Coincidences?

[Sprint]

What are peoples thoughts on coincidences? Especially not just one thing being linked with another, but several events/items being linked without being expected to be.......

personally, something random happening once is chance..... twice is coincidence, three or more times and someone is screwing with you.....

[langy]

To quote one Auric Goldfinger..
"The first time it's coincidence, the 2nd time it's happenstance, the 3rd time it's enemy action"

True and correct.

[Sprint]

always wondered who came up with that one

[tony]

Theres no such thing , anything after the first one then there relly trying to get u

[JDNSW]

A lot of "coincidences" are not very unlikely - in many circumstances humans are simply not good at estimating probabilities.

As an example, on my recent trip back from Yass, I stopped, as I often do, at the craft shop in the old courthouse at Booroowa to buy some jam. I found that one of the ladies there grew up about ten miles from here. Hardly a coincidence given the relatively small population of Western NSW seventy years ago.

Similarly, I bought a second hand tractor and a little later, from a different source, an owner's handbook to go with it. The serial number in the book matched the tractor - not much of a coincidence - both came from the same area, and there were probably only a few dozen of that model, if that, sold locally.

John

[zulu Delta 534]

I am a great believer in coincidences, in that;
both my wife and I were both married on the same day,
My eldest daughter and her husband were both married on the same day, and to top it all off my youngest daughter and her husband both married on the same day as well.
It was fairly common for two kids sitting together in class often to get exactly the same wrong answer to the same exam questions.:angel:
Surely these examples must all be coincidental.
More to the point, what has happened to bring on this thread?
Regards
Glen

[Sprint]

well try these on for size

i started at my new job on monday, my niece is the receptionist, first thing i asked (we rarely bump into each other normally) was wtf her name was on facebook as i hadnt been able to find her

at lunch, i dropped into the local telstra shop to get a price on a new phone and car cradle (figured i'd look into it as i now have a job lol) and had a bit of a chat with the girl behind the counter

went home, found the name my niece had given, checked her friends list to make sure i had the right one, saw her half sister on there, and she was in the right town, so i added her

later that night, 2 people had added me, i had a look at thier facebook pages, and noticed that the person who i thought was my niece was actually the girl at the telstra shop..... checked the other persons profile, and the telstra shop girl shared the same birthday as him..... 8th may 1991 (he was born in 1985, helped my dad and i a lot when my parents got seperated) and wierder still, i havent seen him since 1991.... the year the girl from the telstra shop was born......

checked my nieces half sisters facebook friends list, and sure enough, theres 2 contacts with identical names..... and they work within a block of each other...

whats the chances of that lot happening?

[Sprint]

For a short period recently, 4 weeks to the hour to be precise, i had a gf

Not bad so far, 4 weeks to the hour.....

We got together ~11:30pm on the 19th of June.
We broke up on the 17th July in time for me to be at the pub and knocking back a couple of shots by midnight.....

Unless I've screwed up the dates (I'm 99% certain i'm not, gotta check my passports tho) this is really ****ing freaky, I am certain it was the 20th or 21st, and it was a saturday I flew out of Heathrow....

I broke up with my ex mid afternoon on the 19th june 1998, left the country the next day.

Freaky enough?

It gets better..... 19th June is a friday in both 1998 and 2009, 11pm Australian east coast time on june 19th is 2pm in the UK..... Exactly 11 years give or take an hour or two.....

From 1980 to 2020, these years have a friday 19th June:
1981 - year i was born
1987 - ultimate year of what I regard as my cult car, dont believe me pm me and I'll tell you my hotmail addy that I've been using since I first got online properly ~2002
1992 - parents divorce/property settlement was finalised (I think) and parental custody was awarded to my dad.... i didnt want to live with my mum.... (that last bit i know)
1998 - broke up with my first serious gf and left england (yes, I was young, but we'd been an item for nearly 2 years at that point, still talk occasionally)
2009 - first gf in 11 years
2015
2020

[numpty]

I'm in the same zone as Glen, in that I got married on my wife's birthday and my wife actually got married on her birthday too:eek:.........freaky!

[waynep]

I am a great believer in coincidences, in that;
both my wife and I were both married on the same day,
My eldest daughter and her husband were both married on the same day, and to top it all off my youngest daughter and her husband both married on the same day as well.
Regards
Glen

It would be an amazing conicidence ( and slightly wierd ) if you all were married on the same day ( ie you and your wife, your daughters and their husbands ). Technically possible I suppose. ;)

[Sprint]

So numpty is really screwed if he forgets your anniversary?

[Rob Bruce]

Freekey, My wife a I got married in UK, our room booked for the first night was double booked, we soon met the others with the same sirname as us, similar first names used in their family as ours, we were Ozys they were Poms. After chating for a wile and rooms were being sorted out and free drinks on the house, it turned out that our great grandfathers were brothers, and we got married on the same day :eek:

Cheers
Rob

[justinc]

this isn't as interesting , but my wife and I share the same drivers license numbers (obviously in a slightly different order:p) yet we got our license years apart.
(She thinks I should belong to some strange society of 'trainspotting' number/ sequence counters:D)

JC

[waynep]

this isn't as interesting , but my wife and I share the same drivers license numbers (obviously in a slightly different order:p) yet we got our license years apart.
(She thinks I should belong to some strange society of 'trainspotting' number/ sequence counters:D)

JC

now I'm just trying to think of the situation that would have you and your wife comparing drivers licence numbers ;):confused:

[vnx205]

There may be another explanation. :p

YouTube - It *could* just be coincidence

Less freaky perhaps, but more interesting really.

[Sprint]

regardless of statistics, whats the chances of

1: every year with a Friday 19th June in my life being of significance in my life?
2: me being single exactly 11 years give or take an hour?

[vnx205]

Given the number of people in the world, the chances that it would happen to someone are so high that it would only be remarkable if it had never happened to anyone.

Given that you have probably had thousands, tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of significant events in your life, once again it is hardly surprising that some significant events have occurred on the same dates.

They aren't just statistics. They are the laws of probability, just mathematical calculations.

[Sprint]

*meh* i reserve my right to find it disturbing that it happened

besides which, all the statistics, mathematical probabilities, etc doesnt mean anything once you consider that NOTHING in nature follows any set guidelines or rules, everything has a random factor to it

[numpty]

And it seems to have escaped most peoples attention that Friday the 13th fell on a Thursday this month:eek::o

[vnx205]

And it seems to have escaped most peoples attention that Friday the 13th fell on a Thursday this month:eek::o
Now that is freaky. :eek:

[vnx205]

*meh* i reserve my right to find it disturbing that it happened

Perhaps you mean you find it disturbing that it happened to you. There is nothing remarkable about the fact that it happened, but because it happened to you, you notice it.
It's a bit like winning the lottery. There is nothing at all remarkable about the fact that someone won the lottery because it happens every time the lottery is drawn. There is a 100% chance that someone will win it and you don't take much notice when someone else wins it. I bet you would take notice though if you won it. :p


besides which, all the statistics, mathematical probabilities, etc doesnt mean anything once you consider that NOTHING in nature follows any set guidelines or rules, everything has a random factor to it

The opposite of that is the case.
The fact that they are random is precisely why these things can be predicted by the laws of probability. So far from the randomness of nature making those mathematical probabilities meaningless, the randomness of nature is what make mathematical probabilities work.