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!

Winter Bank an astonishing modern house

I live in Marlow, Bucks. My wife’s now "getting-on-a-bit" cousin, Chris, lived nearby for 40 years in an upside-down house on a lovely site by the Thames in Cookham Dean called ‘Winter Bank’. Four or five years ago a man appeared at Chris’s front door and said that he wanted to buy Chris’s house. Since he and his wife were thinking of moving, after a small negotiation they agreed to sell, furniture and all. The new owner demolished the existing house and built an astonishing modern house – all glass and heat pumps. In November 2010 I was a trustee of my former company’s pension fund. I was travelling in a taxi with the CEO of the pension fund’s investment company from central London to Hounslow for a meeting. As we chatted during the journey, the CEO, Michelle, mentioned that she thought that I Iived in Marlow and that the previous weekend she had visited a startling new house on the Thames in Cookham Dean which had been recently built by a friend of hers as a holiday home. I asked Michelle if the name of the house was ‘Winterbank’ and she, astonished, said it was.

biographical conjuncture in Rome

About twenty years ago my husband had a few days work in Rome, so I went with him. Sitting one fine spring morning on the terrace by our hotel, I opened the book I was reading, 'Julia', a memoir of the writer Julia Strachey by the diarist Frances Partridge. The memoir was based on entries in Partridge's dairy. The book fell open onto a page containing the following: 'April 9th 1964. Rome. Here we are, in a delightful pensione on the Aventine'. Those words sprang from the page like a cord from the past, as here was I, in a delightful pensione on the Aventine. On April 9th.

Of all the bars in all the world...

A couple of years ago I was in Liverpool for a friend's hen party. The friend was now living in Australia and was only back in the country for a week or two to get married - I knew her from university in Leicester and this was only the second time in my life I'd been to Liverpool. Due to my poor knowledge of the area, I was late and went straight to the bar area in a fairly large place on the Albert Docks instead of waiting for table service. As I turned around with three G&Ts to head to our private booth area, through the crowd I clocked a guy walking through the front door, wrapped up in a hat, scarf and heavy coat (it was February). It was my ex-boyfriend of 4 years, with whom I'd called it a day 8 months earlier. He was from Surrey and (to my knowledge) didn't know anyone or have any reason to be in Liverpool. I shot over to him and exclaimed: "Happy birthday!" (for reasons that were obvious) and he looked incredibly shocked. It turns out, he was in the wrong place and was just turning to leave.

A University theme

I e emailed my tutor and said I hope you are not in the Bear pit of academia at least not the bear later that day it was announced about the mysterious deathe of the Titor in Oxford I get intuitive moments but tend to note them and then forget , it is reallty the only outstanding ones that one tends to remember

Unlikely link

Live now in N Uist, in a Colt house built for M Handley Page in1965, bought by us thirty yrs later from a dentist. Intervening owner ...nothing known except he was a lawyer. Mybhusband at funeral of ex Shell manager colleague in rural Cheshire. Introduced to a lady, got chatting, turned out it was her husband who owned the house...

Mr Chris M-S

Heard about you on radio 4 this morning. Thank God somebody out there recognises this....at times I think I've gone stir crazy: coincidences in various forms happen to me on an almost daily basis and I shall now renew logging these and will be in touch. Thank you! Best rgds, Chris M-S

Mr Kenneth Baker

Some years ago my wife & I ventured out for an evening drink. We had no particular pub in mind and were disappointed by the reception & atmosphere at the first pub we visited. Unusually we then went to The White Harte Hotel in Lewes about 9 miles from home. There was immediately a lovely lively atmosphere. A visiting group of perhaps 20 German speaking people in their late forties/early fifties were in jolly mood and obviously enjoying themselves. I began talking to some of the group and they were happy to explain that they were Swiss-German and all school head teachers. They were here on a fact finding mission to investigate The National Curriculum. Apparently in their part of Switzerland each school was free to devise its own curriculum. I said, "It was Margaret Thatcher's education minister Kenneth Baker who introduced our National Curriculum. At this precise moment, right on cue, Mr Kenneth Baker walked into the bar! I called him over in some excitement and invited the Swiss heads to talk to him. I had no idea that Mr Baker had friends in the area. He was very gracious and spent some time with the Swiss delegates.

Relative connection

I live in a relatively obscure Leicestershire village, not one that anybody would normally pass through. One Sunday afternoon, about 15 years ago I was walking my dog along a local footpath. The path concerned widens out into a cul-de-sac which was formerly the medieval archery butts of the parish, running between the church and present cemetery. i became aware of a car which was slowly approaching and moved to one side. It was driven by an elderly lady who was looking rather confused. 'Can you help me?' she asked. 'I'm trying to find the road which will take me to the East Coast.' 'Where have you come from?' I asked. 'Birmingham' she replied. 'I'm not terribly familiar with the Midlands and seem to have gone wrong somewhere.' I realised that she must have come down the A5 (remember - the motorway system was not as facile as now!) and must have missed the turn for the A47, through Hinckley. The next turn would have taken her down the B4114 adjacent to our village.

Met same stranger three time

I recognised a famous conductor in a lift in Bloomingdales in New York in 1989 and said hello. We had never met, but had a brief conversation. A year or so later I was getting off a local train at Leeds Central station and met the same conductor getting off the London train. She remembered me and we said hello again. 4 or 5 years later I met her again, I was in a lift in John Lewis on Oxford Street in London and she was waiting outside when the doors opened. Same person, 3 different cities.

Blackout

Recently I cleared the breakfast things onto a tray, carried it to the larder and dropped it, breaking a jar of honey. While clearing up the honey the phone rang. It was my mother (aged 91) requesting a doctor as a minute earlier she had had blacked out while eating, knocking her tray of breakfast things to the floor.

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