This is a study that simply cries out to be repeated at other schools across the country. A couple of statistics stand out:
1) The least shocking statistic is that 0% of studio art majors are virgins. The only major that might rival art for this distinction is drama. Not sure what it says about me that I always took lots of drama classes in college.
2) The second least shocking statistic is that the chastest majors lie in mathematics and the physical sciences. My guess is that it’s not that these women are less attractive, but rather are too busy to waste their time on trying to find a worthy consort.
3) The biggest upset is that Computer Science majors rank high on the sex continuum, beating out other majors that I was sure would score higher (English, Psychology).
It might be that this is simply an artifact of the particular school. There is actually a bus that runs between Wellesley and MIT on weekend nights that is known locally as the “fornication bus” (you can guess for yourself what vulgar “F” term is generally used in that phrase). If not, however, it certainly suggests that the men of the world should take a closer look at the CS departments when searching for dates.
bear in mind that sample size is 12.5%, and, apparently, CS majors are a rarity. Link to original article here:
http://counterpoint.mit.edu/~webserver/Documents/archives/Counterpoint_V21_I3_2001_Nov.pdf
Alas! My readers will definitely be disappointed. Thanks for the pointer to the original article!
“fornication bus” has had both words censored. That’s the first time I’ve seen “bus” as a euphemism.
what about double majors?
really? “f*** truck” was just going too far?
I just like writing “fornication” when I get the chance.
When on his deathbed, Isaac Newton was asked what he felt was his biggest accomplishment. He replied, “That I die a virgin.”
Computer science? Remember that affirmative action programs in Computer Science departments traditionally aim to raise their “Dave Ratio” to 1.0. Seldom do they achieve this pinnacle of equality.
What is the “Dave Ratio”? It’s the ratio of the number of women studying in a department to the number of men so studying named “Dave” or “David.” Leaving out the “David”s is a trick used to pad statistics in a bad recruiting year.
The bus … er, truck … er, vehicle in question actually has a Wikipedia article that passed notability guidelines.
I wonder how the tendency to lie about one’s sexual history (and in which direction) varies by major.
Back in the late sixties early seventies Iowa State’s Dorm students used to run a taxi service for Nurses from De Moines to come party at Ames. This was a round trip of about sixty miles, with sober drivers. At the time there was one girl to every five guys on the ISU Campus. We treated the Nurses like princesses, because most all of the coeds on campus were unavailable. (Taken by Athletes, Greeks and the like.) By 1976 the ratio was more like three guys to two girls.