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!

University flat

I'm a GP in London. A young patient came in during her first summer holiday from Edinburgh University. Knowing the city a little, I asked her where she would be living next year and it transpired that she was movig into exactly the same flat that my son had just vacated.

Living in Guernsey

My family and I had moved to Guernsey and we were having an evening meal in a hotel restaurant that we often went to. We were so surprised when one of my daughters friends from her junior school in Basingstoke and her family walked by our table. There had been no contact since moving to Guernsey so it was a complete coincidence.

Beach in Egypt

My daughter was walking on a empty beach in Egypt and saw her former university tutor walking on the very same beach. How mad is that.

Lunch in the Dorgogne

My husband and I were lunching at a riverside restaurant in the Dorgogne and we got chatting to the waitress who took our order. The waitress was English and ran the restaurant with her French husband. Prior to moving to France she had been born and brought up in Basingstoke and worked in the very same hairdressers, in Basingstoke where I had once been a cleaner.

Death conincidences.

In Dec. 1985 a neighbour committed suicide, hanging himself in his garage. Early in 1986 it was announced that the Tall Ships Race would come to Newcastle-on-Tyne. In April of that year my mother died unexpectedly.[ I last visited my parents 3 weeks before. Driving away from the house, the thought entered my mind that I had not kissed Mother as normal but would do so on my next visit; and in a brief second something passed through my mind that she would not be there.Then the thought was gone.] My father was quite healthy until 2000 when he became seriously ill, but pulled through on 3 occasions. For some unknown reason I knew that it was not time for him to go, and even told my sister that he would pull through. Early in 2005 it was again announced that the Tall Ships Race would visit Newcastle. In March of that year another neighbour hanged himself in his garage; and I became aware of the feeling that my father would die that year. He died in April that year, 2005. I know the two sets of circumstances are not identical 'jigsaws', but it has set me wondering at times.

Dates and locations

For a number of years I worked for a boss and we... shared the same birthday, 7th May but he was 2 years older....we were married on the same date, 24th October 1970....my brother and his wife shared the same birthday, 13th March but different years...he lived in Barnet round the corner from my mother-in-law....his wife taught in the school next to the church in Monken Hadley where my wife and I had been married

Danish Visitors

25 years ago my brother, a teacher in London, committed suicide. As his next of kin I had to sort things out. I requested that his post was redirected to my home. A letter arrived from some friends of his in Denmark that he'd met whilst teaching over there. It was obvious they had no idea what had happened and said that they were looking forward to staying with him very soon, as arranged. Immediately I rang International Directory Enqueries and discovered that they must have been the only people in Denmark not to be on the 'phone. I wrote a letter to them and rushed off to the Post Office, sending it by the quickest method available. However, I was very worried they would arrive at his flat not knowing what had happened and wondering where he was. I live about hour from London, in a road that has residential parking only and in those days I sold visitors permits to neighbours who needed them. Opposite me lived a young Danish couple, who I saw very rarely and spoke to even less. But on this day she knocked on my door asking for a permit. I felt like an idiot but I decided to tell her about the letter and ask her help.

Gospel Truth

I was invited to be on the technical advisory board of a New Zealand startup out of Waikato University by its CEO. At one social event, he mentioned he'd moved to NZ as a kid, and we discussed where from - turned out, we'd been to the same primary school in London (Gospel Oak) at the same time, 45 years before. And both ended up as professors in computing, on opposite sides of the planet, but then meeting up and working together for fun and profit. How quaint:-)

Cousins

I had been asked to join a new group of tennis players on a private court. There are about seven of us. The girl who owns the court lives about ten minutes drive away from where I live. Last year the girl who owns the court went to Australia to visit her son who was living there. We continued to play tennis on her court while she was away. The first Monday of her holiday I returned home from playing tennis and there was a message on my answer phone from her saying, "You won't believe this but I had dinner with your cousin who is also my cousin!" Her Grandmother was a sister of my cousin's mother and my Father was the brother of my cousin's Father. What a small world!

Rare book

A few years ago I was with a colleague at his house in Belgium and the evening before we were due to return to England we discussed books that had influenced us over the years. I mentioned a book from 1937 entitled Marriage by Leon Blum, intellectual and one time premier of France. I said that I had read the copy held by my local library under request as it was for some reason not considered suitable for placing on the public shelves, this was 50 years ago. I said it appeared to be a rare book and difficult to obtain. The next day we started our return journey by ferry and arrived in Dover where we decided to have a break before the road journey to the South West. After a while we decided we would have a quick look about the town and during our browsing we went into a charity shop and I noticed on the book section at the front of the pile was an early edition of the very same Leon Blum book - Marriage! Surely a strange coincidence. I bought if for 50 pence!

Pages