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!

Blackpool to see the lights.

At the time when I was living in Sutton in Ashfield (it's in Nottinghamshire and 113 miles from Blackpool) , my daughter was living with my ex-wife near Manchester. As a treat, one weekend , My new wife and I (with our family) decided to pick her up from her house and go to Blackpool for the day to the zoo and to see the lights. Although not entirely a spontaneous decision, it didn't take a lot of planning so our day out wasn't widely broadcaast to the rest of the family. My wife has an auntie and uncle, Jean and John, who live in Newcastle, 150 miles from Blackpool. Unbeknown to us, they had booked a week in Blackpool which covered the day we were going. Having been to the zoo and returned to the car for our drive down the golden mile, dusk had fallen and all the lights had been switched on. The journey was predictably slow, as everyone else in Blackpool for the day seemed to have the same idea except for those people who decided to take a Blackpool tram, which seemed to whizz up the inside of our line of cars . As the trams were highly decorated, we, in the car , were enjoying the numerous electrically powered vehicles as they passed.

old schoolfriend

My parents both went to school in Cirencester, which is where I was born. They moved 2 weeks after I was born ( though I don't think it was my fault) to Gloucester 22miles away. (The maternity hospital where I was born has since been pulled down, but I don't think my being born there was the real reason behind that. ) When I left school. I joined the RAF and intended to move to Norfolk when I'd finished my training, Coltishall in particular took my fancy. With the usual efficiency behind forces' decision-making, I was posted to Coningsby in Lincolshire. After a year in married quarters and 4 years in a semi in Boston, my wife and I decided to buy a bigger house at Wyberton, just out of Boston but 16 miles from Coningsby. A short time after the move we were chatting to our new neighbours from 2doors away and his accent caught my ear. When I enquired as to the origin of his accent, he told me he had grown up in Cirencester (143 miles from Boston) but that he too was in the RAF but based in Norfolk, in particular Swanton Morley.

car

my parents had a red ford escort cabriolet years ago. They sold it as a part exchange to a dealer in kings lynn. Years later I went out with a lady who lived about 50 miles from where my parents lived and one day her son, who lived with her, came home in a red ford escort cabriolet. When I let my parents know, they informed me that it wasn't just similar to their car, it was the same vehicle they'd owned years earlier.

New neighbours ?

About 17 years ago and living on a small married-quarter patch, we moved in November next door to an Australian exchange officer and his family who were midway through their 2 year tour in UK. Just before Christmas another couple moved in next door on the other side of them (an artillery officer who would usually have been quartered on a completely different patch within the garrison) and we, i.e. both couples, were invited round for New Year drinks. Bearing in mind our postings were usually of 2-3 year duration and we could be sent anywhere, this really is a coincidence. During the general chit chat, suddenly the cry went up, "I don't believe it", "It can't be true". Yes, it was true. The Australian husband and the artillery officer's wife had been in the same class as juniors aged about 9 years old in Singapore when HIS father was serving in the Australian army and HER father was serving with the RAF, and here they were living next door to each other. A school photograph was forthcoming within a few minutes to prove this remarkable coincidence and there they were, together in the same class photo taken some 25 years before.

crossing paths

I met a young man in my local pub only a month or so after the breakdown of my previous relationship. We hit it off instantly and found we lived only a few streets away. When we got to know each other more we realised we knew the same people and I went on a school trip with his brother when I was about 11. This got us talking more and we found we went to the same school - he was a year older than me. We went to the same uni at the same time and also worked in the same bar! I even recognized his friend who managed the bar! We got the same bus home at weekends from and to the same stop and frequented the same pubs and clubs but never met each other in these 15 years where our paths continuously crossed until 3 years ago in June when I got talking to him, by chance in our local.

Split Croatia

A few years ago my wife and I purchased a house on the island of Korcula, in Croatia. Usually we drive from the UK and take the ferry from Split to Korcula. Probably, we visit Split, a pleasant town with a beautiful old Roman centre, no more than 3 times a year. At the beginning of May last year, we had been to a meeting at an office on the waterfront and were looking for somewhere to have supper. We came across an open air café, clearly popular from the large amount of customers sitting and eating there. The manageress suggested we could join several other people on a bench at a table. Everyone moved up to make room for us and we found ourselves sitting across the table from a man, who turned out to be Danish and, like all Danes, spoke excellent English. I had spent 8 ½ years working in Oman for a local company. One of their activities was representing shipping companies. It turned out that our new found friend had been based in Dubai at the same time where he was the managing agent for the same shipping companies

Vietnam

Our son, an engineering consultant, obtained a job in Hanoi, Vietnam. The reason for taking this job was that he had the opportunity to take his wife and daughters with him. We helped the girls pack-up and took them to the airport in August 2010. As we had never been to Vietnam – I had been very briefly, less than a week in any of them, to Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong. Apart from a few days in Bangkok, my wife had never visited the Far East. We therefore decided to visit the children for Christmas and the New Year. As one of our Christmas presents, our son bought my wife and myself a cruise in Ha Long bay. The boat took no more than 50 passengers and we were asked to take seats for dinner at a table for two couples. The couple who sat down at our table were American; the husband was a lawyer and lived two streets (they lived in 3rd Street our daughter in 5th Street) away from our daughter and son-in-law, also a lawyer, in Brooklyn, New York.

pupil-teacher re-united after 70 years

My name is John Gresham. (Aged 82). Originally a New Zealander – resident in UK since 1960 in Tunbridge Wells One Sunday morning in 2007 I went to my local newsagent to collect my Sunday papers when I got into conversation with an elderly New Zealand lady and her daughter who were on holiday in the UK and passing through Tunbridge Wells for just a few hours on that one day only. It transpired that she was the wife of my old prep school master in NZ. This man held particular importance for me because owing to a disrupted early life my education had been neglected to the point that when I joined his class in 1936 at the age of 7 I could scarcely read or write. His unstinting care and personal attention meant that within one year I had caught up with the standard for my age. He left a year later and I was told he had joined the RAF. His name was Wing Commander Hayden Hugh Miller OBE, DFC, AFC .He fought the whole war in bomber command as one of the most highly decorated airmen of WW2 and 4 times mentioned in Dispatches reg no.

Same pupil, different location

I studied Spanish at Nottingham University starting in 1962. Before my final year, I received a grant from the Spanish Foreign Ministry to spend 9 months living in a hall of residence at Oviedo University, which is in Asturias (NW Spain). I gave English classes in the hall to a small group of Spanish students and a lecturer at the university. His name was Toni Coto. Toni and I got on well but did not keep in touch after I left. After graduating, i went to work for Esso Petroleum in London, spending an initial 2 years as an economic analyst in the Marine Planning department. Then, a vacancy arose in the small Pipeline Planning department. It was agreed that I would overlap with the departing analyst to pick up the project. As he had a single office, I was assigned to a spare office for two weeks. Also in the office was a temp adding up figures on an adding machine (primitive times). Of course we chatted and it turned out that he was temping in London (near his parents' home) during the summer. For the academic year, he taught English at an Academy of English in Tarragona, in Eastern Spain.

Two scorpios meet in Lima

In April 2005 Alan met Hazel on holiday in Peru. In due course they discovered that they were both born on October 29, 1937. Alan was travelling with a couple he has known for more than 50 years and they have mutual friends - a couple living in Potters Bar, whom Alan has known for nearly as long. On returning from holiday and, following the arrival at Potters Bar of 2 identical postcards from Machu Picchu, it emerged that Hazel has known this couple even longer than Alan, the wife in fact since childhood. As a further coincidence Alan & Hazel both worked all their careers with major oil companies (BP & Shell respectively) and, having been widowed before meeting, they have since been happily living apart together and meet regularly with the other two couples.

Pages