OMG – What a Coincidence!

Uri Geller, let’s be generous, the illusionist, once did a trick on a chat show where he invited a TV audience to go and search for that watch that hadn’t worked for ages. He exalted the compliant brethren to fetch and hold it in their hands to which he would send positive energy through the screen to restart the timepiece. Oh my word, oh my goodness, the switchboards were jammed with excited followers whose watch had come back to life after years of inaction in that drawer. It is a very improbable resurrection but Uri knows full well that firstly many people don’t throw away objects that have high sentimental attachment and secondly agitation or the warmth from a committed clenched hand can release a heart’s murmur of electricity from a dormant battery. To give him his due though, he takes the risk of reliance on others and exhibits considerable faith but the real credit for the trick should go to statistics in this case the size of the population that is taking part.

Infinite monkeys and typewriters mean anything can happen. The real beauty of probability is that if you give anything enough chance of happening, it’ll happen. That’s why we’re here. In this link to a lecture in 2010, ‘Statistically, you shouldn’t be here’ Bill Bryson talks about the 4 billion years of reproductive good fortune that had to happen for you just to exist.

You’re a miracle  – or are you!

I’ve been boring my classes for years that you only need 30 or so people in a room to ensure two people have the same birthday, although ensure is not factually correct. With 30 people you have 435 ways of comparing two people’s birthday so I prefer to say 40 with 780 ways and I don’t end up with egg on my face when we try it. Yes there are 365 different possible birthdays but when you compensate that low chance of two being the same by having 780 goes, probability wins through. The chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 14 million but if you buy 14 million or more tickets!!?

But having the same birthday is boring, what other things could 40 odd random people have in common with each other that are simply unknown to us. Many years ago in Devon, a new secondary pupil in my class got talking to the boy sitting next to him. They discovered that they had unknowingly previously been in the same infants class in a small village in Scotland. (They were twins- no, I jest!) What’s the chance of something like that happening? – Well as it turns out, certain, if you think about it.

An amazing film which deals with this phenomenon. is Magnolia . At the start, we are told three true stories of unbelievable coincidences. (Everybody, in fact, has their own tales they can and do tell of such improbable circumstances.) The film unravels the narrative of a dozen or so poor souls whose suffering and interacting fortunes improve after a cataclysmic downpour of frogs. I’ve watched this film for years and it was only when I was reading the Imdb review did I become aware of the sublimal inclusion of the number 82, everywhere in the film by the director Paul Thomas Anderson. The number 82 refers to Exodus 8:2 which reads

“If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs.”

But the irony personally for me continues. I was lying awake in bed that night thinking about this 82. This number rings a bell, where have I seen it before. I went downstairs and found the answer. I had been walking around for the last two years or so in a pair of single strap sandals with a basketball style 82 blazoned across them. What’s more is the colour of the strap, a lightish pink was ‘remarkably’ the same colour as the firefighter’s plane, but then I’m toying with you to emphasise my point. If 82 hadn’t have been on the sandal, it would have been somewhere else, an address on an envelope, a speeding fine or something else my radar was now programmed to look for.

Coincidences are the occasions that we notice. A gambler will only tell you of the times he wins. n (n – 1)/2 gives 780 just when n is 40, what do you think it gives for a million, billion, even a  squillion? The human face has a limited number of features that vary, is it then so surprising or hard to accept that we will all have dopplegangers. Is it possible that life could be occurring elsewhere? The astronomically huge numbers say definitely so. Just think of it, thousands of planets with other monkeys, each one created by god, of course. That does mean that they all need and have saviours, presumably cousins of Jesus, as the original was an only child!

Thousands of years ago or indeed still today to people who want to believe it, a coincidence such as my sandal could only be explained as being a sign from god. The lord has spoken and sent us this sign. Well I’m afraid that’s rubbish. The monkeys now know too much to be frightened off by the belief that God is watching over us, responsible for everything and sending us the odd reminder of his omnipotence.

OMG – What a Coincidence!