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!

Sequential cars

When I lived in Winchester as a boy, my father bought a second-hand car: a green Hillman Minx, registration number GAA 754D. Some time afterwards, our next door neighbours bought a car: a white Hillman Minx, registration number GAA 755D - in other words the next registration number in the sequence. It's not unlikely that a number of Hillman Minxes would be registered in sequence, but what are the chances of two of them ending up next door to each other?

Family birthdays

Brother (1997), sister (1988) and sister's son (2007) all born on the same day: 12th January

Soviet Contact

I visited the Soviet Union in about 1973 under a treaty promoting an exchange of visits to look at what was being done in schools. A year or so later I was in York to give a talk and, surprisingly, had to line up in the station to buy a ticket to London. I heard my name being called and recognized someone I had known as a headteacher in Surrey - now working in York. After buying my ticket I spoke to him. He told me that he was to visit the Soviet Union as a tourist and wondered whether there was any chance of visiting a school. He could not have known that I had been there. I told him I thought it very unlikely but, as it happened, I had the card of the Director of Education for Leningrad in my pocket, and gave it to him. Some months later I met him again but in London when he was representing a primary education group. He told me that he had asked the tourist guides at each stop if he could visit a school and was told no. When he got to Leningrad he decided that he would ask at the hotel reception desk, where there were two young women. He showed them the card and was told that that Director had died a year ago.

visit to daughter's house

This was about 20 years ago, when our daughter (a nurse) had bought her first house in Sheffield and had the occasional nurse lodger to help pay the mortgage. My husband (in Buxton, Derbys) decided to walk to the local Conservative Club for a drink. He had stopped at at an ATM to get some money when he was accosted by a lady in a car which had stopped and she was asking for directions. "Which is the best way to Sheffield" she said. My husband said "which part of Sheffield, as you can go a couple of ways". "We're going to such and such" she said naming an area. "Whereabouts " asked my husband, feeling slightly odd. She then named the street. "What number" said my husband. "number 20" she replied. By this time my husband was in total disbelief. "That is where my daughter lives" he said. It transpired that the couple were the parents of our daughter's lodger, who had come from Glamorganshire to stay with her while our daughter was on holiday. The hairs still rise on my husband's neck when he thinks about it.

Birthdays

I am one of three sisters born on the same day Caroline - 3.12.1942 Elisabeth 3.12.1944 Mary Jane 3.12. 1948

Treble Chance

In the late 1960s while I was working as a music studio manager for BBC Radio, my then wife and I were on holiday in the South of France. We decided to visit the Royal Palace in Monaco and parked our Morris Minor in the official car park. As we got out of the car another GB-plated Morris Minor backed into the adjacent slot. Out of this car stepped one Reg K, a fellow BBC studio manager, albeit in a different section. Not only was he in a similar car in the same car park at the same time, but he'd also parked next to my car. Our paths rarely crossed for the next half-dozen years, until, on an official trip with a colleague, I found myself in Finland. We had just taken our seats on an internal flight in Helsinki bound for the Savonlinna Opera Festival, when along the aisle came a familiar figure. It was none other than Reg K. It turned out that he had married a Finnish girl and was on his way to join her at her family's home in Savonlinna. He was not only bound for the same remote destination on the same day, but he was on the same internal flight.

Birthday coincidence

I met a young lady from North Wales when we were both students at Bangor. (I am from Lytham St Annes in Lancashire.) We subsequently married. It turned out that her mother (who died in 1999) and I celebrated our birthday on the same day, i.e., 21st May. Doug. H

Dopple-hanger

This is a true story concerning real events, that include a grisly issue: if you feel you may be affected, perhaps have actually experienced similar, you may not wish to read on. It is not my intention to deliberately offend. We were a family of five, so I believed. Three brothers, a mother and a father: what used to be called a 'nuclear family'. It is in the minority in some places. I moved back home in my early twenties for what transpired to be a short time - a year or so, perhaps less. When I last saw my mother lying in (again, I didn't know in advance) what was to be the death-bed, I had a young blonde English woman accompanying me. She was the most beautiful woman in the world to me. My mother wanted me to promise I would marry her, and in retrospect I can understand why. I said no, and yet did so after her passing. My older brother by two years, and my younger by four years, were with me at mother's funeral only months later. The cancer was persistent, illness usually is more persistent than the life it takes, don't you find?

old near- neighbours

When walking with his dog the other day my cousin, who emigrated to Australia more than 40 years ago, met a 'dog' couple who had walked past his house a number of times. He got to chatting and discovered the bloke ( Nigel) grew up in Enfield, our home town in Middlesex. Furthermore, he was an orphan in St Joseph's home, which was just 200 yards away from our houses (we lived nest door to one another). My cousin had in fact visited St. Joseph's in 1962 as part of his Dip. Ed.. Having married an Aussie girl, Nigel now lives about 300m away from my cousin.

Simultaneous deaths

My grandparents were married for 50 years and never spent a night apart. They lived in a large terraced house with an adult son, and of course in at that time like most if not all the houses in the area they had no telephone. They were a bit frail and my mum used to pop in every day, often with me in tow, and bring them their shopping. In 1962 grandad suffered a stroke. This must have happened in the early morning after their son, my uncle, had gone on shift. My mum and I arrived at the house to find gran in distress and grandad on the floor beside the bed, not responding and breathing badly. Mum had to go out, find a phone-box and call an ambulance. He was taken to hospital. My mum stayed with gran and the rest of the family did turns at the hospital, over a few days. Late one evening, mum went to make a cup of tea and heard gran stand up, then sit down again heavily - she dashed back into the sitting room but it was clear that gran was dead, still sitting in her chair.

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