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!

I hate coincidences.

Yesterday evening, I was thinking deeply about a past relationship. I decided I would drive by my former 'somewhat significant others' apartment. They live nearby, so it wasn't inconvenient, but I do typically avoid the area. As i'm nervously praying, stomach in knots, I see him. Walking his dog. I drive by. Checking in my rear-view mirrors to see if I can catch a last glance. Things ended on bad terms, so I was not inclined to stop for a chat. I get home and do some crying...more thinking...I decide to add him on snapchat, just out of curiosity. I'm blocked. Unable to add him. Didn't figure I would have much luck with that, as I said, things ended horribly. Come the next afternoon, still ruminating....I decide to check out his Instagram. He has changed his bio (since yesterday) to include his snapchat username. I know that I am blocked, and I know that he would not have been able to be notified of my attempt to add on the social media platform. So, what are the odds? Odds are i'm feeling like coincidences are the devils work...... ugh

No wallet, no problem.

I wanted to impress a beautiful young woman whom I had met at a dance in Augusta, GA. We were 17 and lived 20 miles apart. I took her (in my powder blue 1959 MGA roadster) to a new, fine dining, hilltop restaurant in North Augusta, GA. on a beautiful summer evening. The only other diners were three elderly folks two tables away. I'm 70 now. They were probably in their early 60's. As we looked over the menu, I was amazed at the prices-way higher than I had ever seen in any restaurant. I simultaneously wondered if I had enough cash-even my parents didn't have credit cards back then-to pay the bill, AND I realized that I had left my wallet at home! I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. She ordered the most expensive. We had a very nice conversation, getting to know each other, as I thought of how I might get myself out of trouble with the restaurant owner. Finally, I had to ask the waiter for the check. He brought a folder, opened it and declared that it was a paid receipt because the other table had paid the bill. I thanked them and warmly shook the hands of the two sisters and their brother. I really wanted to hug them.

Sauza Tequila incident

The Place on Paces was a great bar in the 70's in Buckhead (ATL). One full-moon Friday night after Thanksgiving, with college kids home from school, a fight broke out in the hallway to the "ladies" restroom. The hallway wall was common with the back bar wall. As the combatants repetedly bumped against the common wall, bottles of liquor on wood shelves were disturbed. I was at my station, mixing drinks for the enthusiastic folks two and three deep at the bar. I noticed something flying throught the air by my right shoulder. There was an explosion, much like a shotgun blast. A bottle of Sauza Gold tequila had landed on the uneven 1910 concrete floor with such force that the plastic cap was forced off and propelled into a lead ceiling tile, where it remained. The crowd cheered as I poured shots for them "on the house". Someone asked, "How many bottles would we have to push off the same shelf in order to have one survive the fall again?"

Meeting in the Disney World parking lot

I sold a very used Chevy Van to a stranger in Roswell, GA, USA. I explained to the buyer that they tires were bald and the rear end made noise. I suggested that he repair both because they were unsafe. He assured me that he could do both and drove off. I immediately found my wife in our home and waved the $800 in front of he face, saying "We're going to Disney World!! Grab clothes and stuff" for our two boys. Within an hour we were on the road in her new Honda for the 475 mile trip. We stopped for the night in Valdosta, GA. We arrived in Orlando the next day and found a Day's Inn being renovated and at a great rate. The next morning we had breakfast an headed to Disney World. There were many thousands of cars in the many parking lots. We were directed by Disney workers to the next open parking space. Getting out of our Honda and about to walk toward the shuttles I noticed a Chevy Van like the one I sold. It was the one I sold...with a bumper sticker about large tornadoes in texas to given me by my sister who lived in Texas and the same bald tires. I left a note on the windshield that I was not going to give them a ride home if they broke down.

atm malfunction at just the right moment

In May of 2015 I was in Pokara, Nepal using a roadside ATM machine. The maximum amount I could take with one withdrawal was $100 so I took a $100, then the machine returned my card and I put the card back in the machine and got this message: "sorry you have insufficient funds. Please check your bank for further information." I knew this wasn't true, I had plenty of money in my account. I stepped back from the machine and at that moment people started running past me, I thought there was an accident, I really didn't know, but then more people ran by so I joined them and on the main road in Lakeside scores of people were standing in the road and then it hit, a six second tremor that registered at 7.3 and shook everything. I waited for five minutes, sitting down to ponder the events. If that looks like a coincidence, it probably was, but if I believe my spirit, who is energy, got into the ATM and blocked my use so that I could run to safety, then I could also conclude that my spirit knew what was going to happen. My spirit anticipated the event and led me to safety. Ten minutes on the street I returned to the ATM and it gave me more money.

The Bindi Baby

In January of 2009 I was in Hampi, India and took a photo of a rock covered in red and yellow dots, a bindi rock I called the imagge. In April I printed the photo poster size and had it matted and framed and wrapped it up and gave it to two friends who had just had a baby. I hadn't seen nor talked with Jon and Leena since I had returned from India a few months earlier. When Jon received the gift he commented this was the biggest of gifts they had received and when he saw the photo he said when Sophie was born she had a red dot on her forehead and he called her for the first eight days of her life, the bindi baby. I'm not sure which category this coincidence matches below. Finding a link with an object? Matching gift with baby? Parallel ideas? My spirit knew in advance what I was going to do with that photo? That sounds more plausible for a new category: 'events your spirit sees in advance and considers meaningful'

a most recent coincidence

Hi. In April 2009 I experienced a number of coincidences which led me to visit a Tibetan shaman in Pokhara Nepal. After performing a puja the shaman left me with instructions, the last one being if the coincidences start increasing, come back. Well they did increase, quickly, and there was an event I identify as synchronicity, a unification of sorts with a 2700 year old spirit who was a shaman and was buried in Turpan, XinJiang Province. I emailed Stanley Krippner then and told him there were six characteristics I shared with this spirit. He said only three were interesting to him. That was the last time we had contact. Since 2009 I have recorded most of the significant coincidences in journals or blogs. The most recent was last week. I believe, like Jung, that the reason behind coincidences is the active world of spirits, whose rules are not known to us, obviously, but do at times intervene for reasons I know sometimes but not always. Last week 13 November before I left for work I read this daily prayer from the website catholic.org, a prayer for the faithfully departed. I didn't think anything of it, I read a prayer from this website every day.

Terry no mates

I just caught the end of one of the episodes of 'The Likely Lads' where Thelma and Bob are throwing a surprise party for Terry. As usual he spoils it all and is told 'it is no wonder you have no friends'. The episode ended,and I switched channels,where Jim Belushi was part way through an episode of 'According to Jim'. In this episode the sister-in-law is pregnant and speaking to her partner about children. In her panic about the proceedings she referred to a programme she had seen about 'a hermaphrodite child called Terry who had no friends'. It seems if your name is Terry,you are more likely than not have to do without friendship!

body worlds exhibition

I was having dinner with a friend and we started arguing over my eating habits. As I was getting angry I tried to bring up another theme of conversation and remembered that my friend have recently told me that she wanted to visit the Body Worlds Exhibition, a very strange exhibition of plastinated corpes arriving to my hometown in Uruguay. Later, at home, I started to classify the comic books I have in my computer. The first one I opened ("Doctors" by Dash Shaw) got me interested on the story of some doctors offering rich people an afterlife and after a few pages I find the characters of the story going to a Body Worlds Exhibition. There's a whole page about it. I have a lot of comics in my computer and I don't think Body Worlds Exhibitions are mentioned at all in any other comic in the world. So there is a huge coincidence in this exhibition being in my hometown (not very prone in holding foreign exhibitions) and me picking this particular comic after having talked about the subject with a friend over dinner.

TV show and music coincidence

Hi David, My name's Lizzie. Two coincidences have happened to me just this morning within the space of 30 minutes. I'm pretty used to coincidences happening to me, but often they're just as black and white as a lot of coincidences that happen to others - I wish mine were as simple as the birthday coincidences! Here's my story. This morning I decided to watch an episode of one of my favourites TV shows, New Girl. I decided to rewatch the entire series about three weeks ago, which makes this coincidence a lot more complex due to the fact that had any other variable intervened, I would not have watched this specific episode today. First off, before turning on the episode I was listening to a cover of Bruce Springsteen's 'I'm on Fire' where one of the lines reads 'freight train'. I was particularly drawn to the word 'freight' and I realised I had been pronouncing it wrong until I heard this song. Therefore, already I was focusing on the word 'freight'. Then, when I turned on this episode of New Girl, one of the main characters' first lines was 'I feel like a freight train'.

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