Wrong number?
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 have posted a few stories here before, but this one has just come to mind.
</p>
<p>Maybe a dozen years ago I got a mobile phone. After a few weeks I received a text message on it, the first ever. It read something like "Hi (insert my correct name here) I have just come back from China, here is my new phone number xxxxx Please phone me. Jeanette"
</p>
<p>I thought it was odd. I had a cousin Jeanette whom I had not heard much of for a while, though I knew she'd been to the UK and Europe less than two years before. Maybe she had been to China too. But my name was right, the phone number was obviously correct for me and Jeanette made sense too.
</p>
<p>So I called back. It was not cousin Jeanette at all, but another woman entirely.
Date submitted:Fri, 23 Nov 2012 01:41:34 +0000Coincidence ID:6694
