I have a cousin whose son is a driving instructor.

Youngest daughter has just booked her first driving lessons with a company recommended by a school colleague. The driving instructor is my cousin’s son.

My sister’s ex-husband is a drum tutor.

My youngest daughter’s Teaching Assistant has a daughter who is one of his pupils.

Anyone else found anything similar?

I live in Yorkshire. R kid lives in Warwickshire. We were both in London for different things on a random day of the week with no prior knowledge.

We passed each other on the escalators at Green Park tube.

Think of it this way:

Probability of unlikely event occurring in any 1 particular day is say 1000000:1

But how may events occur during your day? 100, 10000, 1000000? So in an event-driven universe, unlikely things are bound to happen.

I think that’s how its meant to be explained away.

Used to live in Bristol and my brother’s girlfriend lived in Liverpool. Was on a day trip to London and happened to be in Harrods looking at caviar. I bumped into a girl next to me at the counter and it was her.

The missus played an April fool on me, saying my car windscreen had been smashed. Later that day she got a text from a friend of hers, saying someone had smashed her windscreen! Spooky.

Humans have a complete inability to judge probabilities – it’s well documented!

<pedant>It wouldn’t be a coincidence if it wasnt random</pedant>

Best/worst/weirdest one for me.

After getting married and driving back home from our honeymoon I took my new wife to a beauty spot where as a kid I used to chill out (Mortehoe).

Some 150 miles from where we live.

We got there, only to see my last x girlfriend sitting in the exact spot I wanted to show my wife.

That was a tought one to explain 😉

You could have asked for a threesome 🙂

Knew a chap for a year. He was sat in our lounge in Sheffield one evening and commented that a lady in a picture on the wall was familiar. Turns out he had gone to school in India with my sister – and his parents were house parents of that school, who had taken over as house parents in 1978, replacing my grandparents who had done the job for 5 years…. 😯

It was a very long drive home as it was Trimix.

We also spotted a Adder on the path going down to the spot, never seen a Adder before or after, maybe it was a sign 😉

Been discussing this with Mrsjova and me Mum.

We moved from MK to Worcestershire 13 years ago and just after the move had a holiday in Ilfracombe.

As we were checking out of the hotel on the Saturday a family from 3 houses away in MK were checking in.

When I left school I joined the Army and went to college in Harrogate. Just before the first half-term holiday I was ordered to go and see one of the instructors. He wanted to offer me a lift home to Horsham in Sussex as his Mum lived in the next road to my parents and he was going to see her.

Ilfracombe is next to Mortehoe, I can see a patern here!

Wonder if Ilfracomb has special powers 😉

Live in the BVI. I’m from Guernsey, my dad is from Manchester.

One of my mates here was born in Manchester. Found out last night that His Grandfather used to Collect my Grandfathers Funeral insurance money. His dad went to the same school as my dad.

My dad used to work for one of my other Friends step-fathers.

My Girlfriend is related to the same friend. But didn’t know until we moved out here.

One of my Ex-Girlfriends (from Guernsey) used to live here and left a month before I arrived, but also went to University with one of my Other friends and Girlfriends ex boss.

Small World

I live and work in Sheffield. Working in client’s offices in london a few weeks back, interviewed a random guy who’d come from Suffolk. He had a northern accent so I asked where from, he said Sheffield. I asked where, he said “Wickersley” which is actually the suburb of Rotherham where I grew up. His dad’s the butcher.

Also, passing through St Pancras a few weeks before that, I bumped into my mate’s mrs. Not really a massive coincidence as St P is the train hub to the north – but still.

We were out in a big group on Tuesday. There are two older couples on another table, and one of them asks the waiter who our lot are making all the noise in the restaurant. The waiter says “It’s the William Hill lot” and one of the ladies says her son works for Hills.

So Dad comes over, and as I know their son, I go over and chat and even tell the Mum what a likeness she has to the son.

Turns out after a while their son isn’t Jarrod in Marketing but Gerrard in security. Well I did have a bottle on wine inside of me and yeah, it was noisy and all.

An Australian girl joined the Glasgow company I worked for. Turned out she was bridesmaid for the daughter of the guy who drove my mother to hospital to give birth to me. Probably not a proper dictionary-definition coincidence, but was definitely a weird thing to discover.

How many people need to be in the same room, before 2 share a birthday?

Something very low, like 17.

correlation doesn’t imply causality.

I used to work with a girl who was from Texas. She went back to the US and while I was on holiday in San Diego, I bumped into her in a restaurant. Turns out she was just visiting a friend for the weekend.

Everday i eat and every day a shit…..seems like i’m wasting my time during these two chores

Everday i eat and every day a shit…..seems like i’m wasting my time during these two chores

i just do them at the same time. mutlitasking – frees up time for riding. (which kind of riding?….either!)

How many people need to be in the same room, before 2 share a birthday?

Something very low, like 17.
I seem to remember 26 – certainly its unfeasably low. Just don’t seem right but I have seen it in action.

it could even be as low as two.

or as high as 366. crazy shit huh….

TandemJeremy – Member

How many people need to be in the same room, before 2 share a birthday?

Something very low, like 17.

I seem to remember 26 – certainly its unfeasably low. Just don’t seem right but I have seen it in action.

Two.
My wife and I share the same birthday.
No excuse for forgetting it.

Was in Mumbai a couple of years ago and desperate to leave so changed my flight and got the last seat on the next flight back to the UK. The bloke I was sat next to lived in my tiny Hampshire village, population 600. I even got a lift home.

Aren’t all coincidences random?

Birthdays thing – its 23 folk in a room ( I googled for it) until its a 50 / 50 chance of two folk sharing the same birthday. IIRC by the time you get to 30 folk ie a class of school kids its a 2:1 on that two of them share a birthday

which is why statistics is meaningless bollocks. you can manipulate the numbers to prove whatever point you like.

i live in madrid was staying at my mates in London and bumped into my gf’s mate who normally lives in edinburgh. was a bit freaky as she’s only lived there for a month

I was staying in Paris many years ago, and we popped out for a kebab. Got chatting, as you do when on hols, and it turns out the blokes running that kebab shop were cousins on the local kebab shop back where we lived.

A mate of mine bumped into the secretary where he worked, in Cairo bus station. Thing is, he weren’t even sposed to be in Cairo, but had been transported there from Israel, after the kibbitz he was staying on came under attack from Hezbollah or someone.

As for sharing birthdays; I was born on the 29th February, and have only met about half a dozen people in my life, born on the 29th. None on the same day as me.

I’m also left-handed, which makes me even rarer. If I ever met a left-handed person who shared my exact birthday, I’d be propply freaked out.

Ain’t hard to work out how many left handed people born on the 29th feb Rudeboy.

Jambo – that is not manipulated statistics but calculated probability. Absolutely true and exact. follow the link for the calculation.

STB; well, if I’m 4x rarer than others, and 1 in 7 are left handed, am I therefore 28x rarer? Or is the incidence of left handers born on 29th Feb much lower?

I have no birthday in the Mayan calendar.

See – weren’t hard.

🙂

TJ – granted but just cos its probable, doesn’t mean its gonna happen.

arrived in christchurch NZ last november.

Met a girl who recognised me and the missus as scots … she was also from scotland

so

“where you from”

“kyle of lochalsh” she answers

turns out she is a friend of my girlfriends university flat mate in st andrews.

i was hitching in OZ, just outside surfers paradise. Car stopped to pick me up, middle aged couple, scottish. Jumped in and started talking, said where i was from in Scotland, bloke said “Surname ?” so told him he then reeled off a perfect description of my house – turns out he was my postie for 15 years before he moved to OZ. They gave me a lift and I stayed with them for a week and had fantastic fun with their oldest daughter who was 19 and very very accomodating 😉

Utterly random.

Mate of mine books for us all to go to a comedy club in Bristol couple of weeks ago…I just knew the comedian was Irish but didn’t look up any other info on him. After a few giggles about some stuff he talked about, he realised there was a connection between us. Turns out we went to school together.

In a random bar in Dallas…get talking to the (irish) bar manager, he says “yeah, I know two lads from your end of the world…they’re living downtown, not far from here”…tells me their names, turns out they were guys I hung out with as a teenager.

Summer 1989, I’m in a DSS office in Ealing sorting myself out with a NI No. for a summer’s work in London. Ask the person sat at the table with me (filling out the same form) about some question, turns out they’re called “Darcy” as well…”fancy that” says I. This was before the days of numbered tickets…a while later, the person behind the counter calls out “darcy”, me and the other guy stand up….as well as one other person in the office…there were only a dozen or so people in the office!!

When Blind Date used to be on on Saturday nights, me and my ex used to have a game where we tried to pick the contestant we thought the other would fancy. On one show, whilst the ex was cooking in the kitchen, there were 3 guys wanting to be picked. One was the spitting image of Charlie Sheen (my ex had a thing on him) so I called out to her that I thought that there was a bloke I thought she would like. When she came in from the kitchen and saw this guy she asked if he came from Milton Keynes – which he did. Evidently this Blind Date contestant was a former boyfriend of hers!

A couple of years ago was in a small hotel reception in Luang Prabang in Laos and spotted a couple who were members of the gym I go to in Bristol. If we had been a minute either side we wouldn’t have met.

RudeBoy – Member
STB; well, if I’m 4x rarer than others, and 1 in 7 are left handed, am I therefore 28x rarer? Or is the incidence of left handers born on 29th Feb much lower?

I think it’s probably lower and here’s how;

There is only one 29th Feb every 4 years so the chances of being born on that day are 1:1461. If left-handed people are 1:7 then the chances of you finding another 29th Feb/Left handed person of any age is 1:10227.

If the average age for males in the UK is 76 that means there are 19 leap years in the time frame giving a 1:19 chance of a match or a 1:194313 chance of finding someone who is left-handed and born on the same day and year as you.

As the population of the UK was 61,000,000 in mid 2007 then there are likely to be 313* (male and female) other people in the UK.

*As statistics are not my strong point any correction of assumptions and figures will be accepted without argument.