April 23, 201412 yr I had a student once who was having a terrible time with the hammer. After watching him for a bit striking the anvil instead of the workpiece; I asked him if he was using the dominant hand for the hammer. he replied that "no, he wanted to learn to use his off hand" I told him he was free to damage his own equipment learning to use his off hand; but he was not welcome to damage *MINE*!
April 24, 201412 yr Steve, you claimed that there are populations that are primarily left handed, which would indicate either a cultural bias in handedness, or some sort of strong genetic component. If that were true, then I would expect every article about handedness in humans to mention it. Everything I have read and can find on the subject says the same thing. Populations of humans are predominately right hand dominate, with 10-30% of the population being left hand dominate. If you count mixed hand dominate you get the higher , 30%, number. There is some evidence, not well attested to, that the number is rising. No one has found a strong genetic component. Hand dominance appears to be set before birth, but the mechanism is unclear. As far as I can tell hand dominance does not appear to run in families. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it. BTW, horses are nearly all left dominate (it's why all horse races are run counterclockwise) , great apes don't seem to show any preference, and elephants appear to be evenly split. I suspect that NASCAR races are all left turns out of tradition. Geoff
April 24, 201412 yr FWIW RadioLab had a nice podcast on handedness: http://www.radiolab.org/story/whats-left-when-youre-right/ Discussed are various myths and theories, including the impact on boxing and the handedness of parrots.
April 29, 201412 yr Author The results surprise me - the number of *ambidextrous* people out there. All the best Andy
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