So there I was. . .

[Shas aia Toriia]

looking up TV Tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage), when I decided to click on the random page button.
You know what popped up? The Order (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrderOfTheStick?from=Main.GiantInThePlayground).
Weird, huh?

Anyways, this is just a thread to talk about crazy coincidences that have happened to you.

[SilentNight]

So, a couple weeks ago I was playing cards with a friend and I was thinking about probability for some odd reason, I can't recall why. Anyway, I was about to draw and thought to myself, "what' the probability that this card is the...four of....let's say diamonds?" And lo and behold, the next card was the four of diamonds.

[Keld Denar]

Friends don't let friends link TVTropes on forums...

[RandomNPC]

Any time I try to make a new friend and invite them to hang out something happens. I'm down to a few people from my first job, and a few others from school (years ago) that I actually converse with.

Seriously, my son just got sick, and someone we met at the park was gonna bring their kiddo over tomorrow and we were all going to watch Dr. Horribe. Things like this always happen.

[Teddy]

Heh, I've adopted a philosophy about these kind of things, that goes like this:

"How many times each day are you exposed to a specific moment which might have an extremely unlikely and coincidential outcome? Take into account that these moments are very very many, even during a pretty uneventful day, and you realize that the unlikely and coincidential is to be expected to happen pretty often.

Now, apply this to the population of nearly 7 billion humans on this planet called Earth, and you realize that things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular."

I like the idea of nothing being too coincidential to not happen.

[Thufir]

Well, this one time I asked for one frozen yogurt and they gave me two, and it turned out this girl I liked at the laundromat really loved frozen yogurt. Crazy random happenstance.
(Disclaimer: This did not actually happen to me.)

[Tricksy Hobbits]

Heh, I've adopted a philosophy about these kind of things, that goes like this:

"How many times each day are you exposed to a specific moment which might have an extremely unlikely and coincidential outcome? Take into account that these moments are very very many, even during a pretty uneventful day, and you realize that the unlikely and coincidential is to be expected to happen pretty often.

Now, apply this to the population of nearly 7 billion humans on this planet called Earth, and you realize that things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular."

I like the idea of nothing being too coincidential to not happen.

Umm, I don't think probability works like that.
You're only remembering the things that did turn out to happen, not all the ones that were unlikely and didn't happen. And you can't really cite a coincidence as evidence if you only noticed it after it happened. Using the OP as an example, it's not that unlikely as he probably knows of a lot of media, and when he hit random article he wasn't expecting it to be tOotS.

And with "things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular", that doesn't take into account the (1*10^13)-1 times something as likely as one in a trillion doesn't happen.

[Zocelot]

Umm, I don't think probability works like that.
You're only remembering the things that did turn out to happen, not all the ones that were unlikely and didn't happen. And you can't really cite a coincidence as evidence if you only noticed it after it happened. Using the OP as an example, it's not that unlikely as he probably knows of a lot of media, and when he hit random article he wasn't expecting it to be tOotS.

And with "things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular", that doesn't take into account the (1*10^13)-1 times something as likely as one in a trillion doesn't happen.

It's pretty unlikely that you will win the lottery, but if ten million people buy tickets, it's pretty likely that someone will win.

There are so many unlikely things going on in life, so if you consider each time there is a chance for something unlikely to happen as buying a ticket to the lottery, by the end of the day you might have a million tickets. If you buy a million tickets a day, something unlikely is going to happen pretty soon.

Alternatively, rolling 1d20 and expecting it to roll a 20 is unlikely. But if you roll many d20, some will likely end up 20. Each possibility of an unlikely even is like rolling a d20, and each unlikely event happening is like rolling a 20. For added probability fun, try actually rolling a d20 whenever you see something unlikely.
Probability: It works

[Eloi]

Umm, I don't think probability works like that.
You're only remembering the things that did turn out to happen, not all the ones that were unlikely and didn't happen. And you can't really cite a coincidence as evidence if you only noticed it after it happened. Using the OP as an example, it's not that unlikely as he probably knows of a lot of media, and when he hit random article he wasn't expecting it to be tOotS.

And with "things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular", that doesn't take into account the (1*10^13)-1 times something as likely as one in a trillion doesn't happen.

We don' take kindly to logic or actual statical data 'round these parts. We listen to purty metaphors, I tell you hwhat. An' I don' need ya tell me that hwas actlly a hyperbuhly I ain't gonna listen to ya.

[mucat]

Well, this one time I asked for one frozen yogurt and they gave me two, and it turned out this girl I liked at the laundromat really loved frozen yogurt. Crazy random happenstance.
(Disclaimer: This did not actually happen to me.)
With my freeze ray I will stop the world...

[Another_Poet]

Friends don't let friends link TVTropes on forums...

+1
to the plus, to the one, to the O-N-E-P-L-U-S

[Serpentine]

Umm, I don't think probability works like that.
You're only remembering the things that did turn out to happen, not all the ones that were unlikely and didn't happen. And you can't really cite a coincidence as evidence if you only noticed it after it happened. Using the OP as an example, it's not that unlikely as he probably knows of a lot of media, and when he hit random article he wasn't expecting it to be tOotS.

And with "things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular", that doesn't take into account the (1*10^13)-1 times something as likely as one in a trillion doesn't happen.Erm... I think that's pretty much what he was saying. To link your points together, there are very very many potential coincidental moments. Most of them don't happen, but there's so many potentials, that the probability of one happening to someone is nigh-inevitable.

I believe this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98OTsYfTt-c) is relevant here.

I have a couple, myself. First of all, I was thinking about starting a thread just like this one the other day...
Secondly, the other day (reason for above), I ran into a friend I hadn't seen for several years. I'd been thinking about her for a while and lamenting that we didn't stay in contact after she moved away. Then I happened to leave the right shop at the right moment on the right day, and there she was...
Thirdly... I forget, back later.

[Teddy]

Umm, I don't think probability works like that.
You're only remembering the things that did turn out to happen, not all the ones that were unlikely and didn't happen. And you can't really cite a coincidence as evidence if you only noticed it after it happened. Using the OP as an example, it's not that unlikely as he probably knows of a lot of media, and when he hit random article he wasn't expecting it to be tOotS.

And with "things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular", that doesn't take into account the (1*10^12)-1 times something as likely as one in a trillion happen.

Yeah, so I was going to answer to this yesterday much earlier this morning, but the internet connection shut down (due to function my dad has activated to prevent me from staying up far to late in the morning), and now I've been ninja'd. Twice.

But I think I'll include my answer within spoiler tags anyway (warning, spoilered post was written 2 o'clock in the morning. Read at your own risk. :smallwink:):


I think you missed my point. My point was that even though there might be a lot of things that are really, really unlikely, some of them will still happen, and unlikely events will happen pretty often. And when they don't happen, well, they don't. That's it. That's the usual outcome, but there are so many cases where there can be more than one outcome, that unlikely things will happen on a regular basis.

And I think you missed my point about once-in-a-trillion outcomes, too. There are things that are likely to happen roughly once in a trillion cases. This is so unlikely that we gladly disregard it as "won't happen". But the thing is that it will still happen pretty often that something this unlikely actually takes place, even though we might see most of these outcomes as pretty mundane, if we even notice them. This is due to the fact that it happens so many times each and every day that something unlikely might happen, that unlikely things will happen. Even really, really unlikely things.


I believe this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98OTsYfTt-c) is relevant here.

Yes, thanks. That video illustrated my point quite well.

[Delta]

Now, apply this to the population of nearly 7 billion humans on this planet called Earth, and you realize that things as unlikely as once in a trillion will be pretty regular."

I like the idea of nothing being too coincidential to not happen.

Well, that's exactly the reason why many computer games (especially MMORPGs) don't even try to use "good" random numbers, because if used by enough people, good RNGs will create results people wouldn't believe are "random" anymore.

For example, let's say you've got a to-hit chance of 50% in an MMORPG. If you missed your target, let's say, 10 times in a row, you'd swear at the PC and curse the programmers for using such a horrible RNG.

In reality, the chances of missing a 50% chance 10 times in a row are 1:1024. Looks very low, doesn't it? Now consider a game being played by 100.000 people at a time. So if everyone playing the game had a fight about every minute with said chances, that could very well leave us with something like 6000 incidents of players missing 10 times in a row in a single hour, that might lead to a lot of angry costumers complaining that the game was "unfair" and "not really random", while in reality, it is exactly that.

So that's why most such games use cascading probablities, with the success chance going up after each miss, because people feel it's "fair" that way, even if it's really giving them a huge unfair edge.


At the same time, yes, there are things so extremely rare that they are practically impossible to happen. Just go into quantum physics, where you can easily think up incidents so unlikely that they probably won't happen even once in the complete lifetime of our whole universe, but still, they are not completely impossible.

[The Succubus]

My current relationship is the result of a most unlikely co-incidence. I used to have a friend I went gaming with about 6 years ago, but eventually lost touch. About 4 months ago, I found myself wondering about where she was and what she was doing, checked my inbox and out of the blue was an email from her asking how I was doing. We started chatting via email, arranged a meet up and things just took off from there.

Co-incidences can be both terrifying and wonderful =D

[RandomNPC]

With my freeze ray I will stop the world...

With my freeze ray I will find the time to find the words....



Well, this one time I asked for one frozen yogurt and they gave me two, and it turned out this girl I liked at the laundromat really loved frozen yogurt. Crazy random happenstance.


but did you drive the spork into your leg?

(yea I edited out your white text)


And now to be on topic:
The guy I was going to hang out with from my previous post? His family had things come up as well....

[Moff Chumley]

So there I was, about to go on TVTropes, when I stumbled upon this thread...
:smalleek:

[Serpentine]

I just had a pretty cool one.
Earlier today, I was looking up "gumdrop babies" while looking for an Australian book (I actually needed gumnut babies). I looked at the disambiguation and saw a link to a CSI episode called Gum Drops.
Just then I turned the TV on, looked at the guide... and saw that the CSI episode Gum Drops is about to start.

do-do do-do, do-do do-do

[Scorpina]

looking up TV Tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage), when I decided to click on the random page button.
You know what popped up? The Order (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrderOfTheStick?from=Main.GiantInThePlayground).
Weird, huh?

Anyways, this is just a thread to talk about crazy coincidences that have happened to you.

I'm not sure this really counts, but it amused me: when reading that, I remember that I know the guy who first created that page on TV Tropes (unless my friend was lying to me, in which case I shall stab him in the neck).

[Serpentine]

Seems fair.

[Dr.Epic]

I was playing Munchkin once, and I wanted a friend to help me go looking for trouble and kill a monster but he refused. And to threaten him I said the card I get could be really cool if I loot the room and he wouldn't get it. He still refused to help so I looted the room and got a super-duper munchkin card. I had five classes (Yakuza Bounty Hunter Ninja Wizard Gadgeteer) by the time the game was over.

[Capt Spanner]

You look...epically familiar, Dr.



Once while going on holiday to Sri Lanka, I ran into a school friend at Dubai airport.

Later when going to University, he ended up (randomly) at the same Uni as me.

[Shas aia Toriia]

Something I heard about some friends of friends who are married - the wife was looking back though pictures of herself in Disneyworld, in which she is hugging Walt Disney himself.
After inspecting the picture, the husband realizes that he is in it.

Cool, no?

[Jimp]

I was expecting this thread to be about the Deadmau5 song.

[RandomNPC]

Something I heard about some friends of friends who are married - the wife was looking back though pictures of herself in Disneyworld, in which she is hugging Walt Disney himself.
After inspecting the picture, the husband realizes that he is in it.

Cool, no?

she married walt disney?