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!

Two Synchronicity sites

I'm delighted that you've put up this site. There are several synchronicity blogs that are filled with stories: http://www.synchrosecrets.com/synchrosecrets/ and www.67notout.com Trish MacG

baby friends meet as adults

My daughter was born in The Hague in 1982. We knew most of the ex-pat British families and I had a friend who had a baby boy shortly before my daughter was born. We left Holland when she was a year old and went to live in Australia and subsequently returned to England when she was 4. We never saw the family again. When she was a student, aged about 20, she went on holiday to Greece and met up with a crowd of British boys. One of them told her he was born in The Hague. She said she was too and thought no more about it. When she told me the story and said his name was Alex, I asked her if his surname was Sheppeard. It was. I asked his birthday and where his family lived, and sure enough it was the same baby boy she had 'known' in her first year of life.

Meeting someone thousands of miles away connected to you

When I travelled to India, knowing only one person and not being an Indian, I made a friend whose father worked with a cousin of a cousin of my godmother, who I did not know lived there. I met my Indian friend by chance queueing for the Ladies toilet at the university!

Take the lad out of Salford...

My wife and I both originate from Salford, Greater Manchester. We now live in Warrington, where my wife works in the local hospital. During recent office/ personnel changes, a temporary office clerk was placed with my wife. After some conversation, it turned out that he was also from Salford, and his Mother-in-law was my Godmother! He has since brought in old photos and Christening paperwork in relation to my Christening. As if that wasn't enough of a coincidence, one of the other new staff is also from Salford, and her Brother-in-law was my wifes teacher, and wait for it...he is married to my old primary school teacher!(totally different schools)....I think that would probably be classed as a serious set of coincidences.

Small World (twice!)

As a scientist, I know that most coincidences are easily explained, as the actual odds against are not that high. For example, in a class of 30 students, there is more than a 50% chance that two of them will have the same birthday. What I find spooky are the chains of coincidences that sometimes arise. Here are two examples (with each coincidence in each story numbered): 1. I spent the 1970s in New Zealand. One of the first holidays we took was to walk the Milford Track, about 300 miles from our home in Lower Hutt. In those pre-credit-card days, the usual method of taking money, even within the country, was to buy travellers' cheques. When I went to the bank to collect them, the bank clerk asked me where we were going. When I told her, there was a slight pause, then she asked "when?" This time the pause was longer, before she said "You'll see me there - I'm going on that tour myself." (#1) When we met up with her at the start of the walk, we found that she had taken her mother with her.

words on radio!

Not so much one coincidence, as an ongoing series of coincidences! This may not be unusual, but we have Radio 4 on much of the time, and one day I noticed that I would quite often be saying, reading or typing a word, and that precise moment the same word would be spoken on the radio. This happens nearly every day at some point, and the words involved are not common words, but words like discipline, contradiction, or believe. Perhaps it's inevitable for this to happen occasionally, but every day?!

old friend meeting

I was in a garden centre cafe just before Christmas, with a neighbour, having a coffee. A couple stood up from their table and turned towards us upon which my neighbour recognised one of them as a friend of a friend whom she hadn't seen for a few of months. My neighbour and I then started talking about meeting friends in unusual places. I told her of two stories one when my husband met and old law school friend at the top of a glacier on a skiing holiday having not seen this person for about 8 or 9 years and then when I met a friend from a camera club that I had been a member of (and left some 4 years prior to the meeting) in a funicular railway going up to the Les Deux Alpes glacier on a summer holiday ( he was on a walking holiday and we were on a summer ski holiday) As I was telling my neighbour this story a group of cyclists came into the cafe and sat down with drinks. I looked across and thought I recognised one of them. I asked my neighbour to take a look to see if she recognised him, but she didn't. It then dawned on me who it was, it was the gentleman from the camera club that I have not 5 minutes before, told the story off, meeting in a funicular railway.

working in New York

I live in Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex. Back in the 80s I went to work as a nanny in New York. The previous girl had left me a few phone numbers of other nannies she had met so I called the first number. The girl who answered asked where I was from. I said Sussex. She said So & so (can't remember her name) came from Sussex. She asked where in Sussex - I said Bexhill. So & so came from Bexhill! When I met So & so, it turned out her parents had bought the flat I was actually born in.

All roads lead to Hackney

18 years ago I travelled from Hackney, where I live, to Hebden Bridge (Yorkshire) for a small folk music event involving former members of cult psychedelic folkies The Incredible String Band. I went back to London on the train with the two only other Londoners at the event. One of them, Deena, turned out to have the same favourite author as me (Tom Robbins) and to have stood almost next to me at a small open-air concert by The Jam in 1981. She was also born and had grown up in Hackney - and I was working in the same small team as Tina and Barbara, two of her best friends from school. What’s more, a few years previously she had been interviewed for a job in a Deaf video project by the same person who I spent 10 years sharing a house with. The friendship might not have progressed much further than the train conversation, but it then turned out that her companion Arlette was on the same PGCE course as me, at the same university site, on the same day. This of course led to me, Arlette and Deena meeting up socially.... Deena and I have been together since then!

meeting same people on 2 holidays

On holiday in Bulgaria we noticed a German group comprising 2 families who were staying in the same hotel as us. We were on 'hello' terms. 2 years later in Morocco, the same group were staying in the same hotel.

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