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!

New Family Member

When I was 16 I chose to leave school and start at a Sixth Form College that was 20 miles away from my home. The college had several housand new student starting, all of which were integrated into existing form groups made up from 12 students from different year groups. On my induction day one of the new students in my form group approached me and seemed to know a lot abbout me, he knew my hometown, that my mother was Irish, that I had family who lived in a specific part of County Cork... What started of as general information seemed to get more and more specific, something that was very strange for someone that I had never met before, had never attended any schools, clubs or functions with me and didnt appear to know any of my friends. When I asked him how he knew so much about me his response was that his brother was engaged to be married to one of my Irish cousins. My cousin had moved to the UK to attend university in Yorkshire where she met her husband, once engaged they chise where to live and ended up in a property 10 minutes away from my parents (who they simply knew as "living in the UK").

bithdays on the same date

my sister (19 febuary), my daughter 19 December, and myself 19 march

Birthday card and Christmas sign

My sister and I have had a few times where we have done the same thing miles apart such as choosing the same jumper etc. However there are two instances where it just felt a bit 'wierd'. Sept 2002 we both sent the same birthday card to our other sister. It was a jokey card and I found it in an little gift shop in Newcastle where I was a student. My sister was in Sheffield and sent the exact same one. Her usual cards to family are of a floral or arty style so this was a change from her 'norm'. Over Christmas this year we had both bought a wooden hanging 'Christmas' sign. The strange thing was She and I both singularly chose to hang it from a shelf above our pot racks in our kitchens. I hadn't previously seen hers as I now live in Liverpool and she still in Sheffield.

Birth Year Coincidence

My grandmother would have been 103 this year, my mother 73, my brother 53, I will be 43 and my daughter will be 13.....

"familiar" family

I moved to a seaside town 75 miles from my place of birth in my forties and went to the local college. I meet a lady there who i immediately felt (the word cannot be attracted) but as an hextrosexual female to another hextrosexual female I said at the time "I feel as though I've known you all my life." We both had busy lives I was contemplating divorcing my husband, my friend and I both had a hyperactive child. We never got intouch apart from college and when it came to the end of the last term I had no one to babysit and ended up cutting college. I never knew her surname of even where she lived apart from the fact she lived in the next town. I was very sorry I hadn't kept in touch. I had a part time job and a small pottery business and was kept very busy. On the 13th Feb 1992 I had had enough of my husband unfaithfulness and rang his brother (when he'd stayed out yet another night) to collect his stuff. I had the locks changed and then spent twelve months divorcing him. In June 1993 I met my present husband in a local cafe I went to near my pottery business, he was sat with a customer of mine.

FOUND OBJECT

Visiting students' Fine Art Degree Shows in Bristol in 2005, I first entered a room 'installation' based on found objects. A student had found 2,000 35mm colour slides in a public waste bin in St. Werburghs Bristol. He had no idea what they related to and had attempted (successfully) to arrange the slides into a narrative order. Students were instructed to produce short A5 booklets to describe their shows/ installations. Picking up the booklet from this student's pile, I flipped it over to skim read it / look at the pictures in reverse order - a quicker way to do it. The back page featured a photograph of me from 1977, helping to organise a large public event for Cyclebag / Sustrans, the cyclists' charity. (I became the chair of Cyclebag in 1978 and a founder member of Sustrans in 1979.) I contacted the student. In late 2004, Sustrans had 'gone digital', copied all their 35mm colour slide photo archives into a digital format and then dumped the 2,000 35mm slides into the nearest large waste bin on the street.

HELSINKI AIRPORT

On a weekend business visit to Helsinki in August 2008, I purchased some dark glasses at the airport before boarding my return flight to Heathrow. Immediately dispensing with the packaging I noticed what looked like an important piece of paper on the floor next to the waste bin I was using. I looked at it; it was a hotel expenses receipt for "Martin Rieser" - a close friend from Bristol - so I put it in my pocket ! On returning to Bristol I telephoned Martin. He had also been on a business trip to Helsinki that weekend, all expenses paid; he told me that unfortunately he had lost his expenses receipt from the hotel ! I had not seen Martin for a few weeks before that business trip and neither of us knew that the other had any connections with Helsinki or were planning to go there.

Bizarrrely Barcelona

Seven years ago in 2004 in October my husband and my twin children and I went to Barcelona to celebrate my 50th. birthday. We travelled to Newcastle Airport to catch the plane and whilst in the queue for airport security I was amazed to find an old friend and her son who I had worked with for 15 years as a teaching colleague in a school in Carlisle directly behind us. We had not been in contact apart from Christmas cards each year. They were travelling to Barcelona as well to study the art of Gaudi as her son was taking an A level in the History of Art.

v.hollins

My mothers maiden name was Anderson and she married an Anderson- no blood relative at all even in the dim and distant past.

SAME HOUSE

My grandmother's best friend, Helen Wodehouse (cousin of PG), moved from Bingley West Yorkshire to Bristol in 1919 to establish the Department of Education Bristol University. She lived at 66 Egerton Road until 1931 when she moved to Cambridge to take up the Mistress-ship of Girton College (until 1942). In 1973 I moved from Bingley to Bristol and my father, a lawyer specialising in property, helped me buy my first house. He came down to Bristol for a weekend to assess the two houses in Bishopston Bristol that I had selected. He didn't like either of them. Halfway between each house (they were about a mile apart) he noticed a cardboard sign in a window "House for Sale : No Estate Agent involved". Being a Yorkshireman he was attracted by this offer; he liked the house; I bought it; 66 Egerton Road ! Six year later (1979) an elderly relative died in Bingley. My father tidied out the property and came across a box of letters that she had tidied out of his mother's (my grandmother's) house when she had died in the early 1960's. Amongst these letters were three from Helen Wodehouse, dated between 1920 - 1923, from 66 Egerton Road.

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