Cambridge Coincidences Collection

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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.

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Well I Never!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

I sit where he sat!

During 2004-2005, I had occasion to research the history of the organ in our local parish church, where I am the organist. Our village is situated on the Essex/Suffolk border. My research included seeking out ancient parish records and recording all mentions of the organ that were relevant. In the 1970s, it appeared that the organist of the day left the appointment as he was not granted the increase of fee which he felt was due to him. There was no mention of his name until the last entry dealing with the matter, when it was revealed. I was astonished to learn that he was the same musician who had taught me to play the piano as a teenager growing up in Surbiton, Surrey, some 52 years before and 120+ miles away. The gentleman's identity was confirmed both by the organ record which all organists maintain - his distinctive handwriting appeared there at the relevant time - and by older local villagers who remembered him.

Holiday in Gozo

In January 2009 we travelled from Skye to an island near Malta, staying at a hotel in Gatwick on the way. The hotel room number was 116. Our flight number to Malta was 116. And our hotel room number in Gozo was 116.

15 to 1

In Nov 2000 my Mother, then almost 80, was watching the quiz show 15 to 1 on the TV. One of the participants was a Gladys Mude of Westcliffe on Sea. Mum was surprised to hear this, as in her youth in the 1930s in Westcliffe she had a friend of this name with whom she sang duets in festivals and the like. She had had no contact with Gladys since Mum's family moved away from Westcliffe in 1937 and she did not know what had become of her, except that she knew that Gladys' father had bought Mum's family's house from them. So Mum investigated further and found that the phone book listed Gladys' number and when my Mum phoned it she found out that it was indeed the same person and also she was still living in the house that had been Mum's family home when she was little. I think this must be a chance event of a lot more than 15 to 1!

White doves telling of death

Remembrance Sunday 1998. We were walking with old friends in our wood when I chanced to look up and through the tree canopy there was a gap of bright blue sky. "Oh! LOOK! The doves! THE DOVES!!" My walking companions - three men - somewhat filled with a good lunch that had been arranged the night before at a celebration party of old friends (Thank goodness for Sunday shopping.) and much wine consumed (by them) around our circular dining room table upon which I had earlier placed a vase with the herb rosemary added. Rosemary is for remembrance and the shoots came from a fine plant given to me by my mother. My husband was some way ahead with the ladies. The men did not respond immediately and when they did, the doves had gone. My mother was found dead four days later and it would seem possible from the Coroner's report, it was the day she died. Whenever I see white doves in flight I am saddened for the year before my mother's death, I was looking out of the north-east window of my study one afternoon to see a flock of white doves swoop over our field. I thought they were going down to feed off the remains of the cropped wheat but they flew off.

Baptism date coincidence

I was confirmed at the age of 14 but had never been baptised (a long story). When I was asked, some 25 years later, if I would be willing to become an administrator of the chalice at my church, I was pleased and honoured but confessed the omission in my spiritual history. My priest explained the situation to the bishop and it was decided that I should be baptised and then re-confirmed as soon as the bishop could find a slot in his busy schedule. This turned out to be 14th December of that year. When I came to file the certificate I had been given, I asked my husband if he still had the record of his baptism which was performed, more traditionally, when he was a baby. He searched for some time, then produced a certificate which stated that the date of his baptism was also 14th December. God moves in mysterious ways!

Unexpected Enclosure

When I was buying my first flat in 1972, I received an envelope containing not only the surveyor's report but also a job application from someone in South Africa with the same surname as mine. My surname is pretty uncommon. I am in my eighth decade and have only met people with that name outside my immediate family about twice in my life. My surveyor worked in a government department but also had a small part-time private practice for which he used some of the office facilities of a firm of architects. Someone in that firm had inadvertently left the job application in the firm's photocopying room and my surveyor had accidentally picked it up when copying my report.

incredible coincidence from chris alexander

this happened a couple of years ago and blew my mind to be honest see what you think i would be interested in knowing the mathematical probability of this as well!I was in a friends flat in cardiff chatting when my friends mobile phone rang .He started speaking to the other person and said sorry I don't know you mate I don't know anyone called Serge.Well it so happens that my best friends nickname is Serge named after ex french rugby fullback Serge Blanco so I said to my friend in the flat let me speak to them he handed the phone to me and sure enough it was my best friend who had inadvertently rang the wrong number at the exact moment I was visiting someone he did not know.He had no idea I was there or whom he had rung he meant to ring another person whose number funnily enough was not even similar he had just misdialled.He could not really grasp the weirdness of this situation to be honest and even to this day still fails to but when one considers the sheer number of mobile phone numbers it is pretty staggering I think you will agree

Two readers; two different books; identical phrase read within 10 minutes of each other!

On holiday with friends 30 years ago: Caroline and I both avid readers. We sat in the sunshine one afternoon reading our respective books - 'Flamingo Feather' by Laurens van der Post and 'Return of the Native' by Thomas Hardy. I paused in the text to read out a particularly beautiful description (something I never normally do) which in included the words:' The lake was as a grey velvet cloak trimmed with white lace.' Having discussed the phrase we returned to our books and, within ten minutes, my friend exclaimed that she had exactly the same phrase in her book, which she duly read out for all to hear!

Omaha war cemetry

My brother's godfather, James Beatty, was an American soldier stationed in Bodmin prior to D day. Nothing was heard from him after the war so he was presumed "killed in action". On a trip to France in 1989 my wife and I visited the immaculate American War Cemetery in Saint Laurent sur Mer, overlooking Omaha beach, where there is a register and steles (stone crosses) of 9386 soldiers. We found a likely James Beatty listed, in row F on the far side of the 172 acre site, but when we arrived at the stone I realised we must have misread the location as it was not that of James Beatty. Inscribed on the stone was the name of a soldier with the surname MASON, which sent shivers down my spine. My surname is MASON!!! p.s. Many years later we discovered that he had not been killed, but returned safely to Philadelphia.

Ghosts

We were told by the previous owners of our Elizabethan farmhouse in the Chiltern Hills that the house is haunted. Our previous house, a similar age of building and farmhouse too did have "footsteps" at two o'clock in the night across the galleried hall's landing. It was not central heating! Within the first couple of years of living in our present house, "footsteps" in the night on the creaking stairs were heard by my husband and he asked if it was me. I was asleep by his side. The alarm contacts on an attic door were being broken (doors open when we were out) and eventually I took one door off and no further false alarms. One guest saw the "old man" sitting at the end of her bed in our elder son's bedroom and she had been a nurse and "seen" ghosts in hospitals when working night shifts. In the orchard, my husband felt certain his ladder was pushed from under him when he was pruning an apple tree.

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