ABSTRACT
Coincidences exist to be disproved-and, therefore, to be eliminated as coincidences. The rationalist adopts the premise that all coincidences are explainable if only one knows enough about the attendant circum stances. To know enough, unfortunately, is not limited to an awareness of the details of the event itself (for example, the travel habits of two people that meet in a strange place) but requires one to assess the class of all similar events that would have been called coincidences had they been observed. Should one not consider the chance that any two per sons meet in an odd place, not just the two under scrutiny? This is, in fact, akin to the well-known birthday problem, in which the chances are about 50-50 that two people in a group of 23 will have a birthday the same day of the year.
