Bio Lab Report Essay, Research Paper

This study was done to determine and compare the suvivorship curves of people who

died prior to1945 and after 1945. Many medical advances have been made in this

country since 1945. We have developed many new drugs, vaccines, and medical

equipment that have aided in prolonging and saving lives of humans. We have also

developed many new techniques to test for diesases and this helps people get the

proper medical attention before the disease gets to the point where it can no longer be

controlled.

I would think that the general belief of most people is that the survivorship of mankind

would have dramatically increased after 1945 because of how far science has come in

that time. The lifespan of humans throughout history has gotten longer, because of

medical advances. The deaths of the people studied will most likely not only be from

disease or sickness but other causes, such as war, violence, drugs, automobiles, etc.

Methods & Materials:

We received a data sheet to collect the data from our findings. The sheet is two-sided,

with blank columns to record the male and female individuals and the age of their

death. The age of death column is divided into five year intervals. One side of the

sheet is to collect the information for those that died before and in the year1945. The

second side is for the data of those that have died after the year 1945.

We went to the Cullowhee graveyard to collect the data off of all of the gravestones in

the cemetary. Since the graveyard is so big and not in exact rows, we had to be sure

that be would not contaminate the data and duplicate the headstones, so we roped off

the sections to be sure not to. When examining the headstones, we looked at the

headstone and determined if they were male or female, by the name or markings on the

headstone. Second, we looked at the date of death to determine which class to put

them in. Third, we subtracted the year of death from the year of birth to determine the

age of death. After gathering all of this data, we would mark the appropraite space on

the data collection sheet. After gathering all of the data from the gravestones, we

totaled the number of male and female deaths per age classification, on both pre and

post 1945 data sheets. We also determined the total number of gravestones, or deaths

by male and female as well as before and after 1945.

Next, we used a second data collection sheet to determine the percentage of people

survivng and the rate of mortality by age class for both males and females, pre and

post 1945. To determine the rate of mortality, we took the total number of male and

females who died before and after 1945 and divided the number of deaths per age

class by the total number of people that were born.

To determine the percentage of people surviving, we first calculated the number of

people who were still living or had not died yet. To determine this number, we

subtracted the number of males and females that died, per age class from the total

number of the previous deaths. After calculating the number of people who were still

alive by age class for pre and post 1945 deaths, I divided this number into the total

amount of people who were alive at the beginning. This number is the percentage of

people surviving. This calculation was done for all of the age classes for pre and post

1945 data.

To visually see the survival percentage of males and females who died before and after

1945, I put this data into graph form using Microsoft Excel.

RESULTS:

The graphs of the data that I collected on this experiment clearly shows a higher

percentage of survivorship after 1945 for both males and females. In both graphs, it is

shown that females live longer than males and the rate of death for younger males and

females is much lower after 1945. It is also clearly shown when comparing the pre and

post data that people have lived longer and to a greater age since 1945.