As a leftie, I tend to work in engineering/manufacturing tech industry. The percentage of lefties in my current area is running 50%. That's in Michigan. It could be that autos attract lefties? And lefties go where the jobs are that suit their brain structure?

and engineering. She's a freshman in highschool and has been planning a career in engineering for a couple of years now. She was just invited to a seminar of sorts at her high school called (Smart Girls Rock!) via recommendation by one of her teachers because of her "strong aptitude for science and / or math." The event is to teach them about STEM careers and to allow them time and space to interact with women in those fields.

My right handed daughter is also one heck of a strong math student, but mostly seems to have interest in artistic careers.

So, yeah that was a little "proud dad" I suppose, but the point is that the rather interesting correlation is represented in my household.

writing with my right hand. Palmer method. In the fifties.

Can't write with my left hand, but it still is dominant. I have been told that seeing me try and swing a golf club is hilarious, because left and right fight over which hand should be on top. The most comfortable way to hold the club results in a truly bizarre and stunted swing. So I stopped trying.

Born in Philly, in the forties. So interesting to see that chart.

by the time I'd taught them both to write, I was completely confused myself.

It's not a dominant trait...the only other leftie in my family was an aunt of father's side (that I know of). But the engineering genes are strong on both sides of my family tree, and for the kids, too.

My older relatives were amazed that the school allowed me to write with my left hand.

Good thing, too. Trying to change me wouldn't have worked, and would have seriously pissed me off.

To be fair, I did have beautiful handwriting.
Still do, when I take care. As I explained to a poll worker who could not read my signature - at my age, my signature is more of a suggestion.

The older is right handed, and I couldn't teach him how to hold a pencil, or scissors, or do much of anything. To this day (and he is now nearly 32), he holds his pen--strangely. The younger one is very adept.

Sort of the reverse of the normal problem of a right handed parent trying to teach a lefty.

I have a sneaking hunch that my granddaughter may be left handed, and I look forward to being able to teach her how to do stuff, and telling her all the great things about lefthandedness!

In my family, left-handedness is the norm: father, sister and I are all lefties. Mum and brother are righties.
Starting school in the early Fifties, they tried to "convert" me, with mixed success. Still write an elegant, Spencerian hand on the right. Block letters on the left. Draw with either hand. (I went into the arts. Wound up as an actor and theatrical designer. Mix of both art and technical things.) Essentially, I'm ambidextrous, but favor the left.
One annoying quirk. When I'm given directions, the person directing me has to point where he wants me to go. I simply cannot tell left from right on the fly....I have to stop and think about which is which!
Dancing with me can be hazardous.

at me. I went into computer programming and support and quality assurance. I was good at it, but as a really hilariously ADHD person, I tended to wait until the last minute and wing things, just, I guess, to make it interesting. And I was always delighted and astounded when my programs ran correctly, when the Tandems I put together actually booted up - even though I know how everything works, and I am horribly logical, things like that were always magical to me. I don't think computers was really the job for me, but my dad refused to let me accept a fully paid scholarship in art from a state college in Pennsylvania (I was only 17 when I graduated, and in those days I never dreamed of fighting back). So I drifted into programming because it was easy.

I have to think about it before I can figure out left or right. A mind is a terrible thing to lose...

Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Florida, Ohio.

I wish their political habits were also left handed.

Seems like every other actor in the world is left-handed, and this is also true of other creative areas.

The Yanomami, of course, are famously almost 1 in 4 lefties. I was reading an article on 13 August (International Left-handers Day) that floated the suggestion of a correlation between handedness and the violence of the culture: http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/news041206-6.html ; the premise being that left-handedness is more pro-survival in violent cultures because they have an advantage in personal combat.

-- Mal

as you can clearly see from the graph, they DO recruit!

born in 1964 is left handed.

He writes lefty and eats lefty but holds his bowling ball and a bat in his right hand.

I'm right handed and a lousy bowler. Nevertheless, I was bowling with some friends and it was gutter ball after gutter ball. I guess my arm got tired and I switched to my left hand - figuring I had nothing to lose. I got a strike.

one of them (a lady born in maybe the 1920s?) had beautiful handwriting. She was ambidexterous but, not naturally - she was born left-handed but at the time she was in elementary school it was believed that left-handedness was wrong, and she was forced to learn to write with her right hand.

Fast forward a couple decades - Another left-handed co-worker. A new employee was continually fascinated by this. He apparently had never encountered a left-handed person before and so he'd intensely watch the left-handed co-worker write and ask her if it was painful.

That's why I wouldn't put much stock in the line graph shown above.