According to Yagan, corresponding via e-mail, the top ten most promiscuous places as determined by his online-dating website -- Portland, Oregon, followed by Seattle, Pittsburgh, Miami, San Francisco, Dallas, San Bernardino, Denver, San Diego and Houston -- were determined by looking at "the percentage of users who listed 'casual sex' among the relationships sought."
Clearly, the theory is that the more people in a city who want to have casual sex, the more who'll succeed.
Yagan doesn't see the promiscuity rankings as necessarily positive or negative. "It's more about the info," he maintains. "We don't judge."
With that in mind, he thinks most users of OKCupid.com have been able to put the results in perspective. "Everyone has had a good chuckle," he notes.
At the same time, the data caught some observers off-guard. As Yagan points out, "several reporters have expressed surprise that their hometowns didn't make the list."
Does that mean these journalists elsewhere are scoring so often they figured they were living in a different kind of Big Easy? Didn't know our profession was so appealing...
Look below to see our previous coverage.
Original item, 12:50 p.m. August 15: Hooray! Another city list in which Denver scores high! And we do mean "scores" -- because Mile High has placed eighth in OKCupid.com's list of the ten most promiscuous cities in the U.S.
Not that we know very much about the ins and outs (get it? ins and outs?) of the survey. Our source isn't OKCupid itself, but a CBS news slideshow touting the results, which are topped by Portland, Oregon, followed by Seattle, Pittsburgh, Miami, San Francisco, Dallas, San Bernardino (!), Denver, San Diego and Houston. And the only hint about methodology is a mention in the Houston blurb about the cities in question being home to "the highest percentage of 'casual sex seekers.'"
We've reached out to the OKCupid folks in the hope that someone there can provide more info -- like whether the site simply polled users or perhaps developed some complex logarithm to extrapolate casual encounters from, er, formal ones. Until then, we can only guess as to whether we're actually less likely to topple into the sack than the wanton horndogs and sluts of San Bernardino...
1. Portland, Oregon 2. Seattle, Washington 3. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 4. Miami, Florida 5. San Francisco, California 6. Dallas, Texas 7. San Bernandino, California, 8. Denver, Colorado 9. San Diego, California 10. Houston, Texas
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