Meeting the new brother-in-law
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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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This actually happened to my father, who is sadly now deceased, but it was so extraordinary that I thought I'd like to tell you about it. He was in the RAF during the Second World War and was posted to India. After his arrival there he moved around a lot, so had no contact with his family back in S. Wales for about 8 months. Eventually he was in Ceylon for a short break, and while there the mail caught up with him. On the last day he was stationed in Ceylon, he was sitting on the edge of the parade ground reading his post, while a party of recently arrived soldiers were parading.
There was a letter from my grandmother in the post telling my father that his sister had become engaged to a young man, who my grandparents had only met briefly as he'd just been called up. My grandmother also included a copy of the local newspaper, so Dad started to read it. The soldiers finished parading, and one of them came across to my Dad, and said that the Monmouthshire Free Press was his local paper too. So they got chatting, and it turned out that the young soldier came from just up the valley not that far from where my father was brought up. At that point they started to exchange names, and the soldier jokingly said that it was funny that my Dad's surname was Jones, as he'd just got engaged to a Jones. "Which Jones?" says my Dad, "Megan" says young soldier, "I've met her parents, Fred and Minnie, and she's got a brother Fred, who's out this way somewhere." "I know," says my Dad "that's me!"
Date submitted:Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:56:53 +0000Coincidence ID:5259
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