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!

Holiday coincidences

We spent Christmas 2000 at the Hotel Kanta in Port el Kantaoui, Tunisia, it is a very cosmopolitan hotel with guests from all over Europe. Another couple in their early thirties with their son of about 10 were staying at the hotel. I immediately noticed that the boy was strikingly similar in looks and build to the son of a friend of mine when he was that age (though Richard is approximately 8 years older than the boy). My husband (who wouldn't recognise his own face in the mirror!) also noticed and commented on the similarities. We never spoke to the family (we had no reason to) but I heard the mother speak English with a heavy north/north eastern European accent - the father and son did not seem to have much English (or French) as they spoke to each other but left all the interaction with the waiters to the mother. The resemblance was so striking we commented to each other every time we saw them. The boy looked remarkably like his father. We even told Richard when we got home that we know what he will look like when he's 35!

Car number plates

http://i.imgur.com/tIa0B.jpg

Old friend

I boarded an Easyjet flight in Geneva a couple of years ago. As I walked along the aisle I saw an old friend I used to work with who I hadn't seen or been in touch with for at least 6 years. She was amazed because she had only seconds before she had just been recounting a story about me to her colleague sitting next to her about how I had changed careers.

Six year gap

In June/July 2005 my husband and I did the full 6 weeks of the British & Irish Lions tour to New Zealand. Our group had a lot of coach transfers between matches (from one particular company) and on excursions, and whenever we were in the North Island we had the same coach driver (for about 4 of the 6 weeks). Eugene was excellent; very knowledgable about everywhere we went and in comparison with our driver on the South Island and others we heard about from other tour groups, we seemed to have the best one. He always wore a distinctive hat in the sunshine. In November 2011 we went back to New Zealand for the last 3 weeks of the Rugby World Cup. Much less coach travel on this journey, only between Airports and hotels, and one trip up to the Bay of Islands from Auckland. We had several different drivers (from the same company as 2005) and the driver to the Bay of Islands didn't seem to know the way and chose an unsuitable place to stop off on the way for refreshments and our companions complained about him.

Funeral music

4 years at the time that my father passed away there were a number of coincidences that happened at that time but one that sticks out. My cousin who is a bandsman with the Royal Marines offered to find out the name and composer for music used for a Lloyds Bank TV advertising campaign with the black horse running along the beach which ran many years ago. He asked his bandmaster and very bizarrely the very same piece of music was on top of a pile of many scores of music next to the bandmaster. Even my most cynical of cousins was stunned by this.

Adjacent Army Numbers

I vaguely remember Brian M during Basic Training in Norton Barracks, Worcester as a National Serviceman. We were not friends at the time because we were in different platoons but I knew he was Welsh and at Christmas time 1954 we shared with others a cold army truck trundling to South Wales. Neither were the frenetic endeavours of National Servicemen at the time conducive to much socialising. We were no more friendly when we were posted to and trained together at the Army School of Education at Beaconsfield but at least we became aquainted. The war Office were determined not to separate us and we were both posted as Education Sergeants (RAEC) to Germany, he to Hildersheim and me to Hannover where we completed our National Service. The first coincidence occurred when a few years later we found ourselves awaiting interview at Brecon Grammar School, he for the Music job and me for the Art Master's post. (Good Lord, how are you this long time !!) However, we neither of us were accepted and returned to our teaching jobs, Brian to Dunstable and me to Pontypool.

Honeymoon walk

On the first day (Sunday) of our honeymoon in London in 1976 my husband decided he wanted to show me the route of the Tideway Head of the River Race from Mortlake to Putney, which is the reverse course of the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race and he decided we should walk the nearest route. My husband rowed the Tideway Race several times and wanted to see some of the riverside features. At about 2.00 pm, just as we passed the Bull's Head pub in Barnes, who should emerge from the pub but a man who had been our Ballroom Dancing teacher a few months earlier at home in Sheffield. We'd joined my parents Dancing Classes to learn to dance in preparation for my husband's role as his company's Social Club Chairman as he would be expected to lead the first dance with the MD's wife at the annual Dinner Dance (and I had to dance with the MD). We did not know that the teacher had any connections with London, and he was just on a weekend away visiting friends. Ten minutes earlier or later in our walk and we wouldn't have bumped into him.

Avoid redheads!

One Saturday many years ago I went to a party somewhere in north London, where I met a gorgeous redhead who told me she was up from Manchester for a few days. Far too shy to ask for a date, I sat on the stairs all night smoking and getting morosely drunk, as usual. College was a film school in Covent Garden. On the Monday morning I was changing trains during the rush hour at Leicester Square, got into a packed carriage and found myself standing next to the same girl. Imagining this to be an encouraging sign, I asked her out. Reader, is she sitting opposite me now, contentedly knitting bootees? No, we started arguing after half an hour, she spent an uncomfortable night on my floor, left in high dudgeon and I never saw her again. So much for coincidences!

Divine agency

In 1990 I was made redundant from my job as a copywriter in an advertising agency. There was a recession, the only option was to go freelance. My wife, an account director at a different agency, introduced me to some clients, who were starting a business selling fine art prints by mail order. The first ad I created for them, selling (for 'only' £395) a set of six framed laser prints of watercolour sketches of the Loire valley by JMW Turner, was a success, and a few months later my wife and I started our own business. Five years later, things turned bad and we had to call in the receivers. On the day of the creditors' meeting, we entered the liquidator's office and found, hanging around the walls, the set of Turner prints we had started out with.

Unknown relations found

My husband and I moved to Bury St edmunds four years ago and I joined one of several french classes advertised. Here I met someone I worked well with so we tried to sit together each week. One week the lesson was on the french alphabet and the task was to spell names in french. I chose my maiden name and my partner's mouth dropped a mile. Ever since getting to know me she had thought how like an old friend of hers I was, even down to my mannerisms. This friend was single and had my maiden name. A few letters and telephone calls later this person and I realised we were second cousins, our fathers being cousins. Prior to this I knew nothing of her existence and knew very little about my father's cousins. She introduced me to a further cousin, daughter of her father's brother so a second cousin of mine with same maiden name (I refer to her as "y".) When we met up, I took with me my father's photo album from the 1930's and 40's. In it we found the photos of Y'S parents' wedding, (circa 1942) It turned out my father had taken the wedding photos and his brother, my uncle had actually been best man.

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