BEYOND COINCIDENCE

London-based journalists Plimmer and King take on probability and chance and describe many of the scofflaws in the confounding realm of coincidence.

As the subtitle promises, the stories, adapted from a BBC series, are amazing—so amazing as to be redolent of vintage pulp magazines, of the oeuvre of the late Robert L. Ripley or of the latest supermarket tabloids. Luck, they find, is not an equal opportunity phenomenon. Some people are luckier than others. The first half of the text provides sprightly essays about the metaphysics of chance and the arithmetic of coincidence, citing such worthies as B.F. Skinner, Carl Jung and Arthur Koestler. Heuristics and superstition, plagiarism and precognition, astrology, feng shui, telepathy, personal synchronicity and vagrant invisible forces all share the work in the pursuit of coincidence. The rest of the book provides, simply, case after dubious case (more than 200 in all). They range from the unfortunate situation of Oedipus to the many instances of lost rings recovered in fish and the heartwarming stories of reunited twins. The authors surmise that coincidences occur now more frequently than in the past. Maybe, they say, it’s the profligacy of information. It’s a compendium of coincidences, ladies and gents, an enchiridion of fortuitous encounters, a barrage of bunkum! As luck—or something—would have it, many of their anecdotes are tales more than twice told. What are the odds?

An awful lot of coincidence, ranging from unremarkable to unbelievable.