Q: In the second assignment, are we required to implement the combined model for question 1 and the population update methods for question 2? If this is so, should we present our code somewhere in a report?
Question 1 will require you to do coding. Question 2 might or might not, depending on which part you attempt and whether you can use existing code. If you just use existing code, then just tell me which file it was. If you have to write substantial new code, I would like to see it. Ideally, you could put it online somewhere (e.g. on dropbox) where I could download it, and include a url in your report: but if you put it online, it *must* be anonymous, so I can look at the code without finding out who you are. Failing that, put the code in an appendix to your answer – this will not count towards the word count.
Q: For question 2, “How do the different population update methods outlined by Mesoudi and Whiten (2008) affect the evolution of linguistic systems?”, would you like us to try to explain why the different pop update methods affect evolution the way they do, or just outline what happens?
Ideally the former!