Four birthdays in One

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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.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

Travelling in a car with three other passengers a chance comment revealed that all four of us shared the same birthday (day and month).
Total votes: 286
Date submitted:Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:53:27 +0000Coincidence ID:4890

Comments

Anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 15/01/2012 - 9:00pm

On December the 28th 2010 I drove through Todmorden in West Yorkshire on my way home to East Anglia. As I passed through the town I recalled that it was becoming famous for planting vegetables in public spaces. Thirty minutes or so later I switched on my car radio and found that I joined the Radio Four programme halfway through an interview with one of the officials from the Todmorden project.

Anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 15/01/2012 - 9:15pm

Sometime in the middle of 2010 I was due to attend a meeting in central London. The meeting included an author who lives in Monaco. Prior to the meeting I arranged to meet a colleague in Hackney for lunch. When I left the restaurant to head off to my meeting I missed a suitable bus by seconds. I waited for the next bus and as I boarded I found myself standing next to the author!
Although it would not be unusual for two people heading to the same location to be on the same bus, I was making my way to an underground station and a tube ride after which there was a further bus journey to reach my location. In other words the bus journey was quite random. It transpired that the author had flown from Monaco and that the train from the airport to central London had broken down in Hackney; he simply jumped on the next available bus.