For every coincidence, how many near misses?

If you are in a group of people, and you ask one of them their birthday, you can be relatively confident that they will not have been born on the same date as you. With 365 days in the year (not counting leap years), even if you were born at a popular time of year, the odds are stacked against you. And regardless of the size of group you are in, if you go up to someone and ask their birthday, it probably won’t be yours.

On the other hand, if you are in an adequately large group, by the time you’ve asked 200 people, chances are that one of them will be the same as you. However, if you have a group of just thirty, the chances are that two of them will share the same birthday. That’s how statistics work – the more you constrain an event (in this case by insisting that it should be your birthday rather than some third person’s that is repeated), the less likely it becomes.

And just as you can test the birthday hypothesis, you will no doubt be able to identify any number of occurrences in your own life that seem to defy the odds, coincidences that seem just too unlikely to be real. Yesterday, I walked into a bar in Washington DC, and saw immediately someone with whom I lived once in England. Quite a coincidence. As the night went on, the links stacked up – mutual acquaintances crossing paths as if every story wanted to come full circle.

Of course, while it is extremely unlikely that I would have seen him specifically, my chances of sooner or later seeing someone I knew were pretty good.  And having seen someone, someone who by definition has some link between their life and mine, it’s not so astonishing that in our reflections on old acquaintances there should be some connections. Washington is a popular tourist city – for the same set of reasons as the reasons that I am here (the monuments and buildings that go with the political institutions I work around). I go to the same sorts of bars as my friends from England – and in Washington that’s a small enough collection, so it’s not so surprising that a visitor should stumble into one of my haunts.

And so it goes on, having gotten over astonishment one can rationalise, and find that in general while something may be quite a coincidence, it also feels inevitable that a coincidence of that sort will happen sooner or later. Of course, alternatively you can put it down to fate, or God, or the Trelfamadorians – as always, the prover has all the options he needs. And as the ‘real’ odds defy analysis, you’ll do well to dissuade someone once convinced.

It is not the coincidence, however, that I find most interesting. Rather, it is the statistical implication that for every chance meeting, there are a hundred near misses – for every time I am in the bar at the same time as someone, there should be many more occasions when they are in just before, or just after me, or we do not see each other, or they’re just up the street, or they’re where I would normally be on that night except I’m working late, and so on and so forth. The implication is that life is a constant whirl of barely missed opportunities to strengthen ties, revisit friendships, share old stories. And in some respects this realisation inspires a sense of loss, the conviction that I have been so close to so many significant moments.

And it seems that we are on the cusp of what could be a change to all this. As smartphones proliferate, we are more and more equipped with the technology that allows us in principle to be located anywhere in the world: and for this information to be shared with others. Can you imagine, simply pulling your iPhone out of your pocket and seeing the dots that are every friend, chance acquaintance, drinking buddy and family member who you have (or at least who have bought into Facebook) buzzing around, their lifelines tracking perilously close to yours. And instead of bumping into Andy by accident, I would have known he was stateside – could have watched him arrive in New York, noticed his southbound journey, and at some point my phone would buzz and say to me,

Andy is within 200 yards. To go and see Andy, leave your flat, turn left, walk to the corner, cross the street, enter the pub. Andy is on the third bar stool to the right. You have found Andy.

How splendid to never need to have a near miss again. But then, isn’t there something beautiful about the grand coincidence. The anecdote is as lasting as the meeting, the feeling of beating the odds simply to have a pint is invigorating, the prospect that behind any door, around any corner lurks a chance meeting is a wonderful thing. I’m not sure I want that taken away. How wounding to be chasing somebody’s dot on you screen, only for them to turn off their signal. How wearing to be assailed by the hundreds of people you never knew were near you at every time of day and night.

I’m not sure that the world is ready to have all it’s movements placed online quite yet – but some are, and may it bring them happiness. And may we never reach a time when the only people you can bump into by accident are the people who you are ignoring on Facebook…

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