unlikely meeting
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.
In Nov. 2013 my wife and I were in the middle of a 6 week road trip (from Boise, Idaho) taking a day hike in Jedediah Smith Redwood Park in northern California. The trail was a loop and we saw very few people. But in the middle of the hike we did run into a couple we knew from Boise. We weren't good friends but the husband and I had spent the previous year working quite intensely together on a non-profit reorganization so it felt more remarkable (even if it wasn't).
So 600 miles from home in the redwood forest we meet friends from home. And it was a loop trail so if either couple had gone the other direction we wouldn't have seen each other.
Not magic but pretty amazing. On the ranking scale below I would put it somewhere between *once a year and **once in a lifetime - maybe a few times in a lifetime.
Date submitted:Sat, 27 Feb 2016 16:19:53 +0000Coincidence ID:8466
