Grace wrote:The coincidence of coincidence happening at any time of the day is actually quite high, around 30%. I saw that figure in print somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find it now. That means if you happen to read a word and hear someone say a word at the same time, that coincidence happens quite often.

The most impressive coincidence for me happened several years ago when I went on vacation to Disneyland. I knew a co-worker was going on vacation at the same time but neither of us asked the other where we were going. To my surprise, I saw her at one of the shows sitting up on the balcony in the front row. I got her attention and waved at her. She was surprised too.

I'll see if I can find the percentage of the coincidence of coincidence somewhere on the Internet or among my friends. Don't get too grumpy, I'm not in the mood.

Skinny Puppy wrote:1 – My birthday is May 6th, that’s also the same day I was born!

2 – If you take my age and divide it by 2, I’m only half my age.

3 – My mom and dad were both born in the month of April and they were both born in exactly the same location... except for the 1,000 miles in-between.

I can’t explain those eerie coincidences? They may well defy science, but they’re real none-the-less.

Someone wrote:

hackenslash wrote:

MacIver wrote:The moon is the same distance closer to the Earth than the sun is the size of the moon, relatively speaking, so both appear the same size to us.

I always thought that was pretty odd...

Indeed, but the moon is receding. It would be pretty astounding if this didn't happen at some point...

True, hackenslash, but you pretty well understand my reasons for connecting this with our particular stage of advancement as an intelligence, I believe.

Someone wrote:I have noted that a lot of talk goes on about people's irrational and irrational-seeming belief systems. I am interested in hearing the oddest stories from personal life or historically-verified generally-accepted matters. Then rebuttals can be made or people can just shrug and say Wow. Please don't lie.

I'll start with myself:
1) My biggest thing is a birthday coincidence. Here are ten dates in chronological order in da/mo/yr format (I'll get to what they are, but you may recognize two or three): 03/01/42, 16/02/43, 16/07/45, 06/08/45, 09/08/45, 06/07/64, 16/07/64,
06/08/64, 09/08/65, & 11/05/97. The 1st, 2nd, & 6th are my father's, my mother's, and my own d.o.b. I'm in the USA, so to me these are all 2 days after holidays, and I guess the minor significance of the second holiday--relatively speaking--is made up for a little or a lot by this being the opposite-gender parent from myself. The 3rd-5th are the dates of the Trinity Site nuclear test and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 7th-9th are the d.o.b. of my closest same-generation relatives, for whom I am the sole link in that generation (I have six first cousins, two of these through my father's step-brother, three through his sister, and one through my mother's sister. I knew and know the birth dates only of the three closest in age to me: two of the three sons of my paternal aunt and my maternal aunt's daughter). The 10th is the date that Gary Kasparov lost to the IBM computer Deep Blue in a match (sequence of games) akin to a world championship though not recognized in those terms. You'll note that my cousins' birth dates are anniversaries of the explosions. Furhtermore, my older cousin, the other full cousin, taught me chess and I spent a lot of time using a computer to analyze the game. Even more, my own birthday also links to the third and tenth dates as follows: 7061964=4*1765491 and 6071964=4*1517991. Yet more is that I discovered the date of the Trinity Site test about 3 months after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Kashmir (and I could go on with some of the stuff that was preparatory to my making the full link).
2) 1 was useful in causing me to calculate (365+1/4)^4=17797577732+7^2/2^8. By extending the 7s on the right to get 17797777777.777... and taking the fourth root and subtracting 365.25 you get a string of digits whose first two 2nd millennium dates are 1957 and 1863. Pairing these two dates in a search of Britannica 2001 (CD) gives "Baha'i faith" as one of 20 hits. Placing "Baha'i" in the search gives 19382 hits, because it handles the apostrophe incorrectly (generating all the hits for "i"), and my 5-digit zip code is 19382, and 1938.2 as a date is in between the two days that Hitler bullied the Czechoslovak prime minister and then marched on Czechoslovakia. The zip-code system was also started in the year before I was born. There is quite a bit more about this date stuff that this post won't hold.
3) The very first thread I started on my own is a thread at h2g2. It's numbered as my 7-digit phone number aside from one digit being off by one digit.

Now, I'm not looking for this sort of thing from anyone but myself to this degree, but more along the lines of two others that other people have said:
1) I read of an American mathematician who happened to be in Germany when he ran across another mathematician who lived on the same block in Indiana when they were children, not having known each other then (with a mutual friend as a part of the story).
2) I was told of an occasion when someone lost a prescription contact lens while travelling, and the first person he spoke to was a woman who just happened to have an extra pair with one missing, and the lens was a good match.

So, don't worry about being believed. We here won't take anybody's word for it anyway.

I won't be responding here this week--I have a number of obligations including a long-ass post on pure number coincidences--but I'll be reading what's said if anything.

Someone wrote:Later. Just say "Ahem! Post #85 of your 3-coincidences thread" if it appears I have spent 3 hours on each of 3 other threads. I only have public computer use, so b-bye.

Spearthrower wrote:

Someone wrote:Later. Just say "Ahem! Post #85 of your 3-coincidences thread" if it appears I have spent 3 hours on each of 3 other threads. I only have public computer use, so b-bye.

I missed this one, Someone.

I take it that this is Someone-speak for 'I'm not answering'?

CookieJon wrote:1. We have ten fingers, and our maths is base 10, suggesting both we and mathematics itself were designed for ease of counting to 10 on ones fingers.

2. It always rains at the end of a drought, suggesting a deliberate failsafe mechanism designed to keep the weather running properly.

3. Water freezes at 0 degrees, and boils at 100 degrees - a design so elegant as to suggest a deliberate sign from the designer... His "signature", if you like.

CookieJon wrote:1. We have ten fingers, and our maths is base 10, suggesting both we and mathematics itself were designed for ease of counting to 10 on ones fingers.

2. It always rains at the end of a drought, suggesting a deliberate failsafe mechanism designed to keep the weather running properly.

3. Water freezes at 0 degrees, and boils at 100 degrees - a design so elegant as to suggest a deliberate sign from the designer... His "signature", if you like.