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!

Small world

I was in South Africa researching the possibility of my company promoting an ice-skating show in the country. There hadn't been an ice-show there for more than 20 years. Apartheid had just ended and it seemed the right time to bring a show to the country. Travelling on a small plane (12 seats) I was in conversation with the man sitting next to me and after about 20 minutes, it turned out that he was an ice-engineer who worked on the ice-shows some 20 years previously. He was also very close friends with the female promoter who I had wanted to track down to discuss the subject.

Traveling to France

Last Summer we set off to France for a camping holiday. While on the boat I bumped into a man who works for a friend, Bob. I said hello and went on my merry way. The next morning as we were queueing on the boat to get onto the car deck, Bob and his partner were behind us on the stairs. We headed off across France towards the camp site. My daughters were getting restless so we decided to stop in motorway service station. After a bite to eat I went to use the gents. Who was in the bathroom but Bob. A week later our holiday finished we headed back towards the boat and near the port stopped at a Supermarket to pick up some wine to take home. We met Bob for one last time. Yes he was heading back on the same boat as us but still!

Meeting a freined abroad

Some years ago I was in Sydney, and wanting to walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I was searching for the way to get up onto the bridge walkway. Just below the bridge was a large shop/souvenir store, so I went in to ask directions. There were alot of people in there, so I searched around to find someone to ask the question of. I ended up going to one of the counters and started to ask the girl for directions, when, halfway through my question, I noticed her looking at me oddly. Are you ... by any chance... Jamie D W, she asked? I was astonished to suddenly recognize her as an old friend from the UK who I had not seen for two years. I had no idea she was in Australia, and the extreme nature of the coincidence was the fact that I had gone up to ask her, rather than another assistant, my question. However, there may be some explanation, in that it is probable a) I chose a pretty girl to ask the question of (narrowed my chances of actually knowing the person, though still very remote) and b) it's just possible I had some subliminal recognition although my conscious mind did not recognize her. What do you think?

mutual relatives

A new boy joined my son's class (in Buckinghamshire). He became friends with my son and I discovered that his mother's paternal uncle was married to my paternal aunt so we had mutual first cousins, though unrelated. The mother had been brought up in Ireland, I had been brought up in Zimbabwe.

coincidence of radio and singing

My sister turned off the radio, which was playing an opera, and my mother objected that she was listening to it. My sister said she didn't want to listen to... and then say three notes in a mocking high falsetto. When my mother turned the radio back on, the singer say exactly the same notes in the same rhythm.

Mutual friend identified

My brother-in-law was on a very small commuter plane in Maine when the young woman next to him said (in a Southern US accent) that she had had a professor in England whose accent was just like his. He responded as follows: 'You are a graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman's College and you spent your junior year in Reading, England where you took a course in British Politics from Alan Alexander'. He responded to her look of astonishment by telling her he was psychic! She was on her way to start her first job on a newspaper in Bar Harbor and neither of them had ever travelled on that air route before.

Dancing Match

We were having dinner on a cruise boat in Amsterdam with a Danish colleague. The band played ballroom music and our friend told us he was a former ballroom dance world champion. Our ballroom teachers were also former champions and we discovered that they knew each other from their touring days.

Shared phone numbers

1 The phone number (excluding area codes applied over time) of my parents in Australia in the '70s was the same as that of my wife's parents in the UK at the same time. 2 I went into a barber's in my old home town in Australia (Castelmaine, Victoria) about 10 years ago for a haircut. We got talking about where I live in the UK (Bristol) and it transpired that his brother ran a local barbers just down the road from my house.

Bumping into Son

I was driving home on an unusual route (for me) at around 3.45/4pm, listening to a Radio 4 programme about 'Coincidences'. As I drove past a bus stop, someone leapt out of the crowd and it was my son (aged around 15). I asked him what on earth he was doing at that bus stop (which was quite a long way from his school and in the opposite direction from home) and he said that he often went to that bus stop in order to get a seat before it would stop at the 'normal' school stop. Had he not leapt out of the crowd at the precise moment I was driving past, I would not have seen him there. It seemed even more of a coincidence bearing in mind the programme I was listening to at that moment!

Grandfather and Grandfather in law born same day and date and also my Friend

My daughter's grandfather in law and her grandfather were both born on 31 st August 1922 and I also discovered that a close friend, Brian, was born same day and date as me, 24 th August 1950.

Pages