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.

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Well I Never!

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

Old friend

Last year (2011) my wife received a telephone call from someone who had dialed the wrong number. It turned out to be an old friend (a clergyman) to whom she had last spoken 46 years ago. He had no knowledge of where we live in the world, and he did not have our telephone number. We had been living abroad for many years, so we could have been living anywhere. He lives in Surrey and we live in Dorset. He had meant to telephone another place with a completely different area code, but out of all the millions of telephone numbers in the United Kingdom, he had mistakenly dialed our number.

Ex-colleague

A few years after I retired from Imperial College my wife and I were seated at the departure gate at Gatwick airport waiting to board a plane bound for Corsica. On turning round I found that an ex-colleague at Imperial, Professor Tony B and his wife were also waiting for the same plane. Furthermore, we met a couple on our walking tour of the island whose son had Tony B as his Ph. D supervisor.

A. C. R.

The first was on a visit to Scotland. My Wife and I were living in Solihull, but travelled to Fort William from Newcastle upon Tyne. We went to a pub to get food and got chatting to the only other people there. It turned out they were also on holiday, and were the parents of a friend of mine who was doing the same course at Birmingham Poly. The second was whilst working in Social Services on Birmingham I regularly had to contact the Housing Department in Bush House in the city centre. We had an internal phone system so you only had to dial a short number to get through. I dialled this number and said who I was, and before I could say anything else the person said, “Oh you will be wanting to speak to Jackie”. I was then put on to a Jackie R, who it turns out is a second Cousin. She worked in Bloxwich Steels, nowhere near the city centre. What are the chances of getting a crossed line and finding a relative you didn’t know you had?!!

Ms

Yesterday 13th January, as I sat waiting for a medical appointment, I was talking to a cousin about our various near relatives. She mentioned that her cousin was charming but bad at staying in touch, even with his mother. I complained of the same problem with my nephew. After the test as we reached home less than half an hour after the conversation, she received a phone call from the boy in question from abroad no less, to say that his mother had died in an accident. A phone call and a mention of his mother! Less than two hours later I received a phone call from my nephew who lives in the USA and with whom I hadn't spoken for ages!! Coincidence!! Di

Dress Sense

A highly unlikely chain of coincidences happened on a day when I unexpectedly found myself with a free slot of time . I went shopping in Sevenoaks to look for an outfit for our son's wedding-----in the boutique was another lady of similar age-----in conversation she was looking for an outfit ,as mother of the bride,(her daughter). The comment was made that she was from Newcastle, on holiday, and staying with her brother.I therefore said that our son's wedding was to be in Newcastle----on asking me for more details she then pronounced that she would be going to the wedding as a guest and close friend of our daughter-in law's mother! On that occasion neither of us found a suitable outfit and therefore went our own ways looking forward to meeting up again a few months later. Imagine our surprise to discover that for the weddings we had both chosen identical outfits (albeit different colours)----I having bought mine in a boutique in another part of Kent and she back in Newcastle!

Time of birth

Both my daughters were born at 05.17 hrs inthe morning one 10/03/80 and the other 14/12/82. Rowena H

ancestors

I thought I was a Northerner, born in Hull, trained as a teacher outside Liverpool, and only moving to Suffolk as "it was the furthest south I was prepared to come", in 1977, finally settling in Eye, Suffolk, where I still live. In 2011 my brother in law started looking at my side of the family tree and found that, on my dad's side, the family had moved from Halesworth Suffolk (about 20 miles away) in the 1850s, tracing ancestors back to Eye, Diss and surrounding villages. For a lot of the time, in the mid eighteenth century, ancestors came from Stoke by Nayland. My mother's family came from Portsmouth, but looking back, some of her ancestors came from Stoke by Nayland at about the same time in the eighteenth century. As if that was not enough, one of my friends from school, who originated from Wakefield, also has ancestors who came from Eye. Mr Andrew F

Our first boyfriend was the same man

I have fond memories of my first boyfriend at school, aged about 13. The boys' and girls' grammar schools had just combined, and for the first time, we were all in the same classes. Paul was a lovely, kind, enthusiastic and totally altruistic young man with a winning smile. We enjoyed playing badminton together - and that was it ! I don't think we ever kissed, or if we did, it wasn't memorable. But he was. I moved schools, and boyfriends, and we lost touch. Years later, when I was about 40, I became friendly with a pair of gay men. One of them was talking about a friend who was about to visit them, who had been his first boyfriend at university. He played the cello and sang, and now ran a therapeutic centre for people with learning difficulties. These were all interests I clearly remembered Paul having. My friend's accent told me he was from the same region Paul and I grew up in, and so the realisation occurred that we had both dated the same boy/man !! And it might not surprise you to know that I came out as a lesbian as an adult too. It certainly didn't surprise Paul when I met him again at a concert where he was performing.

Two wives shared birthdays and names

My first wife's first name was Christina. My send wife's name is Christine. Both wives celebrate their birthdays on January 14th, though not born in the same year. My first wife and I had a daughter, who we called Frances. My second wife's second name is Frances. Both wives had been secondary school teachers. Note: I met my second wife long after my divorce from first wife and not through any kind of education-based event, activity or social occasional. Pretty spooky, huh?

Mandeville Meeting

In January 1959 I started my annual business tour of the West Indies, on behalf of the paper manufacturer, John Dickinson & Co Ltd. Early on I went to a little town, called Mandeville, in a remote part of Jamaica. I stayed the night of the 12th January in the Manchester hotel. During the evening I was in conversation with the hotel's proprietor, there being few visitors. Back in England, several months later, I came down to breakfast at the central YMCA in London. My landlady at that time insisted on my departing my digs at weekends. A young man asked me if he could join me at my table. I could tell from his accent that he came from the West Indies. It turned out that his mother owned the Manchester hotel and that he had been there, when I was engaging her in conversation. I had not seen him at the time. John.

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