Pigs might play football

I have just read the chapter called 'Unweaving the uncanny' in Unweaving the Rainbow which detailed exactly my argument regarding coincidences. It is easy to work out the odds of each of these co-incidences and though they are very high for the number of people around, it must happen to someone. In addition, there are opportunities for co-incidences occurring right throughout the day. Every thought in my head has some potential for co-incidence. I could think of someone and they phone me up. The odds against this might be high but over the year I think about many people and only rarely do the people I think about phone me up within a time of me thinking about them which I would consider co-incidence. Richard Dawkins has a term PETWHAC - Population of Events Which Would Have Appeared Co-incidental. (He uses lowercase - pwtwhac - because he considers capitals to be unattractive on the page). He states at the beginning of the chapter, an advert imagined by Robert Winston, which offers a method of ensuring the birth of a boy for £500 and offers the money back if it fails. As 50% of all children are boys anyway, half the money would be kept for doing nothing. Brilliant! An extreme example but it does hint at the gullibility of people regarding understanding of probability.