Statistics in a Modern World 800
Coincidence Stories

A coincidence is a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, but with no apparent causal connection. Should we really be surprised by these coincidences? Remember that when so many "unlikely" events are possible, according to the laws of probability, some of them are bound to happen. Like these...

(M.H.) I was on my way to my Irish Step Dancing class one night and I said in the car to my mother, "I have never broken a bone before in my life! And I never will." Later that night I fractured my growth plate in my left foot and was on crutches for 5 months and had trouble walking for up to a year after. My mom told me this happens to her and I just found it too funny not to share. My parents have been married for 24 years and they have moved 11 times. Each time they get somewhere new and settle in my mom thinks, "Well, we'll be here for awhile so I'll order more checks." Each time she orders 4 check books very soon after doing so my father has come home to tell my mother that they were moving again.

(L.I.) My most recent coincidence is that my boyfriend and I discovered we have uncles with the exact same first and last name (don't worry we're not related!!). If that wasn't coincidence enough, I'm observing a class for grad school next week and the professor also has that same name. I now know 3 people with the exact same first and last name.

(E.Z.) My boyfriend and I have been dating about a year and a half, but back in January we were talking about a book we both read before we knew each other (re both literature majors). He was saying how he had to wait a while to read it because the person who had it checked out of the Carnegie Library kept renewing it. He also said this person wrote a lot in the margins, which I happen to even in library books m ashamed to say (I t help it). We later found out, from things I had written down and things he remembered, that I was the person who had the book checked out before him. We met about six months after we both finished reading it.canIdowe

(B.C.) The most memorable "coincidence" that I can recall happened when my family was on vacation in New Mexico. As we pulled into our hotel parking lot on the first day of our vacation, we saw a family who we knew from our hometown, near Washington, D.C. They were in New Mexico on a volunteer trip through their church. They were just about to leave and we had just arrived, so it was a "coincidence" that out paths crossed several thousand miles away from our homes!

One time, I went to the mall with my friend and as we were pulling into a space in the parking lot, these two guys pulled into the space across from us. A few hours later, we headed back to my car to leave. As I was starting the engine, my friend caught my attention and told me to look in front of me. Those same guys were getting into their car, preparing to leave, too. We arrived and left at the same time.

(B.L.J.)When I got accepted into Pitt, my ex-girlfriend took me to Ichiban to celebrate. After our meal, we got the check and the traditional fortune cookies. My ex gave me one of the cookies and when I opened it my fortune read "Your future looks bright". It may be a lame coincidence but it was the first one that popped into my head, perhaps because I still have the fortune posted on my refrigerator.

(K.H.) To preface I am originally from Tennessee but moved to West Virginia in the eighth grade. My coincidence happened while I was on a cruise. It was the end of my senior year and I was celebrating with my parents. I noticed that there was another family on the boat from TN. After getting a closer look I realized not only were they from TN, but it was a family that I had grown up with. I hadn't seen them in years and yet there they were on the same random cruise as me.

(E.M.) When I went on foreign exchange, my best friend did too, but she went to France and I went to Slovakia. We obviously kept in touch over the course of the year, and we'd talk about our host families and basically everything we did. She was telling me about her host brother, who had gone on exchange in the US a year before. She mentioned that his best friend from exchange was from Slovakia, and they'd met in the US on exchange the year before. I asked what his name was, since most Rotary exchange students know each other. She told me his name, and I immediately realized that it was my own host brother in Slovakia. It was a super weird coincidence that two best friends from Ohio would have host brothers who were best friends when on exchange in the US.

(D.F.) I am from Philadelphia. I was at the Pete and met a kid that I started talking to about where we were from. It turns out I played on his team in little league. Small world, different city.

(J.B.) I went on a cruise to the Caribbean the same week as my friend, who was on a different cruise, but also to the Caribbean. While I was on the beach in St. Thomas, I saw my friend sitting on the beach about 15 feet away.

(K.K.) My coincidence story happened to me not too long ago. I recently moved into a new apartment. My landlord knew a lot about the history of the place and since I'm interested in that stuff, I asked her about it. She said that the place was many things, an orphanage among them. I mentioned this to my mom, who then mentioned it in passing to my grandmother. She said that she thought her mother in law (my grandfathers mom) was in that orphanage. Sure enough, it was confirmed by my grandfathers sister that I am indeed living in the same place my great grandmother once did.

(A.S.) So, my coincidence story starts when I was in early High School (my crazier days) and I was at a random house party with a group of my friends. The house ended up getting trashed during this event and the mother of the house was very very upset by this at the time. So a few years go by and I had a few changes in my life and I thought about that house party a few times wishing I could get in touch with that woman to apologize for what we did to her home. I had changed friends by then and I moved to the city and wasn't really sure who those people were, I only remember what she looked like. So anyway, when I was 21 (about 5 years later) I was telling my girlfriend at the time this story and about my regrets. Well, she works at a gas station and in the middle of the story I look outside and I see the mother pull in to get gas (about 3 hours from where her home must have been!). So I got to run outside and try to amend pasts but I never forgot about that crazy coincidence.

(A.K.) At the start of last year I became very close friends with a boy in one of my classes. He and I connected because of the class, but then both found out that the other was involved in the theatre department, meaning we had an even deeper connection than we realized. Some weeks later, towards the end of October and far into our friendship, we found that we had the same birthday! November 16 will always be a day we share now. And even funnier; one of my best friends from home shares the day with us as well. Scorpios stick together I suppose.

(K.S.) One year in high school my family and I went on a trip to Pittsburgh to visit my grandparents. At the hotel, the workers told us that we did not have a reservation. Confused, my family had to create another one. The next day the hotel called to apologize because they had given the hotel to the wrong Spence family! (Almost similar to your coincidence experience!)

(J.N.) My wife and I were discussing for the first time when to buy a car for her and we settled on Spring of 16 we'd start to look. The next day her car broke down and we now own a brand new car.

(T.J.) My coincidence is when I was in a sporting good store a few years ago, I happened to meet an individual with the same last name as mine "Zeuch", same spelling and pronunciation.

(A.J.) In high school I applied for universities all over the United States for somewhat random reasons. A random school I chose was Florida Southern which had about 2000 students, and is located in a small town. When I went to visit I meet a girl there who mentioned that she knew only one guy from Tennessee in the whole school. Later in the visit, she saw him and called him over to say hello. It was in talking to him that I found one that he, only one year older, lived in the same part of Nashville as me, had went to the same high school as me and was in the same international baccalaureate program which in itself only had about 100 juniors and seniors in it. The s classes where all down the same hallway and had a shared lunch regardless of the year of the student. We had took the same classes, knew the same teachers and students and walked the same halls for three years and never met or seen each other, but here we both were in a tiny school in a random part of Florida only now meeting for unknown reasons.program

(A.H.) "Coincidences" seem to happen all the time. Which really makes you wonder: are they really coincidences at all? I see my friends from high school very rarely because I was the only one in my friend group that went to an out of state college. I hadn't seen my one friend, Olivia, in two years. When I was home over the weekend, I went to a local grocery store called Wegmans. Wegmans is extremely popular, so much that, my siblings and I have a game called "the Wegmans game", where whoever sees someone they know first (and says hello) wins the game. So, on a random weekend in October, I ran into my friend Olivia. "What a coincidence," I said. But really it wasn't a coincidence at all. We live a few neighborhoods apart in our hometown, she still lives there, and Wegmans is the hotspot for running into familiar faces.

(C.V.) My story of a coincidence happened on Wednesday the 28th, right after the lecture on coincidences. Right after class, I meet with my program director for the first time. We were chatting and I mentioned I was from the Philadelphia suburbs, and she said she was too. Well, she was from Morton and that is the exact town I am from. Morton is only 0.4 square miles and has just 2,700 people, compared to Delaware country, which has over 550,000 and the city itself has over a million and a half. It was just odd that we are both from the exact same place just outside the city and meet in Pittsburgh. It was just odd because we were talking about coincidences and then this coincidence occurred just 10 minutes after class.

(M.S.) I was coming back from school in New York to Maryland for Thanksgiving. The weather was pretty bad so my train had been delayed a couple hours. I was waiting in the station when I saw my great aunt and uncle. I went over to talk to them, and it turned out that they were supposed to catch a train to Boston, but it had been delayed too. These are relatives that I very rarely see (in fact, I wasn't sure I even recognized them at first), and they had only come into NYC on a chance for the weekend. We were traveling in opposite directions, and if my train had left on time I wouldn't have seen them at all. I thought it was a nice coincidence that we had ended up running into each other, especially because Penn Station is so big.

[ Home | Calendar | Assignments | Handouts ]