Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Gina Kolata of the New York Times Edition)
Ouch.
Our own David Gale from the tenth floor is made to look ridiculous by Gina Kolata--you see, she didn't tell him that the survey didn't ask about means--about averages--but about medians. Which means that she doesn't know the difference between means and medians. Which is a very bad thing for a science reporter:
The Myth, the Math, the Sex - New York Times: By GINA KOLATA: In study after study and in country after country, men report more, often many more, sexual partners than women. One survey, recently reported by the federal government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners.... But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.
It is about time for mathematicians to set the record straight, said David Gale, an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. “Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true for purely logical reasons,” Dr. Gale said...
