Unlikely Meeting

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.

40 years ago I was a young electronics design engineer working at H W Sullivan in Murray Road, Orpington, Kent. I was working on a project for the Post Office (now British Telecom) and was sent to the London Patent Office to check that the design did not infringe an existing patent. To my astonishment, at the Office I met someone with whom I had been at school four years earlier. I do not recall his name. We had not been close friends and had not kept in touch. This in itself seemed an unlikely coincidence, but I was even more surprised to find that he was working for a division of Vickers Engineering, in offices also in Murray Road, just across the road from H W Sullivan. I have not seen him since. Paul Allen
Total votes: 200
Date submitted:Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:11:40 +0000Coincidence ID:5292