Sue Frantz wrote: >Ice skating controversies just will ~not~ go away. =)
>I have no idea if this contributes anything to the discussion, but at least >I put off grading papers for a couple hours. =) >Skaters are apparently referred to as 'righties' or 'lefties' based on their >spin direction and not on their handedness. I wonder if people who hear >that a particular skater is a 'lefty' assume the skater is left-handed. After performing a search, I also was unable to find anything beyond anecdotes about a correlation between handedness and spin-direction in ice skating. One person on a discussion list, however, mentioned that it is commonly believed within figure-skating "circles" (sorry) that left-handers always spin counter-clockwise and right-handers spin clockwise. That is, Harry's student simply may have been repeating a myth commonly believed by figure skaters. On the other hand, this does not mean that handedness and spin-direction are uncorrelated; only that, if they are correlated, the correlation is less than one: "This might be an interesting topic for any of you in academia: I've always been curious to see a study done on the handedness and turning/spinning direction topic particulary with respect to gymnastics versus figure skating. The f[igure] s[kating] community seems to believe that if you're right-handed, you must jump & spin counter-clockwise, and vice-versa. The gymn community generally believes this to be ridiculous. I haven't seen any academic-based 'proof' to this. Certainly, there have been many threads about this topic here in the GYMN-L (see digests in archives) as well as in rec.sport.skating.ice.figure. Plus, you could also look at athletes in other sports like swimming (which way they turn at the wall), diving, and hockey, as well as non-athletes and their natural turning directions." (http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/gymn/Digests/Vol4/96.02.28-01) Anyone care to take her up on the challenge? Jeff -- Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213 9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298 Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626 Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS) http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/pests/index.html The Psychology Student: Learning About The Science Of Psychology http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/sbscience/psychscience/index.html --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
