The areas with higher rates of left handedness on the map seem to correlate to the more progressive areas where you’d expect parents and teachers to not discourage it. Was kind of surprised they didn’t mention that, given they started with that anecdote.
xrayarx · 1h ago
Quote from the article
One of the best available data sets on left-handedness comes from a scratch-and-sniff survey of olfactory ability mailed out to millions of National Geographic subscribers in the 1980s.
Go ahead and read that sentence again — it doesn't get any less weird the second time around.
nine_k · 1h ago
The geographical weirdness: left-handedness is much more widespread in Northeast, with some less prominent peaks in Florida, Arizona, South Dakota. The source is suggested to be genetic.
I wonder if there's information on how many passengers of the Mayflower were left-handed.
jamesmontalvo3 · 51m ago
> I wonder if there's information on how many passengers of the Mayflower were left-handed.
Probably 0% reported, considering the negative views towards left-handedness at the time.
irrational · 47m ago
My son is left handed. Nobody else in my or my wife’s family is or has been left handed, that we know of. And we don’t live in one of the mentioned areas. It seems odd, but I’ve never looked into it.
reactordev · 22m ago
I’m the same. No one in my family tree going back to my great grandparents were lefties. Nor any cousins or 2nd cousins. Just me.
pluto_modadic · 23m ago
founder effect, or bias of kindergarten teachers in that area having an outsized effect picking ambidextrous students to be left handed.
deathanatos · 1h ago
The archive.org link doesn't seem to have captured TFA.
One of the best available data sets on left-handedness comes from a scratch-and-sniff survey of olfactory ability mailed out to millions of National Geographic subscribers in the 1980s.
Go ahead and read that sentence again — it doesn't get any less weird the second time around.
I wonder if there's information on how many passengers of the Mayflower were left-handed.
Probably 0% reported, considering the negative views towards left-handedness at the time.
https://archive.ph/y543P