Another UK/Australia link...

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.

Circa 1980: I took the car from home in Nottingham down to London, to attend a concert on the South Bank. Arriving late morning, I parked near the British Museum and spent some time there before doing some shopping. Returning to the car I wondered whether to leave the car there while I went to the concert, or to take it to the South bank. I decided on the South Bank. Once there I had to decide where to park: on the street or in the National Theatre car park? I headed for the NT. The car park under the theatre complex is labyrinthine, but I found a space eventually; but then I couldn't find the way out and up into the foyers. Instead I found an emergency door, pushed hard on the bar, and the door flew open, hitting a couple walking along the pavement. I apologised, and turned away to find my way into the theatre - then did a double-take at the couple, who were staring back at me. Or rather, SHE stared at me. 'Mike?' 'Jenny?' It turned out that after a host of binary decisions, I'd assaulted an old girlfriend with a door... We'd known each other back in the mid-Sixties, several years before I'd moved back up North. There followed a series of 'What are you up to?' questions, and 'Are you still living in Chalk Farm?' 'No' she said, 'We' - Jenny and her husband - 'live in Gwelup (sic), near Perth ..... Western Australia. What astonished me, apart from the distance between us, was the timing of this meeting; one second later and the door would not have crashed into them and we would not have met again. Sadly, it was not SO significant that we bothered to exchange addresses. What was significant was that when we were seeing a lot of each other in the Sixties, the South Bank with its concert halls, theatres and what is now the BFI were like second homes to J and me; this meeting proved, if nothing else, what a draw the South Bank is for like-minded people. Michael Browne
Total votes: 453
Date submitted:Mon, 16 Apr 2018 10:26:09 +0000Coincidence ID:9984