Your cousin lives across the hall

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.

When I attended a very large state college for my freshman year, I spent a lot of time in my friends dorm room. I also got to know the people living across the hall from his room and we became friends as well. At the same time my grandfather reached out to a distant relative who he had not spoken to for many years. They discussed their lives and discovered that although they lived several states away they both had grandchildren attending the same large state university. When he told me the name of my 4th cousin (who I never knew existed) it turned out that he was one of the 10 out of 60,000+ people I had met in my first few weeks. Furthermore it turned out that we were in the same major and in the following years had a few classes together, encountering one another often.
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Date submitted:Thu, 19 Aug 2021 01:09:34 +0000Coincidence ID:11613