Boys with Longer Ring Fingers are Better at Math

slashthedot writes "While it is well known that boys have longer ring fingers as compared to index fingers, now some researchers say that the longer the ring finger ratio to index finger, the better boys are at math. In girls, the shorter the ring finger to index finger ratio, the better is their verbal skills. 'The link, according to the researchers, is that testosterone levels in the womb influence both finger length and brain development.'"

2 girls for every boy

[SPickett (911670)]

The beach boys gave boys all the math they'll ever need. And, it isn't related to the index finger or ring finger, but rather to the finger in between.

Re:

[paleo2002 (1079697)]

My middle finger is an inch longer than my index finger. What does that mean?

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[by Anonymous Coward]

My middle finger is an inch longer than my index finger. What does that mean?

That you're very bad with a fillet knife.

Fantastic!

[codesurfer (786910)]

A little different that my usual pickup line, but what the heck!

ATT: Mathbots

[by Anonymous Coward]

I have a huge cock.

Nature saw fit to bless some of us more than others, enjoy your prime numbers nerds!

Re:ATT: Mathbots

[suv4x4 (956391)]

I have a huge cock.
Nature saw fit to bless some of us more than others, enjoy your prime numbers nerds!

Hi, I'm a prime number nerd [adjusts glasses]. Actually having a huge male sex organs could lead to great difficulty making sex with most women. It may not enter fully, and requires significantly more foreplay than average to average-big organs. Also statistics show that girls normally don't enjoy pushing their ovaries in their throat during sex.

Therefore, I must conclude it's better to have long fingers, as they not only make you better at math, but better at playing piano. Both of which could lead to a better financial situation, and every nerd knows it's easy to score if you're rich, while it's much harder to score waving your wang around and pointing out how big it is.

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[y86 (111726)]

Therefore, I must conclude it's better to have long fingers, as they not only make you better at math, but better at playing piano. Both of which could lead to a better financial situation, and every nerd knows it's easy to score if you're rich, while it's much harder to score waving your wang around and pointing out how big it is.

It depends where you go and the womans objectives...

Re:ATT: Mathbots

[BakaHoushi (786009)]

In the GP's defense, a woman won't try to kill you and take your wang afterwards... ...At least, not that I've ever heard of.

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[value_added (719364)]

Hi, I'm a prime number nerd [adjusts glasses]. Actually having a huge male sex organs could lead to great difficulty making sex with most women. It may not enter fully, and requires significantly more foreplay than average to average-big organs.

There is no difficulty, and they really don't mind. ;-) Trust me. I'm over 6' tall and have ... big hands.

My ring finger, by contrast, suffers from being in the short category. The news of this study (or one identical to it) came out 6 months to a year ago, so I'm

Re:ATT: Mathbots

[anagama (611277)]

If rich wives don't really love their husband why is that?

She's a dishonest prostitute. The man who wins is the one who doesn't marry and visits with honest prostitutes. Probably cheaper and more fun in the long run.

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[BeanThere (28381)]

The type of men women want to fsck and the type of men they want to "settle down with" tend to be two different types of men. The type of man who can provide the mansion with the pool is probably working damn hard, so is hardly ever around, and will almost certainly have far less (sexual) energy than her especially if she is not working but hanging around at home bored (with the pool guy conveniently nearby). A pool guy on the other hand will never make enough money to be the one she wants to "settle down w

Re:ATT: Mathbots

[BrokenHalo (565198)]

The type of men women want to fsck and the...

Hold it right there. I have met a few women in the course of my (relatively long in terms of Slashdot readership) lifetime who are happy and generous enough to go in for a jolly fuck here and there.

But I have never, NOT EVEN ONCE, found a lady whose ulterior motive was to check my filesystems.

Which, I might add, suits me just fine.

Re:ATT: Mathbots

[by Anonymous Coward]

my prime: 611111111113
your prime: 6113

Re:

[Fuzzums (250400)]

Where did you have those 11111's added to your prime??? ;)

Re:ATT: Mathbots

[An ominous Cow art (320322)]

I hear that taking v1111111agra will do that.

Re:

[JamesTRexx (675890)]

Offtopic! Who cares about your rooster?

Obligatory innuendo

[BakaHoushi (786009)]

Somehow, I doubt Freud's work would be as widely known if he had come up with "ring finger envy."

In other news, men around the world replied to the findings with a cry of "Oh yeah? You should see my OTHER ratio." Women world around responded by placing their foreheads in their palms and sighing.

Re:Obligatory innuendo

[Poromenos1 (830658)]

Actually Freud's "penis envy" doesn't mean what you think it means, but we managed to attach the label to something else! Bonus points to Freud for a catchy name.

It originally meant the supposed reaction of a girl when she finds out she does not have a penis. I don't see what the big fuss is, though, most girls get penises later on in their lives, if only part-time. Mod me interesting for starting this post with psychology and ending with porn!

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[siriuskase (679431)]

Not everybody starts counting with the number zero

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[UncleTogie (1004853)]

The second finger is not the index finger (unless it is indicating displeasure like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin) and the fourth is not the ring finger but the pinkie.

Depends if you're counting it by metacarpal [wikipedia.org] bones. The numbering starts at 1, on the thumb, and the 5th is the pinky.... or that's what they teach in medical schools, anyway...

but

[Butisol (994224)]

The ratio of men to women in mathematically intensive disciplines is purely the result of patriarchy, glass ceilings, canes as thick as thumbs, the porn industry, and enculturation via pink dresses and My Little Pony dolls.

Clearly, government must start an expensive program of Grrl Computer Camps to lower this ratio.

that's great

[flynt (248848)]

Let's just say that's not all we're better at.

A longer middle finger

[dattaway (3088)]

adds up quickly to most people.

Flaky?

[timeOday (582209)]

OK, so they found a correlation. But it was a correlation they weren't looking for, correct? If I check for the existence of 20 different correlations with a 95% confidence interval, wouldn't I be likely to find one even if none exist? Somebody else would have to confirm this finding for me to give it any credence.

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[Ckwop (707653)]

OK, so they found a correlation. But it was a correlation they weren't looking for, correct? If I check for the existence of 20 different correlations with a 95% confidence interval, wouldn't I be likely to find one even if none exist? Somebody else would have to confirm this finding for me to give it any credence.

I agree that this result needs clarification but there are many 'weird' correlations like this in animals. Bodies are built differently to computer programs. When I build a program, it's a good

Re:

[flynt (248848)]

I agree, it's not clear from the article whether this was comparison was the prespecified one or not. I couldn't track down the source article to check either (it didn't appear to be in the May 2007 issue of BJP). To give them the benefit of the doubt, it sounds like this was the whole point of their trial, but who knows? We won't until we can find the original publication. It sounded like from the article that the effect size was very small anyway, although significant.

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[siriuskase (679431)]

Oh, the correlation exists, it just doesn't prove any relationship between the various organs that come to mind. Of course, if the familiar shoe size gauge is used, everyone would want to sleep with Bozo the Clown.

Re:Flaky?

[flynt (248848)]

Because the 95% confidence level means you are allowing a 5% chance of finding a correlation where one doesn't actually exist. This is called a Type I error in hypothesis testing. If you do 20 tests, each with a 5% chance of a type I error, the expected number of times that you incorrectly reject the null hypothesis is 1.

F1nger en1argemnt

[Opportunist (166417)]

Dissatisfied with your r1ng f1nger? We can help you...

Re:F1nger en1argemnt

[StarfishOne (756076)]

R1ng? Where?!? My preciousssss!

Testosterone levels?

[Wicko (977078)]

In which way does this affect brain development? If more testosterone = better brain development, well, then sexism just raised by 50%.

Re:Testosterone levels?

[Shados (741919)]

Different brain development, not better brain development.

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[maxwell demon (590494)]

According to some hypothesis, too much testosterone = autism.

Gattaca

[alexandre (53)]

So let's save teaching time and separate them in their first years at school? ;-)
</sarcasm>

Meh

[Jethro (14165)]

The only way to truly know these things is through phrenology.

Verbal skills

[uradu (10768)]

> In girls, the shorter the ring finger to index finger ratio, the better is their verbal skills.

Well, this obviously was written by a boy with an extremely long ring finger then.

GIRLZ : Don't be left behind

[Fuzzums (250400)]

Buy my patch and gain inchezzz on your ring fingers, excell in math and work for NASA.

Finger length can predict ...

[canUbeleiveIT (787307)]

SAT Scores [yahoo.com], aggression [livescience.com] and penis size [preventdisease.com]

I've seen this before

[Punto (100573)]

in the form of 'girls with longer ring fingers are lesbians'. Now we can add "poor verbal skills" to the old "lesbian trapped in a man's body" joke.

Why do they still do these studies??

[Chineseyes (691744)]

The only thing these studies ever seem to accomplish is to piss off certain groups of people.

Black people get angry because there is a supposedly a correlation between being black and athletic prowess or being black and affinity for violent crime.
Women get angry because there is supposedly a correlation between sex and mathematical skills.
White males get angry because there is supposedly a correlation between being a white male and having an affinity for pedophilia. The list goes on and on and on.

ob.

[The Living Fractal (162153)]

In Soviet Russia index finger ring you!

But seriously. I'm not sure if this kind of research is ethically sound. Considering people could exploit this as a basic form of eugenics... how much more research like this should we be willing to tolerate? And what exactly was the goal of this study?

Ask yourself: Is research was done that proved scientifically that people with light skin were inherently smarter than people with dark skin, don't you think there'd be at least a little problem there? Ethically, I

Re:ob.

[Pantero Blanco (792776)]

But seriously. I'm not sure if this kind of research is ethically sound. Considering people could exploit this as a basic form of eugenics... how much more research like this should we be willing to tolerate? And what exactly was the goal of this study?

Stopping research because people could conceivably use it for unethical purposes is a terrible idea. I'm no geneticist, but couldn't correlations we find like this help when we get deeper into genetic engineering by helping us isolate genes that produce a particular result?

Re:ob.

[Peyna (14792)]

The study itself can have merit. The problem is with people who take the study and seek to use it for other purposes.

For example, a study like this could help explain why some people seem to be "better" at certain areas of study (not because they have longer ring fingers, or because they are a different skin color, but because of certain chemicals being present in certain amounts during development). In turn, such a discovery could potentially lead to a cure for dyslexia for example, or any other learning disabilities. At the same time, someone could try to take this research and say that it means we should not allow certain races to breed with each other.

At what point does the power of a few idiots to use something for bad make it so that we ignore the potential benefits of research?

Thanks-Dep. of Bad Science Phrenologists rejoice

[gadlaw (562280)]

A short, useless study of 70 odd British children done for in support of what? Seems most useless and of course encourages those other pseudo science gems like "Phrenology" - remember that one? See, like this study, physical characteristics can be used to determine the character, personality traits, and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head. That way we can absurdly judge people based on bumps on the head, now we have finger length and of course there are always the determinations of character

Repeat after me.

[Loundry (4143)]

Correlation does NOT imply causation.

Correlation does NOT imply causation.

Correlation does NOT imply causation.

It's amazing to me that so much is called "science" which also depends solely on this logical flaw.

I'd say

[saibot834 (1061528)]

The more fingers you have, the farther you can count.

And they call it "science"?

[Anarchysoft (1100393)]

...74 boys and girls aged 6 and 7....These differences are small but significant...

That sample is not even close to large enough to take seriously. The test should have been done on adults, all of one gender and in a much larger pool with information on the genetic and racial history of the subjects. But even the starting premise that we're going to pin complex things like "depression, left-handedness, musical ability, and homosexuality" on slight differences in finger length ratio makes me hope that this psychologist doesn't have a lot of patients.

OTOH

[ceeam (39911)]

Boys extremely good in math tend to lack a ring on said finger.

Re:People with certain characteristic head shapes.

[xouumalperxe (815707)]

Ever heard of Godwin's Law [wikipedia.org]?

Re:Quick Question

[Shados (741919)]

Humans are fairly interesting in how their social development probably has more impact on their abilities than their biological potential.

In other words, the person with the best "brain" in the world could still end up as a druggy working at McD dropping out of school after failing, if they met the wrong people and made the wrong choices.

In a similar way, I pick up maths lightyears faster than my girlfriend: except I gave up on applied maths after graduating, while she continued in that field: result, she's a lot better than me at it. My "body" is still better at maths than hers, but I'm not using it, thus the result. Simple as that.