[Elecraft] Which hand do you use?

[Craig Rairdin]

> Thanks to all who have responded to the "Handedness" survey (49) so
> far. 
>
> Out of 49 respondents, and a world average of 10% left-handers (that
> would be 4.9%), it seems my friend might have been right.  Either 
> the fraction of hams who are "sort of" to "really" left-handed is 
> larger than 10%, or possibly it's because we're mainly male?

The number of lefties in the general population may be closer to 13%.

In addition to problems with your sample (your respondents choose
themselves, which isn't the greatest sampling method) the other problem is
that your sample size is too small to draw conclusions from. If you get 100
responses you can be 90% sure that the actual percentage of lefties is +/-
5.53%. So if you see 10 out of 100 (assuming your sample is truly random,
which it's not) then you can be 90% sure that the actual value is between
about 4% and 16%. That's quite a spread.

If you want even more confidence -- say 99% -- you're in bigger trouble.
You'll need a sample size of 7562 to be accurate to +/- 1%. With your
current sample size of 49, if you get a result of 13 lefties you can be 99%
certain that the actual percentage of left-handed hams is between 1% and
25%!

Craig
NZ0R
N622T