Steam trains
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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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It was Sunday 2nd June 2013. I live in Bristol, and had been working away for the past week. I wanted to catch up with my daughter (4 years old) and decided, on a whim, to take her on an outing to Avon Valley Steam Railway (about an hour's cycle ride away) and have a trip on the steam train. This is not something I've ever done before or even really considered before, and I have no particular interest in steam trains. Anyhow, we get there, buy a ticket, get on the train, and suddenly it seems like quite a funny thing to be doing. I decide to send a text message to my sister, as I think she might find it funny. So I send her a text: "I'm on a steam train!x"
She then texts back to say "no way, that's ridiculous!"
She is a musician and happens, at this time, to be on tour round Europe, and is in Utrecht. She had woken up early, gone for a walk, passed the Railway Museum, gone inside, and had LITERALLY just climbed up into a steam train when she got the message.
I am 30 and my sister is 27. I am pretty certain that neither of us have ever been in a steam train before [possibly as a very young child, in either case]; neither of us have any particular interest in steam trains. Yet possibly our first times going inside a stream train happened within maybe a minute of each other.
What are the chances?
Date submitted:Mon, 01 Jul 2013 22:06:13 +0000Coincidence ID:7121
