Florida holiday coincidence

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.

We took a family holiday in Orlando in the summer of 2006 and while trudging around Sea World theme park we were startled by our Son's primary school teacher who'd spotted our son in the crowd because of his Leeds United football shirt. We'd no idea she was due to be on holiday in Florida, and we all laughed at the coincidence of meeting up, and what were the odds, etc. We returned to Orlando two years later, in 2008, and amazingly, this time while we were spending the day in the Epcot theme park, the very same teacher came running out of an open area cafe, again having seen Tom with his Leeds shirt on (a different one, I should add!). We were absolutely blown away. Clearly we were two groups of people who shared a common holiday interest, but the chances of our two paths meeting up in such circumstances, twice, neither knowing the other was even on holiday, must be incredibly small.
Total votes: 870
Date submitted:Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:18:11 +0000Coincidence ID:3418