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Old 15th Mar 2014, 12:02 am   #1
Biggles
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Default Co-incidence?

About thirty years ago my Brother in law gave me a copy of Radio and TV Servicing which he had found on his travels. A couple of years ago I saw an advert in the local paper for some radio books and naturally went along to have a look. They turned out to be some more copies of Radio and TV Servicing which I bought from a retired gentleman who had been in the trade. When I got home there was one copy missing....which turned out to be the one I already had. What are the chances of that happening?
Alan.
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Old 15th Mar 2014, 1:12 am   #2
Peter.N.
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

Quite remote I would think.

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Old 15th Mar 2014, 2:21 am   #3
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

Coincidence is a strange thing. Humans are pattern matching animals and tend to find significance where none exists. If you sat down and worked out the probability of something like this happening, I bet it would be quite high. We tend to remember all the 'unlikely' occasions when something like this happens and forget all the many corresponding occasions when nothing serendipitous happens.
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Old 15th Mar 2014, 4:45 am   #4
Pete the Pom
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

I'd put the lottery on this weekend if I was you Biggles
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Old 15th Mar 2014, 12:10 pm   #5
Mr Moose
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

Hello,

I think R&TVS went from 1952 to about 1986 and this would mean 35 volumes so the chance of yours being the missing one is one in thirty-five.

Yours Richard.
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Old 15th Mar 2014, 3:22 pm   #6
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

Non coincidences happen all the time, one per Planck time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time I suspect. So that's why are coincidents so common.
 
Old 15th Mar 2014, 8:30 pm   #7
Gillian
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

One coincidence that did not have such a favourable outcome but could have been was ,I always fancied a Yamaha CP70 or 80 electric grand piano ala ABBA or Billy Joel.
I was well known to the local music shop in Andover, I had always pestered them for a Fender Rhodes piano or a Hammond Organ.
One day they phoned me and passed on the number of a gentleman that had a Yamaha electric piano.
Uunfortunately he had only the top half including frame,strings and pickups.I offered him £10 after agonising whether to buy it or not and whether I would ever the bottom half.
I though rather optimistically that half of one was better than none at all!
The years went buy with the top half of the piano gathering dust and cobwebs in the shed.
I cleaned and sorted the shed and finally decided I was crazy to hope to find the other half and duly took it down the dump.
About two weeks later A local chap phoned me up offering some hifi.
He lived about 1 mile away from me.
I made a deal for the hifi and in conversation talked about me playing the piano.
He mentioned that he had the bottom half of a. Yamaha electric grand piano up until about 2 weeks ago.
He had decided that he would probably not find the top half and took it down to the tip!!!
How close was that for nearly?

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Old 15th Mar 2014, 9:03 pm   #8
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

Syncronicity is even more spine tingling than mere coincidence & even Carl Jung took an interest in it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
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Old 15th Mar 2014, 9:08 pm   #9
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

A few years ago I realised that I had somehow missed a WWII series from 1977 which had Radio and Radar content but only in V1 and V2 of 8 Videos. These were on e-bay but complete sets and very expensive. During the annual "War Time Weekend" in Rammy [when we are invaded by tanks and people dressed circa 1940] I found Vol 2 in a charity shop near the station. The next morning, when walking past a large Antiques Emporium just near my house, I was amazed to spot Vol 1 in the window. Total spend £3! Difficult to explain. Unlikely that anyone would distribute the whole set over various outlets and anyway, V2 would have been donated and Vol 1 bought in! I looked around town but didn't find any of the others....Cue Outer Limits music.

When the late Colin Wilson was contracted to write about various strange phenomena he was pretty much a hard up sceptic. While writing the chapter on Coincidence or Synchronicity [to be posh] for his book "Mysteries" he thought of a comment he needed from a particular volume and searched for it on the shelves, accidentally dislodging the very book. It fell to the floor and opened at the passage he was looking for!

Dave W

Re the comments on Biggles experience, I'm not very well versed in physics [or even logic for that matter] and probability theory seems to be something else again ie when we are told eating/drinking x gives a y% of outcome but intuitively, it "feels" that it's only a 1 in 35 chance of picking the right volume [post 6*] if you have them all together [unmarked] in front of you. This seems very different to the situation described but perhaps it's not. According to recent physics a particle can exist and not exist at the same time-perhaps creating an ultimate coincidence?

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Old 16th Mar 2014, 12:18 am   #10
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Default Re: Co-incidence?

What it comes down to is a simple fact: Most humans are pretty lousy at estimating probabilities, though we have some sort of internal reward and reinforcement mechanism which encourages us to try and get better at it.

Just watch any advertisement break on any satellite TV station; online casinos, win big prizes, online bingo, we'll double your first deposit when you open your account, mobile slots and poker ..... and no doubt when scientists discover a drug which mimics the relevant hormones involved, there will be stop-gambling pills or patches.
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