"Most Wanted" connection

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.

In the 1990s I lived in Arizona. I worked for a grocery chain, and on one occasion I worked an overnight shift at a store across town. (I would occasionally pick up extra shifts at that store). After the overnight shift I learned that the armored car servicing a movie theater in the same shopping plaza had been robbed, and the driver killed. Later that summer I moved to France to do some religious service. This allowed me to move around northern France every few months. I returned home, started classes at Arizona State, and eventually transferred to a school in Utah to finish my degree. One day I got a call from a local FBI agent who wanted to talk to me about the armored car robbery from years earlier. The suspect -- who is still on the Most Wanted list -- shared several eerie connections with me, and law enforcement was convinced I was in contact with him. 1. Working the overnight shift (far from home), I had been in the vicinity of the armed robbery the day it happened. 2. My childhood home was two blocks away from the suspect's childhood home. 3. We at one point attended the same church. 4. We went to the same high school -- though not at the same time. 5. We both served religious missions in northern France (he was 3 years earlier than me), and had even lived at the same address -- though several years apart. 6. He attended the same two universities as I did and even had a few of the same professors -- we were both studying French. The thing is, we have never met. It was very difficult to convince law enforcement otherwise.
Total votes: 250
Date submitted:Wed, 18 Aug 2021 22:35:48 +0000Coincidence ID:11600