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I'm a southpaw myself, and therefore quite biased, but I've always been struck by the prevalence of CEOs, Presidents, notable scientists, etc. that I have met w

by arcanus 10y ago

I'm a southpaw myself, and therefore quite biased, but I've always been struck by the prevalence of CEOs, Presidents, notable scientists, etc. that I have met who are fellow lefties. Don't have a p-value, but it seems much higher than the ambient (~10%) rate. For instance, for the last 4-5 years in our computational science research group, we have been sitting pretty steadily near 50%.

rjsw 10y ago
At my PPOE it was 50% too. I can remember being in meetings where everyone except one PHB was left handed.
qrendel 10y ago
Selection bias? There are some studies indicating left-handed children tend to score lower (on average) on IQ, verbal scores, etc: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16643966 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16643966 (Edit: Seems the IQ difference varies between studies and is negligible, if even exists.) Hypothesis is that left-handedness can be caused by early brain trauma, so if "lefties" are disproportionately represented in such positions, the ones with non-pathological causes would seem to have an even bigger advantage over the right-handed to make up for the lower mean. Or perhaps it's associated with other talents that make up for the deficits. (Edit: Wikipedia seems to support this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Intelligence) Or perhaps the research conclusions are just wrong.
- visakanv 10y ago
  It's possible for both phenomena to coexist. Extreme case: Suppose 95% of left-handers are low-functioning, and 5% of them are INCREDIBLY high-functioning. You'd then have them simultaneously overrepresented in top positions AND scoring lower on IQ, verbal scores, etc. If true (in a less extreme sense), I imagine it would be vaguely correlated with post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth. Some of the most amazing people humanity has produced went through unimaginable suffering. And yet the vast majority of people who go through hideous suffering end up dysfunctional. So it's something like– most people with a disadvantage get messed up, but the few who manage to overcome it, manage to overcompensate dramatically.
  - arcanus 10y ago
    > You'd then have them simultaneously overrepresented in top positions AND scoring lower on IQ, verbal scores, etc. Yep... you can have distributions with identical means, and fatter tails.

by arcanus 10y ago

rjsw 10y ago

At my PPOE it was 50% too. I can remember being in meetings where everyone except one PHB was left handed.

qrendel 10y ago

Selection bias? There are some studies indicating left-handed children tend to score lower (on average) on IQ, verbal scores, etc: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16643966 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16643966 (Edit: Seems the IQ difference varies between studies and is negligible, if even exists.) Hypothesis is that left-handedness can be caused by early brain trauma, so if "lefties" are disproportionately represented in such positions, the ones with non-pathological causes would seem to have an even bigger advantage over the right-handed to make up for the lower mean. Or perhaps it's associated with other talents that make up for the deficits. (Edit: Wikipedia seems to support this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Intelligence) Or perhaps the research conclusions are just wrong.

visakanv 10y ago
It's possible for both phenomena to coexist. Extreme case: Suppose 95% of left-handers are low-functioning, and 5% of them are INCREDIBLY high-functioning. You'd then have them simultaneously overrepresented in top positions AND scoring lower on IQ, verbal scores, etc. If true (in a less extreme sense), I imagine it would be vaguely correlated with post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth. Some of the most amazing people humanity has produced went through unimaginable suffering. And yet the vast majority of people who go through hideous suffering end up dysfunctional. So it's something like– most people with a disadvantage get messed up, but the few who manage to overcome it, manage to overcompensate dramatically.
- arcanus 10y ago
  > You'd then have them simultaneously overrepresented in top positions AND scoring lower on IQ, verbal scores, etc. Yep... you can have distributions with identical means, and fatter tails.