The Web of Human Sexual Contacts

Details The Web of Human Sexual Contacts The Web of Human Sexual Contacts

2001-06-25

arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0106507v1

Nature 411, 907-908 (2001)

Physics

Condensed Matter

Statistical Mechanics

7 pages with 2 eps figures. Latex file. For more details or for downloading the PDF file of the published article see http:/

Scientific paper

10.1038/35082140

Many ``real-world'' networks are clearly defined while most ``social'' networks are to some extent subjective. Indeed, the accuracy of empirically-determined social networks is a question of some concern because individuals may have distinct perceptions of what constitutes a social link. One unambiguous type of connection is sexual contact. Here we analyze data on the sexual behavior of a random sample of individuals, and find that the cumulative distributions of the number of sexual partners during the twelve months prior to the survey decays as a power law with similar exponents $\alpha \approx 2.4$ for females and males. The scale-free nature of the web of human sexual contacts suggests that strategic interventions aimed at preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases may be the most efficient approach.

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