In my life, I have seen a great number of very weird coincidences, and have commented on some few of them in prior writings. Consider e.g. [1] (under vs. over the rainbow) and [2] (timing of Piana’s death and Portman’s Oscar).
However, that coincidences happen is one thing; how we interpret them another—and there certainly is a great scope for a too naive take on coincidence to lead to belief in superstitions of various kinds.
For instance, when I was a kid, I was out walking in the early winter evening with some family members. Someone (likely, I) expressed some puzzlement that the street lights had not come on yet, upon which someone (likely, my sister) knocked on the streetlight that we were just passing. Immediately, the lights came on through the entire street.
As for “likely”, I was very young and this must have been well over forty years ago.
This, however, points to another point were superstition can find support, namely that memory errors can make past events seem to match a particular idea better than they did in reality. I do not believe that this is the case here, but if there had been a two-second delay between knock and light, this is something that might have been adjusted in my memories, and, well, how could I tell?
This is also a reason why I press forward with the 21.69, here and now—today, I have the actual receipt with a clearly printed number, but if I were to begin this page two years from now, I almost certain would not.
Now, the most economical explanation for this is coincidence, plain and simple. This the more so, as the puzzlement that the lights were not already on pointed to a level of darkness or a time of day when it could be expected that they were on. However, someone superstitious, ignorant of topics like light street lights and electricity, and/or weak at critical thinking could easily have assumed a causality, that, for one or reason or another, the knocking caused the lights to come on. (Ditto, maybe, a sufficiently young reader or viewer of “Harry Potter”, the more so if someone had used a cigarette lighter, rather than knocked. In our case, even the first book was a good long while in future.)
Throwing a wider net, given the right circumstances, even someone strong at critical thinking might leap to the wrong conclusion. Indeed, that humans seem wired for finding or “finding” causalities is likely because they actually often are there—and often relate to danger, where it is better to remain on the safe side and assume a causality for the time being. (Might the previous sentence illustrate a wish to find or “find” causalities in me?) For instance, if someone pukes within half an hour of eating a previously unfamiliar mushroom, it might be best to not take any further chances with said mushroom. It might have been a coincidence, but there might also be lives on the line.
Indeed, it is easy to find a modified scenario of the above example that is by no means absurd: Someone remarks that one particular street light is out (the others all on), knocks on it, and it comes on. Chances are that it was still coincidence, e.g. because there was a slight disconnect within the street light that grew smaller as the temperature changed and happened to pass a critical mark at the time of the knock. However, it is at least conceivable that the knock brought some slight internal mechanical change within the light that had a similar effect. (In both cases, with some reservation for the exact construction of the street light.) For someone used to older TVs that sometimes needed a good bump before they worked, this explanation might even have seemed plausible (at least, assuming that he drew on only practical experience and had no greater theoretical understanding; note that such TVs were still in the living memory of many or most at the time of this event).
Likewise, what if someone (especially, in olden days) performed some type of magic ritual, say, to cause rain. (Even be it as a last ditch attempt or on the advice of someone else.) Could he be blamed for seeing a causality, no matter how far-fetched to a modern meteorologist, if the next day, by pure coincidence, brought the first rain in a month?
Or consider a personal event from today (2026-07-27): I was grocery shopping, saw a sum to pay of EUR 21.69, and, having the Swedish track-and-field championships on my mind, noted to my myself that that would be an excellent time in the women’s 200 meters. I came home, skimmed the news, and saw some results from the U.S. track-and-field championships, including for the women’s 200 meters, won in—21.69. (Seconds, not Euro, of course. I will mostly leave units out for convenience in the continuation.) A sign that I should make a sports bet based on my next receipt? Probably not. Here, too, a coincidence is far more likely—and if it is not a coincidence, after all, explanations have to be considered like my somehow seeing the time from the race somewhere, not being consciously aware of it, but having it affect my thoughts when I spotted the total.
Nevertheless, someone superstitious might well have leaped to conclusions.
Note that the last explanation (actually saw race result first) is still quite a bit more far-fetched than just coincidence—the more so as it still requires considerable coincidence: Not only might the price (or time) just as well have been 21.68 or 21.70, but my cashier had to run away for a price check, and I considered telling her to just leave the price-checked product out. If I had, the price would have dropped by 2.39 for a total of 19.30 and I would never even have seen that 21.69.
(Why this store, Akzenta, does not do price checks per telephone/whatnot has puzzled me for years.)
Of course, 19.30 is an outrageously good men’s time. In fact, it is exactly what Usain Bolt ran when he beat Michael Johnson’s then world record. This points to a different issue, namely, that an astonishing-seeming coincidence can be made less so by many possible potential coincidences. Notably, the short page that I skimmed gave two other times, a 20.04 for the men’s 200 and a 9.79 for the men’s 100. What if I, instead, had had a total of 20.04 and noticed this as decent men’s time for the 200? (Etc.) Even with these three times, and factoring in my normal range of total, the likelihood could drop from an apparent 1-in-several-thousand to 1-in-several-hundred. What, vice versa, if the total had landed at an amount matching an already-known-to-me result from the Swedish championships? (I had by no means memorized all the results, but I did recall a 20.44 from the men’s 200.)
To make matters more complicated, this was one total to pay and one championship (or two, if we count the Swedish). Take, instead, the likelihood that some total of mine would match some notable current championship result over a life time, and it does not seem so odd that it happened once. This the more so, as there are other events that can have results that might look like one of my Euro-totals, notably the shot put and the triple jump. Then factor in all the many other potential coincidences that involve other numbers and other whatnots.
The women’s 200 also gives an example of where what might appear to be a coincidence could be foul play—while superstitious explanations are unlikely, non-superstitious non-coincidences can still occur:
In the 1980s, two of the greatest prides of East German sports, not just athletics, were Marita Koch and Heike Drechsler. At one point, they allegedly had a four-way tie for the 200m world record at 21.71, both having run that time twice. Now, I cannot rule out that this is what did happen (and I certainly do not have insider information to the contrary); however, I strongly suspect that there was some manipulation involved so that they would both look good—the more so as most of these times were set in East Germany.
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