Old friend

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.

Last year (2011) my wife received a telephone call from someone who had dialed the wrong number. It turned out to be an old friend (a clergyman) to whom she had last spoken 46 years ago. He had no knowledge of where we live in the world, and he did not have our telephone number. We had been living abroad for many years, so we could have been living anywhere. He lives in Surrey and we live in Dorset. He had meant to telephone another place with a completely different area code, but out of all the millions of telephone numbers in the United Kingdom, he had mistakenly dialed our number.
Total votes: 275
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:12:49 +0000Coincidence ID:3979