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!

STRANGE MEETING

Many years ago while holidaying in North Devon we bumped into a work colleague of my husband's. We were invited to join him and is wife at their holiday home that evening. We had a lot of difficulty finding the house and very nearly gave up but in the end found them. Also with them was the wife's elderly mother who during the evening was on the point of going to bed when the Thames was mentioned. I said that my father, who had died when I was 11, had worked near Tower Bridge and it transpired that this elderly lady had worked with my father for many years and the last letter she had typed before retiring was to my mother offering sympathy on his death. Really strange, the chances of us meeting up at all, finding the house and the possibility of the lady going to bed before my father was mentioned make this a really strange coincidence and because of her memories, and fondness for my father, very important to me.

Chance meeting in Jersey

I lived at home with my parents in Beckenham My girlfriend lived in Islington, london. Two of my teanage friends while I lived at home were Robert and Jill. In their twenties they married and moved away. I didn't see them after that. My girlfriend and I married and moved to Clapham, London. Two years after we married we went to Jersey for a holiday. One day in St Helier my wife and i were walking around the shops. Then across the road were Robert & Jill. We couldn't believe it. Alan.

In an 8.08 state!!

When I check the time around 8.00am by looking at a clock or watch more often than not it is exactly 8.08 when i look

Foreign Typewriter

While on holiday in a Greek resort we wandered down a side street and came across a secondhand shop. The shop was closed but we had a look in at the shop window anyway. We noticed an ancient typewriter on display, with a partially-typed letter propped up in it. We then realised that the address typed at the top of the letter was the next street to our own in London.

my husband in hoapital

my husband haden"t seen his sister for more than four years they bumped into each other in Arrowpark hospital,they were in the same ward. having the same opration for reducing the flow of calcium. my husbands name is George Yates his sister is Beryl Murphy !!

Jack Gladas

Having just started secondary school at aged 11, I went to Australia and my family decided to visit Sydney Harbour Aquarium. In front of us in the queue to get in was a friend of mine from primary school who I hadn't seen for almost a year!

South African Experiences

In 1969 my family were living in Waterlooville Hampshire and we left there to emigrate to South Africa. We lived in a small town called Pinelands, just outside Cape Town. My children went to the local school there. Coincidence 1 We read in the local paper that an ice rink was due to open in Cape Town, so my wife decided to take the children to try it out. While on the rink my wife saw a face she knew, it was a friend who she used to skate with in the Bournemouth ice skating rink in 1950's Coincidence 2 During the christmas holidays (summer) 1971 we decided to have a camping tour from Cape Town to Rhodesia as it was (Zimbabwe) driving towards the Victoria Falls we encountered a camper van coming towards us with a Cape Town registration, we waved as they went by and they stopped and found that it was a couple who belonged to the same geological club as ourselves in Capetown, neither of us knew the other was doing the trip. Coincidence 3 Having collected a number of nice mineral specimens during our stay in South Africa one of the teachers at our childrens school a Miss Turnbull asked if we could let her have a specimen to take to her brother in England.

Country Cottage

For a few months in 1978 we rented a run-down thatched cottage, located in a sparsely populated area of Essex. Several years later, after buying a flat in London, we befriended a young man who lived next door to us. We subsequently lost regular contact with this person but met up again for a meal many years later. He described a cottage that he had recently purchased and renovated, and it became clear that it was the same one that we had rented many years before.

Budgie friends

When visiting her friend in a neighbouring flat, my mother used to take her budgie ( caged ) with her. Her friend also had a budgie. Some months later we moved flats a couple of blocks away. After about 2 weeks, my mother's friend rang to say her budgie had just escaped. At that moment my mother looked-out onto the balcony of our flat and her friend's budgie was sitting on the rail. She managed to coax the budgie into our flat, shutting all doors and windows thereafter to prevent further escape. The budgie was subsequently re-united with it's owner.

random coincidece stories

1. We were a golf society visiting St Neots golf course, and a friend said I didn't realise you were a member here. I replied, no I'm not, He said come and look at this and he showed the list of members and their handicaps, there it was:- A.J.Hardie.. handicap 11.. I was A.J.Hardie ..handicap 11 unfortunately I didn't follow this up. 2. Visiting Ostend I noticed some teenagers walking around in school uniform which looked vaguely familiar. On closer inspection it turned out to be my old school uniform Peterhead Academy Aberdeenshire, Scotland. 3. On holiday in Cornwall, walking thro Mevagissy, I came face to face with one of my golfing partners and his wife, neither of us had said anything about holidaying in Cornwall 4. Returning from holiday in Corfu, In the Departure lounge at 0300am we bumped into dog walking friends from our street. 5.Caught the train from Kings Cross to Aberdeen taking my fiancee to meet my mother in the N.E of Scotland- these were the days of compartment trains and there was only one other person in our compartment. For some reason or other I felt an affinity to her but she was engrossed in her book and I didn't want to disturb her.

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