# I Think statistics are rigged!! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 9, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404 "2015-08-09T21:11:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bruinoboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Bruinoboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bruinoboy)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/1 "2015-08-09T21:11:43Z")
A study was done and is showed that 54% of men thought about sex more than once everyday and only 19% of woman do. I call bullshit on this because on both ends the % is way higher especially woman!! ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/2 "2015-08-09T21:12:43Z")
Not all statistics are rigged; only about 85% of them are. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/3 "2015-08-09T21:16:33Z")
Without a link or reference to the study in question, that explains how it was done and exactly what conclusion it reached, we have no way of knowing whether the conclusions you report are accurate, or garbled, or say something other than what you think they say, or are total BS. ---
**Author:** ![Bruinoboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Bruinoboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bruinoboy)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/4 "2015-08-09T21:16:36Z")
> [@Lightnin](#): > > Not all statistics are rigged; only about 85% of them are. Lol…this 1 is in that 85% ---
**Author:** ![Bruinoboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Bruinoboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bruinoboy)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/5 "2015-08-09T21:18:04Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Without a link or reference to the study in question, that explains how it was done and exactly what conclusion it reached, we have no way of knowing whether the conclusions you report are accurate, or garbled, or say something other than what you think they say, or are total BS. Thats true. I think the person who released it just used it just to get a response. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/6 "2015-08-09T21:23:07Z")
Statistics, the field of study of evaluating probabilities, isn’t rigged. Any particular study can be rigged, or even more likely, unintentionally flawed. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/7 "2015-08-09T21:23:52Z")
When you consider that “people who think about sex more than once a day” is necessarily a subset of “people who think more than once a day,” the percentages don’t seem quite so unrealistically low. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/8 "2015-08-09T21:47:26Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Without a link or reference to the study in question, that explains how it was done and exactly what conclusion it reached, we have no way of knowing whether the conclusions you report are accurate, or garbled, or say something other than what you think they say, or are total BS. A critical evaluation in [a snopes bit](http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/thinksex.asp) about “Claim: On average, men think about sex every seven seconds. FALSE” > [@](#): > > … According to the Kinsey Institute’s FAQ, “54% of men think about sex every day or several times a day, 43% a few times per month or a few times per week, and 4% less than once a month.” … > > … A study done through Ohio State University (OSU) for the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Sex Research revealed that the median value for the number of times men thought about sex was 19 times a day (as compared to 10 times a day for women). To collect the data, 120 male and 163 female unmarried heterosexual OSU students between the ages of 18 and 25 were armed for a week with golf tally counters and instructed to click them each > time sex crossed their minds. (Other students tracked how many times they thought about eating and sleeping.) Among the individual men in the study, there was a range of between one and 388 thoughts of sex a day, while with women it was between one and 140. … [The actual abstract.](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2011.565429#abstract) > [@](#): > > It is commonly believed that men think about sex much more often than do women, but the empirical evidence in this area is fairly weak. By means of a golf tally counter, 283 college students kept track of their thoughts pertaining to food, sleep, or sex for one week. Males reported significantly more need-based cognitions overall, but there was no significant interaction between sex of participant and type of cognition recorded. **Therefore, although these young men did think more about sex than did young women, they also thought more about food and sleep.** In contrast, a retrospective estimated frequency of need-based cognitions obtained at the start of the study revealed a sex difference in sexual cognitions, but not thoughts about eating or sleeping. Erotophilia and sexual desirability responding were significant predictors of frequency of sexual cognitions for women, but not for men. Overall, erotophilia was a better predictor of sexual cognition than was sex of participant. **Taken as a whole, the results suggest that, although there may be a sex difference in sexual cognitions, it is smaller than is generally thought, and the reporting is likely influenced by sex role expectations.** (Bolding mine.) The full article is behind a pay wall and I am not so interested: I’ve thought about sex enough for the day I guess! FWIW. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/9 "2015-08-10T01:34:57Z")
> [@Bruinoboy](#): > > A study was done and is showed that 54% of men thought about sex more than once everyday . . . **Bruinoboy** starts 3 threads about sex in one day! Q.E.D. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/10 "2015-08-10T03:00:55Z")
What does it even mean to think about sex, food, or sleep? Can you separate your thoughts enough to say what you’re thinking about at any particular time? Is a brief thought about someone of the opposite sex who passes you on the street in a fraction of a second equivalent to the thought you have when the same person at the end of a date says, “Let’s got up to my apartment, and I don’t mean for just a drink”? What things are going to make you click the counter are dependent on what you’re expected to think about and how you’re supposed to make note of brief thoughts. Whether you click the counter for a fleeting thought depends on culturally-dependent ideas about what a thought about sex (or food or sleep) is. Self-reports of thoughts are useless. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/11 "2015-08-10T03:14:06Z")
> [@Bruinoboy](#): > > A study was done and is showed that 54% of men thought about sex more than once everyday and only 19% of woman do. I call bullshit on this because on both ends the % is way higher especially woman!! What are you hoping to learn? OMG, statistics are Teh Big Lie!! Are we supposed to chuckle in agreement? What do YOU, as someone who has experienced life and who is trying to look at the human condition, think folks really think about when it comes to sex? Are you looking for us to say “oh, those silly studies.” Okay, you got it: oh, those silly studies. Who the fuck cares? ---
**Author:** ![Bruinoboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Bruinoboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bruinoboy)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/12 "2015-08-10T04:51:36Z")
Wow ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/13 "2015-08-10T09:37:33Z")
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Mark Twain ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/14 "2015-08-10T10:48:14Z")
> [@the bit quoted by DSeid](#): > > To collect the data, 120 male and 163 female unmarried heterosexual OSU students between the ages of 18 and 25 were armed for a week with golf tally counters and instructed to click them each > time sex crossed their minds. I can’t stop thinking about this. (!) So basically, for this study, they had to be _constantly thinking_ about whether or not they were thinking about sex. Could that possibly have skewed things a bit? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/15 "2015-08-10T11:45:50Z")
Possibly, but it was males and females equally having to constantly think about whether or not they were thinking about sex and other groups who were having to constantly think about whether or not they were thinking about food or sleep. The conclusion seem appropriate. Young men, prospectively measuring, reported thinking more about all three basic needs more than women and sex not much more relative to other needs in comparison to women. Retrospectively they report having thought about it more. Thus “the results suggest that, although there may be a sex difference in sexual cognitions, it is smaller than is generally thought, and the reporting is likely influenced by sex role expectations.” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/16 "2015-08-10T14:09:54Z")
Even now that I’m in my 60s and the fires aren’t burning nearly as hot as they used to, it’s a rare day that the thought of sex _doesn’t_ cross my mind multiple times. So I’m definitely in the 54%. 🙂 I’d be surprised if the actual disparity between men and women thinking of sex was that large. I wonder to what extent the culture of Kinsey’s era (i.e. ‘good girls don’t think about such things’) influenced the women’s responses, or maybe even the reality. ---
**Author:** ![Gothic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Gothic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gothic)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/17 "2015-08-10T14:59:07Z")
[quote=“Wendell\_Wagner, post:10, topic:727404”] What does it even mean to think about sex, food, or sleep? QUOTE] Thanks, now I can’t stop thinking about doing all three at once. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/18 "2015-08-10T16:59:29Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I can’t stop thinking about this. (!) So basically, for this study, they had to be _constantly thinking_ about whether or not they were thinking about sex. Could that possibly have skewed things a bit? Oh, those silly studies. (Meaning: yep, has to introduce bias. But that is the fault of the study designers, not “statistics” per se.) ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-statistics-are-rigged/727404/19 "2015-08-10T17:42:15Z")
The OP should keep in mind that many young women have a cyclical sex drive due to monthly hormonal fluctuations instead of the more-constant drive men experience. So for one week out of the month, “DON’T EVEN LOOK AT ME!” might reign supreme for her, but two weeks later she could be a total sex fiend. That could average out to about 20% at any given moment who think about sex a lot. > [@Gothic](#): > > > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > > > What does it even mean to think about sex, food, or sleep? > > Thanks, now I can’t stop thinking about doing all three at once. There are websites dedicated to just that. Does this cloth smell funny to you?