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!

silver nickel

my friend gave me money to buy something for him at the gift shop where i work. that morning at work (before i remembered to buy his gift) i found an old silver nickel in the cash register and i really wanted to put it aside but did not have a nickel to replace it with. later i bought the gift for him and put the change in the bag with the gift and sealed the bag with a piece of tape. i made sure to include the silver nickel in the bag as part of his change as i wanted to ask him if i could give him a newer nickel for the old one. Any way..i forgot to ask. Then a few days later we were driving in the car and (quite randomly) he took a nickel out of his pocket and asked me if i wanted it. I said that he should keep it but he placed it on the dash board. later i noticed that it was the very nickel that i had wanted.

Celebrity coincidence...

Some 25 years ago, my parents and I visited Jersey for a holiday. My Father bounded back into the room an hour later, delighted to have been asked for directions by a (erstwhile) household-name TV comedian/ quiz show host, who was evidently lost whilst enjoying a morning run along the coast. This would have been litter more than an interesting meet-and-greet, if it wasn't for the fact that said celebrity recognised my Father, much to the amusement of both men, and quizzed my Father, saying "I recognise you from somewhere". Indeed, he had provided financial consultation to said celebrity the week before, and although he rarely dealt directly with the star talent, he was known to him. Free tickets and backstage drinks at that evening's show were promptly offered.

Serendipity, 333's, and a friendship rekindled

This is all true! In 2004, I was having lunch in Southwest London with Rosie, a young American woman, whom I'd met (briefly) the previous year when I was living in Canada. We'd met fleetingly, at a coffee shop in Vancouver, and bumped into each other again a few days later, (at which point we swapped email addresses). Given she lived in the US, I doubted that I’d ever meet her again. Unexpectedly, Rosie got in touch to inform me she was visiting London, so we arranged to meet. During our friendly reunion, our conversation turned to serendipity .... I had recently begun a relationship with a woman I had met, by chance, at Waterloo train station. During this journey, it was clear there a mutual 'interest'. Still, ‘carriage courage’ deserted me and as she alighted the train I resigned to the fact our paths may not cross. Fortunately, my 'expired' ticket, purchased hours earlier, failed to get me through the barrier and I was forced to turn to join the queue to speak to the guard: she was, much to my pleasure, also in the queue, and conversation began.

Co-incidental Meetings

In 1999, I was travelling in New York (from Australia) & had made email contact with a friend (who was a resident there) to say we should meet up. One morning I decided to walk around the city - stopping randomly & changing directions. About mid morning, I came to a crossing, looked up & there she was - my friend - on the other side of the road. There was my email reply right in front of me. Weird - but great catching up! Similarly, I was travelling in London in 1997. I missed one tube train & was waiting for the next ... and my neighbour from Australia (who I had hoped to catch-up with too) came walking onto the train station. We both couldn't believe it. Same thing at my residential train station ... one morning I jumped on the train to go to work & walked straight into a friend from Australia who I thought had already returned to Oz & had wondered if he was still in London - turns out we lived only a couple of stops from each other ... so kept in touch the rest of my stay. Finally, in Sydney one evening, I called a cab around 6pm to take me to a venue from the north of Sydney to the city.

Len T

My friend Patrick McGrath had been living and working in Shanghai, Population 20 million, and myself, my partner Gillian and my Daughter Sarah travelled there to visit him, staying at his modest flat in a Stalinist era walled appartment complex about 20 k from the CBD towards Pudong airport but still massively populated (The place was truly exotic and we were very impressed with the sights and surrounds of a megopolis such as Shanghai). On one occasion we travelled by double decker bus to the Shanghai CBD (4 Yuan for an air-conditioned bus or 2 yuan for a non air-conditioned one) we chose the 4 Yuan option of course, We walked up the Shanghai mall which takes the visitor through the heart of this massive cities CBD, through what would have been the main street, There was a sea of asian people like a carpet (I am tall so I could see over everyone else) stretching up the mall for about 1 kilometer. A caucasian was approaching visible every now and then as the pedestrians jostled and dodged each other, As we grew closer there was a sense of disbelief, We all noticed him (and he us) because he was one caucasian face amongst thousands and he was bearded as well, very rare.

Five strange world wide coincidences

When I was a trainee Merechant Navy Cadet I shared a cabinwith a guy called Roberts. I was famously erratic and moved like a typhoon. He had the bottom bunk below me. I often leaped oout of bed, in the process either kickinh him or standing on his arm or head. I would rush into the cabin fling the door open invariably when he was behind it etc. Some years later when I was on a ship in Gibraltar shopping for presents, realised I was late rushed out the shop, knocking a passing man onto his back. On rising he said I should have known in this world there was only one guy who could do that to me and it's you Buckpitt. It was Roberts. In 1996 in Port Douglas, Australia at a Sunday market, I felt an arm on my shoulder the guy said what are you doing here David, It was a man who sold ferry tickets from a kiosk opposite my hotel in Torquay. My son was in Vancouver airport with his wife he needed to go to the gents, the man in the adjoining stall was looking at him strangely, On returning to his wife my son said there was a guy in the toilet who is the image of my uncle.

Australian prayer

I live in Melbourne Australia and some years ago my daughter, was travelling with a friend round the US and Europe. Suddenly and unexpectedly I found myself free to travel to the UK, but had no way of contacting my daughter, to let her know I would be there. A few days after arriving in London, I went to a mid-day church service, and said a silent prayer that I would find some way to contact her. A couple of hours later, walking down Whitehall, I came face to face with her. She said she was astonished to see a lady, who looked so much like her mother, who she knew was in Melbourne, approaching her, and was even more astonished when she found it was me. Mrs Jessica C

Chance Meeting

1961, I was in the army as a National Serviceman stationed in Germany. I got a two week leave to come home to England at the same time as a friend of mine. As he lived in North London and I lived on the South Coast we arranged to meet in central London and I would go to his house for two days. I travelled to London by train and when I arrived I had to go on the Underground to our meeting place. I went to the Circle line to take the train and as the trains come every few minutes I did not have long to wait. When it arrived the doors slid open to reveal another friend, a soldier from my regiment standing there!! I didn't even know he was on leave. The chances of that happening must be enormous, that he was on that particular train in that exact spot for us to meet.

European penfriend link

At age 14 I went to stay with a German family organised by my school. The following year I did the Bristol Bordeaux exchange organised by the city of Bristol department. I had visited the same family in France a couple of years running when we were looking at photos of the family and my exchange partner was showing me some photos of her brother who had been on a visit to Germany....the house looked familiar as did the family... and I then realised that he had been twinned with the brother of the German girl I had been twinned with a few years previous to that...we all said that that was a huge coincidence!!!!!

missed train unexpected meeting

The last time I'd seen or spoken to my brother for more than 2 years. Just before Christmas I was in London for business meetings. That evening I went to the wrong platform as I'd wrongly assumed it would be the usual platform where I'd normally get the train back to Cardiff. The guard told me the train was leaving from a different platform and I would never make it. Running through a busy Paddington station at rush hour was no mean feat needless to say I'd just missed the train I had been booked on by a few minutes. After catching my breath, and waiting around 20 minutes for the next train, I proceeded to walk down the platform and board the train, taking a seat by the window. After about a minute a man asked if he could sit next to me, I agreed. As he was putting his coat in the rack I felt a tap on my shoulder, I turned around to see that my brother was sitting in the seats opposite.

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