Martin Gardner has a great essay on coincidence, where he argues that given how many chances there are for strange occurrences to happen simultaneously, that there should actually be more of them. Randomness often doesn’t seem random to us.
Some examples:
1. the ipod people found that a truly random shuffle felt nonrandom to people, because songs would repeat too closely, or you might get two songs from the same artist in a row, and other seemingly nonrandom events. They actually had to design a nonrandom shuffle that would feel more random to people.
2. it’s much more likely to get some numbers matching on a lottery ticket than none matching at all.
3. How many people have to be in a group before you’re likely to have two with the same birthday? Answer: 23. Once you get towards thirty, it’s practically assured.
So, yes, we are pattern seeking animals. But also, probability is a little counterintuitive sometimes.