Finding Strangers were our Neighbours

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.

Some 50 years ago I was a student at Oxford. During the Christmas holidays a friend and I climbed a snowy winter route on Tryfan (a mountain in Snowdonia). When we reached the top we headed towards Adam and Eve (two large rocks on the summit). There we met a couple having a picnic. We asked them where they had come from and they said "Oxford". We said "so do we - we live in Iffley Road". They said "so do we". We soon discovered that they were our next door neighbours - although we had never met. We rented semi-detached houses whose front doors faced in opposite directions - so had never chanced on them during the term we lived adjacent to them.
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Date submitted:Mon, 20 May 2019 19:29:47 +0000Coincidence ID:10280