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!

Mr Richard Lyndon Gwyn Pask

(1) My wife and I live in Gwent, South Wales. In November 2005 we went on an organised touring holiday of Australia. On the tour were two ladies from Scotland, travelling together. We had obviously never met before. We spent nearly three weeks in their company. At the end of the holiday we said our goodbyes, and they flew home on a different flight to us, as we were having an add-on stay of a few days in Bankok. In June 2010, my wife and I went to Edinburgh for a few days (we had not been there together since our honeymoon in 1974. We were walking down the "Royal Mile", which goes from the castle to Holyrood Palace, when my wife said "I think I just saw those two ladies we met in Australia". "Which ladies?" I replied. "You know, those two nice Scottish ladies" she said. "You must be mistaken" I said, but she insisted on running after them (as they had gone some way by now). Lo and behold, when we approached them, they recognised us straight away. The first and last time that we saw them was 12,000 miles away! We had a nice chat and then went on our way again. Will we ever see them again?

Brooking House

My father, whose surname was Brooking, and he lived in East Sussex at the time, was driving through Devon and came to the village of Brooking. He stopped at Brooking House and knocked on the door, just out of interest. The owner showed him the records of the house. It was 100 years to the day that the last Brooking had moved out of the house.

History Educational Triumvirate

I am the Head of 6th form in a school. My colleague, head of higher education and careers, is 25 years my senior. We are both Historians by training. My colleague's assistant is aged somewhere in between our age range. When discussing the university of Manchester History department recently, we ended up talking about a lecturer there, who has been in the limelight recently for some indifferent behaviour. The coincidence is thus: The head of careers taught the individual from Manchester; his secretary was in the same school year as the Mancunian (at a different school to that at which the colleague taught him); I was taught by the same person at Cambridge. Apart from the ages making this possible, surely this is odd?

Birthdaty

My 3 children were born on 17 May 1983, 17 May 1985 and 18 May 1987. My sister was born on 17 May 1950.

Family looks

I was in Santiago, Chile in 1981. I had been backpacking around Latin America, and I walked in to a library to read an english newspaper. I asked the elderly lady at the reception desk if they had English newspapers in the library. She replied and asked me my name and I said Charles. She said "Yes, but what is your surname?" I told her and she said "Isn't Hugh your father's name?" She was right and had seen my father's looks in me. She had known him in Santiago in the 1940's.

Uncanny paterns

Last summer I visted Caen in Normandy with a friend. After finding my uncle's grave (he was killed in WWII) which was emotional I decided to seek out his close friend who was buried nearby. On finding the grave, which had the usual servicemans details engraved upon it, the startling thinng was that his service-number ended in the numbers: '666'. This was very uncanny, as we had been talking up to this point about 'unlucky' numbers, particularly servicemen's numbers. This poor solddier had the unfortunate issue of a service number ending in '666', which according to Biblical accounts is the 'mark of the devil'.

brother in magazine

whilst working in an outpatient department I picked up one of the donated magazines . I had never done this before in the twenty years that I had worked in the dept . I went off to lunch , opened the magazine and there was a picture of my brother ,who has learning disabilities, dancing at his club with the volunteers about whom the article had been written .

Initials

Both of my daughters married men with the initials S A W

Premonition

I worked for The Salvation Army printing department in Toronto, Canada for five years from 1967-1962. During my last year there before returning to the UK I worked under an English editor who came out from the UK. He was a very pleasant man to work for and I was sad to leave his employ. 50 years on, in 2011, I kept thinking about him and his face appeared in my mind very vividly. I went on my computer and Googled The War Cry, the Salvation Army magazine (the first time I had ever done this) and the first page I opened showed that he had died the previous week.

Miss

I moved from a company called Everything Everywhere, to company called Eagle Eye (both EE), and both my bosses have the initials SR.

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