okay, gawd knows that my math is suspect, but the answer seems clear to me how men can have more partners than women. Let's assume that there is a man who has slept with three different women, and those women have only slept with him (and probably assume they're his only partner, but I digress). So, he has 3 partners, and each of the women has 1 partner. Perfectly logical, I think.

Gah! Stopped reading after the first sentence.

It doesn't seem clear to me. Before me, my ex-fiance had slept with one girl. So, adding me, that's two for him. Adding him to my count, I'd had, oh let's just say easily more than 5.

eta: sorta x-posty as it took me too long to type all that....

From Ginger's link:

One survey, recently reported by the federal government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.

Argh! Idiots!

That would be true (the survey results could not be correct) if the averages being talked about were mean averages. But the survey could be true if we're talking about median averages. Which is what the first surveys said. (The NYT doesn't say what average the second one used.)

OK, say we have a population of three men and three women. Two of the women have each slept with one guy. The third woman slept with all three guys. The median number of partners for the women would be one.

For the guys, say two guys each slept with one of the "only had sex with one guy" women and also the "had sex with all three guys" woman. i.e. Those two guys each slept with two women. By elimination, the third guy could only have slept with the woman who slept with all three guys. But the median for the guys is two.

So, either the NYT article is factually incorrect about the studies or else I just demonstrated what Dr. Gale said is impossible.

Anyway, somebody fucked up.

okay, gawd knows that my math is suspect, but the answer seems clear to me how men can have more partners than women. Let's assume that there is a man who has slept with three different women, and those women have only slept with him (and probably assume they're his only partner, but I digress). So, he has 3 partners, and each of the women has 1 partner. Perfectly logical, I think.

But we would expect there would be two more guys who slept with no women . So if we're talking mean then it could work, but if it's median then yours is an example of Dr. Gale being wrong.

Anytime those articles start out with, "We all know men are naturally hornier than women because they have to spread their seed." I completely tune out.

But DJ I think that particular article is trying to say they aren't. Or rather that there are just as many women sexing up as men. It all follows the American Pie Rule of Three.

It seemed off to me, but I wanted the mathier types to weigh in.

It comes down to people hearing the word "average" and assuming it's the mean average. Which quite a lot of people do.

I'm currently not answering the door because I can see that it's the weird guy knocking. There's a guy who grew up in this neighborhood who wanders about, always with his shirt open, knocking on people's doors asking to do yard work. He mows my neighbor's yard on the one side; my neighbor on the other side went to school with him and won't hire him because he's creepy. He gives off such a creepy vibe that I don't want to deal with him in any way, but I'm not sure I want to piss him off, either, because ::creepy::.

Math is hurting my head. Let's just make out.