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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!

Did he know my mother

I was working in a community centre for a couple of years when one day a plain clothes detective came in and asked for our resident JP. I knew all the local police but not him. Whilst he was waiting he kept looking at me and would smile and look away and shook his head a couple of times. With that I acknwledged the joke and asked what I had done. He then replied that I was an identicial twin of a girl he had dated many years earlier but I couldn't be her because that had been about 20 years or so earlier and this was in Maryborough, approximately 300 kilomtres from Brisbane where I was living and working. At that point our JP came out and took him into her office. I was gobsmacked. I didn't get to speak with him again and never saw him again and didn't find out his name. But what he didn't know was that I was born in Maryborough, adopted and raised in Brisbane and I was around 21 at the time. So did he know my mother? I have never found out who she is and didn't get to find out who he was.

Bus Coincidence

My brother, Norman, survived a bus crash in Thailand (his girlfriend, Christine, died) only to be hit by a bus and killed around 10 years later outside his house in Woy Woy, NSW, Australia, in January 2011.

C.O's kindness crops up 30 years later

Soon after taking up a teaching appointment (in 1960) with the British Families Education Service in Guetersloh, Germany I had the sad news of my father's death in a road accident near Swansea. My new school was situated within a R.A.F. base whose Commanding Officer was a Wing Commander Jack P. Jack not only arranged a speedy compassionate flight for me back to the UK but continued to be concerned about my wife (pregnant with our daughter Alison) and mother who were seriously injured in the accident. Jack's son Richard was then a medical student and frequently visited his parents during his vacations, though I was unaware of this. More than 30 years later my daughter Alison and her husband moved into a house in Sheffield. Jack's son, Dr Richard P was their next door neighbour

Same teacher

I used to live in Romford, Essex and in 1982 my son Adam started school at the local primary and his first teacher was called Mrs B. Eighteen years later, having remarried and moved 150 miles North to Horncastle, Lincolnshire, my youngest son Joshua started school and I was amazed to find when I took him on his first day that his teacher was the same Mrs B! Apparently, she had moved up to Lincolnshire a few years after we had but it is still a very big county with hundreds of schools. She was surprised as well and couldn't believe that little Adam was now 18 and over six feet tall. from Susan T

Sweet Shop

When I was 8 years old in 1965 my parents bought a sweet shop in Crouch End, North London where we lived for a few years before moving to Essex. Years later in 1990 when I was married, we moved even further away about 150 miles North where my husband and I bought a house in a small village in the Lincolnshire Wolds and invited a few neighbours around for drinks. One lady who lived around the corner, originated from the London area, I mentioned that my parents used to own a sweet shop and she said that in the 1960s she used to date a young man whose parents owned a sweet shop in Crouch End. After further discussion, we realised that he had the same surname as the elderly couple my parents had bought their shop from and was indeed their son! When you consider how many sweet shops there must be in London and the fact that we were both relocated in a small village 150 miles away, and it was 25 years later, the chances of this happening must be very remote! from Susan Tompkins

Student Coincidence IRCH Conference 1999

In 1995, after over 40 years as being one of the UK's leading top florists, (I was Interflora Florist of the Year in 1981 and taught advanced florsitry with Interflora for over 15 years) I looked for a career change and found it in the wonderful world of herbs where through prayer I had thanked God for the wonderful life he had given me, and asked Him if I could put something good back into society, and the first door opened showing me herbs that had been traditionally used by the Obijwa Native North Americans as a cure for cancer, where in a car park in Birmingham on a Sunday evening after a very inspiring conference on herbal supplements, in October 1995, I was given a small book, with a bright green cover to read called "I was Canada's Cancer Nurse" by Rene Caisse. Taking the book home with me, that night I read it from cover to cover and it was the saddest story I had ever read. The following day a gypsy came into my florist shop and asked me to buy a lucky charm - showing me three - the usual sprig of lucky heather - which isn't heather at all, it is Stattice Demosa, a lucky stone and the other was a golden coloured horseshoe with a horses head.

Son's name

A few years ago my daughter and I won a trip to Los Angeles, we live in Lincolnshire in the UK and had never been to the USA before. I felt guilty as we had to leave my 6 year old son Joshua at home with my husband. When we arrived in LA we were picked up by a stretch limo and taken to a posh hotel in Beverley Hills where we had a suite of rooms waiting for us. I still wished my son could have been there to see it all. As we were exhausted, I decided to run myself a bath. In the living room there was a coffee table with a selection of magazines, so I grabbed one at random and took it to read whilst relaxing in the bath. As I flicked through the pages my attention was drawn to an article about Ants, which may seem unusual but there was a large diagram of an ant identical to one I had drawn when I did a school project on ants many years ago. I stopped to look at the article in more detail and to my amazement saw that it had been written by a man called Joshua Tompkins which is my son's name!

Unlucky 8s

In my mum's family, 8 is unlucky around death. My grandmother died on 8/8/1981, she was aged 80. This was the same date her son who had died many years earlier on the 8/8/1950. My grandfather (again mum's father) passed away on the 31/8/1968. There have also been others who have passed away in August in the same family but not sure of their exact dates.

Meeting friend on holiday

During a holiday in Swanage Dorset when I was about 15 my family drove from the house we were staying and past the seafront when my father needed the toilet so we stopped on the promenade in swanage and sat in the car looking out to sea across the beach. A dingy full of sea cadets was just reaching the shore, they clambered up the low sea wall directly opposite where we were parked and one of them was my best friend Micheal. He didn't even realize it was our car. I jumped out and said hello and he said they cadets were on a trip on a royal navy frigate, but it had devoted a gear box problem so the cadets were given shore leave, at the same time we happened to stop for the comfort break. So same place, same time, both locations unplanned.

Four times 21

Ted Farmer, a Wolverhampton Wanderers centre-forward made his first team debut for the club in the 1960-1 season and immediately started scoring goals regularly. In his 21st first team game he scored his 21st goal. It was also his 21st birthday and the date of the game against Everton, was January 21.

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