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To: general_re
I think one has to assume your partner has AIDS. The only way you could contact AIDS yourself is if your partner has it and your condom failed. I'm not looking for an argument, but where did I go wrong?
17 posted on 10/15/2003 5:22:58 AM PDT by Axelsrd
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To: Axelsrd
Even if you know your partner has AIDS, or assume it for the sake of argument, then the odds of contracting it are whatever the odds of condom failure are, every time, and are cumulative over time because each new sex act is an event independent of the previous event - it's a fresh roll of the dice, so to speak. So if the odds of condom success are .97, then the odds that your condom will be successful 10 times in a row are .97^10, or about .74 - IOW, over ten sex acts, you have about a 26% chance of condom failure, and therefore a 26% chance of getting AIDS, assuming that the odds of getting AIDS from an AIDS infected person are 100% if your condom fails. Which they almost surely aren't, but let's keep it simple ;)

But you don't know that your partner has AIDS, so you have to take that probability into account too. But the probability of condom failure and finding an AIDS infected partner are independent events - the sample spaces are not affected by each other, as far as I can see. So if you choose a partner at random, and the odds that that person will be AIDS infected are .20, then the odds of condom failure and getting an AIDS infected partner for a single sex act is .03*.20, or .006, or six chances in a thousand that A and B will occur, and 994 chances in a thousand that one or both of those events (condom failure or having an AIDS infected parter) will not happen.

But since we're assuming that you only have to lose once to get AIDS, you need to figure up the probability that both of those events will eventually happen given some number of sex acts. Assume you choose a new partner at random every week, for 52 weeks of the year. Then the probability that both events (condom failure and getting an AIDS infected partner) will not occur across the span of a year is .994^52, or about .731. Across ten years, the probability of both events not occurring simultaneously - because you need both events to happen simultaneously to get AIDS - is .994^520, or about .04 - that is, there's about a 96% chance that both of those events will occur simultaneously over the span of ten years.

26 posted on 10/15/2003 5:46:18 AM PDT by general_re ("I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.")
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