Cambridge Coincidences Collection

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.

Well I Never!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

So many parallels??

So I've got this childhood friend who has the same birthdate as me, just that she is a year older. Her sister and my brother also share the same birthday and our dads both have the same first name. In addition we both had a doll named Lina when we were younger (independently from each other) and we both belong to the LGBTQIA+ Community. Can someone explain?

Meeting acquaintances while on a boat on the sea

So my mother and I were visiting Spain in my summer holidays to meet up with my grandpa who was currently on a sailing trip there. So we stayed on his boat for about a week and one evening we were sailing into a small bay and anchored to spend the night there. My mum and I were bored so we put the small rubber boat into the water and paddled around a bit. Eventually we saw two kids and their father in a rowboat a few meters away from us. As we got closer we realised that we knew them because the kids visited the same kindergarden and elemantary school as me. When they also recognized us we met to talk a bit. We all could not believe this had happened. They told us tehy were staying in a hotel in the bay and they hired the boat just for an hour. That's how we randomly met acquaintances somewhere on the sea in Spain.

SINISTER HISTORICAL COINCIDENCES

Reading through the collection of coincidences here it's clear that most are frivolous and trite, but it's only when a coincidence leads to something sinister and evil do they gain gravitas and when these coincidences happen they result in terrible consequences For example, Hitler was a very fortunate individual who was a habitual risk taker and escaped death on numerous occasions in WW1 as a ''trench runner/'message carrier'' ; so much so that he was awarded a number of medals, including the Iron Cross, First Class, that was very unusual for an enlisted man Even after the war in his rise in politics he was very fortunate indeed, such as during the Beer hall Putsch in Munich, November 1923, when he was shot at by German police and a comrade next to him was shot dead .

What in the World Wide Web is Going On?

I'll try and keep this short. I live in Mississippi. I have a PC and often watch Youtube videos. Years ago, I fell in love with a Christian Theologian by the name of Boyd. Boyd has a church in Minnesota and they record the services each sunday; you can download them from the website. I did not know about the church website at first but found a person who was posting these sermons onto his youtube channel. This person's name is Chris. Over the course of a year or so of watching these sermons, Chris and I would get into discussions about them. I never told him where I lived or gave him any info about myself other than my first name. So we were distant friends of sorts, having the common interest in Dr. Boyd's messages. At some point along the way he tells me that he met and fell in love with a girl in his town, which turns out to be in Idaho. They get married. Chris is still posting the sermons and we continue to discuss them. Now comes the thrilling part. He and his new wife, both living in Idaho, are taking a trip to her hometown to visit and let Chris meet her parents. Guess where she is from?

Reminders of an old friendship.

In 1997 I moved to Durham, around two hundred miles away from Norfolk. In 1998 I remember walking seeing Darren’s old red Cavalier car in a side street as I walked by. We used to travel together in this car in Norfolk perhaps about five years earlier. In 2018 I starting to see a customer in Durham through work who revealed to me that her son worked with Darren in their place of employment. It was quite uncanny!

Weird relationship coincidence

I met my boyfriend on holiday in fuerteventura. He is from Germany and I am from the UK and we met in august 2017. We discovered a year later that my sixth form college in the UK and his high school in Germany had a partnership and he was invited to go and study and work in my hometown (Preston) in England for a month. Neither of us knew anything about this when we met and we wonder whether we would have met anyway, just a year later in my hometown?!

Movie duration coincidence

I was watching a movie, and my dad wanted to see the beginning because he didn’t see the beginning. I allowed him to pause it and go to the beginning, and when he paused it, it was at 12 minutes and 6 seconds (12:06). And the time was 12:06 pm. Go to https://misc544.wordpress.com/2021/11/21/coincidence-6/ please.

Eating with a stranger 3 times in 3 different European cities

My family and I were travelling in Europe in the summer of 1976. We stopped to eat in Utrect, The Netherlands. I stayed to lock up the car while the rest went to find a table. When I entered a bit later and stood in the entry scanning the room, a man seated at the bar sized me up and said "your friends go that way". I guess we Americans all dress alike. Two days later, after a morning of wandering Amsterdam (about 50 km away), I met up with my mother in a cafe. As I started to order, this same gentleman walked up and said "Oh, we eat in same place". We got a chuckle out of it, but thought that was the end of it. Not quite. Three months later, as we settled down for the school year in Aix-en-Provence, France (1200 km away), we decided to visit the university cafeteria for the first time. And there in the buffet line, unbelievably, was this same guy! Well, naturally we had to sit together and share our stories. Later, as, we parted, I joked "Well, I guess we'll see you around". The whole year living (and eating) there, we never saw him again. Or, I suppose he could have just decided he'd seen enough of us.

Young dolph died today.

I thought about young dolph today in the morning. And found out later today that he died. I was a fan of his music and his motivational mindset. He will be missed RIP. Also this is not the first time I thought of someone and they died. The number of examples is numerous I’d rather not list them.

absent from school

Every time my dad comes home(which he doesn’t do often) once or twice per week I wake up late so i don’t leave for school , keep in mind that i never skip school , only when he comes home i’m skipping school on the same day.

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