Saints United

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.

We lost contact with a Breton student friend not long after he married, but, as we were going over to Brittany on holiday, I looked up his name on the Internet, found three with the same surname and initial, and wrote to the likeliest one near where he had formerly lived. It turned out I'd found the right Jacques, and he and his wife asked us to call and renew the acquaintance. We found the house, had a wonderful meal in the garden, with lost of chouchenn and wine and cider - a great reunion. Later on, in the house, Jacques asked where we'd been, and was puzzled by what seemed an eccentric itinerary. "Why those places?" he asked, and I told him I was researching for an article on the sixth century Celtic saint, Illtud, or Ildut in Breton, who was from my area in Mid Wales, and who had been very active in Christianising Brittany - we had wandered around visiting most of the sites connected with him. Jacques went straight over to the bureau, and pulled out a photo of himself and his wife standing at the reputed grave of Illtud in the Brecon Beacons - they had been to the area three years before, researching an article on Illtud, within just two miles of us, and not knowing that we were living close by.
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Date submitted:Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:12:56 +0000Coincidence ID:5930