The year is 1799. Is it too much of a coincidence for two Europeans, who are connected through a mutual friend, to meet each other by chance in sub-saharan Africa?

I appreciate that Africa is a big place. But realistically there would only be X ammount of places that a European would go to - trading routes, exploration routes (along rivers), that kind of thing, and there would be so few Europeans in the continent anyway that news of a white person's arrival would travel. One of these two people is stuck in a town or city, and the other one turns up and hears that there is a European woman there so goes to find them.

Does that make sense?

I seem to recall a book by two scientists called How to Think About Weird Things, in which they cover that particular event (and others), and explain it in rational terms, i.e. it does happen but the circumstances behind it aren't often as strange as people think.

A good exercise they set is the question, how many people do you need at a party for there to be a fify/fifty chance that two have the same birthday?

Terry

But if you read it in a novel, would yoou think it was too much of a coincidence?

I think it is feasible, particularly noting your point about it being 1799 and there aren't exactly a lot of places that white Europeans travellers to Africa would go.

Ditto present day and during our last family holiday in 2009, we took a special holiday to Florida. We bumped into my husband's then boss and his family three times! We had no idea he was there and we were actually discussing the coincidence of meeting him in Orlando, when we turned the corner in Busch Gardens to find him sitting there drinking a beer. Coincidence, or not so much noting that plenty of people holiday in Florida, as opposed to meeting him in Wichita or some obsure place in central US.

I guess it is how it is written in to the story that matters.

A good exercise they set is the question, how many people do you need at a party for there to be a fify/fifty chance that two have the same birthday?

Every person in my immediate family shares a date with either my current husband's family or my children's father's family!


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P.S. Diana Galbadon has these 'coincidences' all the time. But she's writing mystery/time travel/historical and it is accepted by her readers.

We bumped into my husband's then boss and his family three times!

Lol, I hope you liked the guy! Bit annoying if not.

It's for a YA historical/saga/romance so it would be in genre.



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I'm thinking of Stanley and Livingstone too...

Leila, I think it would be fine, for the reasons you give. It would be very unusual for Europeans to be there at that time, and news would travel.

how many people do you need at a party for there to be a fify/fifty chance that two have the same birthday?

Oooh, go on - how many?? And why does it work like that (because I bet the number is smaller than one would imagine)

SPOILER ALERT!!!

You're right, it's much smaller than you'd think. Most people guess at around 180, i.e. they translate 'fifty/fifty' as half a year. The number is actually 19 (or close to: can't remember exactly).

The only person I know who got it right was a work colleague who was trained in statistics. He worked it out and came to 19. When I asked him how it worked, he said imagine you're at the party and a line of 19 people are waiting to be introduced. You meet the first one and shake hands. At that point, you have nineteen chances in 365 of him someone having the same birthday as you. He goes away and you shake hands with the next person, at which point it's one in eighteen, and so on. If you add 19 to 18 to 17, right down the line, it comes to around 183 chances, or half a year, or fifty/fifty.

My partner tested this out when she was training once. There were 20 people in the group and she asked them all to write down their birthdays. They were all amazed when it turned out two had the same one.

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Got it wrong! Sorry.

The first person shakes hands with all 19, then goes away. Then the second person shakes hands with the remaining 18; then the next with the 17 and so on. Then you add 19 to 18 to 17 etc. You can see why I'm not much good with numbers ...

I think Sharley's point about there not being many places that Europeans would congregate, and not many bars within those few places, is the really crucial one. Particularly if the final bumping-into isn't chance, IYSWIM: given that A has arrived and heard about B, there's a convincing reason for A to instigate the final action that makes them meet.

Besides, my sister walked out of a phonebox in a small town in Tibet, and literally bumped into someone she'd been at primary school with in Hammersmith.

A veteran editor/agent I knew said he reckoned to allow one thumping coincidence per novel. Any more than that, and readers started noticing...

I think it's fine. It's not quite the same thing, but when I was in my early 20s and went on holiday to Greece and skiing in Meribel, both times I bumped into several people I knew - because as you say, people tend to go to the same places, probably even more so in 1799. And I live in rural France now pretty much in the middle of nowhere but two people I knew from uni both live within an hour.

Thanks. Sounds like I can get away with it then.

I think it would be a really useful way of illustrating the point that everyone has made about there being limited places a white European would go. So, not just plausible, but really illustrative of how things were.

And whilst we're sharing coincidences, I once ran out of a burning tower block in Canada... and bumped into a girl I was at school with years ago in Britain.

I think it would depend on why they were there. If they're missionaries, say, then it's a pretty massive coincidence, cos missionaries would be living in isolated missions in small villages across the continent. (Unless they were, say, Quaker missionaries both going to the same Quaker mission in Kenya). But if they're on a sort of Grand Tour (did such things exist in Africa?) then they've probably both just bought the same guide book.

And similarly if they're scientists studying the same thing, there are likely to be important places that they'd both want to go? Maybe?

Sally

PS Livingstone and Stanley is a bit different because Stanley was looking for Livingstone, following his last known movements.

That's true, he was looking for him, but still pretty impressive to find him when he'd been missing a while.
One is a woman married to a missionary, who has died and left her pretty much stranded, but she has made ehr way to a large settlement - Timbuktu? The other is a man looking for a diamond mine, so he's tracing certain specific stones south along the trading routes. So he could end up in Timbuktu (or wherever) quite easily.

I once ran out of a burning tower block in Canada... and bumped into a girl I was at school with years ago in Britain.

For som mad reason my writer's brain thinks it's much more amazing that it was a burning tower block, which is daft. A better story, obviously, (hope you were okay, AG) but why that should lengthen the odds of the coincident that I intuit, I can't imagine. *note to self: ask mathematical sister*.