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Math It's funny. Laugh.

Boys with Longer Ring Fingers are Better at Math 322

Posted by CowboyNeal from the don't-ask-how-we-know dept.
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.'"
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Boys with Longer Ring Fingers are Better at Math More

Boys with Longer Ring Fingers are Better at Math

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  • 2 girls for every boy (Score:5, Funny)

    by SPickett ( 911670 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @09:59AM (#19363099)
    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.

  • Fantastic! (Score:5, Funny)

    by codesurfer ( 786910 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @09:59AM (#19363101)
    A little different that my usual pickup line, but what the heck!

  • ATT: Mathbots (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:01AM (#19363107)
    I have a huge cock.

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

    • Re:ATT: Mathbots (Score:5, Funny)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:08AM (#19363151)
      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.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by 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 (Score:5, Funny)

          by BakaHoushi ( 786009 ) <`Goss.Sean' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:37AM (#19363369) Homepage
          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.

        • 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...

          Well, not to take this thread too far, but I think it depends on what kind of a woman you are after. I think most guys her

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 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
      • "...could lead to great difficulty making sex with most women." - and how would you know? ;)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mickwd ( 196449 )
        "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."

        What about playing your organ ?

    • Re:ATT: Mathbots (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:10AM (#19363167)
      my prime: 611111111113
      your prime: 6113

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by JamesTRexx ( 675890 )
      Offtopic! Who cares about your rooster?

  • Obligatory innuendo (Score:5, Funny)

    by BakaHoushi ( 786009 ) <`Goss.Sean' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:01AM (#19363109) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @02:33PM (#19365119) Homepage
      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!

  • but (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Butisol ( 994224 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:05AM (#19363131)
    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.

    • Just to clarify, were you:
      (A) being sarcastic
      (B) being serious and really believe that
      (C) trolling

  • that's great (Score:3, Funny)

    by flynt ( 248848 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:06AM (#19363137)
    Let's just say that's not all we're better at.

  • A longer middle finger (Score:3, Funny)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:07AM (#19363145) Homepage Journal
    adds up quickly to most people.

  • Flaky? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:07AM (#19363147)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 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: (Score:2)

      by 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.
    • 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.

  • F1nger en1argemnt (Score:5, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:09AM (#19363155)
    Dissatisfied with your r1ng f1nger? We can help you...

  • Testosterone levels? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Wicko ( 977078 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:10AM (#19363161)
    In which way does this affect brain development? If more testosterone = better brain development, well, then sexism just raised by 50%.
  • So let's save teaching time and separate them in their first years at school? ;-)
    </sarcasm>

  • Meh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jethro ( 14165 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:16AM (#19363205) Homepage
    The only way to truly know these things is through phrenology.

  • Verbal skills (Score:5, Funny)

    by uradu ( 10768 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:17AM (#19363227)
    > 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.
  • Buy my patch and gain inchezzz on your ring fingers, excell in math and work for NASA.

  • Finger length can predict ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by canUbeleiveIT ( 787307 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:20AM (#19363251)
    SAT Scores [yahoo.com], aggression [livescience.com] and penis size [preventdisease.com]
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 12357bd ( 686909 )
      Not only 'girls with longer ring fingers are lesbians', but also his logical counterpart: 'boys with longer index fingers are gays'.
  • 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.

    • Science is only concerned with the truth and doesn't care about your desire to be politically correct or not offend people. So for example there isn't a "supposed" correlation between skin colour and violent crime rates, there really is a definite, proven (mere) correlation between the two (note that says NOTHING about causation, although people tend to incorrectly infer as such). An obvious purpose for such studies is to help determine the causes for such correlations in our society, which helps us CORRECT

      • You are describing surrogate endpoints. If you study the correlation of crime and skin color, you are actually using skin color as a proxy for other characteristics like poverty, parental education levels, and the per child expenditures for education in the inner city versus suburbia.

        Using surrogates is OK in some instances. If the study that answers a given question is outrageously expensive and one using a reasonably valid surrogate is a lot cheaper, using a surrogate can be valid. In addition, if the
        • Until a mechanism is known, we don't know if we're using surrogates. Furthermore, the surrogates serve as checks. If we have a known mechanism and results with surrogates contradict the known mechanism, it can be a clue that something else is affecting the results and may be worth searching for.
    • The point is to understand genetics.

  • ob. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 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
    • Hopefully, if there actually WAS a difference in intelligence based on skin, it wouldn't be hushed for fear of sounding racist/nazi/un-PC.

      But it probably would be: being diplomatic is more important today than finding the truth, right? I'm not saying that there is or isn't a difference, but any findings that support one WOULD be disregarded and/or attributed to the white supremacist agenda.
      • Take 50 random people of each interesting race and skin color. (Chinese, Ashkenazi Jew, Irish, central African) Breed them such that each grandchild is fully mixed.

        Chances are, skin color won't match up with intelligence. It could happen if a skin color gene actually had a second purpose, or if skin color was on the same chromosome as something brain-related, but it's rather unlikely.

        We aren't all mixed-race though. Most of us get our skin color from the same part of the world as everything else.

    • Re:ob. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pantero Blanco ( 792776 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @11:02AM (#19363527)

      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. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Peyna ( 14792 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @11:02AM (#19363531) Homepage
      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?
      • I guess I just don't see the particular reason someone would measure finger length vs. mathematical ability. I can't imagine a real positive outcome from this kind of research. If you wanted to measure mathematiacl ability and the ways it was increased or decreased through genetics, I just don't see why you'd go looking at fingers.

        That's all I meant to say.

        TLF

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Peyna ( 14792 )
          The stuff about finger length is just a way to make people outside the field take a look at the study.

    • I'm not sure if this kind of research is ethically sound...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?

      No. If research was done that proved scientifically that white people were smarter than black people, then white people would be smarter than black people. Sometimes the truth doesn't fit into our current view of the world, but that is a problem with our socie

  • 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
    • You need an unbiased observer, essentially a robot. This could be a human following strict instructions for doing measurements, or it could be a computer program that performs a radar-like scan. Of course, the inclusion of internal structure (via CAT scan, MRI scan, or PET scan) would be better.

      You need an unbiased diagnosis too. This could be done via rather normal statistics. Better would be a score coming out of a Bayesian or neural network. One could even modify those via genetic algorithm, etc.

      There yo

  • Repeat after me. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 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.
    • They aren't implying that either math ability or long ring fingers *cause* the other, simply that there is some apparent statistical correlation. The put forth a hypothesis on something they believe would be a common cause for both situations, but do not say they cause one another.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gsslay ( 807818 )
      Every single person who read your post is now older. You calling that a coincidence?
  • Not only have we heard of this just last week (haven't we? My memory's really bad these days ;_;), but also in 2004. [slashdot.org] Unfortunately, that study claims almost the opposite of this one: researchers, programmers and men teaching mathematics and physics tend to have longer index fingers. So, WTF?

  • I'd say (Score:5, Funny)

    by saibot834 ( 1061528 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:53AM (#19363473)
    The more fingers you have, the farther you can count.

  • And they call it "science"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anarchysoft ( 1100393 ) <anarchy.anarchysoft@com> on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:57AM (#19363499) Homepage

    ...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.
  • I found this interesting and went looking for the other research on this ratio stuff. The problem is all the articles I found simply state there is a correlation but they don't say specifically what the correlation is.

    I mean if your ring finger is longer than your index finger does that mean more musical ability or less? More aggression or less? More athletic ability or less? etc...
  • One Ring finger to Rule Them All! :D
  • Studies have also shown that women with longer ring fingers tend to be lesbians [cnn.com].
  • 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.'

    Nope. it doesn't matter how many times you say it. It's an incorrect answer.

    Ask Lawren
  • my finglonger?

  • OTOH (Score:5, Funny)

    by ceeam ( 39911 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @02:50PM (#19365227)
    Boys extremely good in math tend to lack a ring on said finger.

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