Sex by Numbers: Water Cooler Talk


A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

You’ve been waiting a full week for more titillating information on worldy sex facts and they’re back. That’s right, it’s this week’s Sex by Numbers.

Number of sex “mistakes” that heterosexual men make, according to WebMD: 7

$3: value of coupon for admission to New York’s Museum of Sex (for a total admission price of $14.50)

$114: price of a used copy of Madonna’s Sex on Amazon

1: official fragrances released by the Sex Pistols, as of 2010 (which has a “fresh, restless bite of lemon, sharpened and intensified by a defiant black pepper”)

55,000: number of condoms with QR codes recently distributed by Planned Parenthood throughout Western Washington in part of an attempt to create a “map of safe sex”

Percentage of the world’s sex toys made in China: 70

185,000+: monthly pageviews for Xmusic.com, a blog that features “music to have sex to”

10,000: age of oldest known depiction of human genitals, found in the Creswell Crags cave paintings

Mallory Ortberg

Mallory resides in San Francisco, California. You can catch her weekly Sex By Numbers column.