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!

Hitchhiking in the South of France

I was born in a small village called Blaricum, in the Netherlands. At 17 I went hitchhiking in the south of France. A 2CV stopped and gave me a lift. 'What nationality are you?' the driver asked. 'I am Dutch,' I said. 'That is funny,' he said. 'This is only the second time I ever stopped to give someone a lift! The first time was last week when I gave a lift to a boy and a girl and they too were Dutch. Nice couple they were and as it got a bit late they put up their tent in my garden for the night. They left their address. Came from a village called Blari.. something..' 'Blaricum?' I asked. 'That is right,' the driver said. 'His name was Ernst..' 'Mindlin?' I filled in. 'That is right, Ernst Mindlin.' Ernst lived just up the road from me!

Circle of Relationships

My wife and I lived in Fordingbridge, Hants from 1986 to 1990. We had known several people there from 1967. Our eldest daughter divorced in 1999. She concentrated on working and providing a home for her two young girls. She did not enter into any relationships. In 2006 she met a man who she eventually married. This man was a solicitor and worked in Fordingbridge. We asked a close friend at Fordingbridge if she knew this man and she said that she had been his legal secretary until she retired and she spoke highly of him. One day in 2007 our daughter mentioned that the daughter of his secretary was starting a teacher training course at Winchester University. The daughter of our eldest son was also starting teacher training at Winchester at the same time. We aked the name of the new secretary and realised that we also knew her as an aquaintance through the local church at Fordingbridge. To add to this, the solicitor had been brought-up in Chandlers Ford, Hants where we now live. His mother had been the headmistress at the local primary school which is 300 yards from us R Rozzier

against all odds seeing the same photo we looked at on TV

Dear Coincidences, Some years ago my daughter and I were sorting old photos and we came across one taken in the early 60's of a group of people who worked in the laboratory in Paddington General Hospital. My late wife Avril was there. Also there was another technician named Ian Wilson who later left to become an actor who is known now as Richard Wilson(Victor Meldrew). Later that day,by coincidence,on the TV we saw a chat show where Cilla Black was talking to Richard. During the interview she showed the same picture we had been looking at earlier. We had not planned to watch the program.

fish tank

it was about two in the morning when i woke up suddenly, i never do that, because i had heard someone say check the fish in a dream. i went back to sleep and the next morning my dad came downstairs saying how he forgot to turn the fish tank filter the night before. i asked if he had mentioned the fish atall tht night but he was fast asleep by eleven

'I like that one'

In the mid sixties I shared a flat with two members of the Pop group the Animals: Chas Chandler and Hilton Valentine. On tour in Sweden they had met two Swedish girls, Lotte and Yvonne, who came to visit them in London. Lotte eventually married Chas, Yvonne, in the end, married Gyp, a friend of the singer Donovan. One day Yvonne, another Swede and I were offered a lift from London to Sweden, via Amsterdam. I had just met a nice girl in Amsterdam so I arranged to pick her up on the way so she could come along too. In the end I stopped off in Amsterdam, never went on to Sweden, and the nice Dutch girl is still my wife. That is how Yvonne and she met. Yvonne had a very special way of pointing at gâteaux and such things, saying: 'I like that one,' in a soft, sweet voice. We lost touch with Yvonne. Some years later we moved to Wales. Sometimes, jokingly, when she sees something Yvonne would have liked my wife points at it and puts on Yvonne's voice saying: 'I like that one.' Our daughter had heard her do that many times and, though she had obviously never met her, knew the name of the person my wife was imitating.

A picture is taken of me by a stranger. 3 years and 3000 miles later, that stranger and I are flatmates.

In 2005 I had just started University in Washington DC in America. Some of my friends and I attended the war protest that year, and because my friend was making a his own amateur comedy tv show, we decided to have a bit of a laugh and went downtown dressed up as "Pirates for Peace". By 2007 I decided that Washignton DC was not the place for me, and left to study at UCL in London. In 2008 I was living in student halls in London, and in the spring had a new flatmate who had been randomly assigned to my flat who was also from the States. Before coming to London she had lived in New York and went to Uni in Pennsylvania. We never were too close but would chat when we ran into each other in the kitchen or corridor about coursework and other day to day things.

Answer The Phone.

This happened at least 4 or 5 different times. Me and my best friend always use to call each other at the exact same time, there use to be no rings, just us both saying hello. This only happened between us though.

Majorca and the Isle of Man

In July 1971, when I was 18, I went to Arenal in Majorca from Manchester with two friends for a holiday. We stayed in a hotel called the "Timor". The majority of the other guests were either from Edinburgh or Leicester. My friends and I, all Mancunians, got friendly with the lads from Leicester and even kept in touch when we returned home. In 1973 I went with my Mother to live in the Isle of Man and later that year met my husband. One night (in early 1974) just after we had got engaged, we went for a meal with my brother-in-law and his then fiancee and my newly engaged sister-in-law. Her finacee was still in Scotland at the time but once married would be living in the Isle of Man. My sister-in-law told us of the name she had picked for her new bungalow. "Timoro". I said how odd as I has once stayed in a hotel called the "Timor". To my , and my sister-in-law's surpirse, we were all in the hotel at the same time.

War coincidence

My grandfather was in the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool in 1914 on the day World War 1 began. In early Sept 1939 my father (then aged 18 but still very much with us at 91)) had just got into Liverpool from visiting Canada on a Rhodes Scholarship and was in the Adelphi Hotel on the day World War 2 was declared. I have no intention of ever going to the Adelphi Hotel !!!

Lots of different examples

Here are a few examples: Me and my ex-partner met a couple in Antigua in 1988 - they were getting married on the day of my 30th birthday so asked us to act as witnesses as no one else was with them. A few years later we were at the airport leaving Florida and bumped into them as we both waited for a plane heading home to different UK airports. Another time I was backstage at a major music concert miles from where I live as my (then) partner was marketing the band. Suddenly someone called my name and it turned out to be a man who had been in my class at school and had had a major crush on me. He was there managing the support band. I worked as a therapist and lived about 20 miles from where I grew up on the outskirts of London. A client told me some information about a man she was having an affair with, and - on checking some of the facts - it turns out it was someone who had dated my sister for years in her teens/twenties. Needless to say I wasn't able to tell either party!

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