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!

Bumping into ex wife

Several years ago my husband and I were staying in Brighton at a seafront hotel for the weekend.We walked around the corner to our car when to our great surpise we almost bumped into my husbands ex wife and her friend who also happened to be spending the weekend in an hotel on the seafront just a few yards away from ours.You can imagine how amazed were were at the coincidence.

Cello on the underground

we were running very late for a performance of the Toronto Symphony orchestra, and to compound matters, stupidly got off at the wrong stop on the subway. Another woman was waiting for the train and asked if we were heading to the TSO. We all agreed that there was very little chance of us making it to the first half of the performance, "unless" I said, "one of the cellists is on the next train and they hold up the performance so she gets there on time". The train pulled into the station and we got on. And lo and behold, there was a woman sitting on the train with her cello case tucked between her knees! She got off at the stop for the theatre, and we all ran as fast as we could on the hope that we'd make it in before the performance began. The cellist slipped into the stage door and we made it into the auditorium with seconds to spare before the orchestra started playing. We were more than 10 minutes late, but they'd held the performance. We'll never know why but perhaps it was for a tardy cellist!

Holiday meeting/shared birthdays/links with new friends/chance meeting

In August 2010 my husband and I were on a river cruise in Russia. On the first evening we were socialising with our fellow guests. We got on well with a couple from N London (we live in Mid Wales) and started talking about our families. At the time our eldest son was a trainee solicitor in a large London law firm. It turned out that their daughter worked for the same company and his second seat had been in her department. They sent her a text telling her this, so she was able to go up to our son the next morning saying "Our parents have just met up on a boat in Russia!" My husband, his sister and our younger daughter all share the same birthdate, 24th August (1946, 1954, 1982). My elder daughter and my father ( now deceased) also shared the same birthdate, 4th February (1916 and 1981) While doing her cabin crew training in London in 2006, my younger daughter made some good friends, two of whom came to stay with us at our home in Mid Wales. One girl knew that before she was born, her family had lived in Wales. She was surprised to learn from her parents, that they had lived in the very town - Builth Wells, Powys - that she was soon to visit.

House Buy

In 1968 I was sent on a course in Kingston-upon-Thames and stayed in lodgings nearby. About 5 years ago my son & family bought a house and moved from north London to Claygate in Surrey. I told him that I'd lodged in the area but couldn't remember whereabouts although Esher, Hinchley Wood & Claygate sounded familiar. Recently I was making chutney & asked my husband to fetch some jamjars from the garage. He seemed to be for ever but when he returned he was holding a letter, no jamjars of course. He said you're not going to believe this & handed me the letter which I had written to him whilst on my course in 1968. (Before we were married). Upon looking at the address it was the very same house that my son bought & still lives in but I had not recognized it as it had obviously altered considerably over the years. Speaking to the neighbour she remembered the original owner that had been there when I lodged there.

Meeting someone in the middle of nowhere

I come from Appletreewick in a fairly quiet and remote part of the Yorkshire Dales (population 234). I went on my own on a driving/walking holiday to Ireland in the Wicklow hills a few years ago. I had hardly spoken to anyone for days, and was in one of the most remote parts of the hills and decided to stop for the evening at a B&B. It was quite late, and so was recommended to go to a pub for dinner. It was one of those pubs which looks like someone's sitting room. There was only one person sitting in the corner of the pub for the whole evening. After a while we got talking and I found he was the gamekeeper from Appletreewick who had come to stay with his pal who ran a shoot in Ireland! In a way, easily connectable really, but still I thought it was amazing that I had come all this way and the only person I met was from Appletreewick!

Follow the Leader

One weekend a few years ago, my parents and I decided to go a large store quite a few miles away in a different town. As we left the house and walked up the driveway, we waved at the next door neighbours who had just got into their car. Naturally we ended up following their car down to the bottom of the road. It wasn't so unusual that we trailed them furthur onto the main ring road out of town either. But we ended up driving right behind them all the way to this particular store!

Old penfriend

I am 77 years old and in 2009 I was on holiday in New Zealand. One morning I said to our driver that when I was at school I had a penfriend in Dundedin and that I had written the address so often that I could still remember it. As I quoted the address he stopped in his tracks and said he went to school just round the corner from there. He asked for her name which he didn't recognise, however, a couple of days later he had traced her, found her married name and had spoken to her on the phone. I rang that evening and arranged to meet when we returned to Christchurch. We had a day together catching up on over sixty years of news.

birthday coincidence

I have two adopted sons. The first one was18 months old when he came to us. We were later able to adopt a second child who was born on the first one's 5th birthday.

Family Coincidence

As a young married couple we moved into a new flat in 1965. There was an elderly lady living below who one day said that she thought she knew one of my visitors, he was my father who she used to babysit more than 50 years before. The next surprise was that she had a photograph of my grandfather ,who my father had never seen as he had disappeared when my father was about two,and the biggest surprise of all was that it was my grandfather who had run off to America in 1913/14 with her mother.

Mr William Clouston

In 1991 a colleague and I were in London in a car. We were talking about politics. I mentioned that I didn't think that the new Liberal leader Paddy Ashdown had made much of an impact. My friend said he agreed and the moment he said that we both glanced to the left and saw Paddy Ashdown in the back of the car next to us.

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