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!

chance meeting

My wife and myself were going on holiday to Bournemouth and decided to randomly take a trip into London to see some relatives. Our best friends at the time were going to Scotland for a short break. We decided to take a sightseeing trip and take in the tower of London. On our way into the tower who should be walking the other way but our best friends whose Scotland trip got cancelled so they decided to visit London instead. This was well before mobile phones and was a pure chance meeting. What are the odds on that.

Long lost relatives

When my Dad died in 1981, I was 11 and after a couple of years the family was pretty much split in 2. Apart from my paternal grandparents, no-one else really kept in touch. In the late 90s, Mum and I tried to track down 2 cousins (and their daughters) of my dad who used to live in Hampshire but they had moved. A dead end appeared to have been reached. In 2004, I went to see Duran Duran at Wembley Arena. My (then) friend and I got there to settle into our seats before it all began. Behind us, the row started to fill up and for no other reason I turned round to see who was going to be behind us. I looked at them and literally just glanced away. One minute later I had a tap on my shoulder - "Excuse me, is you name XXXXXXX XXXXXXX?" I looked a bit dumbfounded and apologied as I didn't know who she was... it was the daughter of one of my Dad's cousins that we'd been trying to find. She just happened to have seats directly behind my friend and I in the whole of Wembley Area. She'd been about 14 the last time I had seen her in the early 80s.

Same security codes

My grandson and I have both chosen exactly the same 4 numbers as our security codes. When we found out we just could not believe it!!

T'was meant to be!

I was on a night out with my friend and she bumped into her boyfriend. After a while they started arguing and she decided to leave and go home. Not wanting to hang up my dancing shoes just then and annoyed that she had gone home, i decided to go to the next bar and meet up with a few girls we were due to meet later that night. On my way there I caught a glimpse of one of the girls i was meeting in the window of the pub next door. Wondering why they were already out and hadnt told me, i stormed into the bar to approach them. As i walked through the door, i bumped straight into a man that was walking out. I apologised and explained that i was in a rush and looking for my friend. Kindly he opened the door for me to walk in and have a look - only for me to realise it wasn't my friend at all, but someone who looked very similar! Feeling silly, i apologised to the gentleman that i bumped into and went to leave to meet my friends in the correct pub. Coinsidentaly, the gentleman was just leaving to go to the same bar as me so i walked along with him and his friend.

Pizza delivery

In 1993 I was a Staff Sergeant in the British Army, based in Herford and living in Detmold. Quite late one evening after a long day at work, I told my wife that what I most wanted to eat was a salami pizza. She wasn't particularly pleased as she was in the middle of preparing a late dinner, and anyway the normal pizza taxi places would be closed. About ten minutes later the doorbell rang and when I answered it there was pizza delivery woman asking if knew where number 114 was. We lived at number 112 which was the last house on the street. Frustrated, short of time and clearly looking to end her shift, she offered me the pizza for half price, of course I accepted. It wasn't a salami pizza but that was pretty amazing anyway. At first my wife thought that I had ordered it, but we checked the last number called on the house phone, and established that it was still from her call to her mother earlier in the day, so it would have been impossible for me to have done so.

Strange audition coincidence abroad.

When I was at college in London in 1989, I won a scholarship to study classical music, on the proviso that I studied abroad. My college Principal suggested that I go to study at a prestigious music conservatoire in Austria, because he'd studied clarinet there 30 years earlier and had enjoyed it very much. He said that he'd sort out all the paperwork and a place at the affiliated student hostel. He was adamant that for entry to the conservatoire I wouldn't need any sort of audition, I could just turn up on the first day of term. So I had my farewell party, packed a large trunk and sent it by air to Austria. I decided that I'd acclimatise myself by flying over a couple of weeks before term started so that I could settle in, and so I randomly picked the 18th September to fly. On the 19th September I had breakfast and a walking tour of some of the tourist sites of the town. I then wandered into the college building to see what it was like. Out of curiosity I went up to a noticeboard where I saw a list of auditions happening that day. My name was next to the 12.30pm slot. It was 12.15pm!

Dog story

I had recently split up with my husband and wasn't in a good place emotionally, morose, depressed and crying a lot. My husband had left a few days beforehand to his home town in South Africa. I was left in the UK with our Cocker Spaniel. I would walk the dog every day on the fields behind the golf course where my husband used to work. Occassionaly there would be other dog walkers, on this walk there was one other person on the other side of the field that I could barely see. My dog was off the lead and began to run towards the other dog. The other dog also off the lead began to run towards my dog. My dog turned and ran back towards me with the other dog in pursuit where she lay in submission at my feet. The other dog was large, about three times bigger than my cocker and unusual in as much as I had never seen one before, it was very furry and resembled a huge teddy bear. When the owner came over I asked him what type of dog it was as I was curious. He replied that the breed was a Leonberger. I stood open mouthed in shock and then laughed for the first time in a very very long time. My husband's name was Leon Burger!

Travelled miles away, found a local author.

We used to live in Hythe, Kent, on the site of a one time small arms training school. The site closed in the 1960's & was redeveloped. My wife's parents lived in Nova Scotia, Canada. We went out there for a visit in the early 1990's. On our first outing we visited a tourist attraction, I spotted a bookstall & went to have a look. The very first book that I picked up was entitled Hangman's Beach. That looks like it might be a good read, I thought. Turned it over to look at the back for plot/author info, to read that the author was born in Hythe, Kent. I later found out, that his father was a small arms instructor & had been based at the very school, the site of which I was living at, at the time. The author's name was Thomas Head Raddall. When he was about ten years old, in 1913, his father applied for & got a posting to the Canadian army to instruct in small arms.

From here to Australia

In 1996, I was travelling in Australia for the first time when I met a lovely australian bloke. One day he introduced me to one of his friends whose mother came from England. I enquired as to where. "Oh you won't know it, a little town called Redbourn" he said. "Well Redbourn in Hertfordshire is 6 miles from where I live" i replied. Do you know Brache Close, he asked. I replied that I knew the road but that my mum's aunties had lived in the next road to it since the 1920s. "Ask them if they knew XXXX" I was told. They did - they all went to school together..... Not bad 10,000 miles from home....

Mr. Joe H

I live in a city centre side-street where there are many blocks of apartments but very little road traffic. For some years I had a job which required me to leave home at around 07.30. I would walk the short distance down my street to an intersecting street in order to reach my car. Often there would be just one other person (not the same one each time) walking along the intersecting street and we were on a collision course unless one or the other of us changed pace. This happened so many times that I began to anticipate it.

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