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!

Chateau d'Usse

In the summer of 1990 we had driven from our home in Germany to meet family and to camp in Brittany. Whenever we went into France I always tried to choose a route there and back that would include interesting places to visit. Leaving our campsite at Carnac I decided to return via the Loire valley and visit some of the chateaux. Around mid-day one day we stopped at Chateau d'Usse which is associated with the story of the Sleeping Beauty. In the parking area there was just one large tree providing shade on a hot day. I think it was a chestnut and we found there was a space to park our car under it. About a week later we met an American couple who were two of our best friends in Germany. They had relatives visiting them from the USA and they had taken them touring in France. They had been to see the garden of Claude Monet at Giverny and had then headed for the Loire. We discovered they had parked on the same day, under the same tree at Chateau d'Usse about 30 minutes after we left. It would have been even better if they had been pulling in just as we left. We had not been aware of their plans or they of ours.

car number plates

When we moved into our house in the 1969 I was amazed to discover that another car in the same road had the same numbers and the same letters as ours although the order had been reversed and our car was a "B" reg while the other had no year reg.

Living at same address

As a student at Imperial College in 1958 I was assigned lodgings in Putney. On returning to London some four years after graduation I took lodgings in a house in Hampstead and formed a friendship with the girl whose parents lived next door. Twenty plus years later, when the young lady had become my partner, we discovered that, as a trainee teacher in Roehampton, she had lodged in the same house in Putney two years before I took up residence there.

Coin

I'm originally from New Zealand. I have lived in England for over 20 years. At the weekend I do archery at a large sports field in South East London. One morning whilst going to collect arrows from the target I noticed something small and shiny in the grass. When I picked it up it was a New Zealand dollar. What are the chances of that?

Birthday coincidence

I have a friend who is really interested in Latvia and Latvian culture. His birthday is July 19. It was through him that I met my boyfriend, a Latvian, whose birthday is July 19. It turns out that the only other Latvian I knew when I was growing up was the father of a friend, though I didn't know he was Latvian then. He's an actor, so I looked him up and was surprised to discover his birthday is July 19.

Parallel Montage

In 1975, I travelled to Namibia with two colleagues, Peter S and Kate M, for the purpose of covertly filming a documentary for SWAPO the liberation movement, conducting a struggle against South African occupation. Kate was the director and Peter and I were responsible for shooting the film; he and I had been working together for a couple of years prior to this. We eventually completed the film. It was distributed by SWAPO and fulfilled their needs, at that time; it was shown at the Edinburgh Film festival that year. Kate was later injured in a serious car accident and became wheelchair-bound. Over the years, she and I maintained occasional contacts, when I would go and visit her, but I completely lost contact with Peter. Every year or two, Kate would contact me with some development relating to new interest in the film, which held very little appeal for me but I knew to be important for her. In the late nineties - and I would have to check exactly when this occurred - Kate phoned me to say that the National Film Archive was interested in viewing a print of our film to decide whether they wished to introduce it into the archive.

Sea sun and computer

We were leaving for a two week sailing holiday in the British Virgin Islands. We parked in the long term car park at Gatwick and took the airport bus to the terminal. As I left the bus I noticed that someone had left their laptop behind on a seat. I picked it up and handed it in to lost property. I didn't think any more about it other than the glow of righteousness. We proceeded from Gatwick to Antigua and on from there on an island hopper to Tortola . When we arrived in Tortola we proceeded by taxi to Sopers Hole to pick up the yacht "Gunshot" which we eventually found moored in a raft of boats. We opened her up and unloaded and switched on the electrics. We found all was well apart from the 12v dc feed for the navigation computer that we'd brought with us. We traced this to a fuse but couldn't find a spare. It didn't really matter because we were not due to leave until the morning. We noticed by this time that the boat moored next door to us was occupied, faffing around getting their bearings just as we were. We struck up a conversation, shared a glass of wine, and, conversationally, asked if he had any idea about fuses and power supplies.

Chance Meeting

My husband and I were visiting Paris in the early 80s and on the Tuesday we decided to go to the Louvre. We walked up to the entrance and found it closed. We didn't know that it was closed on Tuesdays. As we turned to leave my husband's friend, and best man from our wedding 2 years previously, turned up leading a whole hoard of school children. They were staying on a campsite outside Paris. He too was about to visit the Louvre on a Tuesday! Neither of us knew the other was even going to France.

Birthday Honours

Last October on my 68th birthday, two cards arrived from my adult children who live roughly 150 miles apart. I opened the first card from my son.It was from a well known on-line greeting card company which contained his humorous personalised message. Then I opened the next from my daughter. Exactly the same card but with her own greetings inside. Coincidence, or what?

Ella and ELA

When we lived in Mallorca my wife was given a pink fish-shaped handbag as a birthday present from a friend. We called it Ella (partly after Ella Fishgerald, and partly after Salmon Ella) A few weeks later my wife was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, which in Spanish is Esclerosis Lateral Amiotrofica, or what they call ELA in short. It seemed a very cruel coincidence as she died of the disease two years later.

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