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!

WHO WERE YOU AT SCHOOL WITH?

On in holiday in 2008 made friends with a couple from Wales with whom we have since gone on holiday with annually - partly because both husbands have common interest in photography. Idly sitting round talking while on the one of these holidays, I discovered that the wife of the other couple had been to exactly the same primary and junior schools as I had in the late 50s, and had overlapped although she was a couple of years behind me. Neither us have lived in that area for many years so there was no obvious connection.

mother and daughter synchronicity

I live in Cambridge and my 28 year old daughter ives in London. On several occasions I have 'known' she is going to ring me even though we have not arranged to do this. I have looked at my phone, and then it rings and her name shows up on the screen - weird!

Going to Jackson

Some months ago I was watching a film on TV, and at the same time reading that week's issue of "Flight International" magazine. At one point in the film ("Hellfighters" - a drama loosely based on the real life exploits of Red Adair) the corporate jet is sent to a small, out-of-the-way airport called Jackson Hole airport in Wyoming, which I'd never heard of before. At that same moment I started reading a news story about the overrun landing of a passenger jet - where the plane comes to a stop past the end of the runway. The airport in question was Jackson Hole.

cambridge neighbours in NZ

We were travelling in NZ in 2005. After a visit to the famous Tane Mahuta we were walking back to the van when we bumped into our neighbours. They lived 3 doors away from us in Coleridge Road, Cambridge. We had not told them we were going to NZ, and we didn't know they were going either!

Lost Earring

In the summer of 2010, my partner Karen and I went for a walk along the sea wall to Dymchurch on the Kent coast. We walked a couple of miles and then followed the same route back. At the end of the walk, Karen realised that she'd lost a favourite small silver earring at some point on the walk, so I offered to re-trace our steps the next day to see if I could find it. As it was so small - about 15mm by 4 mm - I didn't have too much hope. Next day I walked along the same route but arriving at our previous destination, I'd found no trace of the missing earring. Before returning and admitting failure, I stopped to check my phone. As I looked down at the screen, something silver sparkling on the ground caught my attention. Unbelieveably, the earring was exactly between my feet at the prescise point I'd stopped the search! I'm not sure what the odds would be for it being at that exact point out of the whole potential area of a four mile walk on a wide coastal path? Paul

The Turkish Connection

We lived above our grandparents in the late 60's and early 70's. Every week when I was around 6 at the time of the first moonlanding, I used to smell the strong fumes of pipe smoking and Turkish cigarettes from downstairs as my grandfather and his work colleague, Hamdi, used to play cards on saturdays. About seven years later we moved to Golders Green, leaving my grandparents in the bottom flat. Very soon after moving in, my grandfather came to visit for the first time our new home, and just as he came to the front door, Hamdi suddenly came out of the house next door and surprised my grandfather, he didn't know he lived there. I did not know Hamdi at that time, but it later turned out that he had been a member of the folk group I play with, the Dunav Balkan Folk Group , in the late 60's around the time he was visiting my grandfather.

MET ON AN AIRCRAFT

Flying to Washington 1993, casual discussion with the man in next seat results in the discovery that he is the husband of someone who worked for my wife 20 plus years before.

3 out of 25

Twelve years ago we moved to Central London from Aberdeen & bought a flat which was one of 25 in a converted warehouse development. Within days we discovered 3 close connections with other residents: one owner had taught our daughter at 6th form college & her own daughter had been in the same class; another owner had lived in Jamaica as a child when his father ran the local hotel - which we often visited - just a few minutes away from our home on the University campus: his sisters were at school with our daughter; then the 3rd coincidence was an invitation to another neighbour's flat for a welcoming drink to find a colleague of my husband, whom we had known for many years, was our neighbour's close friend & was already with her that evening!

Cow correctly named

I bought two pedegree cows. My daughter looked at one and said, "I think we had better call that one Mandy" I explained that because they are pedegree the cows already had names and that we will find out their names when we get their pedegree certificates in the post. The next day the certificates came and the one she had named Mandy was indeed called Mandy. (The other one was called May, but she hadnt bothered naming that one after I had told her they already had names)

A strange day

I was at home in the evening but could not settle. I was agitated and walking round the room but had no idea why I felt as I did. The phone rang. It was my mother 'Graham' she said 'your father has just died.' In a flash I heard myself saying 'I know'. It had been a normal weekend for him at home. That was in 1976. I have no idea to this day why I said what I did.

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