In recent year the plethora of names and dates and addressees and organizations in a complicated world appears to have triggered many people’s inborn tendency to note coincidence and improbability.

1. Our innate desire for meaning and pattern can lead us astray if we don’t remind ourselves of the ubiquity of coincidence, a ubiquity which is the consequence of our tendency to filter out the banal and impersonal, of our increasingly convoluted world.

2. The tendency to attribute meaning to phenomena governed only by chance is ubiquitous. It constitutes a kind of psychological illusion to which innumerate people are particularly prone.

3. The simple expedient of always asking oneself: “Percentage of what?” is a good one to adopt. If profits are 12%, for example, is this 12% of costs, of sales, of last year’s profits, or of what?