LESSON 5 Life Spans

The students in Mr. Moreno's classroom are studying the history of the United States. They learned that the United States changed rapidly during the 1900s. During this time, many people began working in factories instead of working on farms. Living conditions and sanitation improved for most people. At the same time, the discovery of antibiotics and other improvements in medical care changed the way doctors treat diseases.

The students wondered if these changes had any effect on the length of time people lived. Mr. Moreno suggested that they collect information on the life spans of people before these changes occurred and compare them with life spans of people after these changes occurred. The students decided to compare the life spans of a set of people who lived during the 1800s to the life spans of a set of people who lived more recently.

Brandon and David went to the library to collect data. Brandon looked for obituaries in old newspapers. He looked through many old newspapers from the year 1858 and found 25 death notices that listed the names of the people who died and their age at death. He wrote down the age of each person: 56 yr, 1 yr 3 mo, 54 yr, 9 mo, 27 yr, 42 yr, 2  mo, 5 yr, 38 yr, 34 yr, 79 yr, 59 yr, 76 yr, infant, 21 yr, 25 yr, 24 yr, 19 yr, 30 yr, 62 yr, 51 yr, 43 yr, 20 yr, 1 yr, and 5 yr.

David looked in more recent newspapers. He found 50 obituaries that gave the age at death. He wrote down these ages that were all given in years: 75, 88, 84, 79, 85, 86, 51, 77, 85, 88, 88, 71, 84, 85, 89, 92, 77, 97, 80, 60, 95, 62, 85, 64, 44, 74, 62, 87, 81, 73, 89, 15, 96, 84, 72, 89, 84, 90, 88, 50, 68, 72, 75, 63, 90, 65, 38, 77, 79, and 73. All the people in David's data set died in February of 2014.

David and Brandon shared their data with the class.

1. Compare the two sets of life spans. What do you notice about the length of the life spans in the 1858 data and the length of the life spans in the 2014 data?