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!

Two fathers

During the second world war adoption was not arranged in the way it is now. My natural mother gave birth to me early one morning and by tea time I had been delivered by the district nurse to my adoptive parents in another area of the county. When, after many years, my adopted father needed residential care he chose a retirement home some miles away from both villages. When we applied for a room for him we were told that they only had one place available and that he would have to share. This place my father accepted and we duely drove him there only to discover that the man he would be sharing with was the person whose name appeared on my birth certificate. (This man was not my father but had registered me as his having married my pregnant mother on the understanding that I would be dispensed with.) Fortunately they had both forgotten about the adoption and shared a room for some time. When visiting I was able to take photographs of them together on a settee.

Ubiquitous Schumann

Some years ago I heard Schumann's Piano Quintet for the first time at the Barbican Hall. A while later, one lunchtime, I was leafing through CDs in the shop at the Festival Hall and found a CD of the piece. Within about five seconds of my picking up the CD to buy it, a group of musicians started playing something strangely familiar. The Schumann Piano Quintet.

Nile passengers knew my parents and sister-in-law

Some years ago my husband and I booked a Nile cruise. This was from a national company and we booked independently. However, when we were getting to know our fellow passengers it turned out that one of them had a holiday home in the town where my parents live, attended the same church when on holiday and actually knew them. Another passenger, not connected to the first, came from the same small area of East Kent as my parents and had bought a painting done by my sister-in-law at a local exhibition.

Godsons

I have two unrelated Godsons, for whom I was chosen a few years apart. Both are called Edward. Both were born on 4th October [4 years apart]. Both their Fathers are called Graham.

Meeting a future neighbour in NewZealand

In 2001 my partner Claire Hagon and I (Paul Knight) were travelling around the World we spent about 8 weeks in New Zealand in March 2001. We stayed at a guest house in Nelson in the South Island. It was called Short Bread Cottage. We met another couple there of a similar age. We were about 31 at the time. They had taken 3 months off work to cycle around New Zealand. I remember gently teasing him. He talked about wanting to build his own house one day. She had red hair. We had a pleasent evening and that was it. We returned from travelling in October 2001 with Claire being pregnant. We moved to Windsor in Berkshire where we had previously both lived before we went away. We then could not avoid to buy a big enough house for us once we had a second child so moved to Caversham an area of Reading into a victorian terrace in 2003. We had our 2nd child and a some up our road had a babay about the same time she noticed that two other women had babies od a similar age so organised for them to meet up. they got on and eventually the boys were involved in an evening together. I sort of recognised one of the men more through his manerisuims.

Humphrey Head , the last wolf shot in England

My wife and I sat at a table in a hotel in Ibiza and a couple were sat with us by the head waiter . They were from Lancashire , we are from West Yorkshire and I asked the man what they usually did for holiday in the UK when not going abroad . He said they went touring for a few days at a time, they had an estate car and they slept one night in the car and then found a B and B the next day , it saved them money . Their last trip was to Humphrey Head , Morecambe Bay the previous bank holiday where the last wolf in England had been shot. I asked him if his car was a dark green Austin Maxi and gave him part of the registration number , it was his car . I had been duck shooting with my brother in law and he wanted to park his car in the pull-in on a narrow lane next to the beach . The parking space had been taken by an estate car , all the windows were steamed up and it was 4:30 am and someone was obviously sleeping in the car.

Colleague in Colmar

A couple of years ago we stopped overnight at a small hotel on the outskirts of Colmar, France. Looking out of our window, we noticed another British car drive into the car park, and wondered how many other British people were staying there. A few minutes later, my husband went down to the lobby to discover that the couple who had just arrived were a work colleague of mine and her husband.

Amazed in the Adriatic

Joining an Italian cruise ship, sailing from Venice around the coast of Italy to Savona, we wondered what nationality our fellow diners would be as this would be a multi national passenger list. First night we sat down to dinner and when one couple arrived they were from north Cornwall - our favourite UK holiday destination and we struck up a lively conversation on places we all knew and loved. I continued my conversation with our new Cornish friends when my husband began to speak with the 2nd couple to join the table. I then overheard from the new couple the words "Oh we're from a small town in Derbyshire you probably won't have heard of ... Glossop". Wow. Our home was Glossop. As we continued we soon were amazed to discover that the gentleman had been born and lived for a good part of his life in the house we had lived in for the last 17-years. We knew his name well because our neighbour had often talked of his father. It also emerged that his partner was a work colleague of my brother in law. We found this amazing amongst thousands of passengers from all over Europe and in the Adriatic, so far from the UK.

Meetings with an old friend after many years

Last July I took part in the first concert of the 2011 Proms season at the Albert Hall. Because of the number of performers in the concert the men's dressing room was front of house, below ground at the level of the entrances to the arena (where the Prommers stand). Shortly before the concert I went to the men's room next to the dressing room and met an old friend with whom I had not been in contact for at least 15 years (we are both in our mid-60s). He had only decided to attend the concert within the previous few days, and although a frequent concert-goer he had never 'prommed' before and therefore had never previously used this men's room. In November I returned from a concert at the Barbican to Waterloo by a tube route that I had not used before, because of engineering work on my usual route. As I got out of the tube train this same friend was waiting to board the train at the point on the platform where I was leaving it. In a lifetime of using the tube for travelling to school and work I had never had such an encounter before.

Camera Cuss

I was born in 1934, an only child born to loving parents. I grew up during WW2 and it seemed quite normal for me to sleep in air-raid shelters. In1944, I walked the streets of West London with my parents and grandmother at 1 a.m. homeless, having lost everything but our lives. My father's eldest brother had been killed in WW1 and this had a profound effect on him. He left school early, misled the Army about his age, as did many others at that time. My father was, therefore, determined that I would have the education he lacked. As many of my lessons were done in air-raid shelters, he left me sheets of sums to do every day and I would have to have the answers ready by the time he returned from work! In 1945, there was peace, and I passed my 11 plus, and I also passed an entrance examination to go to one of London's top Grammar schools, the Godolphin and Latymer. My parents were so thrilled, they took me to a well known London jeweller called Camera Cuss, established in London in 1788, to buy me a watch.

Pages