What are some of the key explanations offered by others for why agriculture emerged in different places around the world as reviewed by Richerson et al. (2001)?

What why Richerson et al. think agriculture emerged when it did? (Hint: see their two propositions

Why do Richerson et al. think that agriculture was inevitable around the world? (Hint: see their two propositions)

Do you agree with Richerson’s et al’s idea that a diet based entirely on plant foods is not ideal?

What processes might interrupt their model for plant intensification? (Hint: see table 2).

Complete/answer the following questions in your reading comment:

Provide a brief 1-2 sentence summary of the reading.

How do Richerson’s et al. (2001) ideas about population and food supply compare to those of Malthus?

How does Richerson et al’s point of view differ from Cohen who they mention in the text. Look up what Cohen thought about this online.

What, specifically, is important about the behavior of climate in the Pleistocene as opposed to the Holocene that Richerson et al. think encouraged agriculture?

How do they think innovation plays a role in altering the carrying capacity of the land?

Don’t forget to end by asking bringing up questions you have about the readings. Was there anything you did not understand?

Individual student journals should include short, informative and reflective entries on each of the following TEN items. Each entry should be approximately one full paragraph in length.

1 The bill: select a bill introduced in the 2022-23 session; describe its content and goals. Explain HOW and why you selected it.

2 The legislator: Who introduced this bill and why? Where are they from? Who lives in their district? What other legislation have they proposed?

3 Co-authors: does the bill have co-sponsors or other acknowledged supporters in the legislature (including the other house – Senate or Assembly? Who are they and what constituencies and interests do they share with the sponsor?

4 The opposition: who opposes this bill? Why?

5 The committees: Which committees have been assigned to review this bill? Focus on one of these committees. What other legislation is this committee reviewing? What are some of the similarities and differences among the bills and issues this committee reviews

6 The media: Has the media (in any form) reported on your bill? What are the key elements of this coverage? What points and perspectives does this reporting raise?

7 Public reaction: Evaluate the public reactions, if any, received by this bill? What organizations or citizens groups have taken positions on this bill? What issues do they emphasize? Why?

8 Reach out to your legislator’s office: Formulate a specific question or concern that you have about this bill and send an email to the legislator asking it. Why do you have this question? What is their response? [NOTE: I expect everyone to contact their legislator and provide a detailed description of the process, your efforts, and what you learned].

9 The hearing: Attend/watch at least one committee hearing where your bill is discussed. Take notes. What are the most striking features of this hearing? How does your bill fare and why?

10 Reflection: (Entry of 500 words minimum) What happened to your bill this legislative session (so far)? Reflect on the overall process of making law in California and its connections to the main themes of our course. What are the most striking elements of this process? Why? What is the most important thing you learned? What does the process of making law in California today reflect/illustrate about the history of this place?

Submission Requirements:
• One Word document (the file name must be Lab4B.docx) containing:
o Screenshots: the testing and outputs of the execution of your Python programs.
o Copies of your Python programs: no images/screenshots of your code! The
copies must be in “text” format.
o Important:
▪ your testing screenshots must include the sample testing cases shown
below and another testing case of yours.
▪ Items in this Word document must be in the same order as the questions.
• Your Python programs (that is, the .py program files)—note that there are specific
requirements on the program names:
o Your code must be properly commented (like the examples in Code Archive; you
don’t have to comment on every line of code.)
o On the top of your program, there must be 3~5 lines of the comments with your
full name and date/time when you have completed the programs.
• (Attach/submit/upload the Word file and your program files individually; do not zip the
programs.)
Q1 (60 points) Write a program “Lab4B01.py” that prompts the user to enter a string and then:
1. Display the length of the string.
2. Convert all the vowels into lowercase and display the modified string.
3. Display a count of each of the vowels and the total number of vowels in the string.
4. Convert the string into list of words and display the length of the list.
(Note: the input vowels may be either uppercase or lowercase letters.)
The screenshot of your program execution would look like the following:
2
Q2 (60 points) Write a program “Lab4B02.py”that keeps prompting the user (until input of 0)
for a distance in meters and then displays that distance converted to miles, feet and inches*.
Please note that the value to be converted to feet in this problem is the decimal portion of the
number of miles, and the value to be converted to inches is the decimal portion of the number
of feet. It is not sufficient to simply convert the entire distance in meters to miles, feet and
inches, respectively. HINT: use can use the Python int() function to return the decimal portion
of your calculation for miles, feet and inches. Test with 5000 meters. Show that result in your
screenprint.
*1 meter = 0.000621371 miles. 1 mile = 5280 feet. 1 foot = 12 inches

1            Introduction
In this assignment, you will implement the link state OR distance vector routing protocols. Graduate and Honors students will implement BOTH in two separate programs. Both programs will read the same file formats to get the network’s topology and what messages to send.

2            Router Programs
Your program should contain a collection of imaginary routing nodes that carry out their routing protocol (link state or distance vector, for the corresponding program). These imaginary nodes are just data-structures in your program. There is no socket programming involved. Once their tables have converged, for each node (in ascending order of node ID), write out the node’s forwarding table (see Output format section for details). Then, have some of your nodes send some data to some other nodes, with the data forwarded according to the nodes’ forwarding tables. The sources, destinations, and message contents are specified in the message file; see below for format. Then, one at a time, apply each line in the topology changes file (see below) in order, and repeat the previous instructions after each change. The nodes in your distance vector, link state program should use the DV, LS algorithm to arrive at a correct forwarding table for the network they’re in.

3            Tie breaking
We would like everyone to have consistent output even on complex topologies, so we ask you to follow specific tie-breaking rules.

1.     Distance Vector Routing: when two equally good paths are available, your node should choose the one whose next-hop node ID is lower.

2.     Link State: When choosing which node to move to the finished set next, if there is a tie, choose the lowest node ID.

3.     If a current-best-known path and newly found path are equal in cost, choose the path whose last node before the destination has the smaller ID.

Example: source is 1, and the current-best-known path to 9 is 1 → 4 → 12 → 9. We are currently adding node 10 to the finished set. 1 → 2 → 66 → 4 → 5 → 10 → 9 costs the same as path 1 → 4 → 12 → 9. We will switch to the new path, since 10<12.

4            Input Formats
The program reads three files: the topology file (called topofile), the topology changes file (called changesfile), and the message file (called messagefile).

Note: These files need to be in the same directory as your program file.

All files have their items delimited by newlines. The topology file represents the initial topology. The topology changes file represents a sequence of changes to the topology, to be applied one by one. The message file describes which nodes should send data to whom once the routing tables converge. (The tables should converge before the topology changes start, as well as after each change). All messages in the message file are sent every time the tables converge. So, if there are two message lines in the messagefile, and two changes in the changesfile, a total of (2(initial) + 2(after first change in changesfile has been applied) + 2(second line in changesfile has been applied)) = 6 messages are to be sent.

A line in the topology file represents a link between two nodes, and looks like: <ID of a node>

<ID of another node> <cost of the link between them> The topology changes file has the exact same format. The first line in the changes file is the first change to apply, second is the second, etc. Cost -999 (and only -999) indicates that the previously existing link between the two nodes is broken. (Real link costs are always positive; never zero or negative.)

A line in the message file looks like: <source node ID> <dest node ID> <message text> The files we test your code with will follow this description exactly, with nothing extraneous or improperly formatted.

Example topology file:

1    2 8

2    3 3

2 5 4

4 1 1

4 5 1

This would correspond to a topology of Figure 1. Example message file:

2 1 here is a message from 2 to 1

3 5 this one gets sent from 3 to 5!

Figure 1: Sample Topology

The message file would cause “here is a message from 2 to 1” to be sent from 2->1, and “this one gets sent from 3 to 5!” from 3->5. Note that node IDs could go to double digits.

Example changes file:

2 4 1

2 4 -999

This would add a cost 1 link between 2 and 4, and then remove it afterwards.

5            Output Format
Write all output described in this section to a file called “output.txt”.

The forwarding table format should be: destination nexthop pathcost where nexthop is the neighbor we hand destination’s packets to, and pathcost is the total cost of this path to destination. The table should be sorted by destination. Example for node 2 from the example topology:

1    5 6

2    2 0

3    3 3

4    5 5

5    5 4

As you can see, the node’s entry for itself should list the nexthop as itself, and the cost as 0. If a destination is not reachable, do not print its entry. That’s one single space in between each number, with each row on its own line. Remember, you’re printing all nodes’ tables at once. So, the example for node 2 would have been preceded by a similarly formatted table for node 1, and followed by the tables of 3, 4, and 5.

When a message is to be sent, print the source, destination, path cost, path taken (including the source, but NOT the destination node), and message contents in the following format:

“from <x> to <y> cost <path_cost> hops <hop1> <hop2> <…> message <message>” e.g. : “from 2 to 1 cost 6 hops 2 5 4 message here is a message from 2 to 1”

Print messages in the order they were specified in the messages file. If the destination is not reachable, please say “from <x> to <y> cost infinite hops unreachable message <message>”

Please do not print anything else; any diagnostic messages or the like should be commented out before submission. However, if you want to organize the output a little, it’s okay to print as many blank lines as you want in between lines of output.

Both messagefile and changesfile can be empty. In this case, the program should just print the forwarding table.

The output file will have the general layout as follows:

<topology entries for node 1>

<topology entries for node 2>

<topology entries for node 3>

<topology entries for node …>

<message output line 1>

<message output line 2>

<message output line …>

——– At this point, 1st change is applied

<topology entries for node 1>

<topology entries for node 2>

<topology entries for node 3>

<topology entries for node …>

<message output line 1>

<message output line 2>

<message output line …>

——– At this point, 2nd change is applied

<topology entries for node 1>

<topology entries for node 2>

<topology entries for node 3>

<topology entries for node …>

<message output line 1>

<message output line 2>

<message output line …> ——– And so on…

6            Turn In
Turn in your programs and the files you used for testing.

·         Program file (whatever language you choose) – DV or LS

·         Topology File

·         Changes File

·         Message File

Compute the daily price spread of the asset, defined as the daily high minus low price. Choose an appropriate model, an in-sample period and an out-of-sample period, and conduct a rolling window forecasting exercise for the one-day-ahead spread. Evaluate the forecasting performance of your model and compare it with a simple AR(1) model using loss functions and statistical tests. Interpret your results in light of the stylized facts of return volatility.

In-sample and out-of-sample data is provided in Excel spreadsheets.

Your report is expected to include the following contents: 1. A short introduction to the problem describing the financial meaning and the importance of the problem from a financial point of view in your own words. 2. A short description of chosen econometric methodology with appropriate academic references to the relevant textbooks or papers. You are not required to present mathematical formulas (unless they are necessary for presentation or explanation purposes), but you should clearly state the hypotheses, decision rules and implications of all hypothesis tests. The details of the implementations should be clearly described as well. 3. The results of the empirical analysis in the form of figures and tables. Figure/table should be properly numbered and each of them should include a short and clear caption. 4. Interpretation and discussion of the empirical results (including the discussion of limitations if any). 5. The empirical analyses should be performed in MATLAB. You should include all the written MATLAB codes used to perform the empirical analysis as an appendix, attached to the end of the report.

Length 2.5 pages including tables and graphs.

Rolling window forecast

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/52011-rolling-window-forecast

AR model

https://www.mathworks.com/help/econ/specify-ar-models.html

Suppose you are the manager of a beverage company selling a juice under the brand“Delicious”. There are 2 other major brands in the market, namely “Fresh, and “Organic andGreen”. Your data analyst estimated the demand of your product and provide you with thefollowing information: The cross-price elasticity of “Delicious”in response to price change inFresh”and “Organic and Green are 0.4 and -0.03 respectively. The income elasticity of”Delicious,“Fresh”and “Organic and Green”are -0.01, -0.02 and 0.05 respectively. lt isexpected that there is an upcoming economic recession.

Question #1

Joe and Katy are enrolled in a psychology course. In this course, the average grade is 71 and the variance of the grades is 81. Assume that the grades are perfectly normally distributed.

53. Joe’s final grade was 53. What percentage of students in the course had a grade lower than Joe?

1. Katy had a final grade that was 1 standard deviation above the mean. What was her final grade?

1. What percentage of students in the course had a higher grade than Katy?

1. What percentage of students in the course had a grade in between Joe and Katy?

Question #2

In a recent survey, UVic students were asked to rate their opinions of “Cheese” pizza and “Pepperoni” pizza.  The ratings were on a “1” to “10” scale where “1” indicates a strong negative opinion and “10” indicates a strong positive opinion.  The histograms of the ratings are shown below:

1. Compute and report the range, mean, median, and mode of the Cheese pizza ratings

1. Compute and report the range, mean, median, and mode of the Pepperoni pizza ratings

1. Do you think the two histograms show equal or unequal variability? Why or why not? (Hint: See variance formula below.)

Question #3

Imagine a researcher is interested in whether psychology majors are better at recognizing facial expressions than computer science majors.  The t-test formula (shown below) is the inferential statistic for determining whether this experiment produced “significant” difference between the two groups.

As a general rule, an experimenter would like to obtain a large t score that is greater than 1.96. What are the three factors that determine the magnitude (size) of the t score?

Question #4

Austin is a student in the Psych 201 course.  Based on personal observations, Austin thinks that left-handed individuals have a larger reading vocabulary than right-handed individuals. To test this hypothesis, Austin administered the North American Adult Reading Test (NAART) to a group of university self-identified left- and right-handed students.  The NAART is comprised of 50 written English words which all have atypical spellings (e.g., “aisle”, “chord”, “gauge”).  Previous research has indicated that performance on the NAART predicts reading ability and general verbal intelligence.

4a.) State the research (alternative) and null hypotheses in Austin’s study.

4b.) Austin averages the scores and finds that the mean score for the left-handed group was 85% correct and the mean sore for the right-handed group was only 65% correct.  Should Austin conclude that the left-handers are statistically better than the right-handers in their reading vocabulary?  Why or why not?  Please give a complete explanation for your answer.

4c.) Draw one diagram showing where the 20% mean score difference between the left-handed and right-handed groups is significant.  Explain why the diagram shows a significant difference between the two groups.

4d.)  Draw another diagram where the mean score difference of 20% between the left-handed and right-handed groups is not significant. Explain why the diagram shows that the difference is not significant.

4e.) State and explain the Type 1 and Type 2 errors that Austin might commit in the reading study.

Please read the case, “Western Air Lines, Inc. v. Criswell” & discuss the following questions:

1. What is the basis for the determination that an employer should or should not be required to test applicants on an individual basis? (25 points, 1 page, double-spaced)
2. Should an employer have available as a defense that the cost of the tests would impose a great burden on the employer? Why or why not? (25 points, 1 page, double-spaced)
3. What is the distinction the Criswell opinion makes between “reasonable necessity” and “reasonableness?” (25 points, 1 page, double-spaced)

Please answer all questions.

Eurodollar Futures:

1. What is meant by a long position and a short position in Eurodollar Futures?
2. Explain using a numerical example why a long position in a Eurodollar Futures contract loses money when interest rate increases but gains when Eurodollar quote increases.
3. It is January now. Manager wants to refinance his assets in March and is concerned rates may rise. He wants to borrow $100m for 3 months starting March. The March expiry Eurodollar Futures Quote is 95. (i.e., 5% annual). Manager is fine with paying 5% interest on the borrowing. Compute the net cost to the manager is the Eurodollar settles at 90 in March.

Interest Rate Swap:

1. Explain in words how annualized spot rates can be computed from annualized futures rates?
2. It is March now. Compute the interest payments for a notional $25 million dollars if the 3-month futures quote with June expiry is 99.50 and the 3-month futures quote Sept expiry is 98.00.

Credit Default Swap:

1. Explain what is survival probability? What is default probability?
2. What is the meaning of protection buyer? Does a protection buyer buy a CDS contract or sell a CDS contract?

PVBP and Duration:

2017. Compute the PVBP, McCauley’s Duration and Modified Duration for the following bonds. Settlement date is September 29, 2017. Explain why the duration differs (if any) for bonds with the same maturity date. Note: For example, quotes coupon of 0.875 means coupon rate is 0.857%. Use excel Yield function to compute Yield to Maturity.

1. Compute the annual yield to maturity and annual spot rates given the following annual coupon bonds: