Observations placeholder
Dawkins, Professor Richard - Unweaving the Rainbow - Uncanny coincidences
Identifier
011831
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Richard's wife is called Lalla, and Lalla is one of the most revered poet mystics in India. But I guess that that is no coincidence. Sorry just a little joke.
A description of the experience
Professor Richard Dawkins - Unweaving the Rainbow
Here's an actual coincidence where, although it is a little harder we can make a stab at estimating the odds approximately.
My wife once bought for her mother a beautiful antique watch with a pnk face. When she got it home and peeled off the price labelshe was amazed to find, engraved on the back of the watch, her mother's own intitials M A B.
Uncanny?
Eerie?
Spine crawling?
So what are the odds agaist a coincidence of this magnitude?..........
There are about 55 million people in Britain...... [here the text goes into a great deal of detail in calculating the likelihood of the initials of someone being MAB, although clearly Richard cannot go into the odds of those initals appearing on a very specific antique watch with a pink face because it is is actually impossible to calculate the odds, however, he does come up with a figure of the number of people likely to have these initials]
.......the chances of your initials being MAB in that order are 0.0007.