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!

Wedding connections

When my son decided to get married we discovered loads of connections with his bride's family. 1. The first was that she was from the small highland village Tarbert my grandparents had lived in. 2. The bride's childminder had been in my class at school in Dumfries. 3. Both sets of parents were married on same day 6th July 1979 at opposite ends of Scotland. 4. There were 2 guests at the wedding from either side called Carol Kelly. 5.Two aunties of the bride and groom were solicitors for the same firm, one based in Edinburgh, one based in Glasgow. 6. The week of the wedding, the bride's mother was searching in a drawer and found an unopened box of white linen sheets given as a wedding present by the bridegroom's great grandmother to the bride's grandparents over 50 years before. There are more!!

Music and coin coincidences

Music coincidence Some eight years ago, after a period of some difficulty in finding a job which suited her, my step-daughter got a job with a company called Saffron. Cue great pleasure in the family, which was visiting Hungary at the time for a family event. In my case this took the form of singing to my stepdaughter, no doubt with boring repetition, the first words of Donovan's 1967 song Mellow Yellow, (familiar to me since I am of his vintage): "I'm just wild about Saffron, and Saffron's wild about me..." Back in London she took up the job and one evening we went out for a drink to celebrate. Exactly as we walked through the door of a local bar in West Hampstead out of the music system came Donovan's voice singing "I'm just wild about Saffron, and Saffron's wild about me..." Coin coincidence The second coincidence took place on 1 July 2003. This account is as I sent it to a colleague in an email the next day, although with some names and subject details left out: Yesterday I had lunch with X from Y.

Graham

About 25 years ago I was chatting to my then father-in-law in his house. We were talking about his wider family. He mentioned that he had a brother named Douglas whom he had not seen nor heard from for 20 years. As he was speaking I looked over his shoulder to the road outside. A car drew up. I said 'looks like you have a visitor.' It was Douglas.

Next door neighbours

Years ago whilst talking to my next door neighbour, she mentioned the name of a man I had once worked for. I asked her to repeat his name and how she knew him. 'He was my next door neighbour in Woking' she said. At that time we lived in Lincolnshire and I had worked for the man in London.

all girls together

My daughter-in-law and her two daughters (my granddaughters) were all born on the 23rd, although different months and different years.

Birthday coincidences

My brother's birthday is September 24th, his wife's is May 9th. I have 2 grandchildren, the boy was born on September 24th, his cousin (other son's daughter) was born on May 9th.

small world

When in France I met an English woman who lives there permanently. In course of conversation, I asked her one of the usual questions: "where in the UK do you come from?" She said it was a small village in Surrey which we probably wouldn't have heard of, but it turned out to be Chiddingfold, which is where our daughter-in-law comes from and where she and our son were married. We then learned that this same woman's son had lived in the same road in Farnham that our son and daughter-in-law now live in. A year later I met another English woman, also permanently living in France, who used to live in the next street to where we currently live in the UK, though before we moved there 30 years ago.

On a beach at Tossa de Mar, June 1952

My fiance (now my husband) and I were holidaying in Tossa de Mar in June, 1952 when it was a fishing village with only one largish hotel up on the hill, along a single road running along the coast. We were swimming later than usual, when a motorbike went along this coastal road a hundred or so yards away. We were dripping wet, I was wearing an unfetching bathing cap and the riders were head to toe in motorbike gear. At the same time as we were saying, "There's John and Neil" they were saying, "There's Graham and Val"! We had bade farewell to them a few months before as they set off working their way round the world, so, needless to say we had a convivial evening together before they set off again. I have experienced so many coincidences, usually when I have been something different from routine. Graham and I went out to live and work in Jakarta in October, 1979. We had joined the St.George's Society and went to celebrate Trafalgar Day for the first time inoour lives at a Barbecue in a member's home and garden.

Daily coincidences

There is hardly a day that passes when I don't have a 'coincidence', so much so that I don't think of them as coincidences but as a regular odd and often spooky occurrence but very much a part of my life. The most mundane ones are those that happen to me most often - when I'm typing on the computer or reading a book or a newspaper and I type/read an unusual word at exactly the same time as that word is spoken on the television or radio. These are never the most common words like 'the', 'at', 'but', 'or', etc, but less regularly used words like 'umbrella', 'inflamation', 'university', 'ridiculous' etc. I can accept that for it to happen maybe once a month or once a week would be a 'coincidence' but I feel I'm getting more than the average share of them. Although I'm no longer surprised when it happens, it still spooks me, especially when the matching words concerned are words that are less commonly used.

Family Birthdays

My daughter was born on 2 February, 1973. Her partner was born on 31 January 1973. Their elder son was born on 2 February 2009 and their younger son was born on 31 January 2011. Both boys were overdue. Both were natural births. Both were born on a parent's birthday with one day separating them!

Pages