From: cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer)
Subject: Re: Median??? Re: New Study Out On Gay Percentage
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA
Lines: 48

In article <1qvb5aINNmoi@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>, stephen@orchid.UCSC.EDU writes:
> In article <15378@optilink.COM> cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer) writes:
# #From the Santa Rosa (Cal.) Press-Democrat, April 15, 1993, p. B2:
# #
# #    Male sex survey: Gay activity low
# 
# Note this contradictory title-  Gay Activity Low.

Not really.  The percentage of gays was low.  Headline writers aren't
noted for accuracy.

# #    A new natonal study on male sexual behavior, the most thorough
# #    examination of American men's sexual practices published since
# #    the Kinsey report more than four decades ago, shows about 2
# #    percent of the men surveyed had engaged in homosexual sex and
# #    1 percent considered themselves exclusively homosexual.
# #
# #The article also contains numbers on the number of sexual partners.
# #The median number of sexual partners for all men 20-39 was 7.3.
# 
# #It's a shame that we don't have a breakdown for
# #straight men vs. gay/bi men -- that would show even more dramatically
# #how much more promiscuous gay/bi men are.
# #-- 
# 
# Now let's take a quick look at what you are saying.
# 
# The median of a distribution is that variate-value which divides the
# distribution halfway, i.e. 1/2 of the distribution (population) have
# lower and half have higher variate-values.
# 
# So for Males 20-39 the median=7.3, this means that half of these men
# are higher than this and half are lower than this.  Now if the population
# sample size is 3300, and 1% of them are gay, 33 males are gay.  If we

Actually, 2% were either exclusively homosexual, or bisexual.  You aren't
readiing very carefully.

# say they are distributed equally then only 16.5 are greater than 7.3
# sexual partners, of course, this means that 49.5% heterosexual men are
# greater than 7.3.
# 
# Interesting results.


-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Relations between people to be by mutual consent, or not at all.
