A man in Connecticut

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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.

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In 2014 my school in Melbourne Australia was holding an art exhibition. The curator of the exhibition was American, partner of a former student of the school. We were chatting about where he came from in the US. I mention I had a friend who was Head of a school in New Hampshire. When I mention the school, he said they used to play sport against the school. I asked him which school he attended. It was Deerfield in Massachusetts. I said the only person who i knew who worked there was a person called David Dun***. It turned out this fellow had David as a teacher. I met David in 2005 at an education conference in Washington. I noticed his family named matched a person I had met in a school in New Hampshire in 1987. It turned out that this person was his father. The coincidence continues. A close colleague was visiting a sister school in Connecticut in 2017. She was given a person to look after her for the day. This fellow had worked in Melbourne in the 1980s, for a year. When she was introduced, the fellow wondered if she new her brother David's acquaintance in Melbourne - which turned out to be me. These experiences happen to me all the time, but this is the most extreme. Might be because I have worked in three quite large schools. Who knows, but thought it may help your research.
Total votes: 258
Date submitted:Sun, 31 May 2020 02:53:22 +0000Coincidence ID:10463