For your morning delectation

[andrewducker]

(thanks to is_not_well)

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Whither Law? What was the sample? How did they verify truth?

[andrewducker]

1) This only covers human beings.
2) Students. At Wellesley.
3) It is impossible to verify truth.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

1, :P
2, All students? Some students? The members of one Frat house? I am assuming Wellesley is in America...
3, Very deep. :P

[andrewducker]

I don't actually know any more than you do, except that Wellesley is, indeed, in America.

"Wellesley College is a women's liberal arts college, in Wellesley, Massachusetts"

Other than that, it was just a funny graph Julie found on academics_anon...

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

* suspects it is completely made up *

/So, basically, someone is saying thta arty women are sluts and sciencey women can't get laid?

[andrewducker]

Well, _you're_ saying that. I haven't heard anyone else say that.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

It's what the graph says.

[erindubitably.livejournal.com]

Where does the graph say it's only women?

[andrewducker]

Wellesley is a women's college...

[erindubitably.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that clicked a second after I hit 'post comment'.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

Actually, most women's colleges in America have some men attending - taking classes while officially attending other institutions. I went to Agnes Scott which had, at the time, about 600 students - at least 4 or 5 of them were male.

So, you know. That's meaningless percentage-wise but I mention it anyway!

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Andy says it's a women only college.

[andrewducker]

Nope. That's your interpretation of it.

It could equally be the case that art students are all settled down into marriage, and maths students are more likely to be christians and thus in celibate relationships.

Which isn't any more likely to be a good explanation - because we don't have any explanation at all, nor enough information to make one.

All we have are some self-reported (I would assume) figures on virginity, broken down by area studied. I don't have any particular reason to assume they're entirely accurate, but nor do I have a good reason to think they've just been made up.

In addition, I generally object to pejoratives like "slut" in the first place, but certainly just because someone is not a virgin it doesn't mean that they are having sex with a variety of different people.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

All we have are some self-reported (I would assume) figures on virginity, broken down by area studied.

No we don't. We have a graph. No figures, no data, and no reason to assume they are anything other than completely made up for something like graphjam to make a "hilarious" point:

http://graphjam.com/2008/09/21/song-chart-memes-statistics-made-up-on-the-spot/

I object to perjoratives like slut, too. Which is why I call bullshit when I see "funny" stuff like this which can be used by the kind of people who like to slut-shame women.

[andrewducker]

Good point.

Jibes with my experience though, so I'm going to assume they're 100% accurate until someone proves the opposite with their own poorly sourced graph!

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Give me five minutes on Graphjam, then... :P

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I assumed andrewducker was posting it to show that just because you are doing computer science doesn't mean you are a virgin. The chart actually undermines an arts versus science reading.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

well except for computer science which is hanging out with the arts subjects for some reason.

[erindubitably.livejournal.com]

According to this site it's a 2001 campus sex survey by the joint MIT/Wellesley college magazine Counterpoint.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I'd pick a lot of holes in that data, but at least we now know there IS some.

[andrewducker]

You might also be interested in onceupon's interpretation below.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Quite a good college. Hillary Clinton got her first degree there. Large landscaped campus on a lake, with several hiking paths around it. I saw my first male cardinals there, flashy little things that they are. There's an area of wetlands running down into the lake which is completely covered with invasive purple loosestrife - very pretty in flower.

There are good links into Boston, both driving (route 9) and light rail (it's a short walk to Wellesley Square station). Wellesley town has a pleasant main street, with a good deli, and lots of suburban neighbourhoods full of academics from Wellesley, Brandeis, and all of the Boston and Cambridge colleges. And other people, of course, but the concentration of academics really is amazing.

And now you know!

[joexnz.livejournal.com]

just so someone enters into the non academic spirit of poking fun at maths students

-giggles-

also i was an art history major who dated mathematicians, from purely emperical one person perspective, seems generally accurate to me.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

have to say that mathematicians always remind me somehow of priests (in their general manner).

[andrewducker]

That would be the starting point of Anathem...

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

My experience attending a women's college generally agrees with this.

And not because, as someone said in a different thread, art majors are sluts. But the art majors did have a lot more time for a social life than the math majors, who tended to be a very over-worked and hyper-focused on a regular basis lot while the art majors tended to work in spurts of intense productivity alternating with long periods of socializing.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Would just like to point out that *I* wasn't saying arts majors are sluts, but that this would be the likely spin put on it by others.

[nameandnature]

I expect similar results would occur for men too (anecdotally, from my memories of university). So far, the only person using the term "slut" here is you.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

woo! go compsci majors!

Re: psych majors

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

Although my experience with psych majors would put them significantly lower on the scale than this would suggest. Might be a New England vs. Mid-Atlantic seaboard thing. I have no data for the students out here in Seattle…