# A VERY Strange Coincidence? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825 "2015-11-06T17:16:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/1 "2015-11-06T17:16:04Z")
I am still wonder what (if anything) this means. Briefly, I drive a limo a few nights as a part time gig. A few days ago, an idea popped into my head; I had an idea about a remake of the classic Orson Welles movie “The Third Man”. I remembered the plot well, enough, but I could not remember the last name of the main character (Holly Martins). The next day I was out on a pickup, and i typed in the job number…and the man I was to pick up was named Mr. Martins! It seems like such an event would have a very low probability of happening; but was this coincidence or just weird? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/2 "2015-11-06T17:21:12Z")
That is weird. The name Martins is the rarest name in world. My next door neighbor Mr. Martins told me that. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/3 "2015-11-06T17:32:34Z")
As I read the OP, a flock of Purple Martins flew by. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/4 "2015-11-06T17:49:26Z")
It’s an omen. We’re about to be invaded my Marti(a)ns. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/5 "2015-11-06T17:56:37Z")
Based on your threads here, you have a considerable number of weird thoughts every day. It would be a scary coincidence if none of them ever popped up tangentially in your life. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/6 "2015-11-06T18:04:23Z")
Holy crap, three Aston Martins just drove by! ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/7 "2015-11-06T18:08:12Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Holy crap, three Aston Martins just drove by! And they’re all driven by guys named Martin. I bet you were drinking a Martini at the time too. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/8 "2015-11-06T18:08:22Z")
How often do you think of named characters from movies, books, and TV shows? How many times have you thought of the name of a character in your pondering? (For example, did you think of the names of any other characters in the show?) If you made a note of every time that you think of any name from a movie, you’d soon have a huge list. It’s not surprising that you encountered one name similar to one name from that list in a job where you see a lot of names. Human memory has a tendency to pick out the one time you encountered the name and not all 94858 times you thought of a name and then didn’t notice the name the next day, so it seems like it must Mean Something, even though it’s really just random chance. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/9 "2015-11-06T18:23:18Z")
When my GF and I first started dating, she googled my email screen name (Just to make sure she wasn’t dating a serial killer or something) Well, as luck would have it, there’s another guy out there with my screen name. Which is weird because mine is a name followed by a series of random numbers. What’s even more weird, the guy’s last (real) name was the same as my last (real) name. Oh, and the guy was into bondage as he seems to belong to a few bondage websites. Thank god she was eventually able to determine that wasn’t actually me. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/10 "2015-11-06T18:26:56Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > It’s an omen. We’re about to be invaded my Marti(a)ns. I was watching a TV show about a Martian named Martin. What a coincidence! ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/11 "2015-11-06T18:48:32Z")
As far as coincidences to, that’s not particularly strange at all. I have things like that happen to me at least once a month. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/12 "2015-11-06T19:07:49Z")
I’d be a lot more impressed if the guy’s first name was Holly than if his last name was Martins. ---
**Author:** ![Gothic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Gothic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gothic)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/13 "2015-11-06T19:18:36Z")
Who would you cast as Harry Lime? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/14 "2015-11-06T19:18:59Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > It seems like such an event would have a very low probability of happening; but was this coincidence or just weird? This is a meaningless question, unless you define what “weird” means, in this context. For example, if you believe that low-probability coincidences are, in and of themselves, “weird,” then the answer to your question is that this event was both a coincidence and weird at the same time. As **pulykamell** suggests, though, this sort of coincidence is really not especially unusual at all. The odds of this one particular coincidence happening might be very low, but when you add up all of the thousands of thoughts and habits and interactions and ideas that a typical person experiences, it should not be very surprising at all that we periodically encounter what seem to be strange or unlikely coincidences in our lives. Basically, you’ve offered a choice between two things that really are not mutually exclusive, and one of your choices is really little more than a subjective aesthetic judgment anyway. What constitutes “weird” differs greatly from person to person. I think it’s kind of weird that someone would ask literally thousands of really vague and poorly-thought-out questions on a message board, and then not even bother to return to half the threads he starts. Some people, on the other hand, seem to see such a practice a perfectly normal. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/15 "2015-11-06T19:45:35Z")
Related: [Dick Martin (comedian) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Martin_%28comedian%29) ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/16 "2015-11-06T20:06:38Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > I was watching a TV show about a Martian named Martin. What a coincidence! My (superior) tv show has a Martian named Marvin. I’m still waiting for the Earth-shattering kaboom! ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/17 "2015-11-06T21:55:04Z")
I know, right? I just reread a novel by Raymond Chandler (_The High Window_\*). And then today, I got an email blurb from somebody who’s discussing that very novel\* on her Facebook page! Spooky! \*It might actually be a novella. It’s in a collection, so I’m not sure. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/18 "2015-11-06T22:19:31Z")
Just the other day I said that the only amazing thing about coincidences is that there aren’t more of them. I was talking to my brother Martin. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/19 "2015-11-06T22:52:11Z")
Null hypothesis: this was a meaningless and not particularly impressive coincidence. Your alternative hypothesis: …? ---
**Author:** ![August\_West](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/august_west/32/18069_2.png) [@August\_West](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/August_West)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825/20 "2015-11-06T22:55:08Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > I know, right? I just reread a novel by Raymond Chandler (_The High Window_\*). And then today, I got an email blurb from somebody who’s discussing that very novel\* on her Facebook page! Spooky! > > \*It might actually be a novella. It’s in a collection, so I’m not sure. Weird, I’m looking out a window right now, while using Microsoft Windows! [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-very-strange-coincidence/736825.md?page=2)