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!

Three coincidences

Of these three, the first two involve my husband and the third, myself. My husband was boarding a Concorde flight at Heathrow, on a business trip, and noticed that someone had left an expensive canmera in a trolley. He had only time to scribble his name and address and hand it to a member of airport staff before boarding. Some days later, I noticed a neighbour hurrying towards our house, which is in a little town on the north coast of Northern Ireland, carrying a bottle of brandy. "Where are you going with that?" "To your house. Jimmy found my camera." How many people pass through Heathrow? Having taken a cruise around the Antarctic on his own, my husband met up with six other single travellers from various countries and they became firm friends throughout the trip. The following year they had a reunion at our home on the North coast of Northern Ireland. One of their number was Jean Francois from Quebec. A couple of years later my husband was on a walking holiday in Cape Town and stopped at a cafe for breakfast.

Double accident

Aged about 18, on May Day in Barbados, I was preparing sandwiches for the usual picnic. I had placed the empty corned beef tin in the bin but unknown to me the dog had come in and removed it for a lick, leaving it just behind me. Sandwiches done, I stepped back.... onto said tin, making a hockey- stick slice in my foot. The picnic transport was redeployed to the hospital where 12 stitches were required and I had quite a few days off school to which I returned wearing a flip flop...... About 18 years later on the first May Day in Nigeria, the family newly arrived from London, set off from Benin City to meet some in-laws who worked at Shell camp, Warri. ( no telephones to forewarn them). We were royally entertained, and a meal including snails was being prepared. I knew I had to find a way to avoid this but could not have wished for such an excuse as presented itself Unbeknown to me, one of the cousins decided to take the boys all 3 at once, for a spin on his shiny new motorbike...My middle son aged 8, must have sought a grip and his foot was sliced by the hub(?).

Swiss connection

On a rare trip to Worthing-we live 30miles away- my wife decided to shop at Waitrose. Next to where I parked I noticed a car with a Swiss flag sticker on the back and as the owner was about to get in I casually mentioned that my wife was Swiss and her home town was in the canton of St Gallen, When he replied that his home town was Uzwil in the same canton I told him that hers was Flawil which is virtually next door. When I then told him that we were married in Flawil -in 1952- and that we had our wedding breakfast in the Hotel Rossli he said he knew it well and used to attend the regular Sunday dances held there. Small world!

There it is now

I was ta1king to friends after lunch, by the window of the refectory at the University College of North Wales, Bangor (in about 1964). We were talking about Mini travellers, and I said that my sister and her husband had a Mini van which had had windows and some mock wooden panelling added. I glanced out of the window and said, “Oh, there it is going along the main road now”. I had had no knowledge that my sister and brother-in-law were on holiday in North Wales – they lived in Surrey. - Francis Williamson

Meeting My Rival

When I was 9, my friend David Hume and I would mess around together. He lived around the corner, but we went to different schools - he went to a place called Haberdashers. But no matter what David and I did together, he would always tell me that he had done something much braver, or more exciting, or more fun, with his friend at school, PJ Collins. So I hated PJ Collins. Fifteen years later, while on holiday in a remote hostel on a beach on the east coast of the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania, I met a young man, my age, who said he'd gone to Haberdashers school, and I told him which school I had gone to. He then told me his name was Phillip, but people called him PJ. I stared at him, and said "Are you PJ Collins?" He stared back at me. "Are you Olly Lambert?" It turned out that for years, our mutual friend David had told PJ no matter what they did together, he did things that were much braver, more exciting and more fun with his other friend, Olly.

Surprise offer in the street

I spent much of the autumn of 2011 restoring to a good condition the mechanics and bodywork my 20 year old Land Rover Discovery . After spending hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds on the task, and finally completing it, I decided, as the "icing on the cake" to search for what is known as a Loadliner. This is a large plastic box that fills the rear quarter of a Discovery, but it was only specific to the Discoveries built for just a few years from 1989 to about 1994, and the production company was long gone. I had many times searched ebay and other parts outlets, but was unable, over several weeks, to trace a used Loadliner. Modern equivalents exist, but they are not suitable for my tasks of holding wet sea kayaking gear. While still engaged on this search, on 29th September 2011, I was standing by my parked vehicle in a side street of a nearby town, waiting to go in to a dentist appointment. The quarter mile long street was deserted, except for an elderly lady who was slowly making her way up the pavement towards me from about 100 metres away.

Three Men in a Boat

During the 1960s my cousin Ian Person, a young naval officer, was ordered to render assistance to a crashed US aircraft. With him in the boat was a diver and a medical officer, also named Pearson. The sunken aircraft was located, the diver went down to investigate and duly surfaced with the dead body of the American pilot. The pilot's name was written in large letters across the front of his flyinf suit "Lt PEARSON".

comfort please?

My mother was starting the first batch of a huge pile of washing one Thurs eve before a long 4 day bank holiday...back in the days when everything shut down until Tuesday. The radio was on, it was some time in the 70's. Realising with enormous exasperation that she had run out of her Comfort fabric conditioner she muttered, "Damn I've no idea where I'm going to get any Comfort at this time' At that moment the radio was playing a song called 'Just when I needed you most'...and the singer sang out the words."Where I'll find Comfort...God knows..."

GCSE English paper

When I was 14 I went on a cycling holiday in Austria with my parents. Another family on the holiday had children about my age and we got on quite well. The father of the family was a journalist with The Times newspaper. A couple of months after the holiday I went down to stay with them in London and they took me to visit The Times offices. After this we eventually lost contact. However 2 years later when I sat down to site my GCSE english exam I opened the paper and found that the article selected for comprehension was from The Times, written by the father of my friends and about the cycling holiday we had been on in Austria.

Mr Patrick W

On business in Bristol, car parked in multi storey. I went to next morning to collect vehicle, un-locked boot, and found another persons luggage and various other unfamiliar items. I checked registration number, and found it to be just one number different to mine (letters exactly as mine) my business colleague's registration was the next in sequence. in other words this car was the number between mine and my work friend. also the key worked for wrong car, and it was parked exactly where mine was, (ie row and number) but on a different floor level. All three cars were supplied by a garage in Kettering. Coincidence or......?

Pages