I was once explaining the Baader-Meinhof Phenomoenon to someone and then went to a movie and there was a trailer for a movie about the Baader-Meinhof gang.
I'm taking statistics at the moment too, actually. I understand what you're saying. I was simply remarking on the pleasantness of seeing a correlation between my academic material and real-world applications.
I guess s/he will realize this not in Statistics class, but in Psychology class. Human brain is amazingly equipped to find patterns, even if there exists none.
Those types of stories are there frequently, but you never remarked on them before because you were not thinking about it.