Apparently, lefties are more likely to be at the extremes of intelligence. So more likely to be intelligent and more likely to be stupid, compared to righties. Another place lefties are over-represented is in the population of prisons.

Hmm.. didn't we hear the exact same thing about men compared to women a while ago on gd? I.e. men's intelligence have wider variations than women.

_________________
FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

I am neither left handed nor intelligent. But I am a drummer and I can use my four limbs independently

_________________
If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

You climb stairs on one leg? Must be slow...

_________________
My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

lol, It's not nice to make fun of "crippled" people that way

anyway, I mean I start using my left foot. But I guess you are right it was a bad example.
The fact that I use my left leg to push-of when jumping might have been a better example.

a more interesting questions is why most people are right handed.
animals also have a preferred paw (most dogs for example prefer their right front paw like humans). There has been quite some research about this.

_________________
Laurens
Go school: freegame's Teaching School
Author of: The Next Move a book for 15-3kyu players.

In North America, those who are right handed put down the knife after cutting and then eat with the fork in the right hand. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_utensil_etiquette (in particular the difference between European and North American etiquette).

I hold the steak with the fork on my right hand and the cut the steak with the knife on my left hand, so at least for my case yes the pattern is reversed.

Hi,

I am completely right-handed (especially politically ). When I played football (soccer)
as a kid I was troubled by the fact that I played much better with my right foot. Being told by coaches that a
complete player should use both legs, I tried in some training matches to play predominately "left" and I also
made a lot of penalty kicks with the left leg respectively left foot - but it never became as skilled as my right one.
Once I got interested into this, I occasionly used tools like a screw driver with my left hand and I also tried to write with my
left hand (in addition to the right hand), but it was quite unpleasant and I gave up on it.

Not sure about a correlation with intelligence. There are a few isolated studies which claim to have found one.
Since this is not a very important question I doubt that the studies are really conclusive.


Cheers

hackinger

Yes he did. He told me that a Go player must be intelligent to master all of the rules.

I use my right foot first when walking. Also to turn door knobs, but other than that I cant think of anything else that I do with my "right" side.

There seems to be a small amount of "lefties" but this is expected. Now I think that I should correlate a persons rank with which hand they use. Or something like that...

I'm left handed as well.

WHen you look at the poll, it seems that the proportion of left handed people on the forum is higher than in the average population... But, there is probably a biais in the fact that the question asked is "are you left handed?" (which is likely to bring more left handed people to this thread.

Some trivia for left-handed people visiting this thread:
Did you know that when a left handed person has a child, this child has 20% odds being left handed ?
This percentage raises to 40% when both parents are left handed.

Normal percentage is below 10%.

I probably should have rephrased the question then.

Thats intresting information.

Same for me.

I'm pretty close to ambidextrous, though my handwriting with my right hand is neater than my left. And "intelligent people" is pretty close to a meaning-free expression.

_________________
I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat...

I'm right handed, but I'm just as adept at playing go with my left hand.

_________________
RedPoney Carpenter
kgs/igs/ogs/dgs: redponey
igolocal.net

I feel "ambiclumsy" summarizes me better. Albeit, I write with my right hand in tests where I can't use a laptop.

Interesting story; When I was quite little, we had to write a story at school. I wasn't so good at writing, but I worked hard and finished it. I gave it to my teacher, who was a little bemused ; evidently I'd written everything backwards, and I'd used my left hand to do it.

When I was younger I was right eye dominant, but my right eye has weakened over time, and now I'm left eye dominant (if you are wondering which you are, look at something and suddenly cover one eye; if the picture jumps, you covered your dominant eye)

_________________
Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Yes. So if you're a left-handed man it's even worse!

I have heard this theory as well, but slightly different.

What I heard implied that using your left hand exercised the right side of your brain, which is where the intelligence/logic sits. So people who use left hand more have their logic centers in slightly better shape. Or was it the other way around?

Statistically, this should translate that left handed people are, on average, slightly more intelligent than right handed people. The key word here is: 'statistically'... On the other hand, there seem to be many more right-handed people in the world, so the initial pool is much larger, which would imply greater diversity as well. So, in practice, you cannot make any prediction about a person's intelligence based on their 'handedness'.

PS> As we all know, statistics are nothing but damned lies, anyhow.
Consider two people, one has two chicken, one has none. Statistically, each has a chicken. In reality, one is getting fat while the other is starving.

For the record, I am right handed.
However, following the theory above, I strive to practice my left hand as well. For example - when I need to scratch my right foot, I *always* use the left hand! I can see myself getting smarter by the minute!

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I tie my shoelaces in such a way that my feet can get in and out of the shoes without tying or untying the shoelaces.

_________________
My homepages: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Unkx80 and http://yeefan.sg/.

That's the true sign of intelligence!

_________________
FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

I do it too. But I always thought it was a sign of laziness.