Stimulating Understanding of Computational science through Collaboration, Exploration, Experiment, and Discovery for students with Hearing Impairments
a collaboration of the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc., Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf, Barton College, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Interpreters, Inc.

For Teachers!

The Costs of Smoking

Notes on teaching the lesson:

This lesson can be taught several ways. The students can work through the suggested lesson reading and/ or watching the ASL clips. If the students access the ASL clips encourage them to compare the ASL to the text to improve their reading skills. 

Alternatively you can start the lesson with a discussion of the costs of smoking and use the STELLA model to quantify these effects.

 Students may say that their uncle smoked all his life and he lived to be 90. No one in the model lived to be 90. The model is "NO GOOD!" This is an excellent observation. The model doesn't predict the life span for individuals. It predicts the life expectancy. This is a term that predicts the average life span for a large class of people. Please see the lesson "Life Expectancy" for a lesson on this concept. This lesson uses computer models to explore normal distributions.

Answers to questions.
Now you need to analyze the results. Look for a pattern in the data you collected.

Who lives longer, smokers or nonsmokers?
Nonsmokers. If the smoker stops smoking before his 50s or 60s his body can correct the damage and he will live as long as the nonsmokers.

Do all smokers live the same length?
No.

Which smokers live the shortest lives?  
The more they smoke, the more years are taken off their life.

If you start smoking will you always die early? If not, what can you do to ensure that you will live longer?
No. Stop smoking as soon as possible.

Look at the cost of cigarettes. For each smoker, how much money did they spend at retirement age?
Answers will vary.

What could be purchased for this amount of money? For example, could they buy a TV, car, house..?
Answers will vary.

As scientists we need to question the results of our model. Answer these questions based on your personal knowledge of smokers.

Do you know smokers who have died in the range that the model predicts? Do you know smokers that died outside the predicted range?

Do you know nonsmokers that died at the predicted age? Do you know nonsmokers that died outside the predicted age?

If the model doesn't always predict the correct age of death, we need to try to understand why it doesn't? The lesson "The Statistics of Smoking" will help you understand how the model could be improved. 

Developed by
The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

Copyright © 1999-2001 by The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc.

This project is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation.