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!

Odd chance

I planned to go touring in Scotland with my girl-friend. My boss was going to a hotel in Cornwall. My girl-friend decided on Saturday morning that she would prefer Norfolk. Off we went - to Norfolk - and we stopped at a "T" junction in Cromer, waiting for a line of traffic to clear. ONe car flashed his lights to let us out. My boss. Upon returning to work, his wife had decided at the last minute to change the destination and go to Norfolk as well. The odds of meeting up at the same "T" junction, in a town neither of us was supposed to be...Pretty high I would imagine.

Rolling Stones..three totally random meetings

Back in 1966 I was walking down Carnaby Street together with my mother. A girl in a topless dress came the other way ( the only one I have ever seen ) to the cheers and whistles of a crew installing underground telephone wires.On the next corner Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones was just standing around, looking very much the worse for wear.About six years later I was at Heathrow preparing for my flight to Vienna,Charlie Watts ended up sitting in the seat in front of me.About 6 years later I pulled up at the port in Ostende after a terrible drive through thick fog.

School friends

We live in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, my daughters friend who lived across the road moved to Pennsylvania, U.S.A. The girls had lost contact with each other. About a year later when my daughter was in Grade 8 she went on a school trip to Quebec City and bumped into her old friend from across the road. I don't know who was more surprised.

Met our neighbours in Scotland

My mother and I traveled to Edinburgh to visit relatives. At the time we got tickets to the Tattoo. We were sitting in our seats reading the programs when we struck up a conversation with a couple sitting behind us. It turned out they lived a block and half from us and we had never met them.

Mercedes, rock star

A couple of years ago i was in Scotland and i bought an old Mercedes off the nephew of a rock star. Thin Lizzy member who's wife drove the car. A few years down the line i live in Los Angeles and I heard through a friend of a friend, of a friend, of a friend that there was a Mercedes up for sale. I went to the house and looked at the car. The lady who was selling it was in the film business and her husband was in the band The Cult. I didn't buy the car because the last one caused me some trouble. Roderick

My Grandma and her long lost brother.

Last year, my Grandma found out that she had a brother she didn't know about, after his children got in contact through one of the ancestry research websites. Her parents had him very young and out of wedlock so had to give him up for adoption. Her father then went to India and 20 years later, after he had returned and married my great-grandmother, my Grandma was born. Her parents never told her about him and my Grandma's brother died before she could meet him but she has met his children, who are her niece and nephew, only to discover a series of coincidences. Both my Grandma and her brother were born on the 7th June, only 20 years apart. His first name was Herbert, which is my Grandma's surname, since she got married. They both lived in the same town for a while, only a 2 minute walk away, completely unaware of each other's existence and her daughter and his daughter (my aunt and her cousin) knew each other as they had both taught at the same school for a while, completely unaware that they were cousins.

Beach Find

When I was about 10 years old, we went on holiday to Noosa. I didn't realise until it was too late that I'd left my bank keycard in my shorts pocket when going for a swim at Main Beach. A few days later I was digging about at the back of the same beach when I felt something buried about 30cm under the sand. Sure enough it was my card which I promptly placed back in my shorts pocket.

Airport lounge bbq attendees

I was in the Club lounge in Johannesburg airport chatting to an Afrikaaner when our flight was called. We went to the plane, only to be told it had gone "tech" so we returned to the lounge where I sat down to read my book (having managed to lose the Afrikaaner en route!). The English chaps next to me (I'm Scottish so no connection there) asked me if I had read the author's other books. Then one of them said "were you at Martin's bbq last year?". Yep, I was and he had, obviously, been there too. We had never met before, or since, and we only met because the plane went tech - weird eh?!

Pen pals in touch after 50 years

My dad, in Nova Scotia, Canada, had a pen pal in Australia when he was about 11 or 12 years old in the 1920s. They corresponded for a year or so, and then lost touch, in the way these things often go. In the mid 1970s, my parents were on a bus tour in New Zealand, and got talking to some Australian fellow tourists. Turned out they were from the very same little town that Dad's pen pal had lived in. He said "Oh I had a pen pal there many years ago" Then the Aussies asked what was the pen pal's name. Turned out that the man still lived in the town, and was a near neighbour of these folks. Dad was able to write to his former pen pal after a 50 year hiatus.

Property Ownership

Last year, I travelled to Ramsey, Isle of Man, in order to view a basement flat. I had never previously visited Ramsey. After arriving at Ramsey's bus station, I passed a supermarket, where I inquired of an elderly couple, directions to the street where my proposed flat was located. "Hartshill" was their immediate response to my naming the street. "We used to own that house, before it was split into flats". The estate agent who met me at the property, verified the couple as being the former owners.

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