Multiple coincidences within 24 hours

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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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I live in Sussex and yesterday I arranged to meet my 20 year old son in Greenwich. We both like old books, and so we went to explore a very ramshackle second hand bookshop. I picked out a couple of books, one for me and one by HG Wells that I thought might interest my son. Having followed different paths round the shop, came up to me and told me that he thought that he had seen a book by HG Wells that he hadn't heard of, but that it had only been a book about him. I then showed him the book that I was holding for him - which was a book by HG Wells that he hadn't heard of. On the train home, he was reading a book by Kurt Vonnegut called "Cats Cradle". On our journey, I was reading a somewhat trashy and not very well written science fiction novel, in which one of the characters drew a comparison between a mysterious substance that had been found with...a mysterious substance in the book "Cats Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut. This morning, I was coming too in bed, and thinking about this coincidence, and that it was a pity that I didn't know of anyone who might be collecting such instances. I turned on the radio, Radio 4 came on and the first item that I heard was your one about collecting coincidences. So I felt that I ought to let you know. Clive Wills
Total votes: 428
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:39:54 +0000Coincidence ID:3716