
Researchers Map The Sexual Network Of An Entire High School - chaostheory
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chains.htm
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gcanyon
This article is from several years ago. When I read it then the thing that
stood out to me is that the graph doesn't display the timing of the sexual
relationships. So to say that someone who had sex with just one person is
exposed to everyone in the graph is silly, because that relationship might
have happened when both were virgins, and hence no such exposure happened.

I sent an email to James Moody pointing out this obvious flaw in the
conclusions, and he responded saying that he agreed. His original work was not
intended to show the chronology, and the article draws conclusions that he
didn't claim.

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mattmaroon
Does it matter? Wherever there is a link, (IE persons A and B both slept with
person C) there was an exposure. Unless they were simultaneous, in which case
I went to the wrong high school.

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ryanpetrich
In your example: if person A slept with person C before B did then B has an
exposure to A, but A has no exposure to B.

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mattmaroon
Right, so there's one exposure regardless. You don't know who it is I suppose,
but you know it's there.

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gjm11
AB then CD then BC: the graph looks like A-B-C-D but there's no chain A->D or
D->A that actually permits infection.

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tptacek
Obligatory:

<http://sexchart.org/sexchart.9.15>

(This charts the relationships of the informal collection of people from
#hack, #phreak, and god knows what other EFNet "underground" channels).

A smart guy we hired wrote a traceroute for this (including an FSM parser for
the ASCII art); in an attempt to one-up that, I wrote one that did all-points
shortest path and could answer questions like "how many hops am I from X if
you take Y out of the picture". We used it to test our routing code at
Sonicity; it was handy.

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Jun8
Ahh, too bad I can't upvote you a 100 points. Words fail me when confronted
with this chart. I'm taking up the challenge to parse the ASCII art to convert
to Graphviz as my next project.

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tptacek
Just scan it looking for the first in a run of alnum characters, build a table
of nodes, and then scan the perimeter of each node looking for a character
that starts an edge (`'|- etc). Then write a little state machine for
following each edge, and build an adjacency list.

I really ought to use this thing for C class.

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dagw
Some pretty interesting patterns there. One of the more interesting was that
people who have had lots (5 or more) partners had tended towards 'unpopular'
partners (zero or 1 other partners).

Also I wonder if 2 homosexual relationships (that I can see) is in any way
accurate or due to embarrassment to admit such a thing even on an anonymous
survey.

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xyzzyz
Though I do not have any statistics and I am not familiar with American high
school culture, I believe that not many homosexuals are romantically/sexually
active in high school. People in this age are still discovering these things,
and I don't think that most of the homosexuals fully realize what their
orientation is like. Even if they do, actively seeking partner is looking for
trouble in high school reality -- children and teenagers are so cruel towards
people different from them. I did not know of any of my school acquaintances
to be homosexual, and the possibility of all of them being straight is kind of
odd, considering the percentage of homosexuals in society.

~~~
j_baker
"Though I do not have any statistics and I am not familiar with American high
school culture, I believe that not many homosexuals are romantically/sexually
active in high school. People in this age are still discovering these things,
and I don't think that most of the homosexuals fully realize what their
orientation is like."

Two things:

1\. Yes they are sexually active. They just have to be more discrete.

2\. You don't "discover" that you're gay any more than you "discover" that
you're straight, and if it does happen it happens before high school. I can
think of things going back to third grade that pointed towards me being gay.
Now, whether people choose to accept their sexual orientation is a different
matter.

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xyzzyz
> You don't "discover" that you're gay any more than you "discover" that
> you're straight (...) In perfect society it would be like that. However, the
> culture I live in revolts around straight relationships, and there's just no
> place for homosexuality, except of maybe designating some people as "them",
> in contrast to "us". It sucks, but it is the reality. Children growing in
> this kind of society come to think that being straight is "default". That's
> why I do not think that situation is symmetrical -- it takes more effort to
> acknowledge that you are gay than that you are straight in this kind of
> culture.

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jacquesm
What a pity they didn't add the question 'do you practice safe sex' and
colored the dots accordingly.

It would be of far more educational value to the group that was studied _and_
all their peers.

Side note: In the US there are about 750,000 teen pregnancies annually.

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brianto2010
That was not the point of the study. The point of the study was to examine the
relational map within the high school. It was not to examine sexual hygiene of
students in the school.

> " _It would be of far more educational value to the group that was studied
> and all their peers._ "

How is that so?

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jacquesm
> That was not the point of the study.

I realize that.

> The point of the study was to examine the relational map within the high
> school. It was not to examine sexual hygiene of students in the school.

No disagreement there.

>> "It would be of far more educational value to the group that was studied
and all their peers." > How is that so?

Because it would show them in a fairly easy to understand graph how STDs
spread through such a network.

Having the 'outside world' connected wouldn't hurt either.

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xyzzyz
Can someone explain to me why I do not see isolated vertices in this graph?
When I was in (Central Europe) high school, I recall that apart from me, there
was considerable amount of people not involved in any kind of relationships,
and even not counting them, many people used to have partners from other
schools. Is it really like this in American high schools, or did the
researchers just choose this way of presenting the results?

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jcromartie
The article states that just over half were sexually active. So they must not
be including celibate students.

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xyzzyz
I meant the graph linked in the adjacent comment:
<http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chainspix.htm> The description states
that it presents romantic connections, not the sexual ones. However, rereading
the article makes me think that they did not take single students into account
when creating this graph.

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purosercarnal
As I studied in a male only institution, we used to rush to the the girls high
school, it was a five minutes walk. Weekends were devoted to establishing new
connections (trying to), we were struggling to find partners, specially when
approaching Christmas. Good old time. I imagine studying in a mixed sex high
school should be better to get more relations, but is not so clear. We strive
to do it our way.

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Anon84
The actual article mentioned in the link:
<http://www.soc.washington.edu/users/stovel/Chains.pdf>

See also: "The web of human sexual contacts"
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6840/full/411907a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6840/full/411907a0.html)

(Non pay-wall version: <http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0106507> )

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mhb
I don't see a better way to do it, but what would make them think that results
based on asking teenagers who they are having sex with would be
reliable/actionable? This isn't even addressed in the article?

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felixc
That's probably because this is a press release/internal news item, not the
research paper itself.

That said, I have no idea if they discuss that in the paper either.

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dmd
I made a sex graph for my social group several years ago (names blocked out).
<http://bit.ly/bHPjN4>

It was enlightening for everyone.

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mahmud
Damn, that square with seven edges is no "square" at all. He/she slept with
half your friends of the opposite sex!

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joshuacc
"breaking one link in the chain – any link - will stop that part of the
network from spreading any further"

Interesting. I wonder whether the "save sex till marriage" movement is having
much of an impact in slowing the spread of STDs.

My impression is that they don't change many teenagers' behavior in the long
run. But for this specific effect they wouldn't have to change more than a few
to have a big impact.

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sesqu
I'd be careful with inferences like that. It's not a directed graph, so
talking about flow in time is very speculative.

~~~
jacquesm
And it does not document promiscuity either (in time), for all we know these
are nicely serialized or it could be one big orgy.

It also keeps the relationships within the school, which is not a realistic
picture whatsoever, and once you add in the outside world (especially to that
larger chunk of the graphic) all bets are off.

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rbanffy
Am I the only one who looked at the diagram and imagined it as a great party
planning tool?

Couldn't something like this be quickly built with a school-wide hot-or-not
website? People publish far worse stuff on Facebook.

Hmm... Orkut has a network like this, in the form of crush-lists. In fact, I
know two couples who were "aided" by this feature.

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kingkawn
are there high rates of STD infection for teens? or is it more prevalent in
adults with the mentioned hub networks?

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mkelly
If they're describing the Moody paper I'm thinking of, this is _Chains of
Affection_.

Here's a link (PDF!):
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.131...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.131.3333&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

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sounddust
(2004)

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andreyf
That, and the picture says everything a lot more succinctly than words:
<http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chainspix.htm>

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mahmud
Where is the geek independent set? G = (V, empty)

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dennisgorelik
How do they know that the data they collected in their interviews is reliable?

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a-priori
Teenagers have sex. Who knew.

The interesting part to me is that if you look at individual students in the
big group, most have only 1-3 relationships. They just so happen to link up
into a massive web.

