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!

good morning

same as

wedding dress

I live in Sunderland and when my son was to be married in Plymouth in the year 2000, I wanted to wear something quite different and special for the occasion. I had spoken to his future wife on the telephone but not seen her till the morning of the wedding at the registrar office. At no time had I spoken to my son or his future wife as to what she or I would be wearing on the day. Imagine the look on peoples faces when I, the mother of the groom turned up in the same outfit as the bride to be.

Hard to believe and others

Reading the article in the News paper Mail on Sunday about this website and having had many strange coincidences happen to me over the years I decided to go online to share one of them with you. I started to look for a pair of scissors to cut out the part of the article in the paper with the web site address on it but could not find them or a pen and paper to note it down so I started to rip that part of the page out. My wife , sitting across the room asked what I was doing and when I explained she said I hope you are not tearing out an article I want to take to work to show a friend about red plates at mealtimes helping people lose weight. Without batting an eyelid I answered not to be silly as the paper has nearly 100 pages in it and its hardly going to be on this page...then I stopped in amazement as I noticed the article she was referring to was next to the one on coincidences and I had completely torn through it!! I have kept the bits of the paper as it was just so unusual. Some years ago we were at the airport about to fly off on holiday when my wife started getting sad as we had just left her two babies, Sophie and Lucy ( cocker spaniel dogs ) at the kennels.

mrs a

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General coincidences & synchronicity

Synchronicty is a far better way to explain co-incidences. You may be thinking of someone just before you bump into them. This is also to do with the 6th sense and our pre-cognition of things. This happens to me on a frequent basis. Knowing someone is going to phone, thinking of someone and bumping into them. This is because I had ALREADY sensed their presence psychically and therefore the actual manifestation of that person is merely a formality! You can also dream of future events and these may influence our day time behaviour and affect the decisions we make. (EG: Planes that crash have statistically fewer passengers on them than average - with lots of last minute cancellations!) Co-incidence or precognition? As to birthday connections in families, this is to do with DNA and Astrology. I have three of a particular sun sign in my family all born on the same day, and it was also the same day my grandfather died. There are also other astrological patterns that appear to run in my family. Yes, things that co-incide together belong together at that moment. Call it destiny, call it fate. Call it what you will. There is no such thing as a random coincidence.

Young Friends Reunited

One weekend in 2003 when we all lived in the Leicestershire area we took our young grandsons for a weekend camping at the seaside at Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire. The eldest who was 4 briefly made friends with another boy who lived somewhere in Northern Ireland. Two summers later in 2005 my daughter and her family moved to a small fishing village in Northern Ireland and our grandson started in a new school. In the same class was the boy he had met at Mablethorpe who lived just round the corner from their new home. They remain close friends.

Eve

I am one of a group of 10 lifelong friends. We meet together once a year to catch up. I live in London, the others live in Ireland. On Christmas eve I got a phone call from M...... to tell me that our friend P...... had just heard her son had died. He was in his early 40's and lived in South Africa. I arranged a flight to Dublin for 3 Jan 2012 to go to the memorial service on 4 Jan. On 27 Dec I got a second call from M..... To tell me that another friend from the group of 10 friends, S..... had just lost her son, also in his early 40s. He had died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage on 26 Dec. Because the funerals were on the same day our group of friends decided to attend the removal of the remains of S.......'s son on the evening of 3 Jan in a toen called Prosperous in Kildare and the memorial service for P.....'s son on the Thurs morning in Dublin. Because of the weather on 3 Jan my 1pm flight was cancelled (as were most flights that day). I got a later flight at 4pm but it meant missing the removal service in Kildare. As The plane taxied for take off the man sitting beside me asked me if I was going on holiday.

Conversation on a train

Hi I was travelling on the train from Leighton Buzzard to London yesterday and sat next to a young student. As we were approaching London we struck up a brief conversation about some hand knitted gloves she was wearing. We chatted about university and where home was. It turned out that she lived in Dyfed in Wales and was familiar with the area where my husband's brother and family live. Not only that it transpired she was the ex girlfriend of one of my nephews. We had never met before and I had no idea who she was before that conversation.

Death Coincidence

My parents had seven children and I am the sixth. One of my sisters and two of my brothers have died. First to die was one of my sisters on .................. 6th of August 1991 Second to die was one of my brothers on ........... 6th of August 1998 Third to die was another brother on ................... 6th of August 2005 You will notice that there is a seven year gap between the deaths. Surviving siblings look forward with interest to the 6th of August this year.

C Young

A few years ago we drove to Ireland where we'd rented a cottage in Connemara, and decided to break the journey and by accident came across a country house hotel, where we were greeted by an elderly Scottish lady (the mother of one of the owners) and we stayed the night. On our return, we decided to stop again before getting the ferry, and returned to the same place. This time, however, the owners were there, and after dinner we got into a conversation with them. The wife was Scottish, and came from Moffatt. I said - I have a friend from Moffat, who I met when I lived in Edinburgh. He was a good friend of my first husband, who had died 20 years before. I told her his name and she said 'that's my brother'. Then she looked at me and said : My god, you're the Canadian wife. I then realised I had heard about her and my friend's mother (the elderly Scottish lady who had been there our first visit) but of course we had never met. She immediately phoned her brother in Edinburgh and handed the phone to me. His reaction 'What on earth are you doing at my sister's house'.

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