(forwarded, with headers eviscerated -- Rich) From: Dylan Thurston <dthurston@barnard.edu> Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 11:37:07 -0400 On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 02:50:45PM -0400, Michael B Greenwald wrote:

.... For the purpose of a mathematical example, and not to cater to stereotypical prejudices, let's assume that the men want to, and willingly do, pair with every possible partner (the 20 women for the lone heterosexual man, and the other 18 homosexual men for the 19 homosexual men). The 20 monogamous women, each partner with the one heterosexual man (presumably unaware that he's not monogamous). The homosexual men each pair up with every possible homosexual partner. Then we'd have a mean of 1 partner for the women, but a mean of about 18.1 partners for the men.

David quote the report imprecisely: if you look at the report, it asks for the number of female partners of males, and the number of male partners of females. The point about an unequal total population might still work, but wouldn't put the averages off by a factor of 2. Of course they're reporting median, not average. Peace, Dylan