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Women "Advertise" Fertility
Dik Zak writes with word of a paper published in the journal Hormones and Behavior. A study found that women take greater care over their appearance when they are at peak levels of monthly fertility. The researchers took two photos of each of 30 women, one near ovulation and one at the other end of her cycle. They then showed the paired photos (with faces obscured) to a group of observers, who were asked to judge in which photo the women were trying to look more attractive. The observers chose the "high fertility" subject nearly 60% more of the time than would be expected by chance.
Looks like kdawson isn't too fertile right now.
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Like you uhh know you we are (most of us) are at the 100% fertility rate most of the time and uhhh we don't care about advertising it. I am not sure where i am going with this. Oh snap, i need to shave the 4 month old beard. Wonder where dad keeps his razor...
Hardly statistically significant:-
60% of 30 is 18 - I mean come on, that's only 3 over the pure chance 50%!
There's a reason other than "randomness" that your wife bothers you more at times. It's not just because she thinks that you need "a break from your work". Open your eyes, men! She wants something from you!
My wife and I figured this out ages ago. She's all over me during ovulation. Anyone who's married and paying attention should also be able to notice this. But then again, how many guys know their wife's monthly schedule? Hmm.
--Posted as AC for privacy
Dear stranger, what is this "women" you speak of?
The case study was to small, only 30 women with only 2 pictures, not only did we not collect data, but with the lack of numbers we creates a very large error of margin.
Example, flip a coin once, and you get heads, your test reveals 100% heads when flipping a coin. Flip it 10 times, you got heads 3 times, so according to this test when flipping a coin you have 30% chance to get heads. Now flip it 100 times. That number will be a lot closer to 50%.
Try 1000 women with 6 pictures each (3 in prime and 3 out of prime) then have 100 different people scoring each card.
All this test does is shows is hey maybe there is something, and let us do a real test.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
Not 60% of the time, but 60% more than expected if it were chance alone. So more likely 1.6 * (30*.5) = 24/30, not 18/30.
But of course the actual number isn't in the article.
The enemies of Democracy are
When I'm at "the other end of my cycle" aka, my period, I'm bleeding and bloated and cramping and my face is breaking out, and looking pretty is not exactly high on my list. When I'm not, looking pretty is much less of a hassle. So, not exactly rocket science here.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
The full article can be found here.
So they'll advertise, but never actually have any for sale? It's like shopping at Best Buy.
I am a statistician, and reading through the comments hear, am saddened that many readers claim that "statistical significance" could not have been achieved in this study because of a sample size of 30 women. First, that's only part of the random sample in this study, the other part is men sampled to judge the pictures.
.01, which usually signifies statistical significance.
Second of all, I have looked up the actual publication in "Hormones and Behavior", and the p-value associated with their main test is
Ultimately, determining whether some difference in populations is due to chance depends on more than just sample size. It depends on how large of a difference you want to detect, and the variance of the measurements within a group. Of course, larger sample sizes help, but it ultimately depends on what you're studying, and the design of the experiment.
So while I definitely applaud being sceptical of all statistics, I urge you to look up the actual publications, read the methodology, and then decide if the results are something you believe. Kneejerk reactions to n = 30 don't really help anyone though.
I have not read through this publication in its entirety yet.
Doc: Thank you for volunteering for our experiment
Subject: That's fine. What's it about?
Doc: We can't tell you. But could you tell me what part of your menstrual cycle you're in?
Subject: So it's about menstrual cycles?
Doc: No. We ask everyone that quaestion.
Subject: I believe you.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This is the one type of advertising where you don't want your pop-up to be blocked.
Sure we would. Everyone looks better in the dark.
What woman in her right mind would allow someone to take photos of her based on her freakin' period?
"Will you be menstrating in the next week?"
*smack*
"I take that as a yes."
The published analysis is more analogous to saying that each women has a score that measures how much more or less attractively they dress during ovulation. In the article's case the score is defined in terms of the percentage of observers who think that a women is more attractively dressed during ovulation, with scores ranging from 0% to 100%. The 42 observers are used to estimate that score for each women. The reported percentage of 59.5% is the mean of these scores, and is not a percentage of the 30 women.
The analysis asks whether this mean score is greater than 50%. Whether or not significance is achieved with 30 observations in this case depends on the distribution of these 30 scores, which is not given in the article. Using only the information about the mean (59.5%), using a t.test (the actual analysis was more sophisticated, and included covariates) we can easily constuct p-values ranging from 0.1404 (12 women score 0%, 18 score 100%) to 5.969e-12 (15 women score 55%, 15 women score 65%)
It is possible (but presumably unlikely) that more women actually looked worse to a majority of the observers during ovulation and still get a mean score of 65% (for example if 22 women scored 45% and 8 scored 100%).
When you allow a plug-in root access, there's always risk of spawning child processes.
In other words, having missed the comma, the NS article suggests a higher probability of a missed period?
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Moderators, for the love of....don't just give high ratings to people who post technical-sounding gibberish!!
The parent post is spreading misinformation with regard to the link between libido and di-hydro-testosterone (you'll note that he got the abbreviation incorrect, and attached a spurious "5a" to the front, because he confused the name of the enzyme -- 5-alpha-reductase -- responsible for DHT formation with the chemical itself!)
I'm not going to claim that DHT isn't involved with male sex drive, but it's certainly not the "primary mechanism" behind male libido. One needs only refer to the volumes of studies done on the relationship between selective serotonin reuptake inhibior antidepressants ("SSRIs", e.g. Celexa, Prozac, Paxil) and libido suppression to see that the issue is more complicated than a single hormone imbalance.
What makes this really galling, however, is that the guy has the guts to criticize real scientific research before spouting this crap, and you folks take it as some sort of authority!
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?