Question 726065: a smoker is 15 times more likely to die of lunch cancer than a non smoker. An ex smoker who stopped smoking "t" years ago is W times more likely to die of lung cancer.
w= 15-t
Polly never smoked and sandy quit 2 1/2 years ago. graph the equation and use the graph to estimate how much more likely it is for sandy to die of lung cancer than Polly.
Answer by Theo(13342)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! Let x = the probability of a non-smoker to die of lung cancer.
Let 15 * x = the probability of a smoker to die of lung cancer.
Let w * x = the probability of a smoker who quit t years ago to die of lung cancer.
you are given that w = 15 - t.
Polly never smoked.
Sandy quit 2.5 years ago.
Since w = 15 - t, and t = 2.5, this means that the probability that Sandy will die of lung cancer is 12.5 * the probability that Polly will die of lung cancer.
To graph the equation, let x = the number of years that the smoker has quit smoking.
let y = w which is equal to 15 - x.
The graph will look like this:
From the graph, you can see that when x = 2.5, y = 12.5.
It's actually hard to see, but you can do the calculations to prove it as follows:
w = 15 - t and t = 2.5 which makes w = 15 - 2.5 which is equal to 12.5.
on the graph, y is equal to w and x is equal to t.
if you can graph a horizontal line at y = 12.5 (shown on the graph), and a vertical line at x = 2.5 (approximated on the graph), then the intersection of the vertical and horizontal line should be intersecting the graph of y = 15 - x at about the same point, which it does.
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