Fictive sex and the woman who isn't there.

[Jaymes]

Is the wording of the survey available online anywhere? If so, did it ask only for opposite-sex partners? If not, some of the variance in numbers could be shown there. I know lots of women that have had what I would consider to be sex with other women, yet they don't consider it that because there's no penis involved.

[Engyo]

Everybody lies about sex.

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Originally Posted by Jay

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for the mean number of partners for men to be different from the mean for women in any given population with equal numbers of heterosexual men and women, although the mean, or mathematical average, can differ from the median, the middle point of a range. Surveys typically report the median.
So, are men exaggerating or women under-reporting?

I think the part I bolded is your answer. As pointed out, the means, by definition, must be equal, but the medians do not necessarily have to match.

Apparently (and assuming the surveys are accurate), males and females have different skew... either one group is fairly uniform and the other has a large proportion at one end of the distribution, or the two groups are skewed in different directions.

If we assume that the mean is somewhere between the two medians (i.e. between 4 and 7 for the US study, or between 6.5 and 12.7 for the UK study), then we'd expect the distribution to be something like this:

- the mean for both groups would be equal.
- a large number of men have had slightly more partners than the mean, but a small number have had significantly fewer.
- a large number of women have had slightly fewer partners than the mean, but a small number have had significantly more.

Or, yes, we could just have a lot of people lying in their response.

Whatever the case, it'd be fairly simple to figure out if you had the original data.

[Aqualung]

I bet women under report. It's still generally seen as whorish for women to have multiple sexual partners. It's slowly going in that direction for men, too, which leads me to believe that men at least are not exagerating.

[Ozzie]

Originally Posted by Jay

From International Herald Tribune:

Sex survey numbers don't add up, mathematicians say

NEW YORK: Everyone knows men are promiscuous by nature. It's part of the genetic strategy that evolved to help men spread their genes far and wide. The strategy is different for a woman, who must go through so much just to have a baby and then nurture it. She is genetically programmed to want just one man who will stick with her and help raise their children.

Surveys bear this out. In study after study and in country after country, men report more, often many more, sexual partners than women.

One survey, recently reported by the U.S. 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 the mean number of partners for men to be different from the mean for women in any given population with equal numbers of heterosexual men and women, although the mean, or mathematical average, can differ from the median, the middle point of a range. Surveys typically report the median.

So, are men exaggerating or women under-reporting?

Jay do you think they should be asking whether there is greater variance in female populations than male or vice versa?