http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6680737.stm

I think this might help to add a sense of "LEGIT"

Sure, until you look at My math scores!!
k

75 subjects is surely too few for such a claim? Or am I just saying this because my digits fail to fill the criterion?

Ian

Oh, since when is a reading ever legit? It's more like...guidelines, trends. If you say it's true, it probably is. Do guidelines parallel the lifeline? I can't put my finger on it.

The imformation in this article can be found in (almost) any good book on Palmistry......but please don't take my word for it.




Dave

Another article on that study, said finger-length could be used as a prediction for SAT scores.

Interesting, do you have a link to this article?........

Can't quite put my finger on this as rule of thumb; I'd like to know validity of hormonal influence on those two digits and gender differentation as well. Beware of misleading data. One's presentation assumedly should not venture into argumentalism.

Who gives them time to argue?

Until 1853 it was legal to beat one's wife in England with a stick, so long as it was no wider than one's thumb. Hence the saying, 'Rule of thumb'.

Ian

From Wikipedia:

"It is often claimed that the term originally referred to the maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife.[1] This explanation for the origin of the term was popularized in the opening of the 1999 movie The Boondock Saints.

Linguist Michael Quinion, citing the research of Sharon Fenick, notes that there are some examples of a related usage historically — most notably with regard to a supposed pronouncement by a British judge, Sir Francis Buller, that a man may legally beat his wife, provided that he used a stick no thicker than his thumb. However, it is questionable whether Buller ever made such a pronouncement and there is even less evidence that he phrased it as a "rule of thumb"; the rumoured statement was so unpopular that it caused him to be lambasted as "Judge Thumb" in a satirical James Gillray cartoon. According to Quinion, the term "Rule of Thumb" was first documented in English in 1692, long before Buller's reported pronouncement. The first known usage of the phrase "rule of thumb" in direct reference to domestic violence was in 1976, in the book Battered Wives by Del Martin."

Thanks for that Philemon. However, the Oxford English Dictionary, who have very strict rules for how they accept word meanings and are the final arbiter of the English language here in the UK, give the origin I stated. So, if I'm wrong (sadly all too possible), I'm certainly in good company. I am a rebel enough, however, to love questions being raised and the OED have been wrong before.

I would also add that Wikipedia entries can be added and amended by any man and his dog and don't appear to have any academic rigour attached to them. The one on me is rather short on facts and long on fantasy, for example.

Ian

Another source:

Rule of thumb

Meaning

A means of estimation made according to a rough and ready practical rule, not based on science or exact measurement.

Origin

This has been said to derive from the belief that English law allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick so long as it is was no thicker than his thumb. In 1782 Judge Sir Francis Buller is reported as having made this legal ruling. The following year James Gillray published a satirical cartoon attacking Buller and caricaturing him as 'Judge Thumb'. The cartoon shows Buller carrying two bundles of sticks and the caption reads "thumbsticks - for family correction: warranted lawful!"

It seems that Buller was hard done by. He was notoriously harsh in his punishments, but there's no evidence that he ever made the ruling that he is infamous for. Edward Foss, in his authoritative work The The Judges of England, 1870, wrote that, despite a searching investigation, "no substantial evidence has been found that he ever expressed so ungallant an opinion".

It's certainly the case that, although British common law once held that it was legal for a man to chastise his wife in moderation (whatever that meant), the 'rule of thumb' has never been the law in England. Despite the phrase being in common use since the 17th century and appearing many thousands of times in print, there are no printed records that asspciate it with domestic violence until the 1970s. The false stories that assumed the wife-beating law to be true may have been influenced by Gillray's cartoon.

Even if people mistakenly believed that law to exist, there's no reason to connect the legal meaning with the phrase - which has been in circulation since at least 1692, when it appeared in print thus:

Sir W. Hope, Fencing-Master, 1692 - "What he doth, he doth by rule of Thumb, and not by Art."

That makes it clear that the origin refers to one of the numerous ways that thumbs have been used to estimate things - judging the alignment or distance of an object by holding the thumb in one's eye-line, the temperature of brews of beer, measurement using the estimated inch from the joint to the nail, etc. It isn't clear which of these is the precise origin and this joins the whole nine yards as a phrase that probably derives from some form of measurement but which is unlikely ever to be definitively pinned down.

Philemon,

I find this argument you present more compelling the more I think about it. Holding the thumb up to gauge perspective in art, for example. Perhaps I shall log in to the OED and see what they have to say in response. If I get an answer I'll report back.

Ian

The finger length testosterone/estrogen subject is reasonably well-known in palmistry circles. There are also physical indications from a simian line, as well as many other things.

Google medical palmistry. They don't use the same terms but in many cases it is a diagnostic tool.

That's what I said in a previous post (above), perhaps this shoud have been posted on the mentalism forum regarding Palmistry......?

Wow... nice to know... I was born with an E.T. finger that has built in d-lite... I tinhk taht mkeas me a gneuis...

Thanks for that..............really helps.......?

No worries... I just thought I'd add a little humour along the way...