A question for you statisticians about sex partners:?

Question

Studies show that adult American males have an average of 15 female sex partners while females have an average of 8 male partners. Since it's heterosexual partners only (one man one woman) doesn't the "average" have to be the same number? Why not?

Answer 1

Because they aren't necessarily the same people, and an average is just an average. For example, one average man could have sex with 14 women, each of whom had sex with nobody else. Then he has sex with the 15th woman, who has had sex with 106 men. Taken all together, the women have had sex with 120 men for an average of 8 men each, while the man had sex with 15 women. You can conjure up many such scenarios.

Answer 2

Think about it,. if you have 10 women & 10 men, and one of the women is a sex worker, and the other women all have sex with only 1 man, but the sex worker has sex will each of them, the averages would be:

Men: 2 sex partners ([2 * 10]/10)

Women: 1.9 sex partners [(9*1) + 10]/10]

So no, of course the averages don't have to be the same!

Answer 3

It might be the infamous so-called third rule. Men declare having thrice their actual sex partners, while women confess only one third.

Now, being serious, it doesn't have to be so, since the study doesn't state that no one shares sex partners. You see, if I have sex with two girls, and they both have sex only with me, then I have twice the sex partners as they both do.

Answer 4

the main easy reason for this conclusion is the large amount of female prostitues who serve american men abroad and i think the male female ratio is in favor of women.

Answer 5

Men may be more promiscuous than women. They may be including prostitutes, call girls etc. and thus their average can be higher than the women's.