Introduction: In 2015, English statistician and academic David Spiegelhalter wrote a book backed by the History of Medicine of the Wellcome Foundation entitled Sex by Numbers: What Statistics Can Tell Us About Sexual Behaviour. This represents an investigation into the statistics of human sexual activity to update the statistics of Kinsey and show the startling influence by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: The investigation of the statistics of sexual activity is as enlightening as it is entertaining and there is a plethora of literature on modern sexual practices. This represents a concerted effort to track down these numbers and this data. The largest pornographic site, Pornhub®, also tracks its own statistics since its founding in 2007.
Results: An intriguing statistic is that the average number of sexual partners is about 9.9 (6.6 at Kinsey Center) for males and about 3.4 (4.3 at Kinsey) for females in their lifetimes. The exception to this is with homosexual persons, where the averages are much higher. Nature versus nurture is the classic tale of which is more important, genetics or environment, but most often there is a bit of both behind the scenes. Sexual activity is one of the most difficult topics of historical significance, because it is interleaved with so many socio-religious overtones. The average male loses his virginity at age 16.9, compared to age 17.4 for females. About 1 in 10 married adults sleep alone and not with their married spouse — shades of Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore in The Dick Van Dyke Show. Only 29% of females achieve orgasm during sexual encounters, compared to 75% in their male counterparts. Currently, 66% of male college students report having “friends with benefits.” Also, currently 50% of sexually active men and women are infected with HPV at some point in their sexual lives. Sexual activity burns about 100-200 calories in males and about 69 calories in females but the heart rate at orgasm is about 140 and equal in both sexes.
Conclusions: Spiegelhalter dedicated his statistical analysis “to everyone in history who has struggled with sex. And eventually called it a draw.” There is something like 900,000,000 acts of just heterosexual intercourse per year in Great Britain alone or roughly 100,000 per hour. This can all be extrapolated to the 7 billion humans around the world making close to 166,667 copulations per minute (or almost 4,000 per second).
.jpg)
.jpg)
