Mystery solved

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.

In 2000, my cousin, ( now deceased ), was returning from Vancouver to Glasgow to attend his father's funeral. When I met him at the funeral he was visibly shaken by an experience he had on the flight. He had to change planes at Toronto and on the journey to Glasgow he sat next to and elderly lady who was returning for a family reunion. She had emigrated to Canada in 1947. They talked about Glasgow in the old days and she mentioned that she had lived in Dumbarton road, Scotstoun during the war. As the conversation continued, he discovered that she had lived in the same block of flats as his Grandmother and had known her well. She had been present at the air raid which had destroyed the building and killed his aunt. The family had never known why the aunt had not stayed in the air raid shelter- everyone in there had survived. Seemingly she had gone back into the building to stay with a young mother who was too scared to move. When the bomb hit the building, all inside were killed. Nobody in the family could understand why my aunt had returned to the building from the relative safety of the shelter. Sixty years later we had the explanation by a series of coincidences
Total votes: 440
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:52:55 +0000Coincidence ID:3885