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!

A Change Of Perception

In the Seventies I was a young single Police Officer in a rural force. I transferred to London and was posted to the West End.On my first patrol I was feeling rather lonely and homesick whilst on foot patrol at 0300 in the morning, it was very quiet and didn't know a soul in London. Anyway, time for my first 'stop' in London.I caught up with a man carrying a tool-bag along Oxford Street and searched him, as it turned out he was a GPO engineer and a night worker.I took his name and address. I then realised that I knew his name,when we were both children we had shared a room together for a week whilst on holiday in Jersey,our mothers were teachers and colleagues. London didn't feel so big a place then !

telephone boxes

I was on holiday in London in the old days of concertina wooden doors to telephone kiosks in Piccadilly Underground phoning my Aunt and I asked her when she had last seen her brother - my Uncle. I moved position in the box and discovered he was on the phone in the next box

Leap year babies

Some years ago I attended a course in Canterbury. Of the 20 or so attenders three of us were parents, with a total of five children. Out of these, two shared the same birthday: 29 February (different years).

Telephone Call

When I was 15 or 16 (1960/1961) I decided to ring my pal who lived down the road. I picked up the phone to dial and there wasn't a dial tone. Whilst I was waiting for a dial tone to come on, my pal spoke (to himself) saying something like 'where is he'. I had picked up the phone to ring him at the point in between him dialling the last number at his house and the phone ringing at mine.

Birthdays down the generations

in three generations, granny has three children girl1, boy, girl2 girl2's older child (a boy) has the same birthday as girl1, the oldest child in her generation and boy's youngest child (in a family with the same pattern as his own: girl, boy, girl) has the same birthday as girl2, i.e. the last child in a family with the identical pattern. From granny's perspective: her oldest child has the same birthday as her oldest grandchild, and her youngest child has the same birthday as her youngest grandchild (of seven), in a family with the same pattern as her own.

House Name

We moved into our home on the 18th December 1998 and decided to rename the property. My Mother in Law thought Holly Cottage had a nice festive ring and we placed this on the deeds. A few years later my Wife's Uncle searched the history of our home and discovered that it used to be a market garden and the owner's name was Henry Holly.

Uncle in an anthropological study

I was having tea with a friend of a friend in an Oxford college. We were both from Delhi in India but did not share any common friends or networks from Delhi. We got talking about what we were studying- I was working on inequalities in Britain and her work turned out to be an anthropological study of a tribe in North East India on the Burmese border. She showed me some pictures of her field work and to my surprise l recognised my uncle and his house. Suddenly the world felt a lot smaller than I had thought before.

Twin sister

Whilst visiting relatives in the North of England (I was living in Oxford at the time) we decided to have a day out in Newcastle. On arrival the first thing we did was head for a coffee shop, where I noticed a lady I worked with in Oxford, I went over and said "Hello fancy seeing you here are you visiting too" she looked at me blankly, then smiled and said I think you are getting me mixed up with my twin sister - she lives in Oxford.

Travel conicidence

This happened 30 years ago. My sister and I were travelling back from France on the boat train during our summer holidays. We shared a carriage, on the train, with a young couple. We chatted. When I returned to college, in the September, the woman was not only at the same college as me but was in the same halls as I had been previously and in my old room! I did talk to her about it but she didn't remember my sister or I. When we talked about meeting on the train, this is when I realised she was in my old room.We had not talked about college or Sheffield where we were at college. As I write this, I still can't believe it happened and have never forgotten it!

Best friend coincidence

Susan and I were best friends at school, saw each other at lot socially (we noticed our thoughts/ideas coinciding enough to think we had something special going on). We attended each others wedding (and I moved to a different county) and hadn't seen each other since. Then we each fell pregnant with our first child, and discovered they were both due on the same day: 28th November 1990 - and were born on consecutive days.

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