Crossing paths with your future
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.
A young American couple who were in their early twenties who had met at university came across an old photo of the boy in his early teens standing with friends on a long stretch of beach in the State of Maryland. The photo had been taken five years earlier and long before the two had met at University many miles away from that beach. The girl notices that in the background of this photo is her elder brother very clearly sitting on a towel which the girl (and later when she shows them, her brother and mother) recognise. The couple end up marrying. What are the odds that the brother of a woman you’ve never met is captured in a random teenage beach picture and that you later discover this (and marry his sister).
Date submitted:Fri, 14 Mar 2014 23:07:09 +0000Coincidence ID:7501
