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!

matching dates

My husband and I met 11.04.1952 The house we bought and lived in for the past 52 years was purchased by the previous owners on 11.04.1952

Rachel

My mum was on holiday in south whales, she was driving back and stopped at a small second hand book store in a village with her friend. they briefly browsed the books and then got into the car to return home. A few hours drive later, looking in her handbag she found she had accidentely stolen a book she'd picked up in the book shop, it was too far to go back and return it so she kept it. A few days later flicking through the book she saw a picture of herself as a teenage girl, one she didn't even know had been taken let alone know was in the book!

They follow us wherever we go!

Coincidences have always followed us where we have been and still do - I guess if you are gregarious and talk to people it is bound to happen. On a trip to China in 1996, there were 40 of us in agroup from all over the UK. One of the travellers asked me where we lived - after some generalisation he asked me the name of our village in Gloucestershire - when I told him he said his wife worked in the same village at the agricultural stores some 500 yards away from our home. When I asked where he lived he said Pittville in Cheltenham - somebody on the next table said where? It turned out they lived in the same street!! We were on a trip to Peru to Macchu Piccu in 2003. On the second day a member of our 36 strong group - again from all over the UK - said "I recognise you - you own ..........Golf Club ", I said yes - he told me that his Partner's son had done his work experience with us three years earlier. On the same trip, my wife spoke to another lady and said she thought she recognised her. The other lady said she was sure not but my wife continued that she could imagine her in a white coat - did she work in a hospital?

Shared birth dates

My brother was born 7 March 1938 My daughter was born 7 March 1973 My daughter-in-law was born 7 March 1970

Across the pond

My friend & I were out for a drink one evening about 23 years ago, & I heard American voices behind us. Being the nosy type, I turned & asked what part of the USA the elderly couple were from. Their response was that I had probably not heard of Lincoln, Nebraska. To their surprise I told them that my daughter had recently started studying on a swimming scholarship at that very university. The man turned out be the architect who designed the building Allison was studying in! Later that year we went to stay with them whilst visiting Allison, whom they had taken under their wing following our meeting in that pub in Cambridge. But for my nosiness, we would never had met the very architect who had such an impact on the University where Allison spent 4 very happy years!

Mrs B C

I have a daughter born on 16th November 1957 My son was born 3years and 3 minutes later 16th November 1960 My Father died on the 13th February 1983 my Mother died on the 13th February 2000 When I married my second husband in 1969 we realised that we had both been born in the same nursing home Twyford Lodge Willesden, although we lived in different areas and it took us 30 years to meet

Occupations

My paternal grandfather was a pit pony master in a mine in Yorkshire. My wife's maternal grandfather was a pit pony master in a mine in South Wales. Both were long dead before we met and had no connection to each other in any way. Considering this is a fairly rare occupation it is rather odd but the coincidence ends there. I don't like horses but my wife loves them.

wedding anniversary dates

I was married on 28th September 1974 (we'd altered the date from our first choice of the 21st to fit in with my father-in-law's job.) It was only whilst researching my family tree much later that I found that my grandparents had been married on 28th September 1924 - exactly 50 years to the day before my own wedding.

Shauna

I had gone into town shopping some years ago. Whilst walking past a bank of about 6 telephone boxes, one of them started to ring, being the nosie so and so I am, I picked it up. Now remember im in the middle of town along with hundreds of other people, it was my brother on the other end of the phone. He had dialed the wrong number and got the phone box that I answered!!!!

Rings.

I was walking from town to the place where I had parked, and caught the glint of something on the ground. It turned out to be a lovely engagement ring set with diamonds and a sapphire, quite distinctive. I decided that I would take it to the police station, and set off again to collect my car. On the way I met the mother of my brother-in-law's fiancee, and showed her the ring. She was ecstatic as it turned out that this was her daughter's engagement ring, which she had lost earlier in the day and had been looking all over for. This was a busy route for pedestrians so I was very pleased that I was the one who had found it out of all the people who could have passed that way. Another time I had misplaced my wedding ring and could not find it anywhere despite turning everything inside out including the car, so I resigned myself to the fact that it was lost. We went to visit my own in-laws, and on leaving, my ma-in-law gave me a Marks and Spencer's bag with something in it that she had bought for me, I forget what. When we arrived home and I was lifting the bag out of the boot, my wedding ring fell out.

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