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!

A very unromantic love story lol.

Back in May 2011, I had been going through a very rough time in life, was a single mom & had gone thru a rough breakup to man I had been with for 2 years & was generally over anxious & not sleeping right. My doctor put me on a sleeping med called Ambien to help me get some rest a night. It was later found that this sleeping med had caused people to do "weird things" in an unconscious state & eventually stricter rules were placed on its miligram distribution. So long story short, I had been placed on a way too high dose of this medication & after taking this pill one night, unconsciously I decided to drive to the store & on the way back, I ran my car into a telephone pole going about 5 miles an hours a block away from home.<br /> Although no illegal drugs or alcohol were found in my system, I was none the less charged with a DUI. What makes this story even more strange is that I had never even drank & drove once in my life!<br /> When I was 4 years old, my mother was in a motorcycle accident with her then fiancee in which a drunk driver collided into them.

QY20 Persuaders

Recently I have been watching THE PERSUADERS which are re-running on TV,but not managing to catch all episodes,I took to looking them up on Youtube,and tried to watch them in passing. Today, I played back the episode 'Death in the Family' on Iphone whilst browsing Ebay on laptop. In this episode,all of Brett Sinclair's relatives feature,including Denolm Elliot as one. On ebay I came across a QY20 sequencer which was being sold as spares/repair,I noted that the seller was Australian. Just at the very moment I noted this,Denholm Elliot said "It all started when I went to Australia" - made all the more odd by the fact that I was not running the show concurrently,but was stopping and starting playback to enable paying attention.

Chance Meeting

While stationed at Wiley barracks in Neu Ulm, Germany, in the US Army, in 1975, I and some friends were walking back late at night to the base. We were returning from a Beerfest celebration in town. We were quite inebriated. Other soldiers were also walking home. A fight ensued over some supposed indiscretion between we friends and some other soldiers. I tried to end the fight by threatening the other soldiers with a broken glass beer mug. End the fight it did, when one of those soldiers tried to disarm me from the menacing object. As the soldier nearly bled to death from ill-advised maneuver, I accordingly was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. Due process resulted in an acquittal of the charges by virtue of self-defense on my part. Further details would flesh out other coincidences involved in this story, but I will hold to the main thrust. The man that I cut was immediately released from the Army with a 70% disability. I had heard through the grapevine that he wanted to sue me in civilian court when I got out of the service. I had heard that the man was from the midwest United States, somewhere. I finished my tour of duty of 7.5 more months.

Same phone number

When travelling in Thailand with a Thai friend I bought a sim card for my mobile phone over the counter in a department store. The corresponding mobile number was my Thai friend's old mobile number from years before.

A family connection with a stranger

I moved to Scotland, several years ago, from the North East of England where I was born. I lived much of my childhood and adult life in South Tyneside. In 2013, a friend came to visit me in Edinburgh during the Festival and we walked up the Royal Mile, watching street performers and weaving our way through the Festival crowds. At one point my friend walked ahead of me and I when I spotted her, she was talking to a man who was giving out flyers for a show that evening. When I caught up with her, my friend said, ‘This lad is from South Shields!’ (our home town). He said, ‘Actually, I’m from Hebburn.’ (a neighbouring town to South Shields). He looked about the same age as me (early 50s) so I said, ‘My Mam’s family are from Hebburn; what’s your (sur)name?’. ‘Eglinton’, he said. I replied in turn, ‘When my Mam was younger, her best friend was Ellen Eglinton.’. ‘That’s my aunty’, he said. We stared at each other in disbelief. But we were both smiling broadly.

Marlon Brando

This may seem more in the vein of the supernatural but involves a coincidence nonetheless less. I am a huge Marlon Brando fan and have read all there is to read about his life and his work and I've seen all of his movies and tv appearances (that I could find). One day after finishing a particularly interesting biography on the man I sat in silence on my sofa to think about what I had just read. After a few minutes I began to smell the faint smell of cigarette smoke which grew stronger and after maybe two minutes dissipated into thin air. I have never been a smoker, no one has ever smoked in my home and there was no one outside at the time smoking either. At first I thought "good lord I need to see a neurologist I probably have a tumor. I'm smelling phantom smells" . But I thought about how Marlon Brando was a life long smoker and how incredibly creepy that connection is. I pushed it out of my mind as rubbish. A few hours later I went to pick up my child from daycare and when I step inside a new parent is the foyer speaking to one of the teachers and she mentioned her daughters name "Cheyenne". Brando's daughter was named Cheyenne.

Swimming lessons?

My friend and I were driving on a fairly deserted interstate heading home. We were discussing whether or not we should put my 2 year old in gymnastics or swimming lessons this summer when not even 10 seconds later a truck advertising preschool swimming lessons passes us on the road.

Man calls from a familiar place

I work for a very large insurance company as a Quality Analyst for the service center. You know when you call whatever 800 number and ask to speak to a live representative? I listen to those phone calls all day long and make sure those representatives are doing the right thing. Our service center services insurance policies from all 50 states in the United States. We take over 2,000 calls a day total. One of the departments I quality check sits at about 800 calls per day and I have to listen to 25 of those per month for my quota which I pull at random. These calls come in from all areas of the country at random. On one particular day I pulled a random call from a weeks worth of phone calls so we're talking about 4,000 calls to choose from. A man called into our service center to discuss his invoice. The representative asked for his address to confirm we were sending the invoices to his home and when I looked at his profile my jaw dropped. This man was living in my fathers childhood home. A place I had visited many times as a kid and where the last memory of my grandmother is. I was shocked and needless to say went out and played the lottery that night.

Triple Dip Pink Slip

My third engagement just fell apart and hopes of being a husband and father seem to be slipping away. I have an affinity for news not readily prominently published (RTTM feeds, textbook updates, farmer's almanacs, etc) for various reasons unrelated. I live north of Atlanta and made a career at CNN until a recent tense parting of ways. While on a stroll with my bloodhound I come across a painted birdhouse looking repository of books, about forty titles in all just there to be shared. Surprisingly I find two volumes of a rare featured book titled "Unpublished News and Events" from important years past. I take only one copy and open it at home to find none other than Ted Turner's business card inside with a handwritten note on the back of his card stating "you better work on your story or hurry up and take a wife, life is too short for both." Inside the book jacket on the hard bound outer page the following text is embossed "Trust me, I have tried!" What a back-and-forth of serendipity! Either near dead Ted hired someone to interfere with the footsteps of my religious stroll with my hound, or I'm just losing my grasp of reality.

2 strangers meeting

I was doing a little "match making" with 2 people I know that come from 2 entirely different places in my life. The woman works in the corporate world, this is where I work, and the man lives in my town which he owns his own business putting up drywall. The town being about 45 minutes away from my work. So... I was able to get these 2 talking on the phone and when I came into work the next day and the woman said to me "your not going to believe this" but after talking a little bit on the phone with the guy you set me up to talk with told me that he grew up in the house LITERALLY across the street from where I live now. SO.... what does that mean!?!?!? Weird. Two totally different people, different careers, 2 different towns ... the 1 link is me and he happened to grow up on the same street RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from where she is living? CRAZY... I wish I knew what this meant.

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