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!

Hogarth

I was sitting down last week to do the Times concise crossword, whilst listening to Radio 4's In Business on the i-player. At the exact moment I studied the the clue "English painter. William......", Peter Day referred to "Hogarth" in connection with his programme on London gin! I cannot remember the last time William Hogarth briefly came into my life, maybe once every 4 years, but on the this occasion it happened twice at the same split second. Jake D

Kenya coincidence

Believing what God has prompted you to do, after prayer, and finding His provision for what you need. Judith and I had moved "in faith" to Kisumu, Kenya, where we believed that God had led us to in 1972. When I arrived there, I had an appointment list of dental patients stretching for about three months. I looked around for a car, which we could use both for personal and for dental safari work. Nothing seemed to come to the surface, even though Kisumu was quite a large town. I prayed persistently and felt that I should go to Nairobi to look for a car. Unfortunately, one week before I was due to go to Nairobi, I had an accident and ruptured my clavicular (shoulder) joint. I had waited several months for the opportunity to go to Nairobi, because of my long working list. It was a great disappointment to hear the Russian physiotherapist tell me that, not only must I not drive but, I should not even travel in a car in order to avoid jolting the joint because of the rough roads. I attended the Russian hospital for one week of physiotherapy.

Country Vicar

My mother was at the village summer fair and saw a friend dressed very smartly in a red and white striped blazer, a straw boater, cream slacks and cream shoes. She jokingly asked him what on earth he was wearing, he replied 'My country vicar outfit, of course,'. 'You never see a country vicar wearing that!' she scoffed. Right on cue, our (usually not-so-dapper) vicar came round the corner in precisely the same outfit.

Birthday Coincidences

Though apparently fairly common, my little sister, my Grandad and I share the same birthday, the 17th October. This year however, is special, as it's my sister's 18th, my 21st and my Grandad's 80th birthday on the same day.

Dreaming real life

When I was 30 and working in London, one night I dreamed about a hairdresser who used to cut my hair when I was 8 - 13 years old in Nottingham. I hadn't seen him for 17 years. The next day on the way home I saw him on the tube. I asked him "are you Bryn, you used to have a hairdressers business in Nottingham", he said "yes". I didn't tell him about my dream!

Birmingham hotel sleepwalk

About 15 years ago I stayed one night on business at a large new city centre hotel in Birmingham. I didn't have any pyjamas with me and slept naked. At about 3 a.m. I got up and stepped out of my room, which clicked shut behind me just as I woke up. Luckily there was a laundry store on my floor and I was able to borrow a bathrobe, went down to reception and after explaining, was let back into my room. A couple of years ago I heard a Radio 5 Live presenter, I think it was Nicky Campbell, recount on his breakfast show that he had had exactly this experience, also in a Birmingham hotel.

Scarborough

I trained as a nurse in SCARBOROUGH, North Yorkshire. While I was there my half sister who I did not know existed at that time went there on her honeymoon. Later in life I "discovered" her existance and traced her to SCARBOROUGH in Ontario, Canada. Much later I met my husband in Tobago and we got married in SCARBOROUGH, Tobago.

Hire Car Escapade

On 26 December 2011 we flew from London to Montreal with some friends. The friends had arranged to hire a large 4 wheel drive vehicle. Due to the busy holiday period the car rental company had very few cars available and nothing in the class of car booked. They were given a smaller vehicle, but couldn't fit all their luggage in it. So, they rejected it and waited whilst the hire company found another vehicle that was larger. We then all travelled approximately 120km north to our accommodation near Mont Tremblant, Quebec. Upon our arrival, our friend realised he had left his car hire papers in the rejected hire car. The next day we went to a ski hire shop (away from the main ski resort). As we returned to the car with the skis I noticed that the car parked behind us was the same make and colour as the hire car rejected the previous day. I looked inside the car and saw what looked like my friend's missing rental papers. We waited for the people who had rented the car to return and asked them to have a look at the papers, which did indeed belong to my friend.

666, the number of the beast.

About 15 years ago, I was working in a lab, analysing water & waste water. Another lab tech & I were talking about music and his love of Led Zeppelin. We then moved on to the fact that Led Zep guitarist Jimmy Page had owned a house in Scotland that once belonged to the famous devil worshiper Aleister Crowley. At the same time, we were doing pH analysis and at that point the pH meter completed it's analysis and the meter read 6.66!

Date of my sons birth and ancestry

My first child was due April 30th 1978. A few months before my brother was altering the date on his new watch. The date got stuck on April 4th and would not turn past it. He said to me “I bet you go into labour on the 4th!” Although my son was actually born only 2 hours into the 5th of April my 22 hour labour had actually started at 4am on the 4th of April 1978. During the past couple of years it has been coincidences and an 'encounter' that have helped me to find hundreds of family members in my tree, even in the last 7 days after a conversation I had last Friday. Then I heard your call for stories today on the radio followed by someone else explaining how Mormons are encouraged to research genealogy to find faith. I actually did that even though I am not Mormon. When I started to record the coincidences while finding my ancestry, complete with what they led to and how important it became, it turned into a 4 page essay and so it might become part of a book in the future that I have wanted to write for years!

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