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!

Unusual Museum Visit

My wife, Teresa and I did a cycle tour of the Outer Hebrides last May after retiring from teaching. Whilst on the Isle of Lewis, we visited the Blackhouse Museum at Garrenin. Inside there was a calendar on display in one of the Blackhouses, showing the month of May 1955 - the exact month in which I was born! Before we left, we talked to a young man working in the museum cafe. He was a local - back from university in Glasgow for a reading week. He asked us where we were from - Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, we told him. He then said that his best friend at university was also from Knaresborough! He was astonished to find that not only did we know the person in question, but that she was formerly one my wife's tutees from the secondary school in Harrogate that we taught at. Sent in by Peter.

Insane thought vibes

I was with my best friend just chatting, drinking water, sitting etc. and a man walked past in a Stone Roses t-shirt, so I was thinking to myself, "What's my favourite Stone Roses song?" I was thinking of 'Elephant Stone', except a slight mind blank caused me to mix it up with the Tokyo Police Club album 'Elephant Shell'. So my thoughts went a bit like this: "What's my favourite Stone Roses song? Hmm maybe Elephant Shell. No wait, that's Tokyo Police Club" AND THEN my friend, out of nowhere, says, "hurhur, Tokyo Police Club." Left me speechless for a good minute!

Birthday Coincidences

My husband has the same birthday as my sister-in-law's sister and husband (22nd Jan) and their daughter was born on the next day (23rd Jan).

Near misses...

Recently separated, I was introduced to a man a friend thought I might get on with. It turned out we got on very well – In the late ‘70’s he lived in the house across the street from my childhood home whilst at university; his best friend was my best friend’s brother; in the ‘80’s his band played at a friend of mine’s wedding; in the ‘90’s his first wife was my first hypnotherapy client; in the ‘00’s we both holidayed at a tiny campsite in France during the same week in 2004 – he saw me and sat next to me whilst I read my book (and studiously ignored him, he reports); his brother was in a small babysitting circle I set up; More recently, I offered a couple at his synagogue my parents’ house to stay in when their house burnt down and he remembers asking about me at the time thinking he should meet me; we both frequent the same market stall and are on first name terms with the owner who regularly slips us both free veg… it’s almost as if Fate has been throwing us in to each other’s path again and again and again over the years and it took until 2010 when our mutual friend finally introduced us for us to take notice. We've been together since then.

Pivotal Month Foretold

Last Summer, I was cleaning out boxes of old archived personal documents. I came across an invoice, dated 10 December 1970, for tuition fees for my last semester as undergrad at a university in Ottawa Canada. A couple of years after graduation, I decided to enroll for graduate studies. I made application at two universities only: my old alma mater and the most prestigious Ivy League school (what the heck!). My alma mater turned me down, for their graduate program, so it was a sweet irony when I graduated with a Master's degree from the Ivy League school in June 1977. Unfortunately, June 1977 is also the month my father passed away. The sixth month of 1977, to this day, remains the most pivotal month in my life. On the 1970 invoice, below my name and above my father's name, as next of kin, is the student number from my undergraduate years: 019776. (PS as a further coincidence, at the same undergraduate university, we were flipping a coin, as part of a statistics course exercise ... I called it correctly 32 times in a row!)

Nepal

On holiday in Nepal in 2006, I was walking up a hill with some friends to see a massive, ornate religious monument. Halfway up were some jewellery stalls which they stopped to look at, while I walked on. As I looked at the workmanship of the monument, a lady and I started talking. I asked where she came from, and it turned out we were both from Yorkshire! When she found I was was from Redcar, she asked me to go with her to see her friends. She told them where I came from and a chorus came 'We went to Sir William Turner's Grammar School for boys (in Redcar), to which I replied that I went to Cleveland Grammar School for girls (also in Redcar)! It turned out that they lived about a half hour walk from my house!!

hitch-hiking'paradise journey'1965

,for 3 years I regularly hitched at the weekend,I always wore my smartest clothes,suit,collar and tie,and never waited more than 20 minutes between lifts.On my way from north London to Cambridge,along the A1 one sunny Saturday afternoon,I was picked up within 2 minutes by my first Austin Sprite open-topped sports car.As an extremely experienced 'hitcher' I always ensured that I was dropped off a roundabout and knew precisely where to stand,ready to hold out my thumb,to enable the next car to stop safely to pick me up.To my complete amazement 4 more 'sprites' stopped one after the other on the 60 mile journey,sometimes only a few seconds between lifts.I made the trip in 70 minutes,faster than if I had had my own car.The 'sprite' was the 'boy-racer ' preferred car of that era

Reverend James Samuel Stone

I have since the 1960s had an interest in my family history, particularly the social history surrounding the various ancestors. I had established that one of my great grandfather's cousins, James Samuel Stone, who lived from 1852 to 1928, had emigrated to the USA as a young man, had studied theology and eventually became the rector of St. James's Cathedral in Chicago. From researches in the Bodleian Library, long before home computors and the internet, I established that he had written a number of books. Unfortunately the inconvenience of having to work for a living interrupted and caused long breaks in my family history researches and I had not pursued further details of James Samuel Stone although it remained as an intention so to do. At the time of one of these long breaks in my researches in the 1970s I was a partner in a surveying practise based in offices at 14 St Giles, Oxford. This was a very old property belonging to St John's College and had formerly been the town house of the Duke of Marlborough.

Travel Coincidence

My boyfriend and I were on holiday in Thailand, and decided to go to Pattaya for a couple of days to see what is was like, we were walking along the seafront and someone called out to us, it was a friend from back home in the Channel Island who had left to work overseas several years earlier, we were amazed to see her, she was on holiday with a friend. We took our leave of her that night as we were travelling back to Bangkok the next day to spend 4 or 5 days there before going home. On our 2nd day back we decided to take an excursion and got up early to meet our bus, who should be sitting on the same bus but our friend from back home, we couldn't believe our eyes.......what were the odds of meeting her again!

Holiday Coincidence

Some years ago, we were on holiday with some very good friends in Florida, this in its self was a coincidence as we had not planned the holiday together but found out at dinner one evening that we had booked to go to the same resort and on the same date albeit on different flights and in different hotels! All was going well but we decided we would spend the day apart doing our own thing for a change! Without realising it both families chose to go to Sea World and met each other within the first half hour at the first attraction, we could not believe it. We spent the day together and when we headed back to the immense car park consisting of many different parking zones, found that we were parked in the same zone only a few vehicles away from each other. Neither family knew each others vehicle as they were hire cars and the same make and model and colour as hundreds of other cars hire out to holiday makers.....??????? As we were staying in different hotels in different locations we could not have subconsciously followed each other????? We had not discussed exactly where we would go on the day as there were a lot of options available!

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