Is this survey claim plausible?

[cng99]

While commenting on the honesty of females, Matt Huston, a so-called 'ex-girlfriend guru', says that in some survey conducted on August 5th 1997, it was found that an average man 'grooms' with 7 different women in his lifetime while an average girl grooms with 12 men.

Considering the gender ratio as 1:1, is this even possible?

Here's why I doubt it:
Assuming all men groom with 7 women. Thus number of grooms is 7 times the number of men.
By the same argument, number of grooms can be 12 times number of women.

Since the number of grooms is fixed, the number of men is 12/7 of the number of women. Which is not true.

I've used the word 'groom' to keep it PG-13.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

is this even possible?

Does "this" refer to the possibility of a survey having the stated outcome or to the possibility of the entire population obeying the statistics of the survey?

Assuming we are talking about the entire population, to answer this as a graph theory homework problem, you should fix up your argument by dealing with averages instead of assuming all persons have the same statistic.

 

[cng99]

Assuming we are talking about the entire population, to answer this as a graph theory homework problem, you should fix up your argument by dealing with averages instead of assuming all persons have the same statistic.

So you mean the total number of grooms is not equal to number of Men times 7?

 

[HallsofIvy]

What in the world does "grooms with" mean?

 

[Office_Shredder]

Sleeps with I assume unless we are referring to chimps.

 

[SteveL27]

What in the world does "grooms with" mean?

They do each other's makeup.

 

[Parlyne]

If you interpret this to mean that the average number of women that a man "grooms with" is 7 and the average number of men that a woman "grooms with" is 12, then you are correct that there's a mathematical problem, since the populations should be about the same size. However, it's pretty typical that an expression like "the average man" refers to the median, not the mean. So, the description probably means that the median number of women a man "grooms with" is 7, and so on.

 

[Dashin]

They do each other's makeup.

I lol'd.

Assuming Gender Ratio 1:1, and assuming they used the Mean for the average:

There are plenty of people who do not "groom". There are also plenty who "groom" too much. If we assume that more women "groom" too much and men are less likely to do so, this is completely possible.

However, Men are... ehem, more well known for "grooming".