Spitfire story

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.

I used to have an electronic archiving company. Our first client in 1999 was The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight at RAF Coningsby for whom we scanned many thousands of Warbird drawings. In September 1999 we decided to scan a copy of the Daily Telegraph to demonstrate the power of our software (which could find any page using keyword searches). I volunteered to bring in an old edition which I'd kept from the day my son was born (15/4/1983). By a strange co-incidence the front page of that edition carried a story about a guy (Ray Hannah) who had just paid a lot of money for a Spitfire. But the really spooky thing was that when I bought the Telegraph that day (27/9/1999), the front page carried an article about Mr Hannah's son, Mark who had died in a Spitfire accident that weekend. The hairs on the back of my neck still stand up when I remember this.
Total votes: 1185
Date submitted:Fri, 13 Jan 2012 07:49:31 +0000Coincidence ID:3269