The Science of Coincidence

The Infinite Monkey Cage

BBC

Comedy, Science

4.7 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are some people just lucky? Is there any scientific formula behind coincidences? Is randomness the norm? Brian and Robin team up with comedian Sophie Duker, mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy and statistician David Speigelhalter to uncover the reality and the maths behind seemingly incredible coincidences. How many people do you need in a room to find two with the same birthday? What is the weirdest coincidence that the panel have ever encountered? Is there a mathematical formula to being lucky? How good are we at judging how likely something is to happen? The answer is not very, as Brian and Robin unluckily discover. New episodes released Wednesdays. If you're in the UK, listen to the newest episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3K3JzyF Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:04.7	Hello, I'm Robinin's.
0:06.0	And I'm Brin Cox.
0:07.0	You're about to listen to The Infinite Monkey Cage.
0:10.0	Episodes will be released on Wednesdays wherever you get your podcasts.
0:13.6	But if you're in the UK, the full series is available right now.
0:17.3	First on BBC Sounds.
0:18.9	Hello I'm Brian Cox and I'm Robin Ince and this is the infinite monkey cage.
0:23.5	Now in a probabilistic universe is there anything that we can truly be sure of?
0:28.1	Well I'm just going to interrupt you there because the statement that we live in a probabilistic
0:31.0	universe is non-trivial, I would say,
0:32.9	it can say the assumptions about the foundations of quantum theory.
0:35.6	For example, in the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory,
0:38.0	that's Everettian, you don't know.
0:40.3	Then whilst observing a particular branch of the wave function might conclude that
0:43.7	quantum mechanics is inherently probabilistic, the evolution of the wave function of the universe as a whole
0:47.4	is unitary.
0:48.4	Good night.
0:49.4	That's not that's not the end of the show, it's just I'm leaving. This has definitely gone way
0:55.1	above my pay grade. In fact, when we were working out how to start the show, our
0:59.2	producer said if Brian starts by saying that, we will lose 97% of our audience.
1:05.0	But I corrected it because I said it's 97% plus or minus the square root of the
	...

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