bchris4 4 minutes ago

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 an hour 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 an hour 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 an hour 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 43 minutes 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 19 minutes 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 20 minutes ago

founder effect, or bias of kindergarten teachers in that area having an outsized effect picking ambidextrous students to be left handed.