

Data analysis: more money == less sex, for the young - nod
http://www.tableausoftware.com/blog/lose-job-have-sex

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carterschonwald
This has a simple explanation that the article doesn't account for, namely
that the busier you are with work at a young age (and hence better income),
the less time you have for sexual activity within or without an associated
relationship.

~~~
nod
Well, the author does mention "Or maybe you're just left with less time to go
to work." in the 4th paragraph.

The thing of interest to me, though, was the gender-based age difference in
the inversion point of the money/sex correlation. I would have expected the
opposite, frankly, given society's "breadwinner" v. "trophy wife" archetypes.

~~~
jballanc
Since the analysis is based on comfort with financial position, not absolute
financial position, I would suspect this reflects the fact that women feel the
need for financial security before being able to feel relaxed at a younger age
than men. In other words, more or less keeping with societal norms.

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mattmaroon
That could be the most I've ever seen someone confuse correlation and
causation in one article. He doesn't even understand the difference between
the amount of money you have, and the amount of satisfaction you have with
your financial situation. I know poor people who rarely think of money and
rich people who worry about it all the time.

I have to stop clicking these links, they're always among the dumbest here.

~~~
nielshoven
All valid criticisms. You're right, if it were an academic article I'd never
get away with it, but I decided to take a little more leeway with my blog
post. I hoped my readers would be astute enough to take my implication of an
obviously false causality as tongue in cheek and just appreciate the very cool
correlations. You obviously feel differently - I'll try to be more responsible
in my future posts.

On the topic of financial satisfaction != amount of money, that's very true,
and opens the door to all kinds of alternative theories about what causes the
correlations. Unfortunately, the salary data included with the GSS isn't very
good, so if you want to argue that maybe financially dissatisfied young people
are having more sex because of a different confounding variable (they tend to
be risk-taking maximizers or something like that), there's not much I can say
to argue with you.

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cgranade
To what confidence interval? The article is interesting, but light on the
statistics. Since everything is nicely binned up into "satisfied with money"
and "not satisfied," you could easily do a hypothesis test to reject that the
two categories have the same mean sex rate.

Of course, an obvious extension of this research is to take financial and age
distributions into account with one's statistical voyeurism
(<http://xkcd.com/563/>).

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jaxn
Talk about a perfect example of correlation not equaling causation.

It could be a matter of priorities.

Or it could be a matter of risk taking.

Or it could be a matter of location (higher salaries and less intimacy in
bigger cities).

A shocking study would be more money == less sex, for older men.

~~~
ronaldtriangle
the correlation alone is interesting

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harpastum
As much as the article claims that it's not conflating correlation with
causation, this sort of sentence really throws some red flags for me:

"The moral is clear though - If you want to keep the fires burning into your
golden years, get your financial affairs together early. (Not too early,
though. Right around age 35 would be perfect.)"

Overall, the author seems to be forcing trends that simply aren't there.
Looking at this data set, it seems just as likely that all of these trends can
be explained with the idea that young people don't have as much money and have
more sex than old people. The sex-per-year differential within any age and
gender group is less than 5 times per year.

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lucumo
What's with all the sex stories lately? Spring is here, so hormones are
flowing?

~~~
cgranade
Not just on this site. io9.com has even opened up a "Spring Mating Season"
category. Facebook and FriendFeed are covered in sex-related stories. Nothing
wrong with that, really.

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mikeyur
I call bullshit. I'm broke and still not getting any.

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andylei
why do they assume satisfaction with financial situation equals financial
situation? there are plenty of people making 6 figures that want more, and
there are plenty of people making 40k that are happy with their lives.

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jpcx01
All I know is if I were bartending, or working at starbucks, Id be getting
laid far more often. As a hacker/entrepreneur, women don't play a significant
role in my life.

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erlanger
To paraphrase Eldridge Cleaver, sex and power are one in the same. Poor folk
comparatively get down more often because they cannot exert influence. The
rich have less sex because they're too busy controlling others.

~~~
aswanson
Joke is on the rich.

~~~
erlanger
Hm...seeing that he wrote that from prison, I wouldn't be so sure. Either way,
check out _Soul on Ice_ if you're interested.

~~~
aswanson
Sure will. BTW, any good erlang tutorials/references?

~~~
erlanger
Armstrong's book plus the style guide...I'll post the link to that when I get
a chance. It's overlooked.

Edit: Submitted the style and efficiency guides, check "New."

