What are the most important fingerprint types?
The most detailed system for fingerprint classification was presented in 1985 by the F.B.I.’s “The Science of Fingerprint”. In the F.B.I. system 8 types of fingerprints are described: 2 arch variants, 2 loop variants, and 4 whorl variants – see the picture below.
However, since 1985 researchers have continued to use various other approaches to classify the most common fingerprint variants. Usually the 4 most common variants of these 8 types (arches, radial loops, ulnar loops & whorls) are discriminated. And because these 4 most common variants are easy to discriminate from eachother, we will focuss on the prevalence of only these variants around the world.
Which is the most common fingerprint type in the world?
The table below shows fingerprint distribution results for 12 countries, displaying that in 9 of the 12 populations the LOOPS are the most common fingerprint pattern type. Only in the populations from China, India & New Guinea are WHORLS more common than LOOPS.
The ‘pattern index’ for China, England, Iran, Israel, Korea, Nigeria, Yemen, New Guinea & Vietnam is close to the expected values according the fingerprint-world-map.
And as expected:
- the highest ‘pattern index’ is found in New Guinea;
- and Nigeria and England belong to the 3 populations that have a clearly lower ‘pattern index’.
Only for the USA is the ‘pattern index’ clearly lower than expected; and for Argentina is the ‘pattern index’ clearly higher than expected.
CONCLUSION:
The results correlate significantly with the fingerprint-world-map that was presented in 1953! The average percentages indicate that LOOPS are typically seen in a small majority of all fingers around the world (confirmed in 8 out of the 12 populations). WHORLS are sometimes more common than loops (confirmed for only 3 populations), but rarely the percentage is higher than 50% (only seen in New Guinea).