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!

Mrs Jill S

1. From 1967-69 I studied, among other subjects, economics at the Medway College of Technology in Maidstone. My young lecturer and his wife were very good to students and were very popular. We students were shattered when he left his wife to live with one of his mature students. After this I lost track of them all. In 1975 I met my husband-to-be in Lima, Peru. We discovered that the mature student was the wife of my boyfriend's best friend (a naval officer) and that Adrian had played a role in trying to reunite Peter (his best friend) with Christine (the mature student). She had been studying economics at evening classes at the same time as I had been studying in the day. Adrian and I managed to contact David and Christine who had married. 2. I lived in Zambia from 1970-72 and then went on to live in Kenya for a year. From there I travelled to Thailand, and bumped into a former colleague from Zambia in the queue at the airline check-in desk. A few months later, having visited my sister in Australia, I boarded a 'plane at Sydney and sat down next to the same former colleague I had met at Bangkok. All this before the days of mass travel!

You spoiled my holiday 27 years ago

As one of the organisers of The International Cavaliers cricket matches in the 1960's, I had to collect Ted Dexter and Peter Richardson from the Chesterfield local airfield at Staveley. It was on September 1st, 1968 and the two England cricketers were spending their end of season holiday with their families in Norfolk. A televised benefit match had been arranged for Derbyshire player Harold Rhodes, and they had agreed to break their holiday for the day for the good cause. They had flown from Little Snoring airfield in a light aircraft and I was picking them up and taking them to Queens Park for the match. In driving to the venue, they told of the problems the break had brought about, as they and their young families were involved in their own 'Test Match' and the they didn't appreciate their Dads deserting them - even for a day on the TV.

Parallel Lives. Birthdays

While working in Malaysia on Rubber Plantations in the 1960's two of my Planter colleagues shared the same birthday as mine, one exactly 10 years older and the other 20 years older than myself. At the time my circle of expatriate friends probably numbered no more than 100. What are the odds?

Mr.

I emigrated to Canada in October 1968, and worked in Northern Manitoba for two years as a Research Metallurgist in a copper/zinc mining and smelting company 500 miles north of Winnipeg. As a single man I was able to live in the company Staff House, along with 12 other bachelors. Some had lived there for 20 years plus, others were more transient and stayed for 6 months. My room was number 6. After 16 months at Christmas 1969 I returned to England for the first time, and before returning to my parents in Northern England I visited some friends in London. 6 hours after I landed I climbed up the stairs from Oxford Circus Tube station, looking for a particular shop. It was very crowded and I was a bit lost, so I went randomly over to a guy waiting for someone by a shop window, and asked him where this particular shop was. There was something in his accent that struck me, so where was he from? He was English, but had just returned after working for 10 years in Canada. Oh where?..etc... Until that September he had been working for 8 years, for the same company, in the same town, and had been living in the Staff House, in the room next to mine, room 7.

Rolls Royce in South of France

I have always been curious about this subject and have collected coincidences in my mind over the years.Try this one; In 1962 I was with a few friends in a tiny remote village in the South of France. We met up with a few locals. I tried to explain that the best car in England was the Rolls Royce without much success. As I was struggling to explain, a Rolls Royce Phanthom 5 passed in front of us to my utter amazement. You must remember this was at a time to see a Rolls Royce Siver Cloud in England was a very rare occurence-the much more expensive Phanthom 5 was never seen.

Meeting old friend

In 1994 I visited my daughter, who was then living in Hong Kong, so that I could watch the HK Rugby Sevens. One day, at a loose end, I decided to take the train up to the Chinese border (Hong Kong was still British at that time). This proved to be pretty boring so I got back on the train intending to return to HK but instead got off at the station nearest to Plover Cove dam. As a civil engineer I recalled the building of the dam and was interested in seeing the finished project. I attempted to hire a bicycle to ride the few miles to the dam but decided that I did not have sufficient time to get there and back before the cycle shop closed. Whilst standing on the kerb, wondering what to do, a car pulled up alongside me and who should get out but an old friend from my golf club who was completing his last tour of duty in the colony. Apart from my daughter, he, Ian, was the only other person I knew in Hong Kong.

Fuse Wire.

My daughter asked me if I could repair her broken necklace.I thought that very thin fuse wire would do the job.I had just started aforementioned repair when the phone rang,it was my daughter-in -law."Do you have any fuse wire"? she asked.I was bewildered.She was equally bewildered when I answered that I did and I was holding it in my hand. You may not consider this coincidence worthy of upgrade to 'amazing coincidence' until I tell you that I had not seen or touched the fuse wire for some 2 or 3 years before this occasion.I have not seen or touched the fuse wire since,some 10 or twelve years. Les Kinsey.

coincidental meeting

Our next door neighbours were driving through France on holiday and stopped for one night at an hotel in northern France. Eating at the restaurant that evening they began chatting to the couple at the next table. During the conversation our neighbours said they lived in Rotherham, the other couple replied that they were from Reading but had relatives who lived in Rotherham. It emerged that the couple were my sister and her husband who were also staying at the hotel for one night on their way home from holidaying in France.

Friend Coincidence

I have two friends called Laura who I met in primary school although they are not in contact their lives are remarkably simular. They were both born in Feb although a year apart. They both moved away from our home town after leaving university and became nurses and both at some stage worked within A&E Departments of major city hospitals. It's not just their work lives that mirror each other their personal lives do too, last year they both got married, each to a man called Jonny!

Disappearing act

Two years ago my brother disappeared. He left his family without warning and sent a suicide note to his wife and to me. We had no idea where he had gone. We contacted the police who found on his computer that he had bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok. Without knowing whether he would still be there my father and I went to Bangkok in search of him. We had no leads but that didn't stop us! We contacted the British Embassy in Thailand and they were able to tell us whether my brother was still in Thailand or not. They did this by checking the records of airports and seaports and, each day, we got a report from the Embassy that he had not presented himself at a port the previous day. All we therefore knew was that he was still in Thailand or he had left the counyty illegally. Either way, we were still faced with the prospect of finding someone who didn't want to be found. We found out that a friend of my brother was visiting Thailand at the same time. Neither knew that the other was in the country. My father and I went to visit the friend in Pattaya, about a 2 hour drive from Bangkok.

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