as to how my daughter was doing. I shared with her that she was going thru a bit of a difficult time. That night the lady died. The next day, when I spoke to my daughter on the phone, she told me she got the courage to face one of her difficulties, when a scripture verse, Romans 8:1 came to her mind. The day after that, I was reading the womans obituary, and her favorite scripture listed there was Romans 8:1.

same bedroom

My son got met a girl at university who had the same bedroom as he had when we lived in Burwell Cambridgeshire 18 years ago .

No excuse for forgetting birthdays in my family!

My wife, two sons and twin daughters are all born on the 22nd of the month..... All 5 on the 22nd... My birthday is on the 23rd ...... But only just.... What are the odds of that?

French Encounter

My elder daughter Sarah lives in France and when shopping in the one and only shop in a tiny village in the region of the Pyrenrees, she overheard the other two customers speaking in English. On introducing herself she was delighted to hear that they knew the area in which she went to school, St Albans, Hertfordshire. As they also lived in the same region, they became friends of her and her French husband. I had just become engaged to the man who was to be my second husband. On making a visit to my daughter, we were subsequently introduced to the English couple and were amazed to discover that the two men had worked for the same organisation, at the same time, in the U.K.

Australian Meeting

Whilst on a visit to my daughter who was staying in the Northern Territory area of Australia, we took a walk along a deserted, dusty road - very 'Crocodile Dundee' country. On the opposite side of the road, walking towards us came a young couple. On getting nearer to us, my daughter, Katie, exclaimed that she knew the young girl from her school days, and I was amazed to recognise the young man as a son of my art group teacher in Hertfordshire. We exchanged incredulous greetings !

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