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!

Double Holiday Coincedence

Whilst on holiday in Mexico 2005, my husband and I became friends with a couple from Liverpool, we didnt stay in touch after the holiday ended, swap numbers or addresses as our hotel had to be evacuated due to Hurricane Emily and we didn't get a chance to get their details. The following year, my husband and I decided to take a last minute holiday to Salou in Spain. Whilst on a day out at the theme park, Port Aventura, we had queued up to ride the river rapid ride, when it came to our turn, we went to get onto the boat, and the couple leaving the boat after completing their ride, was the couple we had met the previous year on holiday the other side of the world. What are the chances of that?!

Fate or coincidence?

I was a contestant on Deal or No Deal back in 2005/2006. I am a modern languages teacher but at the time was taking a sabbatical and working as a bingo caller. To chose my boxes I decided to put 22 small balls in a bag and draw the balls out. I decided before hand that I wanted to leave boxes 22 and 5 to the end of the game,since they represent my birthday. Since those balls were already in the bag as I began to draw the numbers I left them in and just decided that WHEN they came out I would ignore them. When I got to the last two balls in the bag..they were..22 and 5. So, rather than DRAW them.. I just wrote 22 then 5 on my paper ..the way I would normally write my birthday. This lead me to get rid of box 22 first..containing £35000... then swapping the box I initially chose-box 21(containing just £100)-for box 5 to get £3000. At the time I felt 22 represented my luck and £3000 my life path..so I guess I took my life path! :)

All 4 children born on 13th of the month

I have four children, all of them have been born on the 13th of the month. The first and third have the same birthday and the 2nd and 4th's birthdays are 6 months apart. My fourth child was born 16 days late - we always joke it was so he wouldn't feel left out - he had to be born on the 13th!

Horse for Sale

A couple of years ago I purchased A horse through an advert in Horse and Hound magazine which turned out to be unsuitable. In my job I organize appointments for by boss to visit stables and check/sell saddles. When googling one particular equestrian centre to find their postcode, I found that they were using the same photo of my horse from the advert which I had purchased him from, as illustration on their website. They had no connection with my horse's previous owner and are hundreds of miles apart.

birthday coincidence

My friend Nancy from school has 2 nephews from the same sister who are born 14 years apart with the same birthday (15th January). Jamie celebrates his 18th birthday today and his younger brother is 4years old. Happy Birthday boys!!

John Common

This incident happened to my parents before I was born. My father David Common was fighting as a BEF soldier in France , June 1940. Told to make a run for it to Dunkirk and ordered to abandon everything except rifle, he threw away a small parcel of gifts he'd previously bought my mother and their daughter ( my sister Edith). The gifts included, I believe, a silk night dress and a doll. He had written his home address on the parcel. He made it to Dunkirk but was trapped on the beaches for 5 or 6 days before being successfully rescued. He returned home several weeks after this where he was astonished to be presented by my mother with the same parcel he had last seen lying at the roadside in France. Apparently another soldier passed that way, sometime after father , saw the parcel and took it with him to Dunkirk. He was more fortunate than father and was evacuated the same day, and on arrival in Dover, posted it .

Exchanging gifts

Back in the early 1990's, I was visiting a friend, who lived in Abergavenney. As I surprise I thought I would buy her a 'thank you for having me gift', and decided on a presentation pack of 'Paris' soap. Whilst enjoying a cup of coffee, she presentated me with a gift, so I thought I would hand her mine. Imagine our surprise when she had bought me exactly the same gift of 'Paris' soap.

dream and reality

When I was a teenager I had a dream that my grandad gave me 50p. (By that age he was probably giving me £1, or even £5, when we visited him.) The next day I went to secondary school as usual, and when I arrived at the bus stop near my house, there was 50p on the pavement, right where I'd normally wait. The bus stop was in frequent use, so I felt fortunate to be the only one to spot the coin. I thought at the time that this was a strange coincidence. Annabel

News of Ben

My wife and I lived in a large village in the Gezeira province of Sudan about 5 hours south of Khartoum. We were teachers in the secondary schools. We rented a house in the centre of the village. Since cooking was done on charcoal we sometimes bought sandwiches from the football club rather than spend an hour lighting the stove. One evening we had visitors and we were eating our sandwiches and chatting away. The topic was nearly always family as this is so important in Sudan. The conversation turned to our nephew, Ben, who was studying at Keele University and volunteered in hospital radio. As we were talking I noticed that, unusually, the newspaper that the sandwich was wrapped in was English. I was amazed to look more closely and see that it was the Staffordshire News. I turned it over and there in the centre of the page was a photo and an article about Ben!

address coincidence

A colleague and myself were chatting one day a few years a go, about where we first started work. We now work in Somerset, but discovered that back in 1987 we were both living in East Croydon and used to go to the same pub, The Cartoon.

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