Archive for May 25th, 2007

Finger length and SAT scores

The original article (by way of Freakonomics):

Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance

The cliff notes:

  • In utero testosterone promotes development of the areas of the brain responsible for spatial and mathematical skills. It also makes your ringer finger longer than your index finger.
  • In utero estrogen does the same for verbal skills, and makes your index finger longer than your ring finger.

Thus, the ratio of ring-finger-length to index-finger-length is supposed to be a predictor of the relative math/verbal SAT scores.

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