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!

Where in the world are you?

My parents were living in Malta and planning to move back to the UK. A shipper came to their home to arrange shipment of their furniture, and told them that he had someone else moving to the UK and that they could share a container with them. The address was not only the same county, same town and same street but it was to the same block of 11 flats. My parents were moving to Flat 3 and the other person was moving to Flat 8. In fact my parents had viewed Flat 8 and decided on Flat 3. Even more unusual was that my parents had bought in Oct 1982 and had delayed their move until April the following year.

Death of a King

Last week in New York I gave a talk about opera houses. I told the rather obscure story of King Gustav III of Sweden who was assassinated in 1792 in the lobby of the opera house he had built in Stockholm. He was assassinated during a masked ball. After the talk a Swedish lady came up to me and told me she was related to one of the assassins. This coincidence is separated by 220 years and two continents.

same class different continent

Birth Parellel Lives I was about 14 years old and had just moved to a new school from the North of England to Hertfordshire. I was sitting next to a girl in the art class, chatting and mentioned I had been born in Africa (quite unusual as I am white middle class!). She said she had too. What part? Nigeria. Where in Nigeria? Cameroons. Where in Cameroons? Tiko. I was born there too. We were born in the same hospital at the same time. My parents remembered her parents. I was shocked. I am now 58 and still remember it vividly. Mrs Carolyn E

Synchronicity?

What happens to me is not a single coincidence, but years of minor events which follow one another, which I believe is called Synchronicity. For instance I was driving home a week or so ago and I thought that I ought to try to understand a little more about this strange thing. Two days later an item comes on the radio 4 Today programme about this website. That's the kind of thing that has happened to me since I was young, small events which in themselves are not very remarkable but add up to what to me is a big mystery.

Photo from 1945

In 1982 my husband David's cousin got married in Israel, but his parents didn't attend, as they were visiting us and their new grandchild in Canada. A wedding guest asked why they were not there, and only then discovered David had married. When she found out my name, she said, "I used to know a medical student with that name, he was at your engagement party, don't you remember?" David's aunt said she didn't ever know him, but she had one photo from that party, folded to fit into an old cigarette case. When she unfolded it, on the hidden bit was my father and his then girlfriend who had taken him to the party. On the visible bit was David's aunt, her future husband and her brother (my father-in-law). Until I met my husband, my father and his did not know one another.

Birthdates and rare name coincidence

I was at a bar when I was in college. An old girlfriend came up to me and said she wanted to introduce me to someone. When I turned around to meet this person she said Quint meet Quint. I said wow that great but my real name is spelt Quentin and he said so is mine. He then pulled out his driver’s license and showed me it. I looked at it and noted that his birthday and year was the same as mine. As we continue to talk it turned out we both were going to the same college. The only difference between us was he was black and I was white. We spent the night talking and buying each other drinks and enjoying the night. I never saw him again but I’m sure he tells people the same story that I have told to people many times. The right night, right restaurant, rare name, same spelling, same birthdates and school.

Theatre Visit

I went with a friend to an evening performance at the theatre in Aylesbury on 22nd January 2012. It was dark and gloomy when we parked our car in the busy car park and strolled down the hill to the theatre to meet our other friend in the foyer. After the performance at 10.15pm we walked together to the car park. "Where are you parked Mo" I said. "Over there" came the reply - immediately next to each other, both being totally unaware of the types and registration numbers of each others' cars. The car park was full with at least 300 cars parked in the large open space.

Holiday

10 years ago I went on holiday with my then husband on the Rocky Mountaineer from Calgary to Vancouver in Canada. We arrived in Vancouver and booked into our hotel. We staggered with our luggage to the lift, pressed the button and the lift arrived. Once inside the lift I found it difficult to manoeuvre and stretched across the luggage to press for the second floor when the lift doors suddenly closed, and instead of going up we went down to the basement. The door opened and there stood Ray and Maggie. Ray had in the past played cricket with my ex-husband in a village cricket team in a small village in Oxfordshire: neither of us knew that we were going on holiday to Canada. Two seconds earlier I would have pressed the button and no doubt we would have arrived on the second floor not having seen them. They left the next day.

Same flat

About 20 years ago I was living in Leeds and a friend of mine moved from Sheffield to London. He had no fixed place to stay other than with friends. He told me he would contact me with an address once he had found himself a more secure place to stay. Sure enough within a few weeks he wrote to me with his new address. Coincidentally I had lived in the very same flat some eight years previous and had actually helped to save it from ruin by rescuing it from dereliction and opening it up as a squat. There was no way he could have known any of that at the time.

2011 prime number example

Your feature ( More or Less - Radio 4) on the year 2011 formed from the sum of primes starting at 157 got me thinking since all the house numbers on our road in France are all prime numbers and our house is number 157 ( the house numbers turn out to be the distance in meters from the start of the road!) 157 (our house) then three more primes ...163 + 167 + 173 then Alain and Agnes house (181) then three more primes .....191 + 193 + 199 then the last number is Francoise and Sylvie's house (211) So the three house numbers up our road, each separated by another three prime numbers adds up to 2011. I wish I had realised that in 2011 - it would have made the year much more interesting!

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