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!

Marriage partners

My elder sister is married to a man called John Rogers. And my husband? Jon Rogers of course. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

The wind of change

I was a language assistant at a school in Schleswig-Holstein during the academic year 1987-88, when Germany was still a country of two halves. Nobody foresaw the reunification of east and west except, evidently, the teachers at my school. On the occasion of my birthday (Oct 3rd) they gave me a jokey card with the phrase on the front "Ihr Geburtstag sollte zum nationalen Feiertag erklaert werden" (your birthday should be declared a national holiday). The following year the Berlin Wall came down on that date and Oct 3rd became the Day of German Unity, a holiday throughout the Federal Republic.

Mere Coincidence

Three years after my sister, her husband and three children emigrated to Adelaide, S.Australia, I called at our hardware store for screws for my husband's diy effort. These were wrapped in a scrap of Dalton's Weekly. As I screwed up the paper to throw in the bin a piece of print caught my eye. It was my sister's old address in Crawley, Sussex and the house was for sale again. Their purchasers were selling up to emigrate to Adelaide so that my relatives were there to meet and help them settle. This was just because I had spotted that piece of news in a paper I never usually read. I wrote about this in more detail for a U3A exercise.

Vancouver

I belonged to a youth club in the early 50's and was friendly with one of the lads. Time passed and I met and married another. 30 years later I met up with a couple from the youth club, who had married each other. We were discussing old times and I asked if they knew what had happened to Colin. They said the last that they had heard was that he was living in Vancouver. I have a daughter who lives in Vancouver and on my next visit I looked in her phone book and lo and behold there was Colin's phone number. I rang the number. He remembered me. We arranged to meet and we discovered that he only lived a couple of Avenues away from my daughter. Mrs Betty W.

meeting a flat mate

Waiting on a platform at Victoia Station I fell into conversation with afellow-traveller. WE continued by sitting next to each other on thetrain. I asked how far she was going and she gave the name of sa place wher i used to live. I asked which road; same one;which housenumber ; same one. I tolde her that I had love for a year in this large house and had sold it to a developer who turned it into apartments and studio bedrooms. I knew the name of the sister who had slept in hers when it was a convent!

Subject co-incidences

I keep a diary, not so much about me but life around me, and what takes my interest. Having heard your R4 item I decided that 'The odds of coincidence' would be my theme today, Saturday 14 January. I have been in regular contact with Henri, my U3A economics tutor, and a few days ago sent him a long epistle entitled 'When machines take over - the effect on jobs.' Yesterday I listened to David Hockney and picked up an interesting article on him in The Times. This formed my diary entry with the title 'Art of the future'. This put in context my rationale for future jobs and, crucially, the need for imaginative thinking. I saw the connection immediately and decided to send Henri a copy. Imagine my surprise when Henri responded this morning saying what a co-incidence as The Economics of Art is his topic for our session this coming Monday. What a co-incidence too that I was born on 8 May 1945, V E Day and that I worked with a chap born on Armistice Day and also a lady born on VJ Day. All co-incidences yes, but long odds? I doubt it.

Birthday coincidences

On a skiing holiday the week before Christmas 2011, we were a group of 14 in the ski chalet. On Decemeber 20th, 3 out of the 14 guests celebrated their birthdays!

Cousin built house

Having lived in Middlesex, various parts of London and Hertfordshire, in Lincolnshire and Kent we moved to Watford in 1975 to be near our daughter who had moved there for work reasons. Like me, my mother was born and brought up in Edmonton, Middlesex, but her family came from west Hertfordshire and into Buckinghamshire. A cousin had lived in Watford all her life. After we had been in the house we bought for a couple of years, my cousin asked if we knew that the house we lived in was built by a cousin of ours, surname Puddephat. In 2003 we moved, at the invitation of the same daughter, to live next to her in St. Michael's village, St. Albans. She has since discovered that a Redding (my mother's maiden name) and a Puddephat signed a petition to Parliament from St. Michael's Village in 1641. reply

OLD TEXT BOOK

As a small boy at my horrid boarding prep school our text books were often very second-hand obtained from suppliers who recycled them. One day a master was looking inside the cover of one and saw an inscription showing that it had been used by his mother when she was at school.

Shared medical misfortunes

While studying a postgraduate course in health psychology, I started to become friendly with another student on the same course. On further acquaintance, it turned out that she too had survived Hodgkin's disease (Lymphoma) about 15 years previously and had also suffered the tragedy of having a stillborn baby (no know causes) born on 10th June (although not in the same year). I believe that the odds of getting Hodgkin's disease in the general population are about 1:40,000 and stillbirths were probably about 4.5 per 1,000 in 1988 plus the date coincidence. We lived about 20 miles apart so presumably have no particular shared environment as causal factors. One of us had the stillborn baby before cancer treatment and one years afterwards. Added to that we have both undertaken first degrees in psychology as adults and then landed up in this new postgraduate masters course together. Furthermore we had become friendly enough to discuss these difficult topics. The good news is that we have remained great friends for over 22 years already!

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