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...
(T.S.)Just last night my boyfriend and I were riding the elevator up to my room on the 12th floor in tower A. I was telling him that I needed to get in touch with my friend, Stacy, because I needed to ask her a question. Just then the elevator stopped at the 10th floor. Low and behold, when the elevator doors opened, Stacy and her boyfriend were standing there. They were trying to get an elevator down, but her boyfriend, Mark, had accidentally pressed the up button. It was definitely convenient for me because I got to ask her my question. I suppose that the coincidence of seeing her last night was really not so unlikely. We do live in the same building and all. The fact that I had just mentioned that I needed to talk to her, did make the situation a little strange, though.
(T.M.) When I was a freshman in high school, I pitched for the baseball team. During the city championship, i threw a complete game with only 27 pitches, (1 pitch per batter, 27 batters the whole game). We won the game by a score of 7-0, and I have only heard of that happening one other time.
(W.G.) I was on my way to the University of Pittsburgh from my home in New Jersey before Arrival Survival. On my way there I saw someone that looked like they were on their way to a school as well at a rest stop about halfway through Pennsylvania. I didn't see his car or anything, but he just seemed to be on his way to move in to a college. When I moved in to my room the next day I was surprised to see this person again because he was my neighbor on my floor.
(E.H.) When I began Pitt this fall, I became friends with a guy named Jon. We started hanging out and talking more. Eventually, we found out that a cousin of mine who lives in Pittsburgh is best friends with a cousin of Jon's who also lives in Pittsburgh. It was a funny outcome. The occurences of this happening is probably not so unlikely because out of all the people that I met here, there are pretty good odds that atleast one person has a relative who is friends with one of my relatives.
(S.M.) My coincidence story happened before my freshman year in high school. My family and my friend's family went on vacation to Hilton Head, South Carolina. One day my friend and I were in the ocean and we started randomly talking to some girls near us. It turns out they weren't only from Pittsburgh, but they went to the same high school as I would soon be attending. I guess its really not so unlikely for this to happen, since my family goes on vacation to Hilton Head nearly every year and its a popular vacation spot for people from this area.
(J.D.) Once when I was out with my friends at a concert and I lost my wallet with my ticket and most of my money. I had a$20 bill stashed in my sock in case of any emergences. One of my friends had come with us, but had no ticket, he planed on buying his at the door. Well, The price of the tickets were 25 each, and he had just enough for his, my other friends were broke. As we walked to the ticket counter, A woman walked up and offered us 2 tickets for 40 bucks, my friend and I split the price and both got in. I guess this is not really that unlikely, because with so many people attending the concert, there was a good chance that someone had bought tickets, and ended up needing to do something else. Since tickets were not sold out, she would have had to lower the price if she wanted them gone quickly.
(B.L.) Last Tuesday, when I was doing laundry, the majority of a load of clothing was stolen straight from the dryer. The clothes didn't turn up at all until yesterday when I was doing laundry for the first time since the theft incident. I noticed in the dryer next to the one I was about to use, an article of clothing that resembled one that I owned (though I didn't realize this item, specifically, had been stolen from me). Upon closer inspection, I noticed one of my other garments that had gone missing. When I opened that dryer to look through it, everything that had been stolen was sitting there, including some of my best friend's clothing that I had been washing for her and was also stolen that day. Nothing in the load didn't belong to either me or my friend, everything that I'd recognized as missing was present, including some other items I didn't realize had been stolen. It was all there; the load had just finished its dryer cycle and everything was still warm. I suppose this isn't exactly a coincidence. It's obvious that both the thief and myself do laundry on Tuesdays, so that fact made it more likely that I would find the clothing. The time frame on Tuesdays on both weeks was similar, again making it more likely that I would recover the missing garments. So, though I thought this was a complete miracle, it is by no means statistically impossible that I should have found my laundry. Nonetheless, as I expected never to see my clothing again, I was surprised and pleased.
(A.K.) Early last summer, I went to a birthday party for a friend of mine. By coincidence, she and I have the same birthday even though she's a year younger, but at the party I learned that there was someone else there who shared our birthday, for a total of three. Everyone thought this was pretty weird, so we decided to see if anyone else in the room shared a birthday (there were about 15 or 18 people there). It turned out that there were three other people who had the same birthday, different from mine. Everyone was blown away by this coincidence, figuring that the chances of six people having two birthdays between them in that size group was pretty small. After doing the probability exercise in class about people in a group having the same birthday, I know that this was not totally unlikely, or at least not as unlikely as we all thought it was. The chance of two people in a group of 18 have the same birthday is about .35 (using the formula given in lecture), so there was a decent chance that two of us had the same birthday, but I still think it was pretty coincidental that there were two groups of three people that had the same birthday.
(K.M.) I remember when I got into a car accident about two years ago, I had a dream the night before that I got into a car accident. At first I was scared, thinking it was a sign and I had some sort of secret powers. Then I began thinking rationally and thought that car accidents are pretty common and so are dreams about car accidents, as I discovered after doing some research. I had just gotten my license six days earlier and driving had been on my mind. So, in the end I came to the conclusion that the occurences were not so unlikely.
(J.H.) The other night I got into a big fight with my girlfriend, and we weren't talking. The next day I went out to dinner, and got a fortune cookie. The fortune read "There appear to be many clouds; but they quickly pass." Sure enough, by the next afternoon my girlfriend and I had made up, and everything was back to being wonderful. Since I do not believe in fortunes or psychics or anything of the sort, I found this to be a funny and interesting coincidence. I will not count the fact that it could of been an actual message of the future, because I think such a thing is silly. But, I do think there could have been a confounding variable. I could have tried harder to make amends subconsciously, because of the fortune being in the back of my mind. However, I doubt this is true, because generally I discount such fortune predictions.
(J.K.) My coincidence happened when I was 9 or 10 years old. I was down in Virginia Beach with my family on vacation and my sister and I ran into a family that we knew from back home. It was so weird because we're from the Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre area and Virginia Beach is like 5 or 6 hours away. I guess it's not that unlikely because it's a vacation area where people come from all over to go to and it's not like I run into people I know from far-away places all the time.
(L.T.) My name is really unusual and so is the spelling. LEIGH. one day I went to use the bathroom one floor up from me in my dorm. I came out of the bathroom and saw on the door the name Leigh. I tried to open the door for it was my room and then I realized that I was one floor up. Another girl had my same name and spelling and was one floor up from me in the same position as my room if it were one floor up. I thought this was a coincidence to find someone with my name and correct spelling right above me in my dorm. It seems really unlikely that this would happen but with a school this large, it is ignorant to think that I'm the only Leigh here.
(B.H.) A personal coincidence that happend to me was my sophomore year I got housing lottery #91 here at pitt. This was significant because the lower the #, the better chance you had at getting to live anywhere on campus you wanted to. This was definitely a coincidence because, as far as i know, the distribution of #'s is random. I don't know exactly how many #'s they give out, but i have seen #'s above 5,000. So, there was not a very good chance to recieve a # under 100, which is considered to be a great #. If there were only 5,000 numbers given out, which i know there are more than that, there is only a 2% chance of getting a number under 100. All in all, it was definitely a coincidence and lucky that i had recieved a number that low.
(D.L.) My story happened two or three weeks ago. It was a Friday night and me and my one buddy were asking around to see what kind of fun things there were to do. I asked two of my friends from home who also go here where they were going, because i haven't seen them in a while, but they didn't know at the time. So, a few hours go by, I didn't hear from my two friends from home, so I went out to a friends house on Dawson St. We're there for a while, then we decide to go home. On the way home, we are walking and we look down on the sidewalk and we see written in the snow the word "party." So we decide this sounds like a good time so we go in the house. There, we find my two friends from home, which I thought was absolutely amazing. How amazing was it though? The house where this word party was written happened to be close friends with my one friend from home. Second, the street it was on was on the most direct route home from Dawson. The only compounding variable here is the actual word "party" written in the snow, which seemed to me to be a very unusual occurrence indeed. Given this word being written, the probability that me and my friend what see this and promptly go into the house were high, so all in all, not that amazing a story.
(M.H.) I play online poker and just recently I met a friend of mine from back home in a card room and had no idea he would be playing that particular day. There are hundreds of rooms to choose from and thousands of players so the probability that we would choose the same room was not high. It may not have been that coincidental since we are both avid players and typically play the same limit games.
(T.G.) This one time I was reading a magazine and can a cross a girl who my grandmother said loked like me she was my age and had my same first name. we like the same color and are same hgt. TaMisha Greathouse her name had a small m though.
(P.K.) During Thanksgiving break, my dad told me a dirty Christmas joke (the nature of joke is irrelevant). The next day, while walking to Heinz Field for the Pittsburgh and Miami football, my roommate's dad told me the exact same joke. I was shocked at first, but then I thought about it: it was after Thanksgiving, and maybe Christmas talk was on the radio and they both heard it. Maybe both of them got forwarded the joke via e-mail. So, I wouldn't consider it that great of a coincidence.
(M.B.) This actually happened a few weeks ago. I had just received a phone call from a friend that I hadn't heard from in at least two years. We talked about how long it had been since we last saw each other and then that weekend I ended up seeing her at a Wal-Mart that's about 25 minutes from my hometown (She is from the same town as me). It was pretty funny that we had just talked about not seeing one another and then we saw each other that same weekend, but I guess looking back on it, it wasn't all that strange because of the fact that this is the only Wal-Mart in the immediate area probably made the chances of us running into each other greater than if there had been more than one in the area.
(G.T.) The coincidence story that happened to me occured about 2 years ago when I was living in Cleveland, OH. My family had just relocated there from the Pittsburgh area and we were about to go on vacation to Ocean City, MD. Much to my surprise one of my good friends from Pittsburgh whom I hadn't seen since I left for Cleveland was actually staying in the same condominium complex where my family had also rented out. I thought this to be very unlikely because when you think about the possibility of vacationing in the same city, let alone staying in the same condo, coupled with the fact that you had no intention of this taking place, it is rather rare for this kind of occurance to happen. Although seemingly impossible, this actually happened and I felt that it was a rather large coincidence.
(K.Z.) One time when a group of friends and I were going to a restaurant we made reservations. When we got there they said that we only reserved a table for two people instead of our group of eight. We found out later that there were two reservations under my friend Kirstin's name. One for two people and one for eight. When the the couple came in before us they gave them our table for eight.
(J.H.) "Pillow People" were fairly popular when I was very young. When I was no more than 3, I got the Pillow Dragon. He's green with purple spots and purple spikes on his back, anda very small felt tooth coming out of his mouth. While I was in grade school, I occassionally met someone who had a Pillow Person, but no one ever had the Pillow Dragon. I was special because of my cool pillow! As a freshman in college, I was randomly assigned a roommate from Buffalo, New York. Pillow Dragon stayed at home, among many other stuffed animals (only select few could come to my college bed if I ever wanted to sleep on it). Somehow in the middle of the year, my roommate and I got to talking about childhood toys. I have no idea how or why, but one of us mentioned Pillow People. I mentioned that I had a Pillow Person, except it wasn't a person because it was a dragon. Sarah gave me a look of shock, and said she had a Pillow Person Dragon too. We described our dragons and came to the conclusion that we had the exact same Pillow Dragon!! She had also never met someone with the dragon. So we both brought our pillows back and Pillow Dragon now happily sits on my bed, occassioanlly meeting Sarah's Pillow Dragon. This situation is highly unlikely for a couple reasons. First of all, we both recieved the pillows as presents when we were about 3 years old. Yes, there were probably at least a thousand Pillow Dragons made, but most kids lose or give away their toys when they grow older. Sarah and I both held onto these pillows. The next unlikely part of this story is coming to discover that we both had the pillow, when neither of us brought it to school with us, nor was the pillow one our most prized childhood toys, just a passing comment! So, since the age of 3, Sarah and I were destined to be roommates.
(L.M.) Well when I was in high school one of best friends and the first and middle name of Brandon Ramon. In the summer before going to the tenth grade, I dated a guy named Brenden. Then later that year a guy named Brandon, who wasn't my best friend was interested in me. In the eleventh grade I began to date a guy named Ramon. When that was over I ended up dating my best friend Brandon Ramon. He thought that it must have been fate, I thought it was just plain weird. I do not think the occurance was really so unlikely since Brandon is a common name for a guy in the United States.
(Y.O.) One night I ordered Chinese food and began to eat it just as my mother got home. My mother does not normally buy lottery tickets, but while coming home from work she decided to buy a Pick Four ticket from the New York Lottery. Just as she was deciding what numbers to pick, I began to open my fortune cookie and gave her the first four numbers on the ticket. My mother selected those numbers and won. Thought the prize was approximately $50, not millions by far, I still felt that that was a big coincidence. What was the probability that the numbers on the fortune cookie would be the winning number, the probability that I would receive that particular fortune cookie, and the probability my mother would buy a lottery ticket that day? Thinking back on that day I still believe that those occurrences were very unlikely. Since then I have tried many fortune cookie numbers, but none have worked.
(J.R.) One coincidence story that I can remember is that when we had the old car. It was a blue cutlass supreme, but I don't remember the year. Once, when we were coming out of the store we were going to our car and the same exact car was right next to it. The other car was blue like ours, it was the same year, and it even had the same hubcaps. In addition, it was parked right next to ours. My mom said, "What are the chances of that?" So, I said, "I don't know." Now that I think about it. It isn't so unlikely that this would happen. Oldsmobile made thousands of those cars that year, so it was bound to happen that the same year would be in the same parking lot. In addition, there are usually only a few "main" colors that cars come out as, like white, silver, black, red, and blue. Blue is a pretty popular color so I isn't surprising that someone would choose that color. Also, the hubcaps came with the car so there isn't going to be too much variation in the styles. The fact that the car was right next to ours was pretty random. The only reasoning for it is that the drivers of the other car just grabbed that spot since it was closer to the store than some of the others. So, in all it wasn't too unlikely that it would happen. It's just that it's easier to remember things that we think are strange.
(N.K.) This is Nina, and ahem, I must admit this coincidence is not all that remarkable but it struck me as such at the time. I had the misfortune to embarass myself repeatedly in front of this guy Michael that worked at the hospital I was interning at in high school. What happened was I was swiveling around in my desk chair, and unfortunately the office dress code was heels. One day Michael walked by and said hello to me. I was so startled, that when I swung around in my chair, one heel flew off my foot and hit him right in the knee. Needless to say, it was mortifying. The coincidence is that subsequently, for the better part the 3 month internship, no matter which part of the hospital I happened to be in at the time, whenever something embarassing happened to me (like, oh, I don't know....spilling stuff, getting my hair caught in the elevator, (the list goes on and on), ) Michael always happened to be there....and I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME. I thought it was remarkable because he was usually confined to one floor, and only visited other floors to run errands that he should happen to catch me embarassing myself all the time..... Perhaps this is isn't such an unbelievable coincidence....maybe I'm just cursed like that, who knows?
(H.N.) Last year I enrolled into Biology I course. I actually had to drop the class after the first week because I had a few class changes. Well as the semester progressed, I received an email from a biology professor stating that I scored an 89% on one of his exams. I was shocked, I wasn't even enrolled in that class anymore yet I was still receiving a grade. But next to the "my name" it has a social security number which certainly was not mine. The occurrence of someone having a very "rare" name like mine and enrolled in the same class that I was at the moment was very coincidental. I was still wondering if the "real" Hai was receiving their email. Well I was really curious about this person so I went on the Pitt website and tired to find this mystery person, but I had no idea what that person's last name was. So that person still remains a mystery, and yet throughout the semester I was still receiving emails in which I was very content with the grade even though they were not "really" mine to start with.
(I.G.) One day in highschool, two of my friends and I wore the same exact clothes (same type of shirt and jeans from the same store!). Although we were from a similar neighborhood, this was still very unlikely as this happened with only people who I was friends with and it happened in one day! All in all, the probabilty that this could happen was very low, when accounting for the different clothing stores, different patterns of clothing, the pattern of who one is friends with, and all this occuring in one single day.
(S.T.) I went to a field hockey camp at Syracuse University and a girl on my team was named Erin Tibbetts. My last name is also Tibbetts, and it is not a very common name and it is not often spelled like that. I found it coincidental that not only did she have the same last name spelled right but she was also on the same team as me. I guess it might not have been all that coincidental though because the leaders of the program may have seen the name and put us together on purpose, assuming we were related. And there are obviously people with the same last name who are not related in the world. And with all the improbable events that can happen, it is evident that some will occur.
(A.A.) When I was about 12 years old my friends and I were sitting around trying to cause some mischief, and somebody suggested to start making prank phone calls. He called random numbers, and pretended to be doing these ridiculous surveys, which most people hung up on once hearing some of the absurd questions. He then asked me to pick a phone number. I knew a wide range of numbers of which the first three digits would work with our area code (965,966,967,336, etc.) and randomly picked one, and then randomly gave out the last four digits. Someone answered the phone on the other end, and my friend gave a survey full of weird questions, which the person answered. My friend then, to make the false survey complete, asked for his name. The guy on the other end gave his name, and it was the obnoxious older brother of one of our friends who wasn't with us that day. So the coincidence was that I gave a random, 7 digit number, (at least the last four digits were random) and it turned out to be someone who not only we knew, but lived in our neighborhood. It seemed to me that the odds of picking that number out of thousands of other possibilities for our area (Allentown), was extremely low.
(K.S.) Last semester I took Biology one and in the class we had four tests. The tests were color coded pink, yellow, blue and white. I received a pink test each of the four times. I was unable to choose my test. Before each test we were not allowed to enter the room and we were led in by the TA's and they seated us. Then the TA's handed out the tests and each row got two alternating colors. For example row one receives pink and yellow and row two receives blue and white. I thought that this was a large coincidence since I received a pink test copy on all four different test dates. I was unable to choose my seat and the tests were ranmdomly distributed. THe probability of this occuring is (1/4)*(1/4)*(1/4)*(1/4)=.0039 or a chance of 1/256. This is an awfully big coincidence that i received a pink test copy each time.
(S.R.) I was playing texas hold-em poker where each person gets two cards and then five cards get dealt out on the table and each person tried to make their best five card hand. I was playing with one other person and i was dealt two kings in my hand. I bet a lot and the other person stayed in. When the five cards were dealt onb the table they were all low cards with assorted suits, 2 spades, one heart, one club, and one diamond. I was sure that i had the best hand with my pair of kings so i bet all my money. Unfortunately on the same hand that i had two kings in my hand, the person that i was playing against had two aces and he won. In this case, the occurances were very unlikely. The odds of getting two of the same cards are 4/52 times 3/51. Add to that the fact that we both got two of the same card, and the only ones that would beat me were the aces. See you on Friday!!!
(C.V.) When my mom was switching doctors a few years ago she was trying to straighten out all of her insurance forms with the new office. A few things got very confused and she found out a few days later that there was a women with the same first and last name as her (absolutely no relation) who went to the same doctor's office in a town less than 10 miles away.
(R.H.) In my family, I share the same birthday with: my dad, my aunt, my great aunt, and my cousin's son. This seems like a lot of birthdays on the same day, but looking at the population and how many birthdays there are, it doesn't seem too unlikely that some people with the same birthdays would be in the same family.
(E.N.) so many years ago, my parents are searching for a house. as a normal precaution, my parents asked the local neighbors about the area about the schools and water and such. while they were questioning the neighbors, one family was never home when they wanted to ask questions. so the buying time comes and my parents make the decsion to purchase this particular house. now we go around and introduce ourselves as the new residents. the family that was not avaliable to talk to us before turned out to share the same last name as us. our last name "Natale" is not really common, and these people had no relation to us. so we live there for a many'a'season and we finally decide to move. we remain freinds with the family and move to another area. years later when i graduate high school i invite the "other natales" as we referred to them to my graduation party. at this point i know i am going to pitt. when the other natales arrive, we begin talking and i find out that their oldest son also is attending pitt. coincidence? well, there is alot of alot favoring the pitt thing, but the being neighbors thing is a little creepy. okay, that's my story, thanks for your time
(K.L.) The other day I got a ticket for parking illegally in the Quad. When I was walking down Fifth, I was trying to think of how I could pay off the ticket. Half way on my way to class, I found a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk, that someone must have dropped. I think that this really is a coincidence, because not many people leave their money in a spot where it can fall out easily, especially in an area where a lot of poor college kids live.
(S.A.) Well, I was talking to a girl I just met, Caitlyn, about how she met JC Chasez from Nsync at a club and Caitlyn was telling me how her friend went up to JC and introduced herself. When I asked her about her friend, Caitlyn said her name, and I just thought, that sounds so familiar. Then I remembered I knew a girl by the very same name who went to my high school, like freshman year and she had been very into Nsync. She moved away after ninth grade. So I asked Caitlyn if her friend had ever lived in Ohio. Caitlyn said she thought so. Caitlyn's friend doesn't go here, but later, I went to Caitlyn's room and she showed me a picture of that friend. It was definitely the same girl. I was so floored. What a coincidence!
(I.M.) One coincidence that sticks out in my mind happened about five years ago. I was listening to the radio and happened to come across a Penguins game on the radio. At that moment i was just thinking about how much i love the Penguins and how much i would love to go and see a game. Just then my friend called me and told me that his dad just got two tickets to the next Penguins game and askd me if i wanted to go. I immediately said yes and told him about how weird it was that i was just thinking about that. That situation, to me, was very strange and quite a coincidence. But now looking back on it i suppose that it wasn't that unlikely that a situation like that could occur.
(J.M.) I met a person at pitt who is uncannily like me. We are both fairly italian, similar height, similar weight, similar political views, similar interests, and we both like wrestling and have similar wrestling backgrounds. Thats the best coincidence I can come up with, that I can remember.
(M.B.) The most recent coincidence story that I can think of is when I first came to Pitt and joined the Air Force ROTC Detachment here. The Commandant at the time had the same last name as me, and eventually I found out that he and I were distantly related. At first, it seemed very much like coincidence, however since my family on my dad's side is originally from the area, and I do indeed have many relatives around here, that in and of itself wasn't a huge coincidence. That said however, since military personnel are routinely transferred around the globe to many different bases, the probability that he and I would be at the same location at the same time is fairly on the coincidental side.
(R.W.) My coincidence story is very simple. I thought that it was a coincidence that my "high school sweetheart" and I had the same birthday. Statistically I think that because there are 365 days in a year and so many people in the world that this may not be really considered a coincidence.
(M.S.) I lived in Okinawa Japan for 6 years because my dad is in the navy. After we finished there we moved to San Diego where I went to High School for four years and worked. I worked in the Upstart Crow, a tourist trap of a bookstore on the beach, and one day while I was working this lady and her daughter came up and ordered drinks. I knew I recognized them, and kept staring at them, and they kept staring at me, and eventually we came to the conclusion that we knew each other from somewhere. After awhile we eventually figured out that the lady was the mom of one of my elementary school friends on Okinawa and the daughter was her sister. They had moved to Las Vegas from Okinawa, but they were vacationing in San Diego. This really is a big coincidence because I hardly ever worked at that point, and the chances of them coming by while I was working is fairly small I would think. In addition, San Diego is a naval town, so a lot of Navy people might be there, but their family was Air Force, and there are no Air Force bases in San Diego. It was weird, and I think it was a pretty big coincidence.
(S.S.) During the summer of 2002, i attended a function in Toronto Canada for a week. there were over a million youth from all over the world gathered to see the Pope for "World Youth Day" while at this event, i met a kid named patrick gallagher. we talked throughout the week, went our own separate ways never imagining that we would cross paths again. a year later, i was working at Gap in Grove City, Pa. Grove city is a small town with not much to attract people. i was talking to one of my coworkers on Saturday afternoon, and i looked up and saw Mr. Patrick Gallagher walk into the store. i was all but shocked, and began to tell the story to my coworker. she was intrigued, and asked that i point him out. just as i did, she exclaimed..."I know him too!" as it turns out, she was a college student, not originally from Grove city, and Patrick attended her church at home. Although we have studied probabilities and learned that things that seem unlikely, might not be that far fetched, it still amazes me that of all the people to meet in toronto, i met him, and not only did i run into him again, but i saw him when i was with someone else who knew him, in a different city from where we met, and from where he lived.
(A.G.) WHen I first met my husband it was 4 yrs ago at one of the social events. After the event was over, I thought that I'll never see him again. The next day my sister and I went out for a lunch and then she asked me to come with herr to office depo because she needed a computer disk. Office depo wasn't my favorite store at that time, and any time my sister went there it would take her hours and hours, so when she asked me to go there, I hesitated at 1st, but then I gave in, under one condition that it is not going to take long. As we drope up to the store, and got out of the car, my sister and I noticed a tall guy walking ahead of us that looked just like the guy I met at the social event the night before. It turned out that that tall guy's guy friend, also asked him randomly to go to the same store, because his guy friend needed to buy something. Both my now husband (tall guy) and I did not expect that, it was as as unlikely as it could be, but if we would of decided not to go to that store, we would never be together.
(J.O.) Since renting out an apartment in south Oakland beginning in August, in the month of October, I had my car vandalized three times! My driver's side mirror was knocked off, my car was egged, and my car stereo was stolen, all within three weeks! It seems as though the occurrences are unlikely, considering they all happened within three weeks. In all reality, having your car vandalized in Oakland, in this case south Oakland, isn't a rare occurrence!
(R.B.) When I was at home for Christmas break, I decided to go shopping at our local mall with one of my best friends who I hadn't seen in a while. We were shopping in JCPenny for a present for his sister. I was looking at some sweaters, helping him to pick one out when someone behind me sneezed. I always say bless you when someone sneezes, just because I think everyone should always have someone say it for them. So when I turned around after saying bless you, it was my grandma! She said thank you without looking to see who it was who had said bless you and kept on walking. I think that the occurances were really unlikely. Of all the people to be in that mall at the exact same time and place as me, and to have sneezed at that moment is unlikely. Unlikely, but not impossible. I laughed about it all day.
-(C.B.) When I came back from Iraq the first time, in September, I put together a photo album of all the best photos I had from over there to show my family and friends. Then I made a date with Crystal to meet at Starbucks and catch up. We sat there and looked at my photos when her friend Matt walked in and joined us. I didn't remember Matt, but it turned out we used to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity together some years ago. So after Crystal left, Matt looked at my photos. A girl saw my album at that point and she sat with us and said hi to Matt and myself, but she made us think that the other one of us knew her by various gestures such as petting my head and asking when I'll show her the photos, as if she was my girlfriend or something... meanwhile doing the same thing to Matt so I thought she was actually his girlfriend. Meanwhile Matt's actual girlfriend, Erin, works at the Starbucks and looking at this girl got so pissed off that she walked over and stood above him with a bad attitude and asked, "What's going on here??" So, it finally turned out that this girl was doing a project for her sociology class wherein she had to violate social norms with strangers by treating them as close friends to see how those people react. So Erin, a little reluctantly, let Matt off the hook and went back to work while the girl started looking through my photos in earnest (she didn't know before they were from the war in Iraq and now was actually interested). She came upon a photo from the plane on the way back to the states, where after about 18 hours or so I asked my Marine buddies how they were enjoying the flight and they gave me the finger. Seeing this she screamed and said "Oh My God that's Chris Boyko!!! He's my best friend's boyfriend!!!" So I guess she left us with some favorible conclusions for her sociology project As if that weren't queer enough, my friend Dan whom I've known from high school in Philadelphia walked into Starbucks and I said, "Hi Dan" and Matt said, "Hi Dan." It turned out THEY knew each other too! Semper Fi!
(N.S.) Just a couple of days ago, I overslept and missed work (wonderful beginning, I know). This was the only time this had happened to me this entire school year. What was really strange was that this same day, my boss took off from work without warning, which she had never done before while I was working there. Also, a colleague of mine also overslept that same day, and she is a very responsible individual, so that is not a very likely thing to happen. So yes, I would say that these occurrences were rather odd and pretty unlikely (let's hope they don't occur again).
(E.R.) When I applied to Pitt I did not request a roommate, because I wanted to meet someone new. So when I moved in on the first day, I met my roommate and she so happened to be a girl that I was best friends with when I was in grade school, but then she moved out of state. I did not know that she was attending pitt because I had not talked to her in years. I think this is really a coincidence because what are the chances that someone would get a roommate that so happened to be his or her best friends several years before. I thought that was pretty unlikely.
(A.G.) A few years ago I met my now friend, Megan. When we first met we thought we have seen each other before, but we weren't sure where. We figured out that it was that we went to the same summer camp. Turns out we never went to the summer camp at the same time, but actually knew each other from a completely different place and that our paths have crossed more than twice.
(M.S.) In a writing seminar class my freshman year, the teacher split the 15 students into 5 groups of 3. Each group was assigned by the teacher to critique 1 of 5 anonymous opening paragraphs from our previous assignment. the odds of my opening paragraph being on the handout were 33%. Sure enough my opening was on the handout. So I thought what are the odds my group will critique my paragraph. I felt confident we wouldn't, (.33)(.2)=.066 7% was the probability. I was wrong once again. My group was randomly assigned my anonymous opening paragraph. To make things worse, before I open my mouth; my two group members began to destroy this anonymous author's writing style. So i bit my tongue, and pretended it wasn't mine. Wishing class would end quickly, and knowing with my luck it wouldn't.
(C.S.) My current girlfriend and I appeared in a play together when we were four years old, and did not talk to each other for the next 16 years. We both came from the same are in Northeast Pennsylvania, but we actually re-met here in Pittsburgh, and did not realize that we appeared in this play together until we had been dating for a couple of months. While this is not as coincedental as say, running into each other on a safari in Africa, i think that it is rather coincedental, because not many people from my area come to the University of Pittsburgh, instead, they usually go to Penn State.
(E.K.) About 2 weeks, for 4 nights in a row I would have a horrible nightmare and wake up at 5:48 AM with my heart ponding and my palms sweaty. I don't know if I can simply blame my circadian rhythm or if it was something else but it definitely was not a good time.
(D.W.) I have a kind of lame coincidence story. I met this girl on the bus on the north-side. It turns out that she went to pitt, had the same major(at that time), was the same year as I was, and we both lived on the north side. Now that I think about it, it is really not that unlikely that you could go to a school for a while and meet up with someone that lives close to you.
(K.M.) in the computer labs we are each assigned a user name based on our initials, well my name is Kristen lyndsey mackel. so my initials are klm. and when there are more than more person with the same initials they assign a number in sequential order of how many persons there are with those same initials. the number i was assigned is 116 so that means that at the university there are coincidentally at least 115 other people with my same exact initials.
(T.N.) I bought a book from B&N online recently and about 10 pages were blank. For example, it left page 110-120 blank. It was my first time buying a book online and my first time getting a book with blank pages. I returned the book off course.
(S.D.) This summer one of my friends from high school and another friend from college both went to ocean city maryland and became friends and one day my friend from high school came up to visit and met my friend from college. They knew each others names it was a defident coincidence, i think because it is hard for two people who i am friends to pick the same week, the same town, be my friend and then run into each other down at the beach. So i think it is a coincidence.
(M.J.) When I moved in the eighth grade, I moved in between two people who had the same birthday as me. Before that, I had never known anyone with the same birthday. I think that this event is not as unlikely as I had at first thought because of the exercise that we did in class last Friday.
(A.V.) So I don't know if I can still get credit for this, but I figured it was worth a shot. My coincidence is that all of the friends that I have made so far at school who live in Towers live on the left side of the room. If there were only a few people that this applied to, it wouldn't be such a coincidence, but there's at least 8-10 of my friends living on the left side, which is a little odd.
(S.J.) When I moved into my new house freshmen year of high school, there was a girl next door that was my age. We became good friends and her name was Stefanie as well. One day when my mom got mad, she called me by my full name, Stefanie Elise. My friend had been at my house during this time. It turns out that my friend was also Stefanie Elise and we were shocked by this coincidence. Thinking about this now, it is probably likely that there are many Stefanie Elise's in the world. However, I may not ever live next door to one ever again.
(S.A.) I worked at Kohl's over the summer. One night, we were just closing and I checked this couple out. It was a guy and a girl and the guy was buying a pink shirt. I smiled at them as I put the shirt in the bag, noting that the shirt was really pink and I thought it was kind of funny. The next day was my day off and my family and I went to Six Flags in Chicago. It's only about an hour away because we live in Illinois. We spent the whole day at the park. We were looking forward to the Superman rollercoaster, a rollercoaster that you lay down on, so it's like you're flying. We did this last, our final ride of the day. The line moved pretty quickly until the ride broke down for a few minutes. We weren't getting out of line though. Finally, we were on the steps up to the ride, getting ready to enter the final stage of our wait. I looked down into the crowd of people below us waiting and I couldn't believe my eyes. I saw the couple that I had checked out the day before, the guy and the girl, not too far behind us in line. The guy was wearing the SAME pink shirt that I had sold to him the previous day. I think they noticed me too. Out of all the places in the world, all the amusement parks, all the rides, all the times they could have gotten in line, all the shirts he could have worn! I saw them again in that ride. I just think that's kind of amazing... a really freaky
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