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!

Visiting Wantage

Visiting our Daughter and family in Australia where they live, my wife and I took a trip up country. Needing refreshments on the trip at lunchtime we followed a signpost to a small community of bungalows and a Bowls Club. The latter said open to all so in we went and ordered sandwiches and cold drinks. We, obviously, attracted a deal of attention and a large elderly lady approached and, after the usual "G'day" asked where we were from. On hearing we were from the UK she asked where a bouts and we said "near Oxford" and she said "where near Oxford". I replied "Wantage" and large lady said "Oh, my sister lives there in the retirement bungalows in Maryfield". This road is about 150 yards from our house! Is that amazing or what? We now live in Devon and never did get to meet the sister. Mr.Brian R

Credit Card

On a trip to Shanghia last year, my colleague withdrew some cash from a cash machine in our hotel one evening. We had a late night out and went to work the next day with hangovers. During the day, my colleague realised he no longer had his credit card. On return to our hotel in the evening, he asked if it had been handed in and was advised yes, a credit card for Mr Paul Tuck had been handed in the night before. When he asked for it, it as a master card - his was a visa card - and it was another Paul Tuck who had lost a credit card in the same hotel in Shanghai. Coincidence or what? He never did get his credit card back as it must have been lost.

speaking to friend at hairdressers

having arrived at the hairdressers for my hair to be coloured and cut, i was thinking about a friend whom i was supposed to be meeting later that day for drinks. my phone rang-it was her, that was the first coincidence, as we were chatting about the place to meet and what time, i told her i was in town getting my hair done, and she told me that she was, we laughed at the coincidence, then i asked her which salon she was in, and the was in the same one as me, only downstairs so we missed each other as i came in and went straigt upstairs. that was the second coincidence. the third coincidence is that when i went downstairs to go and see her, we realised we were wearing the same coat, that we both had bought new the day before.(this was especially bizare as the coat in question was a totally different style and colour that either of us would normally go for)

Genealogy searching

Coincidences One of the incredible number of co-incidences which happened to me on my second trip to Slovakia was this one: I'm in my little blue Czecho hire car, taking a last possible photograph of our great-grandmother's building - stolen time as I should already have been on the road back to Prague. I'm there because the previous evening when I was in Prejta I met people who told me where the house was and invited me in to their house and by the time I came out it was too dark to take a picture.. Desperately wanted to see inside the old barn which was the remaining structure, but there was no one around to ask. I’m taking photographs and just about to leave when an identical blue Czecho hire car comes up and parks exactly outside the house. At this particular point in time I am just putting my camera back in the boot. I haven’t got time to spare but I have to introduce myself to the man who emerges from the car. He’s Tibor, who tells me his grandfather lived there until three months ago. We talk a little and then he drives away. I walk round the block, only to find him again, by chance he comes out of his house.

Hearts

When I was 2 years old, it was discovered that my heart was on the right instead of the left. I have a condition called dextrocardia and situs inversus. There was no family history of this. Aged 34 I had my first child, at 8 months he needed a chest x-ray and it was discovered that he had the same condition. Apart from this reversal of all internal organs we have no adverse effects from it. 2 years later I had my 2nd child, this time they checked her at birth as I had been assured with my first pregnancy that the chances of having a child with their heart on the wrong side were a million to 1. sure enough my daughter also has the same condition.

First day of school

On my first day at junior school, aged 4, I became best friends with a boy called Kevin. Over the course of the next few days, we discovered we shared the same birthday. A little later it turned out our mothers also shared the same birthday and further investigation revealed that our fathers and older brothers (both six years older than us) both had birthdays ten days apart from each other. We were inseperable for the next seven years.

Old Friend

My husband and I met Tony & Fred (Winifred) on a plane whilst migrating to Australia in 1964 (£10 pommies)- we were both very young and just married. We stayed in Australia and kept in touch, even sharing a house together at one time. On the day we heard my mother-in-law had died we heard that Tony's dad was dying of cancer so made arrangements to come back to England together, this was in 1966. We both had families and kept in touch over the years, tailing off in the years up to 1985 when I had sent them a Christmas card with a note telling them all of our news. They arranged to come to see us and when they did they told us that their 14 year old daughter had died some 4-5 years previously of leukemia and they had received my card on what would have been her birthday and it had cheered them up on what was a very sad day. After her daughters death Fred had breast cancer and had a masectamy and then contracted MS. After this time we kept in touch spasmodically but did not see them. They lived in Haverhill, Cambridgeshire some 30 miles from where we lived in Sawtry.

Birthday coincidence

I phoned avios to book a hotel and was giving my children's details to the lady on the phone. I told her my 6 year old was called Luke and she said, 'I've got a Luke too, but he's 8'. I then had to give his date of birth, when I did, she gasped and told me that her son was born on the same date, (but 2 years earlier). Sarah

Purse returned in rush hour underground

In the school summer holidays (late July /August) 1962 I was asked one moring to meet a french speaking creole ( that was how she was described to me) off the boat train at Victoria Station, show the woman London and take her to the Convent in Slough that evening. I met the woman easily but as he she had two enormous suitcases we went by tube to Waterloo station to put them in left luggage before site-seeing. At The Left Luggage department I realised that I had lost my purse with return ticket and money. The woman had some money so we set off to "do " London. After St Pauls, the Monument and The Tower of London we set tout to retun to Waterloo in the rush hour via Tower undergroud station. As we went towards the entrance there was a surge of people coming out. A man came forward from the crowd and said to me " Here is your purse" and handed it to me. He expained that I had dropped it whilst getting out of the tube at Waterloo some 3 hours earlier but the doors had closed before he could tell me.

Fathers name features in Taiwan Restaurant Menu

I was on a business trip with my MD, Peter, in Taiwan, and we decided to have a break from local food and eat at a restaurant in Kaoshiung called the "Pig and Whistle". The menus were tastefully printed on "greyed out" facsimiles of old English newspapers. During a break in the conversation, we started to read the random news stories, and one of them was from the horse racing pages. It featured the winner of a routine race at Newbury in the 1960's, Peter's father, a Newbury jockey! What are the odds of us even reading the background to a restaurant menu, and then finding one's father's name as the featured race winner!

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