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!

Unexpected Phone Call

My wife and I purchased a wooden toilet seat to replace the avocado plastic one in our cloakroom. I installed the new seat and put the old one in the garage. At least two years later, I received a telephone call from a lady who asked whether I could supply her with an avocado toilet seat to replace a broken one. When I asked how she came to ring our number, she explained that she was trying to contact a local hardware shop. (I checked later and discovered that the shop's number differed from our own by one digit, although this was the only occasion when we have received a call intended for them.) I told her that we did, in fact, have an unwanted avocado toilet seat which she was welcome to have if she wished to collect it. She gratefully accepted my offer.

Birthday and initial letters co-incidence

Arriving at Sussex University in 1969, I discovered that my room-mate shared the same birthday as I, viz. 15/8/51. This was a co-incidence as we were both meant to share with other people, who having arrived earlier at our desginated guest house, decided to share. My room-mate's initials were JAH, mine JWH. In the second year, we shared a flat with two girls who had shared a room in digs. Their birthday was 11/12/50, and their initials were JMH and GMH. We accordingly had two birhtdays between us and 6 initials out of a possible total of 12. Both JWH and JMH were known by their middle names. When GMH went abroad for the third year, our new flatmate fulfilled the initials co-incidence, MJH, but, alas, not the birthday co-incidence. We remain friends over 40 years later.

Our Family Birthday Coincidence

My birthday is 22nd April 1955 My first son Jamie was born on 22nd April 1980 My second son Tom was born 22nd April 1981 There is one year and five minutes between their birthdays.

Death and Birthday Coincidence

After the death of my husband on 12.02.1988, I decided to sponsor a child in his memory. I randomly chose Ethiopia after watching a TV documentary and thinking what smiley faces they had despite their hardships. When the details of my child arrived I discovered she was born on 12th February 1988. Sheila

Chance meeting ?

A few years ago I had surgery on one of my knees and afterwards I was required to have physiotherapy in order to strengthen the muscles in my leg. The surgery was carried out in a hospital in Droitwich and during the course of physiotherapy I met another male who had undergone another surgical procedure and was also having physiotherapy to help him regain full use of his leg. I did not know this person prior to my treatment and would chat to him whenever our physio appointments coincided. I was aware that this man was unable to drive when I came to the end of my treatment. A week or so later I was on my way up the M6 motorway and I decided to stop at the service station at Sandbach on the North bound side. I drove into the car park and headed for the first free parking space I could see. I parked the car and as I got out of it I notice the person in the next car getting out as well. You can imagine my surprise when I realised that this was the same person that I had met during our physiotherapy treatment. Just what are the chances of bumping into someone in these circumstances?

Lofty dreams

We were having work done on our house and had emptied the loft. I was sitting looking at photos we had taken of our honeymoon in New York years earlier, particularly those of my husband and I outside the World Trade Centre buildings. As I looked up from the photos a newsflash appeared on the TV to say a plane had flown into one of the towers. A shiver ran down my spine as I looked back from the photos to the TV screen in disbelief. Also When I was young I went on holiday with my Mum & Dad. One night I had a dream that our family home had been burgled. As we were pulling on the drive when we arrived home from our holiday the neighbour came out to break the news that our house had been burgled and on the same night that I dreamt about it!

Meeting in a crowd of 50,000

When I was 18 I commuted to work in London every day (60 miles each way). During that first year at work I regularly attended football matches at Stamford Bridge to watch my team, Chelsea. In those days (1968) you could just turn up, pay on the gate, and get in. Most of the spectators stood on terracing and could choose where to stand. Even the fans of opposing teams were able to stand next to each other without restriction. For a small surcharge it was possible to buy a ticket at the turnstile that randomly allotted you a numbered seat on rows of fixed benches in front of the West Stand and these were the closest seats to the playing area. There were 1,000 numbered places on these bench seats but they weren't under cover. There were about 8 rows of these bench seats. There were 5,000 seats in the West Stand immediately behind the 1,000 bench seats. These were under cover and numbered like theatre seats Rows A-Z plus the seat number in the row. One evening, as rain was forecast, I arrived at the ground early and unusually decided to buy a ticket for one of the 5,000 covered seats rather than sitting on the bench seats, which was my normal preference.

Long Shot

Some twenty plus years ago, whilst living in Cambridge, my wife and I spent a week on holiday at a hotel in Mundesley, Norfolk. We travelled around the area, sightseeing, and included a day in Norwich where, at one point, we took a coffee break in a restaurant at the top of a department store. The restaurant was busy and we shared a table with three ladies who were already seated. They were complete strangers to us and they and we carried on quite separate conversations. We could not help overhearing what one lady was telling the other two about an enjoyable holiday she and her husband had spent in Cornwall that year, including the first names of their hosts and the town of Mevagissey. At this point I begged the lady's pardon and asked if she would confirm the surname of their hosts and their address in Mevagissey, which she did and which proved to be the name and address of my wife's nephew, the only son of her late sister, a nephew she had not seen for perhaps thirty years or more. We had all lived on the edge of London up until about 1966, when we went our separate ways, for reasons of employment, they to Cornwall and we to Cambridge.

Holiday encounters

Three years ago I bumped into two different colleagues from work (I work at a middle sized North of England university) on two separate holidays a month apart. One on a beach in a small village in Britanny; the other in the Dom in Berlin. I knew neither was going on holiday there, nor when. On the first holiday, we stayed in a small self-catering complex and found that someone from the adjacent office was also staying there, though while we were there we DIDN'T bump into them!. So three people from work on two separate European holidays within a month ...and two close encounters !

Good Neibours

In the summer of 1999 whilst returning from holiday in Cornwall we were driving on theA361 between Taunton & Street when we were hit head on by an oncomming car. Our car was a right off but fortunatly we were not, sustaining mainly brusing. The offending car had apparently also just clipped the car in front of us. Into this scene of carnage stepped the people from this car. Incredibly they were friends & near neighbours from our small villiage of Freshford nr Bath, who completely unknown to us were also travelling home from their holiday. We were subsequently whisked off to Hospital for a check up & eventually arrived back at our home late that night. To our delight we found that our neighbours had unloaded all our personal & holiday gear from the wreck of our car & transported it back to our house even putting our freshly cut Cornish daffodils into a vase. David P.

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