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!

Rotten Apple

I have two specific serendipitous events that crossed my path today. First I wrote a letter about being attacked by a sommelier, then read in a new book's prologue that the author had the exact same experience with a wine steward. In my letter I utilized the word "discord" in description of my inner turmoil. Just now while reading a study performed by the National Institute of Health on a .gov website He author uses the word "discord" uncharachateristically in place a reference to "patient notes" or "test results". How crazy that two ideas I placed on paper earlier today have manifested in both a printed text and online in a medical study.

Schwinn Twins

As I sat in a nearby park talking on the phone, a man approached asking for what I thought was a ciggarette. He sat down next to me in a socially invasive manner and began fiddling with his bicycle. When my call ended, we conversed. His bicycle was a very unique sea foam green Italian road bike that I have never seen before. The man told me how he previously had toe clips and gave a few other details of his history with this cycle. After a brief interlude, I walked home and of the handful of bikes I saw on my journey, I came across an almost exact replica of the one possessed by the man I'd just encountered. Tied up outside my local chemist was the same sea foam green vintage bicycle with all the accessories including the toe clips that were mentioned as they were missing on previously encountered model. I brushed it off remembering the man's mention of having a twin brother somewhere close by, but he also shared that he bought his bike second hand for 200 quid! How crazily serendipitous!

German Shepards

I use Uber to get almost everywhere. My last four consecutive Uber drivers complemented my toy poodle and each one mentioned a shared affinity for dogs. I asked each driver exactly the same questions starting with,"do you have any pets?", every driver answered the similarity that they had a dog, three currently and one when he was younger. I then asked "what kind of dog?" To this each of the four drivers respinded that they had German Shephards, except for the man whom did not have a dog currently but previously in life. When he did have a dog, it was a German Shephard Mix (Doberman I think) named Sparky. What are the odds!!!! Four of the five ride share drivers that I meet in two days traveling in Los Angeles all have experienced ownership of German Shephards. To further the magic in this coincidence, I have always wanted a big dog, specifically a Reisenschnauzer, which comes from a region near Germany called Bavaria. Well, technically it is Germany, unless you're from there.

Time and distance

In Christchurch NZ, in 2008, my father was throwing a party for his friends and as usual my family was invited. I asked to take a colleague from work. He had arrived in new Zealand in June 2006, a couple of days before my return from being away from NZ for 20 years. We had met through school (kids in the same class) and then later at work - same department at the Christchurch City Council. His in-laws were visiting form the UK and asked if they could come as well. At the party my father was talking to his mother in law and he dropped his wine glass. Turns out, she had been treated in 1963 at Fulham & Hammersmith hospital in the Renal department by a lovely New Zealand doctor who was on his consultancy training - a Dr Little. That was my father. She had been told not to have any more children up to that point but my father told her not to be worried and have more if she wanted. She had one more daughter - my friends wife.

Funny Coincidence involving Brett Micheal's Birthday

I am a teacher and I celebrate a birthday every day with my students. Very rarely (a handful of times a year), I am observed by outside people. Last year, on March 15, I had a visitor just as we were celebrating Brett Michael's birthday (an excuse to play Every Rose Has its Thorn ... not a terribly educational moment). We all had a good laugh after the visit. Last week, I was told that a higher up at our organization would be visiting next week. A friend jokingly said, "I hope it's not Brett Michael's birthday." We looked it up, and...you guessed it...March 15.

Black Hills of Dakota

This morning I woke up early and when I did I had 'The Black Hills of Dakota' from Calamity Jane in my head. My class had sung the song as part of a variety show in primary school 24 years ago, when I was about 8, and while I remember it well I do not think about it often and nothing that I can think of, either waking or dreaming, had prompted me to have it in my head when I woke up. Not thinking much of this I got up, went to the bathroom, walked back into my room and turned the radio on, to RTE 1, Ireland's state broadcaster's main station. When the radio came on it was silent, in that little fraction of a second gap in between songs, and when the next song began it was Doris Day singing 'The Black Hills of Dakota'.

Snail watching in life and on Radio 4

In May 1992 after attending a module of my Buddhist-based psychotherapy training in South Devon I spent a couple of days near the coast. I walked on the coast path and noticed a large snail crossing the bare earth in front of me. Its feelers were fully extended and it seemed vulnerable; a little bit like me after the training. I crouched down and watched it as it crossed the path, feeling protective of it. As I watched it a party of bird-watchers came by me, and seemed a bit surprised I was there, crouching down. Several times I felt tempted to move the snail to the safety of the grass beyond the path. I resisted this - in a Buddhist 'being is preferable to doing' mode - and watched the snail until it had reached the safety of the grass by itself. The next day I had to drive some 300 miles back home. I was not keen to leave the beauty of Devon, but decided to take the journey slowly, and switched on Radio 4 as I began. I heard the words 'look at the snail, dad'. On 'Pick on the week' was being repeated the story by a writer who had related an event which happened on holiday with his 3-year-old son.

synchronicity with words

Multiple times a day, I hear a word right as I read it. For example, i would be reading an article and read the word "address" and at the exact same time, I will hear someone say "address." This happens with any and all kinds of words, common and rare. Sometimes it will happen 10 times in a day, sometimes 0 or 1. It freaks me out and i don't think of them as coincidences. Not sure what it means, because the words aren't notices close to each other like 10 seconds apart. It happens at the exact moment I read or think the word.

Mi casa es sous casa

I lived with my boyfriend in his mother's house in Florida in 1998 while it was in the process of being sold. We broke up and I eventually moved to Ohio, where my sister and her family had moved. Years later my sister and her family moved back to Florida and had been living in a relative's house and had to suddenly find a new place to live. They went through a rental agency and ended up in the exact house fifteen years later without having a clue until I asked for their address to send them a card. At first I thought it was a joke and then she sent me pictures. This kind of stuff happens to me all the time. It makes me a bit paranoid sometimes.

Meeting someone I know on the London Underground

I got on a crowded tube in Central London on Saturday (ie a non-work day) and found myself standing next to someone who works in the same open plan office as me - there are about 40 of us in this space. Neither I nor this person live in London so it was also very unusual for us to be In London on a Saturday nor were we anywhere near our shared workplace.

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