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!

Arlene England

After graduating from Art School and leaving home in rural Aberdeenshire in 1981 I shared a flat in Stanley Street, Aberdeen with three other girls for a short time before deciding to move to Surrey. I had a small attic room which I loved very much even though I could hardly stand up in it. Many years later, infact just last year, 2011, I started working for a company in London and at an event was introduced to some friends of my current boss and his wife. People always ask where I come from (still have a good Scottish accent) and one of the friends, who is now retired but was a GP, told me that she and her mother has been evacuated during the war to Scotland because her father had been injured at Scapa Flow and was sent to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary to recouperate. She recalled staying in a very nice house in....yes...you've guessed it...Stanley Street! and as we both jumped to tell each other where we both blurted out...No. 32!!! Everyone was stunned. It turned out that she, as a young girl, had also slept in my same attic and remembered it well, even though she is now nearly 80. Very spooky.

Death of relative

In 1994, in my capacity as Vice-Chair of my local Royal Naval Assoc. branch, I was invited to attend a commemoration service at St. Mary le Strand in memory of the death of several Wrens on the torpedoing and sinking of the SS Khedive Ismail in 1944. It was a very moving service not only for the dead Wrens but for all who died, some 1500 in all. In 2001 my last surviving Aunt (sister to my mother) asked me if I could find out how her brother, Stanley Birch, had died. He was an able seaman and had died at sea in 1944. Yes, he had died on the way to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) on the troopship SS Khedive Ismail. All unknowing I had been to his memorial service 7 years earlier.

School friend on holiday

1967. Met a school classmate (12 of us doing A Level French) in a bookshop in Paris. Neither of us knew we were going to France. 2000s. Torremolinos. I slipped on steps. Someone said "careful" and grabbed my elbow. I recovered my posture, threw a quick "thank you" behind me. Only when I got home did I only found out that it had been a firefighter from the local fire station where I am chaplain - he was one of about 90 firefighters on the watches I visit. He hadn't shouted after me at the time.

Birthday Coincidences

My mother and two of her siblings were born in London, on the same day, 30th December, two years apart, My uncle 30th December 1920 My aunt 30th December 1922 My mother 30th December 1924

Same password on two mobiles of two friends

Very recently I picked by accident the mobile iphone, (the same as mine) of a friend and ran my 4-digit (not same number and not consecutive numbers) password and unlocked the phone. At first I did not realise because I thought it was my mobile, until my friend sitting opposite at a dinner table who had seen me taking her phone, said to me. "How did you know my password?" to which I replied that "I did not". And ofcourse we then both realised that we had the same four-digit password in our identical iphones. It is interesting, in the first place, that we found that out about this amazing coincidence, but more exciting was the fact that we had the same four-digit password!!! Now what are the chances of such a thing happening?

Photographer photographed

I photograph families as a portrait photographer, just before Christmas a mother and her adult daughter and husband came for a shoot at my studio, the mother, in passing, mentioned that her, now deceased, husband was a photographer but that it was unlikely that I would know him, of course I asked his name, Godfrey Argent. Surprised I replied, "of course I know him! In fact my father represented him as his agent AND I was photographed by him at the tender age of 16/17 years old! (I am now 52) Sadly they have been unable to find the negatives from the session he did with me, I would imagine because he was doing the shoot as a favour for my father and probably gave him all the negatives, now lost... As a result the shoot was fantastic and great fun.

partner birthday match

My parents have the same birthday (different years). As a child I thought this was the case for all mums and dads, i.e. everyone's partner had the same birthday as them. I now have a civil partner with the same birthday as me (different years), but he also has the same first and middle name as me too...

Three siblings born on the same day 4 years apart!

My father was born on 15th September 1920. His first sister was born 4 years later on 15th September 1924, his second sister was born 4 years later on 15th September 1928.

Sisters

I am one of four sisters. Three of us have the same birthday - 19th May. There's 6 years between me and my older sister and 9 years between me and my younger sister. My other sister's birthday is 19th October.

Friends...ESP?

I am in a group of 5 girlfriends. Xmas 2010 one of the other girls had bought exactly the same present as I had for all the other girls. Xmas 2011..we did it again!..even though I had bought my 'perfect' presents eleven months earlier in January. Also a couple of weeks ago I was walking into a pub for lunch..as I was walking across the car park I was thinking about my friend. At that very moment a car 'tooted' at me ,,she was driving past, on the main road.

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