Radio coincidence

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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 listen to Radio 4 (speech radio) all day most of the time. The number of times that I hear the same word as I’m typing (or saying or reading) is so astonishing that I started to note them until the list got too long and time consuming to keep up. These words aren’t common conjunctions or anything, they are often not the sort of word you’d expect to come across in an average day let alone at the same moment, sometimes several times a day. It bothers me a lot. Of course there is the possibility that in all this background language @ whatever words per minute versus the words I’m dealing with in my own life you’d expect some coincidence, but I still find it hard to accept as not noteworthy.
Total votes: 754
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:36:08 +0000Coincidence ID:3463