Average number of sex partners

[TheBoss]

For men is 20 and the median is 8.

These numbers sound low. Wow, I'm like triple the average. Does this mean I'm good at getting laid for just promiscious?

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/News/story?id=156921&page=1


"Total Number of Sex Partners

Average Median

All 13 5

Men 20 8

Women 6 3



While there are differences between the sexes, the data are internally coherent; for example, people who report more sex partners, men and women alike, are more apt to describe themselves as adventurous sexually and to say they enjoy sex a great deal.




Total Number of Sex Partners

All Men Women

One 19% 12 25

2-4 25 16 33

5-10 28 26 29

11-20 12 18 6

21+ 12 20 4"

[Mastery]

I'm no statistician, but those numbers don't seem right.

Average man has 20 sex partners, but average woman only has 6? How can that be. Common sense: every time a man has a new sex partner, there's a woman who has a new sex partner as well. (Assuming heterosexual) So the average number of sex partners should be roughly equal.

For those numbers (20 for male, 6 for female) to be true, doesn't the female population have to be around 3x the male population? (Either that, or theres a whole lot of male-male gay sex going on.) Can those here good at math/stats confirm this :confused:

Clearly we have men exaggerating their numbers, and women downplaying their numbers - no surprise :rolleyes:

[Pulse]

I'm no statistician, but those numbers don't seem right.


Let's take Jane and Bob as our example...:

Jane Sleeps with Bob

Jane then sleeps only with 5 other guys for the rest of her life

Bob sleeps with 19 virgins

19 virgins only have 3 partners each for rest of life

Bob has just upped the average for men and greatly reduced it for women.

What is it... 10 percent of men sleep with 80 percent of the women?

[Superfreak]

There are twice as many females as males, Oh and more importantly women lie about that sh*t even on surveys, But so do guys LOL just opposite directions

[Maverick]

Statistically speaking there should be 50% female and 50% male population, however it leans just slightly towards more women. Not even close to twice as much. :P

[ware_ru]

Let's take Jane and Bob as our example...:

Jane Sleeps with Bob

Jane then sleeps only with 5 other guys for the rest of her life

Bob sleeps with 19 virgins

19 virgins only have 3 partners each for rest of life

Bob has just upped the average for men and greatly reduced it for women.

What is it... 10 percent of men sleep with 80 percent of the women?

lol... off on every single part

If we're assuming only hetero sex, each sex act contains one man and one woman, so the TOTAL number of "sexual acts" in the population must be the same for men as for women.

Now, the total number of sexual acts by men = total number of men * average number of sex by a man

Similiarly, the total number of sexual acts by women = total number of women * average number of sex by a woman

Because the left side of the equations for men is the same as for women, and so is the first factor on the right side, the averages should be the same. According to the data, they're not. Bad statistics. QED

[Affection]

Actually there was great study done into why there is a disconnect between the number that men report and the number that women report. It concluded that while men being more proud of their acts might be part of the reason, it also has to do with differences in the way men and women count.

Specifically, men tend to take a "rough estimate" at the number of women they've slept with ("Yeah it seems like about 20."). This can fluctuate up or down, depending. Women, on the other hand, are more like to enumerate ("I fucked Affection, Joe, Steve, ..."). Enumeration can only yield the actual number or lower (if she "forgets" a few). From personal experience, some women don't "count" sex sometimes as well; that is, they come up with reasons why it wasn't "really" sex, and then don't add that guy to their list.

~~Affection

[Mild_Seven]

You guys are thinking about this too deeply. The simple way to put it is that there are a lot of guys fucking the same few sluts. In surveys like this they probably knock off the few lowest and few highest on the scale to get a more representative number (because those few sluts can skew the numbers).

I don't like the word "slut" by the way, but I'm just using it to be emphatic here so you know what I mean.

[LifeWithBG]

Who the fk listens to ABC anyway? :)

[Pulse]

lol... off on every single part

If we're assuming only hetero sex, each sex act contains one man and one woman, so the TOTAL number of "sexual acts" in the population must be the same for men as for women.

Now, the total number of sexual acts by men = total number of men * average number of sex by a man

Similiarly, the total number of sexual acts by women = total number of women * average number of sex by a woman

Because the left side of the equations for men is the same as for women, and so is the first factor on the right side, the averages should be the same. According to the data, they're not. Bad statistics. QED

My scenario, although unrealistic, is something that is definitely possible... and shows how statistics could very easily end up like the OP's. You need to rethink what you are saying.

Lets say there are 100 women and 5 men... the men sleep with every single woman.

Men sex partners =100

Women sex partners = 5

Take the 10% of men sleep with 80% of the women thing into account and it makes even more sense.

We aren't talking about the number of sex ACTS... we are talking about sex PARTNERS... of course the number of sex acts is the same for men or women. Make sense?

[Pulse]

You guys are thinking about this too deeply. The simple way to put it is that there are a lot of guys fucking the same few sluts. In surveys like this they probably knock off the few lowest and few highest on the scale to get a more representative number (because those few sluts can skew the numbers).

I don't like the word "slut" by the way, but I'm just using it to be emphatic here so you know what I mean.

No you mean the opposite... there are a small number of guys (small when compared with the overall population) sleeping with ALOT of women.

[ware_ru]

My scenario, although unrealistic, is something that is definitely possible... and shows how statistics could very easily end up like the OP's. You need to rethink what you are saying.

Lets say there are 100 women and 5 men... the men sleep with every single woman.

Men sex partners =100

Women sex partners = 5

Take the 10% of men sleep with 80% of the women thing into account and it makes even more sense.

We aren't talking about the number of sex ACTS... we are talking about sex PARTNERS... of course the number of sex acts is the same for men or women. Make sense?

And the other 95 men to account for equality in population have had sex with 0 women.. so you do the math and... yeah. I'm right. Trust me :)


The only way that the stats could be so different and no lying is if they somehow found the top few percent of men and the lowest few perecent of women, but assuming a large sample size, this probability is small and not worth talking about.

And the quote that you're referring to is "20% of men sleep with 80% of the women" and that's just the generic "80-20" rule and not an actual statistic or anything. It's used in various situations e.g. "20% of the population owns 80% of the goods" and other shit like that.

[Xander]

I also remember the study Affection is referring to and they also found that when the researchers hooked the subjects up to fake lie detectors and asked them a second time, the men gave the same answers but the women's numbers went up (I think from ~5 to ~8).

[Casimir]

With an equal number of men and women, the mean average number of sex partners for men and women must be equal.

The median average can be different. The median is the number where half the population is above it, and half below it. It is higher for men because sex is generally spread more evenly across the female population, where men are more likely to either be 25 year old virgins or huge players with 100 lays.

[HUGE AL]

This also comes down to the David Buss (my psych prof at U of M and now a contributing writer for Esquire) Theory of parental investment. In other words, if a woman has sex with 100 guys in a 9 month period, she can only have one child; if a man has sex with 100 girls, he can potentially have 100 children. Thus, women are inherently more careful as to who they sleep with and the number of men as well. Explains slut defense also...

[Biggie]

Well let me tell you how these kind of studies are done.

First u assume that the total number of sexpartners for a male is Normally distributed with expected value mu and variance sigma square. Now what we can do is to take a random sample from this distribution (Studies.) Let say we get 1000 anwsers each claiming Xi = x sexpartners. Now we estimate the expected value with the sample mean. And then we put up a hypothesis H0 that mu = the sample mean.

After this we test if H0 can be accepted ie the probability for our sample could be coming from the distribution under H0 is 95%.

Now the most common flaws of such a study:

(i) The Normal model can be badly fit to the true distribution
(ii) The sample can be biased. ie the selection is made in such a matter the sample doesnt represent the population

So in essence what can we learn from such a study:

Well the only thing that we can be reasonably sure of is that this study indicates that men have more sexpartners then women. One of the common flaws of the Academic world is that such studies are taken as proof for something they in essence dont prove.

[Dr. Zeus]

This study is probably bullshit. But even if these numbers are correct, it's irrelevant to younger people. I'm sure the majority of the people polled are middle aged or older. They've probably been married most of their lives. And their single/dating years were spent in a much more conservative time. LTR's were a prerequisite for sex.

The huge difference between average number of partners between men and women is probably attributed to it being excusable for a man to be a little more promiscuous, but for a woman the term slut was one that people used liberally.

But I've read nowadays, the average 22 yr old female has twice as much sex as the 22 yr old male. I completely believe this.

[Cedar]

...men tend to take a "rough estimate" at the number of women they've slept with ("Yeah it seems like about 20.")...Women, on the other hand, are more like to enumerate ("I fucked Affection, Joe, Steve, ...")....

Based on conversation with multiple girls, they only count relationships. Not quickies, one night stands, etc etc. Men count everything. I'd say double the girl estimate for more accuracy.

[Diebold]

Oral, Anal, Vaginal... I still think that the average for males is under 10 different partners. No clue for women, I hang out with promiscuous women (although my ex wife only fucked three guys and two women before me)