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| Aren't we all the standard deviation? |
I work in a scientific field. Statistics are the text that make up the scientific bible. It tells us in numbers, shared definitions, charts, and other agreed methods, the meaning (if any) of the questions we asked. The data is the data. It is as good as the planning and set up of collecting, processing and interpreting it. If the study design is faulty, the data will be too. If the study design is robust, the data will be too. The key point to remember with stats, don't believe the numbers until you fully understand them.
In the hands of statisticians, scientists, mathematicians and other experienced statistics users, the data can be used and explored with the hope of truth and accuracy. Once that data escapes to people with agendas, it can be spun and give stories that are exaggerations or lies. My interest in this comes from two recent interactions with "stats." The first is in relationship to violent crime and the second to the amount of orgasms women have during anal sex (the two stats were not presented as related and are from completely different discussions.)
PART 1
I was talking to someone from the old country, Montana. They had heard some statistic stating more rapes and murders occur in California and New York than all other states. I instantly felt my statistical shenanigans hackles rise. I asked where they got this number. From a conservative talk show host implicating that the blue states have more crime. I then asked how did they report the numbers. Did they give specific data? The shared data was total numbers of murders and rapes for each state. That right there triggered the full stat shenanigans alarm.
I asked the Montanan:
How many people live in the US? It is estimated around 310,000,000.
How many people live in California and New York? ~37,000,000 and ~19,500,000 = 56,500,000
After doing some math 56.5M / 310M X 100 = 18.2% of all Americans live in California or New York. That means almost 1 in 5 Americans live in one of those two states. For California alone, 1 in 8 Americans are Californian.
I then had to ask, wouldn't that mean about 1/5 of all murders and rapes in the USA occur in either of those states? That one stumped the Montanan for a moment and they reluctantly agreed.
After the chat ended I had to look up some data. I went to the FBI crime statistics website that breaks down crime types for each state. I looked at the 2009 numbers for both Montana and California.
California - 1,972 murders, 8713 forcible rapes reported
Montana - 28 murders, 294 forcible rapes reported. Total Montana Population ~975,000
I ran the numbers and determined the incidence rates for both states per 100,000 people.
In California there were 5.3 murders and 240 reported rapes per 100,000 citizens in 2009.
In Montana there were 2.8 murders and 300 reported rapes per 100,000 citizens in 2009.
If you look at that data, California had almost twice as many murders as Montana per 100,000 people. Montana had 20% more reported rapes than California per 100,000 people. Even with that data, it is hard to make assumptions as to why the crime rates varied between the two states so much. We can theorize on it and do more studies to test the theories, but those numbers alone only tell us the totals, not the causes. We can also argue about the validity of the totals reported. The number of murders is a pretty objective number since it is based on the total number of bodies found that were the result of murder. Ever since rape statistics have been collected, statisticians have known the actual number of rapes compared to the number reported are way off. That nugget right there can throw speculations out the window. We could look into estimates of under reporting of rape for each state and ask why so few rape victims file reports. There are so many questions for criminologists, psychologists, and sociologists to explore.
PART 2
I was visiting one of my favorite websites, Slate.com. I read the following headline, The Ass Man Cometh: Experimentation, orgasms, and the rise of anal sex. written by William Saletan and was drawn into the article. The article reports results from a recent national survey published in the latest issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
As the Slate article states, the survey ...
... clarifies the prevalence of gay sex, teenage intercourse, and oral gratification. But the big story is the increase in anal sex reported by women—and its possible connection to female orgasms.
In the article, the survey found a increases in the number of women in all age groups who report having anal sex ever and in the past year over the numbers reported in 1992. The shocking news came from comparing the amount of women who achieved orgasm through various methods.
Is there some new erogenous zone being discovered through anal sex with women? How can this be? What would Freud think since he believed clitoral stimulated orgasms were "immature" and inferior to vaginal stimulated orgasms?
Among women who had vaginal sex in their last encounter, the percentage who said they reached orgasm was 65. Among those who received oral sex, it was 81. But among those who had anal sex, it was 94. Anal sex outscored cunnilingus.
Saletan postulated on this and suggested an interesting possibility.
Here's my guess. Look carefully at Table 4, Pages 355-6. Only 6 percent of women who had anal sex in their last encounter did so in isolation. Eighty-six percent also had vaginal sex. Seventy-two percent also received oral sex. Thirty-one percent also had partnered masturbation. And the more sex acts a woman engaged in during the encounter, the more likely she was to report orgasm. These other activities are what gave the women their orgasms. The anal sex just came along for the ride.
So why did the inclusion of anal sex bump the orgasm figure up to 94 percent? It didn't. The causality runs the other way. Women who were getting what they wanted were more likely to indulge their partners' wishes. It wasn't the anal sex that caused the orgasms. It was the orgasms that caused the anal sex.
CONCLUSION
Both of these statistical examples illustrate the power and dangers of statistics. Like drugs, porn, and other things that are used for various purposes, they are neither good or bad. It is the use, purpose, and end results that can make them good or bad. Whether we use overly simplified crime stats for political gain or over-generalized sex stats to try and convince someone into trying anal sex, the temptation to corrupt the data through message manipulation and selected number sampling is great. Do not believe statistics until you fully understand what and how they measured the desired questions.
POSTLUDE
What does this have to do with masculinity? As with all statistics, the temptation to create sweeping generalizations are great. When it deals with details on sex, sexual practices, and other sexual points of interest, it affects us all. We need to know the truth about data before we take the interpretations from them as truth. Sometimes the interpretations are lies and need to be debated and debunked. Other times, they are a pleasant or painful truth we need to face. Either way, don't swallow the kool-aid until you have read all the ingredients.
On a lighter second note - As a sexual male, it is titillating to read this stuff and figure out where I fit into the data. I am ahead of the curve for some parts and behind on others. Time to have fun.
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