Coincidental Punting
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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.
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My wife and I where on holiday in Cairns, Australia around 25 years ago when we bumped into a family from near our home town of Bolton, Lancashire. Not a particular rare event, but after the usual holiday commitments of "we must stay in touch" neither party did so and we have never seen them again either before or since the meeting in Cairns, except .... Around 5 years later both my wife and I went for a long weekend to Oxford (an addiction to Morse was probably partly the reason) - our only trip there. Whilst there we decided to have a try at punting, and of course the boat went on what a statistician would probably call a random walk until it bumped into another boat which contained, yes you have it, the family we met in Cairns on a weekend break!
Date submitted:Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:09:31 +0000Coincidence ID:7023
