Keith Milsom 1/29/2014

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207365339.xls.ms_office / Left handed child probabilities

WHAT IS THE CHANCE OF HAVING A LEFT-HANDED CHILD?

This worksheet was created by Keith Milsom, owner of Anything Left-Handed as part of an article on the probability of various left-right parent mixes having a left-handed child You can see the article here http://www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk/lefty-probability.html And you can see the Anything Left-handed survey results here http://www.lefthandersday.com/lefthanded_surveyresults.html This is only a layman's analysis and if you can improve on it, please let me know email keith@anythingleft-handed.co.uk Starting number of individuals Starting number of couples Assumed starting rate of left-handedness in the population 1,000,000 500,000 10%

Percentage chances of having a left-handed child for each possible parent combination Percent of % chance % of LH all couples Number of of LH Number of children Father Mother with mix Couples child LH children with mix Left Left Right Right Left Right Left Right 1% 9% 9% 81% 100% 5,000 45,000 45,000 405,000 500,000 20.0% 12.0% 16.0% 9.0% 1,000 5,400 7,200 36,450 50,050 10.0% 2.0% 10.8% 14.4% 72.8% 100.0%

Number of RH children 4,000 39,600 37,800 368,550 449,950

% of RH children with mix 0.9% 8.8% 8.4% 81.9% 100.0%

Resulting percentage of left-handed children

Percentage of all children born to two right-handed parents who are left-handed

9.0%

Keith Milsom 1/29/2014

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207365339.xls.ms_office / Left handed child probabilities

Total Children 5,000 45,000 45,000 405,000 500,000

Keith 20.0% 13.0% 13.0% 9.3%

ALH 14.0% 13.0% 13.0% 9.3%

McManus 26.1% 19.5% 19.5% 9.5%

Coren 35.0% 10.0% 20.0% 10.0%