Hi eprebys-ga,
First of all let me say that I found this to be a VERY interesting
question because it allows us to compare humans with nature and
possibly how each group has affected the other (if you use time series
data).
I'll consider each of your questions in turn:
the questions:
how many trees over 1 year of age are there?
vs.
how many people over 1 year of age?
For these questions I would have to say that it would be much better
if you could get percentages. Since trees and people are both living
and have very different reproduction patterns, these questions would
provide insight into "birth" rate for each group. Also, I would be
curious to find out if there is a pattern on how each species "dies".
As far as I know, death rates for humans are the result of various
factors (natural, disease, crime, etc...) and therefore result in a
death rate pattern with respect to age. But what about trees? It seems
intuitive that trees usually live to a point where they are a certain
size, and then the percentage of them that are "murdered" by humans
(cut down) drastically increases. Disease, while present in trees, is
not nearly as much of a factor as it is in humans! Finally, there is a
link between the two groups; trees replace carbon dioxide with oxygen,
which is crucial to human life!
how many trees with an age greater than 1% of that tree
species average life expectancy?
vs.
how many people with an age greater than 1% of the human
average life expectancy?
My first comment on this comparision is that if you are going to
discriminate between species of trees, then it would only be
consistent to consider different ethnicities of people...perhaps if
this is too massive a task you could narrow your scope to a certain
group of tree and human "types". What you are really comparing here is
a segment of variance which looks at how "skewed" the age distribution
is for trees vs. humans are in terms of average age. Again, it would
make more sense if you did this in terms of percentages :) What you
are really comparing here is the "affluent" sections of each
population, or those that were able to overcome the adversity they
faced during their life. OF course, this is very much a function of
genetics and environmental factors. Very interesting!
is there a number x such that A> B where
A= the number of humans with an age greater than x% of
their life expectancy
B= the number of trees with an age greater than x% of that
tree species life expectancy
?
I'm assuming that these values are the quantitative output of your
analysis on this topic. Percentages, again, would be best here (with
total data perhaps in an appendix?). This appears to me to really
bring the point of the research study home. What you would really be
doing here is directly comparing the variability of the upper end of
life expectancies. What would really add to the interest of this type
of study is the comparison of how genetics and environment affect
these values...also based on these numbers you could make conclusions
as to the potential effects. Some would include air quality for
humans, how humans have decreased the value of B (this needs a time
series) and so forth...
I have to say I would have never thought of doing such a study, this
is very original and also has a lot of applicability to the way that
we live and coexist with trees. So, yes, this is an interesting study!
Cheers!
answerguru-ga |
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