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!

School/university

When I had done one year at grammar school my parents moved from Warwickshire to Surrey and I entered my new school in the second year and took over the text books and place in class of a girl called Angela who had moved to north London. After school I went on the university to study agriculture. The first woman fresher that I met was the same Angela. The school she had moved to was the one my mother had attended.

Walking into a window

I was in my local (Worthing) Citroen garage collecting my car following it's service when there was a loud bang. Everybody in the place turned to look and saw a man holding his face in his hands. He had walked into the showroom window. A few minutes later, there was another loud bang and unbelievably, somebody else had done exactly the same thing. The staff at the garage could not understand what was going on and the service manager said he had worked at the same place for a number of years and that nobody had ever walked into the window before in all the time he had worked there.

Liverpool in the mind

As a university professor, I get to supervise PhD students. I was in my office chatting with one of them, an Iranian, who had done some interviews in his home city. We were listening to one of these, and I noticed the word 'Liverpool' (I didn't understand anything else). I asked about it, and he replied that lots of people over there supported Liverpool. I then responded by saying that, through my work, I had briefly met a man in Norway who regularly came over to attend Liverpool matches. As I was finishing speaking, the phone rang. It was that man. I don't know him very well, and I hadn't had any contact with him for a year or more before the call.

The greater significance of co-incidence

This box doesn't offer enough space for the experiences I would like to pass on to you. May I leave my e-address for you to contact me. Esme Ellis

weight of a soul

I was considering watching the film "21 grams" which uses a theory developed by a real scientist, which has never been verified, as "accepted real" in order to provide poetic license for the story. The theory is that the soul weighs 21 grams and is equal to the amount of body wight lost at the point of death. I took out some stuff - a handkerchief I think, from my pocket as I considered the possibility of reality of the theory as proven, and dropped excacly 21 pence onto the floor, by accident.

Chance Meetings

I completed a PhD at Leeds University in 1964 and spent the next 47 years working in London. During my time in London I had chance meetings in town with former student colleagues from the same Leeds department on only two occasions. Both encounters took place on the same day, one at lunch time in a vegetarian restaurant and one the same evening at the English National Opera. Incidently I very rarely dine in a vegetarian restaurant or go to the opera.

Double Date

On Saturday, 18th April 1992 I started to decorate my bedroom in an old cottage. A lot of the plaster was damaged especially around the window frame. Whilst raking this out I came across a wooden peg I had assumed was there to wedge in the window frame. When I look at it there was writing on it which read: John Moss mounted round this window frame on Saturday, 18th April 1874.

Insignificant to everybody but me

in 1977 I was studying to repeat my A levels and as part of the curriculum we did "General Studies", a Friday afternoon chat with a well meaning sort whose name escapes me. He was talking about a story where the earths entire population had been destroyed, presumably in some form of M.A.D.. The Martians appeared eons later to find no life but did find a film of Donald Duck and created an entire history and sociology based around a cartoon where we traveled in cars that constantly fell apart. At the same time I had in my case that same story that I had just started to read, I didn't appreciate the link until later in the day on the journey home.

Two film names rhyme

My girlfriend, several days ago, decided that we would spend the night in and watch a few DVD's, upon making this decision she headed off to the HMV at Oxford Circus to purchase some films from their plethoric selection. When I returned from work, Unknown to my girlfriend, she had chosen three films, two of them had titles that rhymed. They were as follows: Larry Crowne & Harry Brown I could not believe the coincidence

Radio and CD Player in sync

Last week I was driving along listening to Classic FM radio and a couple of minutes into one piece of music (it was Borodin), I decided it didn't match my mood so I switched to my 6 disc cd player in which I have kept the same fairly diverse discs for months if not years. To my complete bafflement, it seemed I had failed somehow to switch, so I switched back to the radio - and then I realised that my CD player had picked up on exactly the same track, and merely a "cat's whisker" behind! At a guess there are an average of 15 tracks on each cd - so I spent the rest of the journey pondering on the probability of that ever happening again in my lifetime (I am 65 and drive extensively, ergo listen to the radio/cds). Incidently, a friend suggested that my boredom threshold must also reach the same point on the same track each time! This has been on my mind ever since - so is it a coincidence that coincidences came up on Radio 4 so soon afterwards?!!

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