Passport mix up

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.

I was travelling by bus in East Africa many years ago and were passing through the chaos of passport control at the border between Kenya and Tanzania. I chatted to an English nurse in the queue to pass the time and when we finally were allowed through we grabbed our passports and got back on the bus. I glanced quickly at my passport and found the photo of a girl; I checked with the nurse and found she had got mine. We realised the reason for the confusion when we noticed our respective passports had been issued at the same office and at the same time - the 9 figure numbers were sequential differing only by the last digit.
Total votes: 329
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:57:20 +0000Coincidence ID:3891