NYC subway, impossible coincidence
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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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My sister lives in NYC (Staten Island) and I live in Newmarket (UK). I visited her one summer. We were to meet at the ferry terminal in lower Manhattan, after she finished work. She wasn’t sure the exact time so we had a 40 min. window for the rendezvous. As with the tube in London, on the NYC subway there are quite a few ways to get to a destination. I took an indirect route (as in got lost), and waited for a train I hadn’t planned on. I was still pretty far from lower Manhattan. I stood on the platform, the doors opened and my sister was standing right in front of me. There were no less than 3 different lines either of us could have been on. When the train pulled in to the station there were at least 20 cars, and each car had 3 sets of doors. So, same line, same car, same door, same time in a subway system used daily by over 4 million people.
Date submitted:Fri, 07 Mar 2014 15:14:33 +0000Coincidence ID:7491
