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!

Power Theft

Over a year ago at my home in Texas, a work crew repetitively took power from my outlet between my garage door and my front door while they worked on my neighbor's house. I protested every time as the cord hung and blocked the egress to the home, so I pulled and threw it in their direction every time I came and went. Oddly, I moved after my home for the seven years prior began mysteriously consuming massive amounts of utilities at a similarly cacophonous pace. Well, I now live in California and a work crew is again violating the place, except this time inside my home to retrofit the building's plumbing at the landlord's orders. First they arrived a few days prematurely and excavated extraneous holes in solid exoskeleton like before. I asked them kindly and they confirmed their needs were self contained. Then in my absence the workmen proceeded to pick a locked door and enter a secure area confirmed as off-limits moments before where they not only steal AC power but move my wife's sacred ashes to the floor where they could be knocked over by the door.

Same time every day

I usually put my phones far from my bed every time I sleep. Something weird happened to me in the past 3 weeks. In the morning when I wake up, I would go and check time on my phone and if its anything before 07h30 I would go back and sleep a bit and check the time again after a while and go back to sleep and so on. Surprisingly for 2 weeks, I would wake up and reach for my phone, and check the time, it will be 06h59 and I would go back to sleep a bit and wake up again and check time, it will be 07h16. This happened every day for the past 2 weeks. It continued happening even when I became aware of it. Sometimes I would even try to prolong checking time in hope that it will have changed. But when I do observe the time, it will be the same times. Very weird.

How'd you guess?

I've been reservedly considering enlisting in military service for many months, and just last week decided which branch to join. Today my Uber driver preached ad nausiem about the benefit of the very branch for which I applied a few days earlier. The same Uber driver from today went on to explain how he originally applied to be in rarely spoken of battalion, similar in today's terms to a suicide bomber pilot in the Pacific. I was shocked with disbelief because another Uber driver whom I'd recently met just so happened to be an elite survivor in said bastion of force.Lastly, there were two rather silent or otherwise "out of tune" passengers in the back seat for each respective Uber journey whom all departed at least five minutes before reaching my destination. I could seek more coincidence here, but what's here is crazy-making enough. What a sincerely small world. I give thanks to technology like Facebook the intraweb to keep us in-touch and aligned with reality!

Providing Personal Information

I just entered a profile and submitted my e-mail to setup an account on this website for what feels like at least the eighth instance in the over the past four months.

Matching Music

So, earlier in the week, my best friend messaged me asking if I was listening to music at the time. At the time, I wasn't, but I did have the song "Savior" by Rise Against stuck in my head, so I told him I wasn't listening to music, but I had a song stuck in my head. He asked what song I had stuck in my head and I told him. He then sent me a screenshot from before I had told him which song, and in it, he had written "savior rise against". He then said he had had the song in his head earlier and started playing it to get it out of his head but that doing so made it worse. The reason he ended up asking me about it was because we've had similar coincidences before, but we hadn't thought to write it down before asking before this.

Recycled Telephone Number

I was working from home as dressmaker when the children were small, and a customer from across town was reading out her new phone number to me. The kids could not understand why I was so amazed to discover that it was our old number from before we switched phone companies the previous year. That was until I showed them the phone directory for our city of 400,000 and they realised there were quite a few other people that the number could have been given to instead!

Family Connection

I moved from Kansas City to Evanston, Illinois in my late twenties (25 years ago) with my husband, toddler and baby. I hired a young woman from Northwestern to help me as a babysitter and mother's helper a few afternoons a week. She didn't work out but introduced me to her friend who was from St. Joseph, MO - a smaller town about an hour north of Kansas City. I got to know her friend very well as we regularly took walks with the kids and dog. She spoke regularly of her aunt and one day I asked, "Was your aunt married to a man named John?" She said, "Yes - Uncle Johnnie!" Her aunt had been married to my uncle but divorced when I was young so I had no awareness of her niece. She had never shared a last name so it was little clues about what her aunt was up to that led me to the realization - six months after we first started talking! I've experienced so many coincidences in my life, many of which are "matched" below, but this one was the most extraordinary.

Matching Grades

A friend of mine studying economy in another country outside of the UK asked me for help with some Math and after helping her I tried to reassure her about her exam. I told her she would get 25 out of 30. One week later she had texted me saying she got exactly 25/30 and I was surprised. We joked about my ability to predict things and then I said "Well then, next time get 30/30 in your next exam" and she actually did get that. It was surprising.

Strange Meetings

On one particular Friday morning last winter I asked a friend of mine to buy a package of 1Kg of sugar because my birthday was coming up that weekend and I wanted to make some sweets but I didn't feel like walking all the way to the market. I had a class to attend in some building near where I live and I knew my friend was going to come to have a lesson right at the time when mine finished so I thought I would see him then and retrieve the sugar. I don't know why but I had a feeling that another third friend of mine would accidentally show up there (I had no reason to assume that) and he actually did. What is more is the fact that I had thought (or hoped) that he would arrive right when the other one was giving me sugar...so that I could invite him (all by accident) to my cake-making party.

Breaking Bones

In Summer 2015 my mum received an offer to attend a conference in early September at a private company. When she told me she had to travel to some place far away from home for some days I replied "What would happen if you slipped just before the conference and broke your ankle? Would they still cover the costs?"<br /> This was in July and although that question seems totally random my mum frequently breaks a bone or two in her body by accident (usually by falling), so I considered one of the bones which were still unbroken. Also, she had an old fracture on one ankle so when I asked I was thinking about the good unbroken ankle.<br /> In late August she slipped and broke her (good) ankle, but still went to the conference using crutches.

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