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!

childhood friend

I was adopted when a few months old and a few years ago traced my original family history. I was telling someone at work who I had never met about this when she encouraged me to continue. I thought that I was boring her but, no. It turned out that she had been a playmate of my half sister who I had never known about and had never met.

RAG Ball

I turned up to my first ball in Oxford and later that evening bumped into one of the girls who is also on the University squash team from another college, wearing the same dress- even though I didn't know she was going and obviously we hadn't co-ordinated dresses!

travel coincidence

I am a Canadian who was married and living in Canada until 1971 when my marriage broke up. I came to the U.K. at that time, met my current (English) husband and remarried shortly after my divorce came through, and we have been living in England ever since. Although the divorce was quite amicable I am not in contact with my previous husband or his family. About 20 years later (in 1990 or thereabouts) my second husband and I were flying home to the U.K. after a week's spring holiday in Portugal. We were seated in the same row as an elderly English couple and we got chatting with them. This couple ran a pub in Henley called The Little Angel on the Bridge. After some conversation on that topic I remarked to the lady that in both looks and speech she very much reminded me of a Canadian relative I used to know many years ago (my ex-mother-in-law). Further talk and investigation revealed that this lady was in fact actually my ex-mother-in-law's first cousin! She had never been to Canada, however my ex-inlaws had been to England on holiday and had visited her and her family in Henley.

Strangers on a train.

In February 2004 I was travelling eastward on a District Line (London underground) train to my home in Dagenham. It was 3pm and the train (about 6 carriages) was relatively empty. At Barking a passenger entered my carriage and sat opposite me (there were only 2 others in my carriage). I was engrossed in my book, "This Game of Ghosts" an autobiography by Joe Simpson, the mountaineer (see Touching the Void book and film) and did not immediately notice the stranger opposite me. When I did look up I saw that he was reading the same book (not the most popular best seller - sorry, Joe). We laughed and acknowledged the coincidence and then discovered that not only were we were reading the same edition but we had both reached the same page - 120! I love the coincidences of his choosing my carriage out of 6 relatively empty ones, choosing the seat opposite me, etc etc. I read nothing into these coincidences but it was a happy moment and makes me smile every time I think about it.

An indirect route for a letter

I had an elderly aunt who was resident in a nursing home half a mile away from my house. I visited her regularly and on one occasion, as it was approaching Christmas, we had arranged for me to take her out for a restaurant meal. On my arrival that day, I found her seated in the lobby, going through a sheaf of mail that had just been handed to her by the supervisor. As I approached her she pulled a letter out of the sheaf and handed it to me. "Oh - this is addressed to you", she said, as she casually handed it over. I reflected on how strange this was. The letter had been addressed to me, but somehow it had been wrongly delivered to the old folks' nursing home in which my aunt lived. The large amount of Christmas mail delivered to the home had been hurriedly sorted and distributed to the residents that morning by the office staff. Each resident got quite a handful of mail. The letter addressed to me was in the sheaf of mail given in haste to my aunt - who found it at the very moment that I entered the building. The significance of this was completely lost on my aunt, who could not understand that anything unusual had happened, at all.

PK USA

Went to dinner with my husband and some friends in Calif. While we were waiting for our food, I was telling my friends about an article I read about if you are in a room of 25 people or so you will find someone or some connection to you. As I told the story a person sitting at a table next to us asked me if I was from Pa. He then asked if I was from Secane Pa. I said yes (surprised) He lived around the corner from where I lived. I had been out of Pa for 30 years.

Queuing in New York

As we queued in a New York Bank, I was chatting away in Welsh to my Great Aunt. The mam in front turned to us and asked where we were from. Accustomed to this question, I responded that we were from North Wales. He responded that this was clear to him, what he wanted to know was where exactly in North Wales we came from. I told him that I was from Denbigh - and so was he although he'd been living in New York for many years and had lost all traces of his original accent.

Great Great Grandfather's Gravestone

A few years ago, I attended a baptism of a son of friends of my wife in Great Shelford (Cambridge). Whilst approaching the church, I noticed the gravestone of a John Sterns. I noticed this as the surname is similar to mine (Stearn) but didn't think much of it. More recently, I have researched my family tree and discovered that I DO have a great great grandfather named John Sterns (the spelling of the surname has changed) who was born in 1831 in Great Shelford. I was born and live in Surrey.

The same birthday

We listened to your interview just this morning on radio 4 about your study Then on the same day -Tonight - our new next door neighbours came round for dinner for the first time and we discovered that the two men have the same birthday, May 10! So is that two coincidences ??

Chance Meeting

On my way to a rehearsal, I walked into my local tube station carrying a small keyboard in its case. I sat down to wait for the train and a lady sitting at the other end of the bench asked what was in the case (she was clearly American). I unzipped the case and played her a tune. "That's nice" she said" who do you play for?" "Anyone who calls me up" I replied and mentioned that I'd worked for the BBC for many years. She seemed interested and told me that she was in the UK doing research on the plays of Samuel Beckett and there was one radio recording that she had not been able to track down; she was looking for information about an experimental production of "All That Fall" recorded at the BBC in about 1975. She realised that asking a stranger on a railway platform was a bit of a long shot but worth a try. By a strange coincidence I had worked on that very production twenty years before and was able to put her in touch with the producer (long since retired).

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