In reality, the simple model of Problem 1 does not capture all of the complexities of population
Question:
In reality, the simple model of Problem 1 does not capture all of the complexities of population dynamics over a long time. In particular, environmental conditions can change greatly from year to year, causing R to vary. The provided data file, rabbit_data.txt, contains population data for European rabbits in Australia over a period of 50 years [1]. The data file contains 3 columns: Column 1 = year Column 2 = month (1 = January, 2 = February, etc.)Column 3 = average number of rabbits per km (It’s not entirely clear what they mean by “per km”)Ina MATLAB script:•Open / load the data file• Calculate the date for each row of the data file as:
date = year + month / 12
Plot the average rabbit population vs. date on a fully annotated graph
Calculate the mean and standard deviation of the rabbit population for two different periods: Prior to 2005, After the beginning of 2005
In the comments in your MATLAB, comment on the data and analysis: has the rabbit population changed in recent years? Has it become more variable? Referring back to the simple model of Problem 1, does it appear that the value of R has changed over time?
Programming Hint: When you load the data file you will have a matrix with 3 columns. You can simplify the programming if you then extract each column of the matrix into a separate vector. For example, suppose you load the file into a matrix called rabbit_data. Then: year = rabbit_data(:, 1);