<h2>What was the chance of this strange personal coincidence?</h2>
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<p>I am perplexed; I just ended a relationship with a guy and 1 month later I meet another guy who has the same first name and the same first initial in the last name. Example : Torrence Tolley (1st guy) &amp; Torrence Tiffen (2nd guy). What is the universe trying to tell me?</p>
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<p>Yes, that's a real post from our site!--but there have been plenty of others like it.</p>
<p><strong>Strange and unusual things happen all the time:</strong></p>
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<p>Million-to-one chances crop up nine out of ten times.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/95458-scientists-have-calculated-that-the-chances-of-something-so-patently" rel="nofollow noreferrer">--Terry Pratchett</a></p>
<p>For an understandable explanation of the &quot;law of very large numbers&quot; expressed by Terry Pratchett, read Gina Kolata's NY Times article about research by Persi Diaconis and Fred Mosteller, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/27/science/1-in-a-trillion-coincidence-you-say-not-really-experts-find.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;1-in-a-Trillion Coincidence, You Say? Not Really, Experts Find&quot;</a>.  Former Royal Statistical Society president <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hand_(statistician)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">David Hand</a> has written an entire book on this <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Improbability_Principle.html?id=raZRAQAAQBAJ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;Improbability Principle&quot;</a> aimed at the layperson.</p>
