Beyond Coincidence by Martin Plimmer and Brian King, Icon, £12.99, ISBN 1840465344 Reviewed by Wendy Grossman
THERE are two Wendy Grossmans who are journalists. Both are American, but one lives in London and the other in Houston, and both have written about academic plagiarism. What are the odds?
Pretty good, actually. Certainly a lot better than the odds of most of the coincidences in Martin Plimmer and Brian King’s Beyond Coincidence. It would be mundane in this book. How about the odds of all four players in a whist game being dealt a perfect hand? 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,559,999 to 1. And yes, it’s happened – at a whist club in Bucklesham, Suffolk, in January 1998.
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Proponents of the paranormal may leap on this collection as evidence that Something Truly Strange is going on. But Plimmer and King have chosen to take sceptical angles: they look at statistics, the psychology of belief, risk assessment, pattern recognition and luck. For example, the odds are 10 million to 1 against dying in a plane crash, but 250,000 to 1 against choking to death on food. Yet most people feel safer eating than flying.
Now, if you are reading this sitting next to a Wendy Grossman on a plane from London to Houston and choke on your steamed chicken, that’s quite a coincidence – and we are not responsible.