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!

The Coincidence of Coincidences

This morning (24th January 2012) I read an email sent to me a few days ago by my friend and fellow performance artist, Brian Popay, directing me to a website that he thought I might like, entitled Understanding Uncertainty. I duly discovered that it concerned the Cambridge Coincidences Collection masterminded by one Professor David Spiegelhalter. Having read some of the quoted examples, I replied to Brian’s email, expressing regret that I hadn’t kept a log of the several coincidences I’d experienced in my lifetime because, off the top of my head, I couldn’t recall any of them and was therefore unable to contribute to Professor Spiegelhalter’s pool of stories. However… Later today, during a bus journey, I spotted an abandoned copy of ‘i’, a morning newspaper that I haven’t read since I bought the first edition way back in October 2010.

An unlikely family reunion

In 1989, I went to a social work conference in Cardiff. I travelled there from my home in Bristol. It turned out my half sister also attended this conference. We recognised each other only through the unusual surname we shared.... (she had married, but chose to hyphenate her married name.) My father left my family (in Glasgow) when I was five, moved to Kenya, met another woman, and had three children with her. He moved back, briefly, to the UK (Dorset) when I was 17, where I met up for a week with him and his new family. He left the UK shortly afterwards, telling my mother he was going “beyond the jurisdiction of the British courts” and she should expect no more alimony from him. That was in about 1966. I heard no more from him, or any of the family, until I went to this social work conference in Cardiff. There, I learned from my half sister that my (our) father had died 12 years before. The family had moved back to the UK in the 1970s, and settled in Reading. The half sister I met was the only one of his three offspring who knew of my existence. A strange and unsettling experience.

Grand Canyon coincidence

In about 1979, I was travelling in the USA. My partner and I were delivering cars, and travelling where they sent us. We had spent a few days in San Francisco, before heading off to Houston with a car we had been asked to deliver. We decided to stop at the Grand Canyon overnight, so we could experience one of the USA’s best scenic attractions. We were sitting looking out over the Canyon, and started chatting to a woman who has also stopped to admire the view. She was on her way back home to San Francisco. She asked where we had stayed in San Francisco. We had been invited by a kindly stranger to stay in his flat – his flatmate had gone off on holiday for a couple of weeks. We told her the name of this person, and where he lived. Turned out it was her flat we had stayed in..... she was so amazed, it made an even bigger impact on her (and on us! than the Grand Canyon. (Should she ever read this, thanks again for the hospitality we were given!)

My friend Carl

In about 1978, I travelled to Antiparos, a tiny Greek island, untroubled, at that time, by many tourists. I was there for a few days, then travelled on to other islands. I was walking down Antiparos’s main street one day and bumped into a good friend from Bristol, where we both live. He had gone to live on an Israeli Kibbutz many months before, and, as far as I knew, he was still there. He had left, however, a week or so before, and was making his way slowly home. Both of us were surprised and delighted to meet up.......... we celebrated with Retsina and Ouzo.....

The odds are?

It was early April. The year, 2004. Having sold our business in Cornwall, I signed the contract in my soliciters office at 10am. My soliciter told me that Glyn, the purchaser, was due to sign at about mid day, and he would confirm with me. At about 2pm. the telephone rang, and Thurstan, my soliciter told me he only had one word to say, and that was "Help". It appeared that Glyn's soliciters had been alerted by Land Registry Office that it appeared that a triangular section of the land, according to them, we only had what amounted to users rights. This put a spanner in the works, as it needed to be proved, or disproved. Some three or four weeks later, on Whitsun Saturday, a Range Rover drew into the premises. The driver came up to me and asked if the owner was about. I explained that I was the owner, and hopefully, very nearly the ex owner. He explained that he had come down to Cornwall for the Bank Holiday, from Paddock Wood in Kent.

Government defends beach volleyball tickets

Not a coincidence that happened to me, but just saw this article, which may be of interest because of the way the top civil servant at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport used 'coincidence' to justify what might otherwise have been seen as prurient purchases: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16702708 Here's the key section: 'But there was laughter on the committee as Mr Sutcliffe asked him: "I don't know if this is an oddity or not - but can you explain why there seems to be a strong interest in beach volleyball among ministers and civil servants? "The government have bought 410 beach volleyball tickets, costing £26,000, as against only 256 athletics tickets." Mr Stephens admitted he had thought it an oddity himself - but there was an innocent explanation. "When we were purchasing tickets for staff to purchase, we obviously thought they were mostly going to be able to go at the weekend or on Fridays. "Then when you look at what's available at those sorts of price bands, on those sorts of days, most of it turns out to be volleyball.

jayne joyce-green

I was working as a staff nurse and a patient was approaching a particularly horrible end. She was distressed and vomiting faeces. I decided to pass a tube to relieve her vomiting, washed her and made her comfortable and she passed away peacefully about an hour later with her family present. About 5 or 6 days later my own mother died unexpectedly. I went to register the death and waited outside a number of rooms to go in and give the details. When I was called in the person had to fill in the details in a large ledger one person to each page. When she showed me my mother's page, the details of the lady I had helped were on the opposite side. In other words she and my mothers details lie face to face. I could have been called into any of those rooms. The lady told me they each held their own ledger and there had been no entry made in that ledger till I came with my Mom;s details all those days later. You might imagine there would have been an entry as this was in the city of Birmingham which surely must have many deaths recorded

Chance Meeting

This is about my Uncle Joe who was captured at Dunkirk and was a PoW until 1945; he died 2 years ago. Along with thousands of others he endured the long march from Poland (Stalag XXA) in bitter winter conditions and eventually met British troops on Luneberg Heath. At one stop in a barn Joe and his 2 mates were approached by another PoW who asked for some tea and a scrap of bread for a mate who was on his last legs. Joe obliged. Shortly after the war Joe and my aunt were invited to friends in East Anglia to recuperate, travelling via Liverpool Street. They went into the cafeteria to get a cup of tea and while Joe was queuing a stranger approached Auntie Hilda. He said 'Your husband saved my life'- he was the man who had the bread and tea scrounged from Joe and his mates. Joe only ever saw him twice and never knew his name.

Anon

Hi there, I have not spoken with my friend in a while and thought that I would ring her whilst I was carrying out my group to my suprise she already rang me prior to me coming out of the group. Synchronicityi think rather than co-incidence.

Random timings

Last week I had a hospital appointment several miles from home, at a location not directly accessible by public transport. I arrived early but went in late and spent around 20 minutes with the doctor before leaving. The walk back to the station took me 15 minutes, followed by a 20 minute wait for the train, a 40 minute train ride and finally a 2 mile walk from the station to my house. Meanwhile, my wife had been off work and left home to pick the kids up from school earlier than she usually would. When she got there she bumped into a friend and stayed chatting for quite some time and then drove the short distance home. Although every aspect of our timings was unknown to each other, was dictated by many outside influences and completely out of the norm; we both arrived at our front gate at the exact same time.

Pages