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!

Humans Crossing Paths

Ever since I was a child my dad would throw a fit about backing out of the driveway and there ALWAYS being a car coming down the road at that exact instant every single time. There would be no cars coming down our street before he left or after he left, just at the same exact time when he was pulling out of the driveway. Now, I'm sure many people experience and complain about the same thing and I didn't think about it too much until I started to see the same uncanny type of events start to happen in my own life. I see this when I am out driving and live in a small town and it never fails for me as well; for example, every time I'm going to make a left turn there is always another car that is coming down the road at exactly the same time I would be turning to where I would collide with them every place I go as well as pulling up to my house; there is always somebody pulling up on my street at exactly the same time. Nobody 5 minutes after I pull up, just exactly the same time I pull up. I also notice this at my job where I work on the phone and can see the phone calls come in.

Lots of sixes

A person whose phone number 10 digits taken by pairs always add up to "6" makes an appointment for the 6th day of the month at 15:00 (1+5 = 6).

Old Crush

So last night, my friends and I were talking about guys we used to like. I have not talked to him since elementary or seen him since him since middle school. I am in 10th grade now. I started looking at, lets call him Jeffery's instagram profile. I had a major crush on him during elementary school. My friends were telling me to hit him up because we do not go to the same school anymore. I did not. Later, when I had gotten home, my family was watching a movie. The first thing I notice was that one of the characters had the same name as Jeffery. I had first thought that this was just a weird coincidence and thought it was kinda creepy because we had just been talking about him. The weirdest part of this was that during my soccer game, he was playing on the field right next to me. Now I started to believe that these were signs or something along the sorts. I told my mother about this and she also told me I should get in touch with him and that she wants to see what he looked like. I thought he was gone after the game but I pulled around the corner in the car and he was right there.

Birthday number sequence

The number sequence will only be apparent when considered in the USA date format (MM-DD-YYYY, as odd as that is). My son was born as 1:23am on April 5th 2006 (4-5-2006). So with a bit of imagination he was born with the time and date number sequence of 1 2 3 4 5 6.

Music and dreams

A month ago I went to a concert, which included some pieces played with traditional Chinese instruments. There was a solo guqin, which I had never seen nor heard before, and as I listened to it I saw a battle unfold before me. An old man was sitting in the middle of a path leading into the mountains, his legs crossed and a guqin in front of him. His face was hidden under a hat and as they pluked the strings an army of corpses fought for him. The more erratic the sound of the guqin got the fiercer the fight. Now, last week I came across a novel and one of the MC character did use a Guqin to fight corpses in exactly the same way as I had seen while listening to the music at the concert.

Travel Coincidence

I was one day talking with my flatmate about this very dear friend of mine who is knowledgable in French (my flatmate is from France). I mentioned to her that he often travels to Paris around early December so I had plans to ask him if he was going to leave in winter 2018 as well. This was brought up because my flatmate was travelling to Paris that week-end (some time in end of October - early November). I then, on the same day, asked my friend if and when he was going, expecting either a negative reply or December as a date. As it turns out, he was also taking the same train as she was on that Friday and not going there in December as usual. I found this surprising.

(Un)expected meetings

Tired with the towny life I decided ot buy myself a ticket to a bigger city last year. As it was holiday period in the summer I expected I might run into a few familiar faces, yet I still found this experience very surprising. Of all the people I could possibly meet I ended up crossing paths with someone whom I had just met a few weeks prior but who had left a strong impression on me. A few minutes later, at the same location, I caught sight of another, less familiar, person who had been drinking tea at work while sitting not too far from me almost every day for the past 3 weeks or so.

A Lucky Magical Coincidence

In my early twenties I decided to break free of university life and travel from Sydney, Canada to Sydney, Australia. I went backpacking along the east coast, directing my life trajectory with full autonomy for the first time. I anticipated meeting friends along the way and soaking up each new experience without hesitation. About half way into my travels I was hit a heavy wave of homesickness. I had not felt this feeling before and so was confused and disoriented. As a result this made it challenging to continue calling the shots all on my own. I found myself stuck in the same town, spending day after day in internet cafes talking to anyone from home who was willing to listen to my loneliness. Missing out on what I traveled so far away for, I eventually came upon a lucky coincidence that helped me become unstuck. One day I was leaving the internet cafe and on my way out I opened the door for another young girl entering. It turned out to be a childhood friend also from the Canadian town of Sydney. We grew up together, went to school together, our families knew each other. We were not close at the time, as she was a bit older and were had been out of contact a while.

Discovering Lost Family

DISCOVERING LOST FAMILY by Lauren Agnelli of Chester, CT My father’s side of the family, the Agnellis, were by nature not an outgoing or friendly bunch, so by the time my father died in 1974 at the young age of 43, we never heard from any of them except our beloved great Aunt Toots and Uncle Ambie -- who had always been regular visitors. So the only other Agnellis we knew of were our father, his two brothers, his dad and his mom, our grandparents. By 1974, half of them were gone, and the two brothers never stayed in touch after grandpa’s death and so. . . Back in the ‘60s when I was growing up I did remember, once, hearing about some “country cousins” we had up in Connecticut somewhere, but the reference was so vague it seemed to me like something mythical, an urban legend. Urban animals all, the Agnellis in our family resided in the boroughs of the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens, all a part of greater New York City. We were writers, pilots, salesmen, CFOs, Public Relations professionals, Executive Secretaries. Fast forward to 2005, when I was living in a beautiful place that I’d been purposefully transplanted to in the state of Connecticut.

"Jennas," "Jennifers," Etc.

I. Jenna Dewan 1. Shortly (I believe around five minutes or less) before the television show The Late Late Show with James Corden aired on July 30th or July 31st of 2018, I oddly (admittedly without any need to go into further detail) and inexplicably (arguably in my opinion without going into further detail) “hugged” my television set by putting my arms around it. Similarly, near the beginning of that show during a guest introduction, the celebrity Jenna Dewan seemed to put her arms out in a gesture as if she were hugging someone. 2. A taped segment on that show contained a conversation between Ms. Dewan and the psychic medium Thomas John in an automobile. Similar to one set of Ms. Dewan’s grandparents, my late maternal grandfather was a veteran in the United States military. With respect to the discussion of cardinals in the taped segment, though my late maternal grandmother and I rarely discussed sports with each other and though another family member of mine recently told me that my late maternal grandmother was a New York Yankees baseball fan, I do recall my late maternal grandmother once telling me that she was rooting for the St.

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