Triple Births
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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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Back in 1985, my wife was pregnant with our second son, David. At the same time, my boss too of that era was pregnant with her son Matthew. David was born two weeks early at 17:54 on 6th. November 1985. Later, I found out that my boss had given birth to her son Matthew at 17:55 on the same day; the boys were born just a minute apart, both in the Hull area but at different hospitals. Some years later, David was at school and befriended a girl called Zoe in his class who was born at 10:00 on 6th. November 1985. Not really remarkable, but she was born in the USA in a time zone eight hours behind ours, so effectively was born at 18:00 GMT!! What was the chance of the three of them being born in just a six minute period?!!
Date submitted:Thu, 10 Dec 2015 15:42:48 +0000Coincidence ID:8329
