Cambridge Coincidences Collection

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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!

Mrs Valerie Shaw

Births My step daughter was born on the same date as my grandfather 100 years later and her daughter was born on the same date as my mother 100 years later. I have always thought that remarkable especially as we are not blood related. Telepathy My youngest daughter and I often contact each other just as one of us was thinking of the other. This can be email, text or phone call and it has been like this for years. It happened when we lived close and still continues now that she lives in Australia.

BBC NEWS COINCIDENCE, MUSICAL COINCIDENCE

Dear Professor Spiegelhalter, Sixteen years ago I woke up in my Paris apartment one Sunday morning and immediately thought of Leslie Crowther. Why Leslie Crowther? A figure I had never thought about since last seeing him in revue in Edinburgh 40 years earlier. At one o'clock London time I tuned into the BBC whose newsreader altered her tone appropriately at the end of the bulletin to announce that "the comedian Leslie Crowther died early this morning." I wondered whether I'd left my radio on overnight. I had not, and in any case the Press Association was not likely to have received and published the news until later in the course of the morning, after I awoke. Not long after, I spent several days suffering from that insufferable condition in which one cannot remember a tune. I had heard it in a movie about the German close harmony group, the Comedian Harmonists. The song: "Das ist die Liebe der Matrosen." Then one Sunday morning (again) I awoke early and there it was!

Dr Brian Wood

Two coincidences with a point 1. I was a squaddie in the army in Cyprus during the Suez crisis (just to put a time frame). The others in the tent knew I was a biologist, and brought me in a chameleon they had found. We kept this as a pet and admired its fly catching technique. Later, I was employed as entomologist on a citrus plantation there, and was interested to develop the natural biological control of the pests, rather than spraying vast amounts of insecticide. A famous "mentor" from University of California came to see what we were doing. I also mentioned the chameleon, which I had never since found one. He said he would like one (he had a licence to import "predators" into USA). Walking through a field with some others, we were trying to explain what they were. "Well, they are like this" said Paul, and picked one off of the tree we were passing. I never saw another in the wild. 2. In Malaysia I ran with an unserious running group called the Hash House Harriers (now world wide) . My first such pack was in a rather rural area around a small town called Kluang.

Faulty car radio?

What are the odds of playing a CD on your car CD-player, switching to the radio and your radio is not working? At least, that is what I thought when the radio was playing the exact same song, at the same time, note for note, word for word as the CD I had just switched from. It wasn't anything in the charts either so not something being played frequently. reply.

Mr John Mitchell

There we were in bed having a nice cup of tea (thinking about whether to have a boiled egg or a bacon sandwich) while discussing what time we needed to leave tomorrow to go to a house warming party, and up pops the brother of the party's host on the radio. Bizarre!

Car sale

In 1980 (aged 22) I travelled across the USA from East to West with 3 friends in a 2nd hand gold Chevrolet Impala estate car, a journey of 4 and a half months. At the end of the trip, in San Francisco, we sold the car to a group of German lads who were going to travel from West to East. Over a year later we were still travelling abroad (now in Asia - India or Thailand I think) we met another traveller who had also crossed the USA, but had gone from West to East - we did not tell him about our USA trip, but he told us that whilst in the USA he had hitched a ride in a gold Chevrolet estate car that was being driven by a group of German lads who were doing the West-East trip, and who had bought their car in San Francisco. We then realised that it MUST have been the car we had owned and sold to the German guys!!

Three in one

About two years ago, we had an employee move to a new job and although we were all relatively good friends, we hadn't heard from him nearly five months after he left. During a quiet moment on morning, we were sat around talking and I asked if anyone had heard from Chris? "No", was the reply, and then the phone rang... Sure enough it was Chris making contact. After a brief chat, the phone went down. And rang again. "Could I make an appointment to see Chris please?", was the request from the lady on the phone...

Strange encounter

My late husband, Bill Embery, from Preston, Lancs., shared his unusual surname with his cousin, also Bill Embery. I was born and raised in Middlesbrough and met Bill when he came over to work at ICI in Redcar. We eventually moved to Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire, where I worked in the office of a school. One of the teachers returned from a cruise holiday where they had shared a table with Bill Embery and his wife Marie, from Preston, Lancs. Furthermore, that teacher had taught in a Middlesbrough school with her Northern husband and had returned to her home town of Milford Haven where they both were again able to work together.

birthday coincidence

My sister's son Robbie was born on 11 December 1998, 5 years to the day since my own son Luke was born on 11 December 1993. The funny thing is that Luke was not even due until February 1994, but arrived 10 weeks early after I caught salmonella - very nasty. As far as I know my sister's pregnancy was normal and Robbie arrived on time. Luke became an adult and Robbie a teenager on the same day!

Intimate relations

In the early stages of a relationship with a former girlfriend, we were chatting away and got onto the subject of her bra size, which I correctly guessed. 'ooh you think you know it all dont you?' she said, to which I replied 'Of course, like I also know youve got a big mole on your (........)'. I have no idea at all why I said it, its not a comment i would usually consider making under any circumstances, but it just popped into my head. Her jaw dropped......I had no way of knowing her anatomy, as we had had no physical intimacy prior to that, and had no mutual friends who might have furnished me with the information, but it turns out that she does have a very unusual and prominent mole in the specified area. I wish someone could have videotaped the inquiry that followed......

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