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!

Interesting times - strange but true

There is a history of strange coincidences in my family. Genetic or pure chance- who knows? I’ve been a professional ecologist for over half a century, and on occasion have seen some quite impossible things that, even now, I cannot ‘explain’. As a scientist am of course familiar with problems in which it is necessary to distinguish between coincidence and correlation, and I have had to treat the straight and narrow track of due diligence and caution in dealing with many puzzling occurrences in my career as a globe-trotting consultant. But there have been some incidents in which I have been completely unable to draw any conclusions Here are some examples. 1. Random selection of a missing item amongst many thousands. During my National Service in 1958 I trained as a medical radiographer at RAMC Woolwich in London, UK. One morning I went into the room where patient X-ray records and photographs were stored. In those days X-ray images were on large photographic sheets of film, which were kept in very large identical brown envelopes. There were many thousands of envelopes on the racks of shelves along one very long wall of this room.

Surprise Encounter in Marrakesh

In the 1960s I lived in a cottage in Somerset. A frequent visitor and good friend was a Canadian by the name of Lester. At the end of the summer, he announced his intention of heading for India on his 1940s Norton motorbike, and duly set off soon afterwards. A few months later my partner and I decided to take a trip to Morocco, and drove down through Europe in our VW camper van. We headed for Marrakesh, found ourselves a campsite, and parked in an empty space. On the space next to us was a small tent and a washing line, and hanging on the washing line was a red vest. "I'm sure that's Lester's vest", I said to my partner, but we decided it couldn't possibly be. However of course it was -- his Norton had broken down in France and he had replaced it with a mobilette (small motorised bicycle) and had abandoned the India trip for the much closer Morocco. We had had no idea of this, and he had no idea of our plans to visit the country. It was, of course, a very pleasant surprise and a complete coincidence.

Unwanted spare parts

When my engineering company moved premises, we had to move our spare part stores. The store manager called me and said that he had found an old box of spares labelled with a customer's name and should he keep it. I said "No. We haven't heard from that customer for at least 8 years". I put down the phone. Seconds later my secretary called me. She said that while I was on the phone the customer had called asking if I still had his spare parts.

American friends

In 1968 my husband and I were visiting Cambridge, Massachusetts. We met a couple who told us they had visited Oxford, UK in 1966. They proceeded to show us a film that they had taken from the window of their hotel during their visit. The film was of a group of students celebrating the end of finals. The coincidence was that we and several of our friends were in the film, my husband was one of the students!!

penny lane

Whilst sitting in my Cab waiting for a job, i listen to Classic Gold radio , im in Christchurch Dorset, On the Radio comes a Beetles song , "Penny Lane" i'm humming along to it and reveling in the Nostalgia of the remembered times, I then get a job , so i do a U turn and just as i'm facing the new direction, over christchurch train station bridge comes a Huge White articulated lorry , and on the side in Green letters 2foot high is the name Penny Lane, i was totally gobsmacked, i have since read that this phenomenom is called Syncronisity and found books on the subject amasing. kind regards Victor j.s. Hartley

Down Under coincidence

While on holiday in New Zealand we were at a small jetty and stopped to enquire about ferry timetables. The guy recognised our accents and it turned out he had lived three miles from us and emigrated to NZ almost 40 years previously. He told us that his family hadn't visited him till recent years and said that Charlie Dimmock the celebrity gardener had just stayed and had we heard of her. I told him that 45 years ago when I was 16 I had worked with a girl who had gone on to be Charlies Aunt, I said that her name was Cathy Dimmock though of course she was married now and her name had changed. Yes he replied, she's Cathy Swire now, she's my sister. Turned out I had met him when I had visited Cathys house all those years ago.

Babysitting

On holiday in Halkidiki (mainland Greece) in 1983. Got friendly with a family, and they introduced us to a young couple on the beach whom they had met in the hotel. During conversation, it turned out that my wife ( both she and I grew up in the same Leicestershire village) had used to push this young girl in her pram with her twin sister round the village when in her teens.

Simiar names/same name

We have experienced two startling coincidences in the last fifteen years The later one occurred during the last couple of years. Our principal hobby is our old cars (specifically, for the purpose of this note, our 1927 Delage). Some two years ago we were taking part in an event in the Ardeche (South Eastern France) and one of the spectators came up to me and said that he had a back axle for sale for a Delage similar to ours. We went to look at it and arranged to go back later in the year and collect it in a trailer with our modern car. The vendor’s name was Jean-Yvres Hubert, not all that common a name in France. Last year, a “wreck” of a Delage, also 1927, was for sale in a village near Le Mans, many hundreds of kilometres from the Ardeche. I contacted the owner and agreed a sale. It transpired that his name was also Jean-Yvres Hubert. But he knew absolutely nothing about his name sake in the Ardeche. The other co-incidence occurred when we were stopping in a hotel in Huddersfield (I was then on the University Council). At the time we were living in the Republic of Ireland, County Kildare, in a lovely Georgian House which we rented from the Dutch owners.

Broken Table Leg

I was invited to a Round Table dinner as a quest by a friend in Leeds and sat next to a man I had not met before . I asked him as an opening question where he went on holiday the previous year and he said in a converted barn in Alnwick in the North East . Thats funny I said , so did my wife and I and our two girls , the cottage was lovely and when we had unpacked my wife made a cup of tea and I moved a three leg side table to put the tray on and the leg fell off . I purchased some glue during the week and mended it as I did not want to be charged for the breakage . It turned out that he and his family had stayed in the same cottage left the morning of our arrival and he had broken the table a few minutes before they had left and he had proped it up against the wall so it looked OK .

travel and buying a book

Coincidently I heard Front Row on Radio 4 one evening last year. There was a review of a Stephen Fry autobiography. I thought no more of this as I am not a particular fan of Mr Fry. A few months later I was making a business trip to Kenya. I always take a book with me and I already had a book on the go which I packed. While reading at the airport I realised that I would finish my book before the end of the trip. I don't usually buy books at airports. I am a more considered book selecter than this. As I apporached the book shop the first thing I saw was a prominent display of the Stephen Fry book. I remembered the review and I bought the book. When I arrived at my destination ( a nature conservancy) I was billetted in a very nice safari lodge to work with a colleague from France that I had not met before. On the second night she said she whished she had brought a book. For once I had two books, which was very unusual for me. I offered her the Stephen Fry book as I had not started it. She told me she had met Mr Fry and he had stayed at this very lodge.

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