Session 01 - Introduction

Discussing the theory crisis; showcasing Git

Overview

  • Bring empty name tags and board markers.
  • During the Git intro, create the course’s private homework repo. Create the folder homework/01-Smaldino-chapter.
  • Create an R-project file (without that, git does not work in R-Studio). Otherwise, many students will create that project fiel themselves, leading to many merge conflicts.
  • At the end, collect the name tags (and bring them along next time)
Topic Duration Notes
Introduction 5 Instructor introduction
Introduction of students in the plenum 10 Guiding questions: Name, home town, why chose this Empra. Write your name tag.
Formalia 20 Slides
Lecture: Introduction: Theory crisis 100 Slides
Git Intro 20 Slides 1-6
Explain homework 10

Homework 1 (individually)

Learning Goals: Learn how to pull, commit, and push to Github. Be able to resolve a merge conflict.

Homework steps:

  1. Create a Github account. (Skip if you have one already).
  2. Send your Github user name to me via email. I will give you access to the course’s private Homework Repository: https://github.com/nicebread/FOMO-homework-2025. (Note: You won’t be able to access, clone, or even see the repository until the lecturer has granted you access).

If you are proficient in git and Github, you can skip step 3:

  1. Do the tutorial “Introduction to version Control with git and GitHub within RStudio”, and the follow-up tutorial “Collaborative coding with GitHub and RStudio”. Depending on your prior knowledge, completing both tutorials will take between 30 min. and 2.5h.
    • Note: In chapter “Secure the connection …” it says “You will then be asked to provide a passphrase. Protecting your keys with a password is optional but highly recommended”. I recommend not to set a passphrase (just leave it empty), unless you deal with very sensitive data. You will get crazy if you need to enter your passphrase at every SSH operation.
  2. Once you have been granted access to the Homework Repository, clone the repository to your local machine. (This cannot be done on an iPad or smartphone; you need a computer for that.). Important: Do not fork the repository (as you did in the tutorial), but clone it (i.e., we are all working within the same repository, not on individual forked copies of it).

Deliverable:

Push your answer from Homework 2 (see below) to the folder homework/01-Smaldino-chapter of the remote repository (i.e., first save your file locally in the respective folder, then commit and push).

Homework 2 (individually)

Download Chapter 1 of Paul Smaldino’s Book “Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution”. Read the chapter and answer the following guiding questions:

  1. A typical criticism of formal models is: “You baked your results into the model, so the conclusions are trivial”. What could you answer to such a statement?
  1. What is done in a “decomposition”?
  1. What question should guide the decomposition?
  1. What is, according to Smaldino, the key difference between exact and inexact sciences?
  1. Name the two types of models that typically are employed in social sciences.

Deliverable: Submit answers to the guiding questions as a plain text or markdown file to the course’s Homework Repository:

  • Navigate to /homework/01-Smaldino-chapter (After you cloned the repository in Homework 1, you should have that folder somewhere on your local machine.)
  • Add your answers as .txt or .md file with your first name as filename (e.g., “Heinz-Ruediger.md”)
  • commit and push
  • (To verify your submission: Go to the website of the repository, and check whether your file is in the folder homework/01-Smaldino-chapter.)

You can answer in English or in German. Most questions can be easily answered in one sentence. Feel free to copy and paste the relevant sentences from the paper. If you are tempted to use ChatGPT, better don’t do the homework at all (after all, the goal of this exercise is that you learn something, not that you make your lecturer happy).

Using git for the first time can be challenging. But it’s a skill that will pay off in the long run. If you get stuck, and made honest attempts to solve the problems yourself, don’t get desperate: Just send me your homework via email, and we will sort it out together in the next session.