double holiday coincidences

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.

Several years ago my husband and me were holidaying in Naples, Florida. One morning my husband got chatting with a hotel resident at breakfast. He asked where in England they were from and the lady replied that she actually lived In Spain. My husband politely asked whereabouts in Spain and the lady replied it was in the area of Murcia. She said that we would not probably have heard of the local town Mazarron, as it wasn't well known and that she lived on a development called Camposol. My husband said that we did in fact know the area well as we too owned a property on Camposol. We discussed the coincidence and later met for drinks. Now we are very good friends and we see them regularly on our trips to Spain. However the coincidence doesn't stop there! A couple of years later we went on our first ever holiday to Dubai and decided to take a bus tour from the hotel round the city. The bus was late picking us up and by the time we made our last hotel pick up the couple who got on the bus were obviously annoyed at having been kept waiting. They sat behind us on the bus and we struck up a conversation which led to us strolling round the sites together. It was their first trip to Dubai and they said that they spent most of their holidays in Spain where they had a house. We asked where their house was and they said it was unlikely we would have heard of the place as it wasn't really on the tourist map. The nearest town was called Mazarron and they owned a house on an urbanisation called Camposol. We were amazed that this had happened twice in a couple of years. Normally we don't make a habit of chatting to strangers as we have plenty friends and like to spend holiday time on our own, so it was purely coincidence that we spoke to either couple. In the first case it was because the toaster in the breakfast room stopped working and in the second case because we were explaining to the irate couple why the bus was late! So we now have two sets of friends on Camposol...one that we met in Florida and the other that we met in Dubai!
Total votes: 179
Date submitted:Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:38:20 +0000Coincidence ID:5126