I Saw You in Cork

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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.

In 1995, I was living in London but applying for jobs in Ireland with a view to moving home. I was born and raised in the northeast of the country, right on the border with Northern Ireland but the job I applied for was in Cork, three-and-a-half hours away in the southwest. I was called for interview and spent just part of a day there, as I flew in an out on the same day. I was on Patrick Street for maybe 15 minutes in total. I had kept all of this secret because I wanted to surprise my family. A couple of weeks later I was back home in my parents' house for a weekend when my sister's boyfriend said, 'I saw you in Cork.' I managed to plausibly deny any such occurrence, even though he told me the day and time and it matched precisely when I would've been wending my way down Patrick St. He believed me and said it was amazing because he followed me and even got ahead of me so he could have a good look. I subsequently got the job and was able to reveal that it was, in fact, me that he'd seen. The fact that I'd never been in Cork before and he rarely went there added to the spookiness of the coincidence.
Total votes: 582
Date submitted:Fri, 20 Jul 2018 12:10:38 +0000Coincidence ID:10064