Oh man - I hope you didn’t get that kind of math at Catholic School. If so, sorry about the years of ruler whacks you must have endured. In the public schools, they teach that probabilities aren’t additive.  Rather, you calculate independent probablities using multiplication, so that a 12% chance over 4 years is = (.12* .12 * .12 *.12) = 0.00020736, or .002%.

*cough*cough*

The independent event is not getting pregnant. Assuming a failure rate of 12% per year), the probability of not getting pregnant four years running is (1.00-0.12)**4, roughly 60%. For five years fucking, you’re at roughly 50%.

It gets more interesting when multiple contraceptives are used in combination. Assuming the contraceptives do not interfere with other, the failure rates are independent events whose probabilities are multiplied. For the sake of argument, let’s assume condoms have a yearly failure rate of 12% and the pill has a yearly failure rate of 0.2%, with a combined failure rate of 0.024%. For five years of combined use, this amounts to a probability of not getting knocked up of (1.00-0.00024)**5, roughly 99.88%. The more effective contraceptive, the pill, would yield a five-year success rate of 99.0% when used by itself.

people do not agree on the concept of morality

And here I thought it was that everyone just disagreed with me . Not that I haven’t been willing to shoulder the weight of my amorality anyway.

The 1950s were a dark and dismal time, to be sure, which is largely why conservatives seem to love them so much. But even the era of the McCarthy witch-hunts and women being cramped up in the home did not happen exactly as the conservatives wish they did.

Yep, Sadie.  Not that I’m nostalgic for the 50’s; but if Eisenhower were around today, he would bitchslap Bush for giving conservatives a bad name.

People simply do not agree on what makes something “moral.� And what is more (and perhaps most critical of all) is that morals and values change over time. This is simply a fact of life, and conservatives need to get over it. The sooner they do so, the better shape society will be in.

This reminds me of an old Punch cartoon, showing a little boy standing in front of his comfortably seated grandfather.  The boy asks: “Grandfather, what are Tories and Whigs?”

His grandfather replies, “Well, Tories believe in the Queen and the King, in maintaining order, with people staying in their proper place, and keeping things more or less the way they have always been.  Whigs, however, think that new times require new laws, and that royalty should not rule, and that all kinds of religions and opinions should be tolerated.  In fact, they are a bunch of good-for-nothing thieves and scoundrels!”

The boy then asks, “And which are you, Grandfather, a Tory or a Whig?”

Mr. Peacock:

Your math skills likely would have benefitted from having your knuckles wrapped with a ruler. 

As an aside, and completely off topic, the young ladies and young gentlemen who attend Catholic school routinely whip pub kids’ butt when SAT and ACT scores are compared. This has been the case for years. 

Elwed:

I’m not one to question your math.  The skill differences between us is deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon.  I’m pretty sure that the rithmatic for failure rates at 4 years yields a result that is lower than it is at 5 years. Not vicey versey.

Course, I’m but a dumb ol’ country boy suggesting you may have, could have, might have, maybe ya did and maybe ya didn’t, transpose a number or two here or there.

OK, this is as racy as any of my comments will ever get, but my nonmathematical analysis of condom reliability is as follows:

Picture a five-gallon bucket, full of new condoms in their wrappers.  That’s about how many I have used in my lifetime.  I have never had one break.  That’s a hell of a lot of condoms.

Granted, anecdote is not data, but I have heard people (including a young relative once, explaining her unplanned pregnancy) say “the condom broke”.  OK, fine; whatever you say.

Condoms are extremely well made.  They are electronicaly tested at the factory.  A typical condom can hold a gallon of water.  The supposed 12% failure rate of condoms sounds to me like people don’t want to admit they used them improperly or forgot to use them… as they might if their sex education were shot through with ‘conservative’ edits.

Of course the anti-sex people parade the figure around as if it were rocket science - it’s more like sociology.

Consi, sometimes even country boys get things wrong.

I’m pretty sure that the rithmatic for failure rates at 4 years yields a result that is lower than it is at 5 years. Not vicey versey.

The success rate (not getting preggers) drops from 60% to 50%, which implies that the failure rate (getting knocked up once or more within that time frame) rises from 40% to 50%.

The trick with probability calculations is when to apply which formula

DOF’s point is well taken, too. Pragmatically, any statement of success or failure rates must necessarily be qualified with “when used correctly"…

I’ve asked this before elsewhere, but here’s a math puzzle. Who knows, somebody might actually put it to practical use:

You have two condoms; how can you have sex with three women without risk of anybody catching an STD from anybody else? Negative points for “none at all”.

Having worked my way through my own 5 gallon bucket [tips hat to DoF-- ‘well done ‘ol chap’] I call bullshit on the 12% failure rate.

What a crock of shit.  I’ve -never- had a condom fail on me.

No, condoms do not work correctly if you tie them around your balls.  Nor if you put it in your mouth and chew it like bubblegum, nor if you just balance it on the tip of your penis like a little stocking cap.  I suppose if she clamped it tightly between her knees, and made sure she never dropped it, that THAT might be an effective alternative use of condoms but, in general, condoms don’t ‘fail.’ As they call it in the IT industry, it’s usually an ‘end user’ error.

It comes with fucking instructions.  [well, actually it comes with instructions for how it should be applied-- the fucking instructions usually come from friends, books, movies, etc.] There’s nothing wrong with condoms as birth control, except for the fact that so many people are illiterate.  RTFM ferchrissake!

http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2001-08-16/cover2.html

[whew.  I feel so much better.  A day without a rant is like a day without coffee].

Consi, sometimes even country boys get things wrong.

I’m pretty sure that the rithmatic for failure rates at 4 years yields a result that is lower than it is at 5 years. Not vicey versey.

The success rate (not getting preggers) drops from 60% to 50%, which implies that the failure rate (getting knocked up once or more within that time frame) rises from 40% to 50%.

I thought you were saying the failure rate, went from 60-50 at 4 and 5 respectively.  Instead you were giving us the success rates at 4 and 5 respectively.  My bad.

regardless of the event that causes failure of birth
control (agreed mis/non-use is probably the majority.)
this still leaves a stated percentage. a percenteage
that remains unchanged regardless of the number of sexual encounters. dude says its 12%. this sounds
like total bullshit but having worked with bullshit
people that dont know their ass from a hole in the
ground before, we can work with it:

Suzie is one horny girl and she rolls the dice and gets laid a thousand
times a year. man can she fuck. with a 12 percent
failure rate miss suzie ends up with 120 piles of jizz shot in her. (assuming collected data was correct for her chosen method of birth control, lets say rubbers.. of course this would be more of a guarantee, wich it isn’t)
so : 1000:120 = 12%

The next year miss suzie decides to give the ol cooch a break and only gets laid 100 times. with a 12% failure rate she catches another 12 loads of jizz.
so: 100:12 = 12%

although the percentages change she still only
manages about a gallon of jizz over 2 years.
(if somebody contests the gallon figure i’ll shit.
it is inert and a guess but is far better math im certain than the originally spewed forth ‘12%’ figure)

elwed tackles probablility nicely. kind of like
pro rating your parking tickets over time.

Lets say I get a parking ticket for parking illegally at work and it costs me a hundred bucks.
(whoa thats alot of cash for a ticket, but stay with me)
lets say legal parking is a 30 minute difference in hike from parking illegally in the junior partner or handicapped spaces and i make 50$ anhour. well if i got busted parking illegally this wouldnt be profitable. but i dont so now we
factor in time. I can make 50$ extra in the time it takes me to walk. and since i get a ticket about every 100 working days only costs me
(50$ - .50$) to park per day. so at the end
of 100 working days I get PAYED to park illegally
to the tune of 49.50$ a day.. or 4950$ every hundred. why would i park anywhere else?

probability goes down over time. events can alter probability. if an event occurs today and it doesnt
occur for the next five, the overall probablilty of the event occuring again will actually go down
regardlesss of previously collected data the event is unique. as I feel the ‘12%’ figure is unique to Mr. Cantrell.

Some may call my experiences ‘lucky’ I call them planned exploits. granted there is chance for the adverse in any activity one may partake in. you could choke on a piece of food today or tomorrow and that might end it all.

Even though I think Cantrell comes off like a total idiot and has spouted some total bullshit math. I kind of gathered that the moral of the story was that if you make the circumstances
of any event ideal you can decrease a chance of failure. His plan for marriage isnt perfect.
If a couple has a child and the husband chokes on her
piss-poor cooking and dies, well there ya have it:
single motherhood.

sorry for the rushed, non format entry.. its dinner time

haha talk about bad math..

i just re-read my parking ticket scenario (above post)

If you agreed with it it would have been based on a
ticket that cost 50$ vice the 100$ stated.

the correct still makes a point by being payed
4900$ (a buck a day) over 100 work days. still no
small potatoes.

GODAMN IT. potatos.

I have no idea how many condoms I’ve made use of over the years, but it’s been a hellalot and I can say that I have had exactly two that actually broke even though I was using them in the proper manner (as far as I know - I never took a class in condom use).

Fortunately nothing, if you’ll pardon the pun, came from it.

even though I was using them in the proper manner (as far as I know - I never took a class in condom use).

It’s just like swords - the pointy end goes in the other guy.

(grin, duck, and run)

Uh-oh, I had it all wrong.  If I’ve never had a condom fail, and Nowiser has never had a condom fail, but Les (apparently of Kryptonian ancestry) has had two fail, then CONDOMS FAIL TWO OUT OF THREE TIMES!!!  Call James Dobson; he should know about this!

And people think liberals are bad at math…

Can I have 5 gallon bucket status if I’ve made lots of condom water balloons?

Real men rip condoms to shreds anyway and that’s just during the 4-play. Yes, I said four-play!

Elwed, I’m stumped....well, not “stumped”. If that were the case, I couldn’t make decent use a condom anyway.

Real men rip condoms to shreds anyway and that’s just during the 4-play. Yes, I said four-play!

Brock, I am in awe.  I’ve never done 4-play.  It’s always just been 2-play; me and one other person.

Can I have 5 gallon bucket status if I’ve made lots of condom water balloons?

The important thing, Brock, is how many broke while you were in the process of filling, and how many broke post-launch.  Because that’ll give us a much better sense of the actual ‘failure rate.’

4-play?  Shit, I have trouble watching a movie and eating popcorn at the same time.

I guess when we all get up there to DOF’s age we’ll be more focused on four minutes than four play.

According to the Georgia Tech Wellness Center, condoms have a failure rate of 12%.  This number takes into account people that do not employ the device correctly or reuse it.  Condoms are successful at preventing 98% of STD’s.  Don’t be an over achiever.

Also, if there is a leak in more than 4 per 1,000 condoms, the entire lot (approximately 5,000) is discarded.

Remember, your next batch may have had only 3 leaks.

GAAAAHH!!!  I can’t take it anymore!  The guilt, the shame, the uncertainty!  I used a quantifiable expression as a vague rhetorical device!  “5-gallon bucket”, indeed.  Gad, that’s something creationists do.

I was able to set 12 condoms flat in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket.  The sides of the bucket angle outward from the bottom: in a circle drawn from the top of the same bucket, I could set 13 condoms flat.  Without getting into a stacking problem that is waaaaay beyond my mathematical background, I’ve found that when things are jumbled or tilted, you get fewer of them in a given space so flat seemed the way to go (that being the resting orientation of condoms on a horizontal space such as a tabletop). 

A packaged condom measures 7/32” thick. The bucket is 14” deep.  Here’s the question: at what height could you make the transition from 12 to 13 condoms?  Sheer lazyness forces me to guess it’s at about two-thirds of the way up - lower would hold more condoms, higher would hold fewer - but the error would only total a couple percent overall.

You could fit 42 layers (at 12 per layer = 504 condoms) in the bottom two-thirds, and 21 layers (at 13 condoms per layer = 273 condoms) for a total of 777 condoms.  This will vary somewhat depending on how carefully the layers are formed, brand, smooth or ribbed, etc.

This figure is slightly below the range I had figured based on mental imagery.  In any case it is likely that almost everyone here is in the 5-gallon-bucket club.  Some are probably working on their second, third, hell - fifth buckets.  There could be a wheelbarrow class out there, I don’t know.  But Wheelbarrows are pretty irregular shapes so I leave that problem to someone else.

Next time I’m just going to say ‘hella lot of’ as Les did.

And as if to join our discussion, here’s a little pearl of wisdom from James Dobson in this morning’s paper:

...Planned Parenthood’s own data show that the No. 1 reason teenagers engage in intercourse is peer pressure! Therefore, anything we do to imply that “everybody is doing itâ€? results in more — not fewer — teens who give the game a try…

What I’m saying is that our condom distribution programs do not reduce the number of kids exposed to the disease — they radically increase it! And consider this: Research indicates that where disease prevention is concerned, the failure rate of condoms is incredibly high, perhaps 50 percent or greater...
- James Dobson 22 January ‘06, “Advocating condom usage to teens can be dangerous” Link

Well James, I don’t know about other people but peer pressure had absolutely nothing to do with my decision to have sex as a teen.  The question Dobson appears not to be asking is; what is the STD rate among teens in countries where condom usage is accepted and not subject to constant churchie opposition?

Luckily one of the few things I did right as a teenager was to go to Planned Parenthood - with my girlfriend - and take their ‘condom course’.  I recommended my kids do the same.

Uhm.  In the interests of full and honest disclosure, I’d like to revise my bucket down to 2 1/2 gallons. 

(goes and quietly weeps in a corner).

I’ve never had a break, but a friend of mine has had two kids from breaks (he got snipped after the second).  I know of another where the condom slipped off during the act.  I’ve had a couple of times where , and I was pushing at the end of the condom.  I could understand how someone may break one that way if they’re really into it and won’t stop to lube. 

After decorating a car with Lifestyles condoms, I would never use them for sex.  The damn things kept breaking.

Umm that shoulda been “I’ve had a couple of times where things got a little dry, and I was pushing at the end of the condom.”

Hey Ragman, here’s a tip from an old broad:

If things get THAT dry, no matter how “into it” the condom-wearer might be, he’d be wise (and considerate!) to stop & lube up, because his partner is definitely not enjoying that much friction (unless s/he’s into painful sex anyway).

OB, I noticed when it happened and did so, and the wife’s not shy about telling me so, but sometimes if the guy’s sliding inside the condom, the partner may not really notice. 

I have a preference for durex(the old Sheiks “Thank you Mr Sheik!"), which I’ve never torn.  The lifestyles incident, it seemed half of them tore way too easily when we stuck them on the wipers, antenna, etc.  If I’m not mistaken, they’re also the cheapest condoms on the shelf.

I wonder how much the ol’ condom sitting in the wallet for 3 years contributes to the failure rate?