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!

Birthday coincidence

Mine and my children's birthdays are in different months but the dates descend by one for each of us: Myself 22nd, eldest child 21st, middle child 20th, youngest child 19th

foretelling

I used to have a good friend, and yesterday she happened to come up in conversation with two people- about how we had a big falling out and i was still sad about it hoping it would rekindle, and about how she hadn't contacted me since and i never thought she would again. last night she texted me a very long paragraph. also, i had a dream about having a UTI. I woke up with a UTI. o

same song choice from stranger 14 years later

Its 2017 and I downloaded a song from 2003 and around 830 and decided to listen to it in my car about 930 the song ended and was about 90 seconds into the next song on the playlist.. I was also pulling in my driveway. I shut the car off and 10 seconds later a car drove by playing the same song.... It was titled In Those Jeans by Genuine

Precognition?

At 2.29am on 14 April 2017 in Derby, UK, I recorded the following journal entry "Loxton bingo tonight". Via Google, I found that there is bingo at the Loxton club in Australia but not until 7.30pm on 20 April 2017.

Multiple Birthday dates and numbers coincidence

My husband and I were both raised by biological mothers and step fathers. Both mothers share the same birthday Both biological fathers share the same birthday Both elder sisters share the same birthday My son and my best friends daughter were born on the same day 3 years apart My other best friend is due a baby on my birthday My husband birthday is 20th June and mine is 14th October and our done was born in 2014

Link to previous generation?

My location - West Wolverhampton, West Midlands. February (?) 2016. As I was checking e-mails on my computer my journalist daughter called me on my mobile phone for quick directions to a street in Willenhall, West Midlands, where she was to interview a business owner. She was about a quarter of a mile from the street where she needed to be. I directed her to the street and to the shop which is known to me. Within seconds of ending the phone call an e-mail arrived from a friend in Manchester who is researching my family tree. I was given some new information but was specifically told to 'check out' xxxxx street Willenhall where my great great grandfather (The one who lost an arm at the Battle of New Orleans) had lived - the very building that my daughter was going to visit. Also - my daughter was eight months pregnant at the time.

Random Song

Driving with my friend and our two sons. Her 7 year son requests Take on Me from Ah-Ha - his current favorite oldie but goodie - but neither of us had reception in that area. So I turn on the radio, scan to the first channel, and right then the first chord of his requested song starts. This was our second strange coincidence of the day, so something must be going right. Needless to say we turned it up loud and celebrated this little victory!

dragons

With my friend and our 2 sons playing in a creek. We were talking about books we liked reading. She told me she like sci-fi, fantasy and dragons, and talked about the dragons ornaments she had as a child. I told her how my mother (deceased) loved the same kind of stories and was obsessed with dragons as wells. Right then, my son finds a little toy in the creek and hands it to me, which I immediately thought was a dragon. It had the word "Northosaurus, made in China" imprinted on it, which is a dinosaur that is considered a Sea Dragon in China. Note, there were no other toys in the creek.

2 stories in 1

At some point my friend was transferred from LA to St Louis for work. One week after he moved, my boss told me she wanted me to attend a conference in St Louis a few weeks later. Pretty cool, a trip on the company dime and I could see my friend who just moved there. Once I arrived, I discovered his new apartment was directly across the street from the conference. At said conference in St Louis, I met a girl from Kansas City. She told me she recently visited her friend in LA (a few months prior). When I pressed for details, it emerged that her friend was living in my last apartment in Santa Monica, CA. Not just the building, she moved into the unit I had vacated. I think this poor girl I was speaking to thought I was crazy "omg was it next to the bowling alley? was there a pet shop across the street? was it the corner unit with the patio next to the alley? I just moved out of there! this is unbelievable".

Parallel lives

Five years ago I became a project manager of the project for improved rural water supply and opened a call for an expert to conduct a situational analysis. Apparently, the topic was not very popular at the time and we received small number of applications. The first one that I opened was a surprise. The birth date on the top of the CV caught my attention as the day and the month were exactly the same as mine while the year was different in one figure only (almost the same). It turned out that the expert was exactly ten years older than me. The content of the CV, i.e. the overall application, of this expert was rated the best. This was established in the end of an objective selection process and had nothing to do with me having subjective preferences for this expert which were grounded not only on the birthday connection but also on the fact that the person had an engineering background and was working at the university at which I studied towards my BSc diploma. Since the moment we met, we have been having a smooth communication and mutual understanding about our common topics on water supply.

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