How can you argue that your leading publication venue is important? I am applying for academic promotion and as part of my case I would like to argue that having published x FOCS, y STOC and z SODA papers is impressive.  However, I have been told by our head of department that those on the promotions panel will never have heard of FOCS, STOC and SODA and so this will just be compared with the number papers people publish in any other venue.  I have further been told that I should provide checkable evidence that these really are important conferences.

  How can I do that?

I could quote acceptance rates except I don't believe they are particularly low in these conferences due to self selection.

One might also have thought that recommendation letters would be the best way to judge the quality of someone's work. Sadly we first have to pass a first filtering round in the promotions process before they are requested.

I have been told by our head of department that those on the promotions panel will never have heard of FOCS, STOC and SODA and so this will just be compared with the number papers people publish in any other venue.

I find this stance outrageous.  It is the promotion committee's responsibility to understand—at least at a high level—the publication landscape in the fields in which candidates publish.  Moreover, if the committee is outside your department, it is your department chair's responsibility to educate the committee on the publication culture in your field.

Aside from the conference rankings that Henry mentions, there are other less official rankings of CS departments or just theory groups, based on publication output weighted by prestige.  (The rankings themselves should not be taken seriously, but they do provide a window on what the community thinks of the conferences.)

Another method that might be helpful is to gather evidence about where strong theoreticians actually publish.  Select a handful of successful theoretical computer scientists in top CS departments and show the committee where those people publish.  To pick out a few random DBLP pages off the top of my head: Avrim Blum, Chandra Chekuri, Satish Rao, Santosh Vempala.  Choose whatever experts you consider to be your aspirational peers in your subsubfield.

Alternatively, bypass the "prestige" question and argue directly that your work is strong.  I assume you are provide the review committee with a research statement.  That statement should provide direct evidence that your work is important, visible, and highly regarded.  How often is your work cited, and by whom? (Only your subsubsubfield, or a broader set of researchers?)  What followup work has it inspired by other researchers?  What do other people's papers say about your work or the problems it addresses?  Have you received any research awards (for example, Best Papers or an NSF CAREER) or more indirect accolades (for example, invitations to program committees, journal editorial boards, or Dagstuhl workshops)?  Are you in Oded Goldreich's list, or in David Eppstein's annual top 10?

I'd also recommend asking your department head whether the pre-letter evaluation is merely a sanity check, or if it has real teeth.  My university's promotion process includes a preliminary stage, where the Promotions and Tenure Committee decides whether to request recommendation letters, or not to put the case forward at all.  But at least for tenure cases, this stage is essentially pro forma; a decision not to request letters requires a compelling case for failure.

If that's not the case at your institution, I'd strongly recommend pointing the committee to CRA's Best Practice Memo on Evaluating Computer Scientists and Engineers For Promotion and Tenure.  In particular:

  The primary direct means of assessing impact —to document items (a) and (b) above —is by letters of evaluation from peers. Peers understand the contribution as well as its significance.


What should I expect from a non-academic interview for a PhD position? I have applied for a PhD position in Physics. First I had Skype interview that they called "personal interview". They asked me about my family and stuff.

Now the University has called me for a face to face interview and they are calling it "non-academic interview".

I wonder what kind of questions should I expect from this interview?

Note: I had academic interview with my prospective supervisor, who's accepted me.

The university is KAUST (Saudi Arabia)

It is quite acceptable to ask who you will be interviewing with, and what the interview will be about. You can even ask whether you should prepare an overview of your academic work for non-academic interviewers (to which the answer is likely to be "no", but it'll probably be "No, the interview will involve X Y and Z"). You can ask whether it's an interview with their administrative personnel, or with higher-level managers; you can ask whether you should bring anything (you're visiting Saudi Arabia, right?); and so on. You could even straight-out say "I'm not sure I understand what a non-academic interview means, as after I'm interviewing for an academic position and KAUST is a university."

Don't ask a zillion questions, though, just pick one or two depending on the context.

Also, if you know someone who's not in charge of the hiring process (PhD candidates, post-docs, faculty) you can ask them in parallel about the process.

Finally - I could speculate about what "non-academic" actually means: Maybe it's an HR-style interview? Talk with group members to see whether they like you? Negotiations of employment conditions? Political screening like @Ben suggests? ... but they will probably just tell you (except for that last option I guess).


How much help is a PhD supervisor if you only see them 30 minutes a month? I often hear from PhD students that they see their supervisor only 30 minutes per month, or 30 minutes per semester even. According to my calculations, this adds up to a whopping 13 hours and 6 hours respectively over a three year period (if there's no contact during the holidays). This is less than the typical amount of contact hours during an undergraduate week of lectures.

This made me wonder: To what extent does such a PhD supervisor really help you? Even if this supervisor is a star professor, does 6 to 13 hours over a period of 3 years, really help you that much with your PhD?

To formulate the question differently, let's say you're getting 10,000 education/career points out of your PhD. How many would you get if you got rid of the supervisor and basically had to do it without official guidance?

Your supervisor's job is to be sure you're on the right track, not to do any of the work.  Thirty minutes a month ought to be more than sufficient for that.  Also, the supervisor either takes care of the administrative details or is responsible that someone else does that.  Finally, you appear to have omitted the amount of reading required of the supervisor.

I'm absolutely sure I didn't see my supervisor for 13 hours over the course of my degree, but he read every word I wrote and provided feedback without which I probably could not have finished.


Change of Affiliation before Publication I was a student at a community college and did research as an undergrad at a small university. After finishing up my summer research, I continued to do poster presentations, all three of which I indicated my community college as my affiliation, as the research was funded through them. In addition, I was still at the community college.

Currently, I am not at a larger university and we are about to have our manuscript published. Do I need to change my affiliation to something else, or should I keep it as it is with my Community College.

You can have multiple affiliations on a paper. When transitioning from one institute to another while working on a paper, it is common to list both institutes as affiliation. You should list all those places where a significant amount of work has been done. That is, if you run a study at institute A and write the paper while working at B, list both A and B.

If you are currently without any affiliation only mention your former place.


Interview Follow-Up Email Etiquette I am writing a follow-up thank-you email for a teaching position that I interviewed for at a place where I am an adjunct. If I have had a (good) idea based on something the committee discussed, can I include that in the email, or does it come off as over-eager and/or desperate?
For what it's worth, the committee did say to get in touch with them if I had any further questions.

I think it good to share. It shows you are thoughtful and got something out of the discussion. But keep it short.


Chicago or APA for draft manuscript? I am relatively new to the writing process. I wrote my first manuscript in APA style and found it time consuming while changing it to the Chicago manual style. I am aware that most journals have their own specific journal styles that we have to follow despite the reference style being the same. However, as per your experiences, in which style of referencing/writing, did you find writing your draft manuscript easier to modify later on? (Modify as in changing styles). Simply put, should I write my draft manuscript in APA or Chicago? P.S. Political Science Pre-PhD student.

My main tip would be to use a reference manager that automates the task of formatting references. There are many to choose from. But any good tool should make it fairly trivial to move between author-date format to numbered format. Good tools should also come with a wide range of tools for customising the look and feel of your references. Personally, I use Endnote and it works well for my workflow with MS Word. If you use LaTeX, then you'd want something that works better with BibTeX. That said, I think the big thing is that you get to know the features of your reference manager so you can use it effectively.
In terms of what reference format to adopt, I'd go with the format required by where you plan to submit the work. If it's a thesis, then follow any rules provided by your department. But commonly with PhDs, the format is up to you. In that case, you'd usually adopt the convention (or one of the conventions) of your discipline.


How should I phrase a résumé if I have an uncertain degree plan? I have been working towards a degree in mathematics and in computer science for the last two and a half years. That corresponds to the following bit in my résumé:

  Education
  B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2016 expected)
  B.S. in Computer Science (2012 - 2016 expected)

However, I recently found out that I can graduate next semester with a major in mathematics and a minor in computer science. If that was my plan, I would write this:

  Education
  B.A. in Mathematics (2012 - 2015 expected)
  Minor: Computer Science

However, at the moment I am undecided about which path I plan to take.

Which should I include in the résumé? I am considering just writing down whichever one would seem more impressive, but I don't want to be deceitful.

Facing an uncertain graduate date is a common issue, particularly for many Ph.D. students who aren't sure exactly when they are going to defend.  The thing that you want in your C.V. is to communicate as clearly as possible what are your skills and time of availability to the people considering taking you on for your next career stage after graduation.  Thus, put your current best estimate in; if you want to indicate an option to join a position earlier, put that in as well as an option.


Applying to work where I said "no" in the past? I'm currently applying for lecturing jobs at a couple of universities (in the US), and one of these is a place that had accepted me in its Ph.D. program a few years back, an offer which I ended up turning down to go somewhere else (this was done in a very courteous way and I do not believe I left a bad impression).

Do you think my history with the school could have an adverse effect on my current application?
If not, is there any reason to  mention somehow that I applied to their graduate program (I'm worried that if I avoid the "elephant in the room" they might become suspicious)?

There are many reasons why people choose to go to one program over the other. While there might be some thin-skinned people, I don't think that should lead you to rule out applying. Since applying to a job at a school is minimal cost to you, you should go ahead and do it.

Much more likely is that the only person who remembers is the person who would have been your POI.  I wouldn't bring it up unless someone asks.


Piece of identification needed at first registration day of a US conference I will soon take part in my first congress in the USA.

What piece of identification is needed to register on the first day?

I don't want to carry my passport with me all the day of the conference so is a driver licence sufficient?

If you're registered as a student (or some other role that gives you a discount) then you may need to bring proof of that, but otherwise I've never attended a conference and had to bring anything in order to register.

If the organisers of the conference expect you to bring something then they'd almost certainly tell you. Check the information you've been given, and if they say nothing about bringing proof of ID then you don't need it.


Remote work employment opportunities for someone with chronic health problems I have a PhD in physics, and my career path of choice has always been in physics. Unfortunately, I have been struck with a series of chronic health problems which have caused me to be fired and homebound much of the time. However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home, provided I am also given flexible hours. The problem is, despite my continuing ability to continue working from home despite my chronic health problems, no employer so far has been willing to hire and pay me. The resulting financial problems have forced me to leave my chosen career path for the past few years, which only makes me look worse and worse on my CV, when coupled with being fired.

Do you know of any organization or employer willing to hire researchers remotely? Thanks.

As you are asking this on academia.SE, I am assuming that you are looking for an academic job as opposed to working in industry. In that case, I am afraid your assumption

  However, as physics research is mostly a mental activity, I am still able to work remotely from home

may not be true for higher (post-graduate) academic jobs. I would say, being a postdoc or higher in physics is to a large extend a social activity, as much of your job will consist of teaching, training the next generation of researchers, and networking. In general, all researchers after a certain stage find that they spend preciously little of their time on actual research (which you may be able to do from home, depending on your concrete subfield). Most of the time is actually spent on activities that require physical presence, at least some percentage of the time.

That being said, many research labs are quite flexible in terms of working hours and (partial) home office. In my lab, for instance, I would not assume that anybody would take issue with an employee working about 50% of the time from home (under the assumption that one would actually work at home, of course). However, the remaining 50% would probably require physical presence, simply because the tasks would require it.


Familiarizing oneself with state-of-the-art at the beginning of a PhD From my research internship experiences (my previous University didn't really focus on research much) and what my current advisers told me, a general flow of a PhD is like any other long(er)-time project:

familiarize oneself with state-of-the-art on the subject

generate your own ideas (by trial-and-error) and integrate with current approaches
(with this phase becoming a lot fuzzier the more advanced your "project" is)

write it up for the world to know.

As a fresh PhD student, I'm currently in the middle of familiarizing myself with the state of the art, following the advice of many older students ("be a brave soldier in the beginning and do and read everything your advisers throw/send/e-mail your way"). And I do understand the importance of it (in fact, more often than not, I love it). But, it does give one an impression of self-uselessness sometimes (I have a talk with myself every few weeks or so to remind myself of my motivation and resolve the "uselessness" issue).
So, my question is: Typically, how much time would a fresh PhD student spend on going through state-of-the-art at the beginning of his/her PhD?
And some sub-questions:

is it expected/typical to produce some kind of output (articles?) during this period?
what kind of output is expected at the end of this period?
what would be some indicators that this period is ending which a student himself can notice

In the end, just to provide some context: I'm doing a PhD in Europe, and we have a limit of 3 years for a PhD (sometimes extended for up to 6 months) and I'm studying Computer Science.

I don't think there is a clear transition between “familiarizing oneself with the subject” and “being an expert in this topic, and generate new ideas and approaches”. The transition is gradual, and it's called “the PhD”.

However, there are ways to quantify this evolution. For example, ask yourself: in a discussion with your advisor and a few other experts on a topic related to your PhD, how able are you to make useful comments and suggestions? How often do you come to your advisor saying “I have tried to do X because I read about it and I think it can apply to my issue”?

Regarding the written “output” of the beginning of a PhD, it pretty much depends on you and your advisor. Mostly, the output is knowledge in your mind, but it can also be useful to make notes (both for yourself and your advisor) on each subtopic you discover. For myself, as an advisor, I ask students to contribute bibliographic notes (written or orally) every now and then, for me and other students of the group who work on related topics.


Is 15 sections too many for a journal article? I am planning to write a journal article about real-world algorithms solving a practical problem for an IEEE Computer Society transactions journal. The section outline currently is as follows:

Introduction
Related work
Problem definition
Simple algorithm for a simpler problem that cannot be scaled up to the real problem but is very interesting from mathematical viewpoint
Several mathematical observations from the simple algorithm
Simple algorithm that can be scaled up
Good, slow algorithm, as used in literature
Implementation details of our version of the good, slow algorithm
Another good algorithm from the literature and some improvements to it
Even more improved version of the Section 9 algorithm
How to deploy Section 6 algorithm for worldwide use
How to deploy Section 9/10 algorithm for worldwide use
Results and discussion
Discussion about one important point that could be claimed to invalidate the results but in reality doesn't
Conclusions

So, there are 15 sections. In IEEE double column style, the text is now 7 pages + references + biographies, but I expect it to grow to 10 pages + references + biographies because some of the sections are empty currently, their text not being written yet.

Now, my question is: do I have too many sections? I have intentionally kept the sections concise, not being too wordy. So they explain things just once and expect the reader to understand. So, the paper is not overly long.

The paper is quite conclusive because it explores 4 different algorithms and manages to optimize one of them to be fast enough to be used in practice. I don't want to remove any content because it would make the paper less conclusive. The results are important as well: the best algorithm as optimized by me runs over 60 000 times faster than equivalent prior art algorithm in the Section 3 problem.

I don't see any simple yet good reorganization into subsections: for example, Section 5 really has to be immediately after Section 4 so that the reader doesn't forget the important things from Section 4 when reading Section 5. So I can't combine Sections 4-10 into subsections of an algorithm section, because in the middle there would be a mathematical observation section unrelated to algorithms. In theory, Sections 11-12 could be combined to be subsections of a deployment section, but that would save just one section number. Another way to save one section number would be to do this:

Results and discussion

13.1. Results
13.2. Discussion
13.3. Discussion about one important point that could be claimed to invalidate the results but in reality doesn't

After really hard work, I came up with the following barely acceptable outline having less sections:

Introduction
Related work
Problem definition
Simple algorithm for a simpler problem that cannot be scaled up to the real problem but is very interesting from mathematical viewpoint
Several mathematical observations from the simple algorithm
Scalable algorithms

6.1. Simple algorithm that can be scaled up
6.2. Good, slow algorithm, as used in literature
6.3. Implementation details of our version of the good, slow algorithm
6.4. Another good algorithm from the literature and some improvements to it
6.5. Even more improved version of the Section 6.4 algorithm

Deployment

7.1. How to deploy Section 6.1 algorithm for worldwide use
7.2. How to deploy Section 6.4/6.5 algorithm for worldwide use

Results and discussion

8.1. Results
8.2. Discussion
8.3. Discussion about one important point that could be claimed to invalidate the results but in reality doesn't

Conclusions

Is this 9 section outline better?

Yes, you improved it a lot with the 9-section outline, because:

It is much easier to communicate the tiered the structure of the paper to the reader, which makes readers and reviewers much happier.

It is easier for readers to scan through and understand the main outline of the paper, instead of having to figure out for themselves which points are more closely related.
It is easier for your to preview the shorter outline in words near the beginning, than if you're thinking of it as 15 sections.

It may slightly save you space, because subheadings likely take up less room than main headings.

Here are two additional potential revisions to further streamline:

Change point 5 into a subpoint under point 4. It's still about that simple algorithm. (As I just saw, lighthouse keeper also advises this.)
Shorten the title for 8.3. (Obviously, you're giving a generic version, but it could be done briefly by saying "Addressing Entropy Concern," replacing "Entropy" with a reference to whatever issue thoughtful reviewers may anticipate as a problem.)

Someone in your field may have better comments about whether the information you want to pack in here is all too much to effectively demonstrate in a 10-page paper. In particular, the simple, unscalable, mathematically interesting algorithm might not be as related to the rest, if you must cut something.


Journal article suggestion website or application I'm finishing up my PhD in mathematics at the moment. I like to read journal articles from a wide range of different disciplines, and I wonder if there's some kind of service that might suggest articles that I like based on ones that I've already been reading.
For example, Google Chrome has a feature called 'Discover' built into it, where it suggests different articles that I might like to read.  This is mostly news articles, which I do read and find interesting. Sometimes it picks up on some journal articles, or for example some science journalism articles which link to papers.
Is there a website or app which works similarly to this, but suggests only journal articles or web pages which are discussing journal articles, covering a wide range of disciplines?

There are quite a few paper recommender systems (a highly active area of research, by the way; see this Google Scholar search on "paper recommender systems"). They first draw from a corpus of research publications you 'follow', have read or stored; second, they use algorithms to find related papers; and third, they recommend these related papers to you.
To name a few platforms:

Google Scholar: You can 'follow' Google Scholar profiles with the option to get e-mail alerts with publications related to the followed
profiles' research. This is possibly the widely used approach.
ResearchGate: You can 'follow' ResearchGate profiles, and the RG main site will show you papers related to their publications.
Academia.edu: Same like ResearchGate, but including with the option to get e-mail alerts.
Mendeley: If you use Mendeley, its feature "Mendeley Suggest" sends you (I think weekly?) e-mails to recommend similar papers to
you as the ones you have stored.
Twitter: Follow journals and 'journal lists' (an aggregation of Twitter profiles of journals, such as this one on Political
Science) on Twitter, and you will see them announcing their newest publications in your Twitter feed.

In addition, there are some platforms that require you to type in a DOI of a paper and that then search for papers that are in a co-citational relationship with the DOIs. Just some examples:

CitationGecko: https://citationgecko.azurewebsites.net/
ConnectedPapers: https://www.connectedpapers.com/
CoCites: https://www.cocites.com/


Can I hand in an essay which I have written last year, but not as part of a course? I have written an essay last year, as a personal exercise. I now have a course at uni on the topic and could basically just hand in this essay now, the topic fits perfectly. I have also never submitted this essay to any other course or so.

Could I just hand in this essay, or would I violate some rules with that? Is this maybe already self-plagiarism?

Could I just hand in this essay, or would I violate some rules with
  that?

If you wrote it as a personal exercise and it was never submitted to any course (i.e. never read), I can't see how anyone would notice the difference - provided you are right about the fact that it answers your assignment perfectly and you are not subconciously trying to make it fit into the assignment.

  Should I just hand in this essay?

Aside from the rules, consider the teaching value of writing an essay (which you obviously already know, since you wrote one as a personal exercise!).
If your workload allows it, you might find that re-working on that essay a year later is really instructive. Your perspective (on the content, but also on the writing level) probably changed in one year, and with the head-start of having a first version already, you could dig deeper into the subject and end up really learning a lot and producing an essay worth an amazing grade. Or, if you don't feel like reworking this one, maybe you could pick another subject altogether? The teaching goal of essays is usually to have you research a new subject; handing in your already written one, while being legal, would certainly not serve that purpose.


What are the academic job ranks in Sweden? Recently I read about a position as "universitetslektor" in a Swedish university. I did some research to figure out what this academic rank means. In my understanding  it is similar to a lecturer in the British system. What I could not figure out is if "universitetslektor" is a permanent position, or if there is a qualification after which this position becomes permanent. Also, does  universitetslektor refer to lecturer or to senior lecturer. What would be the analogue in the US system?

In general, «Universitetslektor» is the closest the Swedish system has to an «associate professor» in the US system, and is close to a «lecturer» in the British system. The more junior rank would be «Biträdande lektor», and the more senior «Professor».

There are some subtleties in play here though; most importantly for the linked position is the phrase «tidsbegränsade anställningar». This means that the position is for a limited time only — they are hiring from March to December, supposedly to fill an urgent teaching need. The limit in time signals several things. One of them is that it is likely to be important to shoulder the teaching required — it might, depending on the department and their situation, for instance be difficult to buy out teaching time with research funds. Another is that it comes with none of the tenure guarantees usual «lektorat» provides. Since the position is time-limited, it will evaporate at the end of the time, to be replaced with a different position if the department finds the funds to hire again.

The hierarchy to figure out how the ranks work would be something like:

Tidsbegränsad anställning: Time-limited appointment. Not subject to tenure-like employment protection.

Adjunkt: Adjunct teacher. Needs not have a doctorate. Fills a teaching need.

Biträdande lektor: Similar to tenure track; usually time-limited to 4-6 years, at the end of which a review takes place deciding whether to upgrade the position to...

Lektor: The most common of Swedish University teaching/research positions. Obligated to teach, but can usually trade teaching time against research grant money. At every University I have ever interacted with, these come with an obligation for a certain amount of pedagogical qualifications — and if you are hired without pedagogical coursework in your CV, you may have to spend large swathes of your first year studying higher education pedagogy.

Professor: Similar to Professor in the UK or Full or even Named professorships in the US. It used to be very rare — one or two per field wasn't uncomomon; but since 1999, Professor is a possible target for promotion from Lektor, which increases the numbers. Before the 1999 reform, a Professor could not be fired, even under usual Swedish employment protection rules.

In summary: «Universitetslektor» is an essentially tenured position. They all come with heavy-looking teaching loads, but it is common in Sweden to reduce teaching loads with grant money. «Tidsbegränsad anställning» is a non-tenured and likely to be teaching-heavy position.


Possibility of skipping lower level prerequisites for graduate math application? I am a non-traditional student interested in entering a graduate program in statistics or applied mathematics (to study probability / complex systems modeling). I have an undergraduate degree in a liberal arts subject - little to no technical coursework.

My question comes in two parts:

If I self-study and score well (90%+) on the GRE Math Subject Test, would I be able to take advanced undergraduate courses as a non-degree student with prerequisites waived?
Would your typical graduate program consider a student with only advanced courses but not the "basics" (calc, linear algebra, etc.)?

Certain life restraints (financial, geographical and existential) make it difficult for me to go back and take the classes.

Thanks in advance.

The details will certainly vary from place to place, but, as your questions suggest, what is required is not coursework per se, but knowledge of the material.

The Math GRE subject test is perhaps not the most convincing way to demonstrate competence in calculus and linear algebra. Instead, you should directly negotiate with your target undergrad institution to see how they'd want to be convinced that you're ready to do upper-division coursework. They may have advanced-placement exams, or may have you take the final in Calc IV, etc. It will vary, and it might be a mistake to invest time and energy in doing the GRE subject test, since this might not suffice.

I can't speak for "typical" grad programs, but mine and many others look much more seriously at upper-division coursework (or equivalent!) than lower-division. It is not at all unusual that people destined for math grad school tested-out (or whatever verb applies) of a year or two of calculus, due to taking good courses in high school, or from a community college while in high school, or self-study. The coursework (or equivalent) that matters much more is top-end upper-division or beginning graduate level.


Is it "inappropriate" to write in a manuscript "this problem is unsolved, though arguably progress has been made" and then reference your own work? Is it considered inappropriate to write in a manuscript "this problem remains unsolved, though arguably progress has been made" and then reference your own work?

Because you would be saying that your own work is the only progress being made on a subject... Is not it too arrogant?

The phrase is already written with another bibliographical reference. My question is just about whether I should replace and older reference with my own new work, which I of course think advances towards a solution.

I don't think I'd call it inappropriate, exactly, but I don't think it is the best way to word it.

Your use of the word "arguably" signals that the phrase "progress has been made" is subjective - and in particular, it's a subjective opinion coming from a source that is clearly not impartial (you).  Also, "progress has been made" is vague and not very helpful to the reader by itself - you're forcing them to go and look up your other paper if they want to know what kind of progress you mean.

So why not solve both problems, and replace this unhelpful subjective statement by a helpful objective one, that briefly describes what you actually did:

  This problem is unsolved.  However, in previous work [14], we showed that in the special case where the graph is symmetric, the conjectured statement is true to within a factor of 20.

Of course, if there is relevant work by other researchers, you should cite their work here as well, with a similar brief discussion.


Why are US PhDs different from European PhDs? So apparently I heard from here, here and here about the differences in PhDs in the US and in Europe.

To sum up, it takes longer, on average, in the US than in Europe to finish a PhD since US PhD programs require less and have more coursework compared to Eur PhD programs.

Why is that so?

I tried looking it up but seemed to be getting the stuff above, nothing really explaining why that is so.

First, let me start off with a counter-question:

Why would you expect them to be exactly the same?

Different regions have historically different educational systems on all levels, starting from Kindergarten. Why would you expect specifically the PhD degree to have a completely uniform definition everywhere in the world? Of course there are nowadays activities to make degrees (incl. PhDs) more comparable worldwide, but these things take time. As politicians in Europe have learned as part of the so-called Bologna process, you can't just top-down decide that from now on, we are using the US system.

Of course, there are sometimes reasonable arguments for differences in system. For instance, you concluded:

  it takes longer, on average, in the US than in Europe to finish a PhD since US PhD programs require less and have more coursework compared to Eur PhD programs.

In the US, a bachelor's degree is required for starting a PhD. In Europe, almost universally, you need a master or one of the older five-year diploma studies. So we in Europe expect students to hit the ground running basically from day 1 in their PhD. On the other hand, we don't require them to do much, or any, course work because they did all of that as part of the previous studies. Of course, if you then look only at the pure time spend in what is called the PhD studies, you end up with a shorter time in Europe.

Now you can of course go deeper down the rabbit hole and ask why European universities expect PhD students to have a master's degree first. The reason for that is mostly historical - around here, we often didn't even have Bachelor's degrees until the above-mentioned Bolognia process. What happened as part of this process was that decision makers ended up deciding that pretty much the first three years of the old diploma studies became "the bachelor" while the remaining two years became "the master". Of course, this reasoning led to the public opinion of somebody with "only" a bachelor's degree as a glorified college dropout. The universities implicitly also shared this notion, as there were never substantial motions to admit bachelor degree holders to PhD programmes in most universities. Slowly, the bachelor programmes are getting more profile as something better than just the first 3/5 of an actual degree programme, and consequently their public image also improves. Universities are nowadays also taking first tender steps towards making it easier for bachelor degree holders to start a PhD - however, so far, this is mostly targeted at making it easier for international students to enroll.

Important concluding remark: I am aware that a lot of the above contained pretty sweeping generalizations, which do not hold true everywhere. Specifically, Great Britain and Ireland already historically used a different system. However, I wanted to answer with something a bit more substantial than "systems are different everywhere".


Can professor terminate student's stipend at anytime? A friend of mine who is a last year international PhD student in the US got his monthly stipend terminated by his advisor. He still has GTF and is working for as a RA for the last three years. During that time, he has published several papers and his research results also brought in money via grant for his advisor. However, he got stuck in a project recently and could not get it done properly, thus after a few bad individual meetings, his advisor threatened to cut his stipend due to bad performance and he actually did. Although he still have two other ongoing and working project and close to graduation, his advisor still admanat about not paying him. He still need to work in the lab in order to graduate.
Can professor has right to terminate stipend for student like that? What can PhD students do to protect themself in this situation?

What both the professor and the student can do will be specified in the contract / agreement or conditions.

If the professor is within those then yes he can cut the stipend: continued poor performance after a warning may well be relevant grounds...


Is it possible to publish a paper when the research was done many years earlier? Is it possible to publish a paper when the research was done a number of years ago?

For example, can I write a paper from my Masters thesis which was done in 2011 and try to publish it in 2017?

Yes, IF the research is still relevant and novel.

When you publish a research paper you never write when was the research performed, you merely describe the research and explain why it is relevant. If the research is still a new/different method, then it doesn't matter when you did it. No one is going to ask. If the method was novel then, but now several people have published about it and you can not add anything to the current literature, then it is not worth publishing.

Just follow the same criteria that you would use if the research was done last night to consider if its worth of publication.


Is a thesis a publication? If I publish a Master's thesis, does that count as a "publication" (ie protect me from other people publishing my work as their own?)

If I think I can get a paper out of my thesis, am I forfeiting this possibility by sending copies of my thesis around to other people to look at?

In order, yes, and no.

A thesis is a public document and thus helps establish "prior art" in terms of research. Of course sometimes researchers come up with the same ideas simultaneously, or certain work is just not known as widely as it should be, so sometimes work gets innocently repeated (as compared to plagiarised, which can also happen, but reasonably rarely).

As for publication, a thesis is an entirely different kind of publication to a paper, in every discipline I am familiar with, publishing papers drawn from work in a thesis is expected, sometimes even required. The only (?) way you could interfere with further publication would be if you published your thesis as a monograph.


How to further follow up after contacting project supervisor twice? I am applying for a foreign research internship/ scholarship that requires the applicants to first approach their potential adviser over email.

I had sent my first email around the end of August and then a follow up email around September 18.
I heard back from the professor the next day, who said that my application will go through a pipeline and then he will let me know if there is a further possibility for me.
It has already been a month since that.

Now here's the thing, the deadline for application is approaching fast and there is a need for a number of documents to be prepared and processed both by me and my potential supervisor before that. Also, my institute has declared an official holiday of about two weeks, so it won't be possible to get the signatures and stamps from my home institute before that (nearly October 25 and the deadline is November 1).

Should I send a second email? If I should, then how can I structure such an email without sounding impatient and unprofessional?

Too late to be useful, but I'm on an "unanswered questions" kick, so...

Yes, I would contact him again. The worst that can happen is that he is annoyed; the best that can happen is that you get your internship.

How to structure it? Concisely. Like this:

  Dear Professor, Sorry to pester you, but if we move ahead with this, I will need to get the signatures/stamps from my home institute this week. Is there any update about my status? I am still highly interested in this opportunity. Thank you, -Name.


Plural or singular for a multi-authored paper Suppose Jackson and Kim wrote a paper in 2014. When I cite this paper, should it be

  Jackson and Kim (2014) show that ...

or

  Jackson and Kim (2014) shows that ...

This is a special case of a more general problem about 'plural' names for specific organisations/groups, which often comes up (and is different in the UK and US, to complicate things) - for example, https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/138238/are-vs-is-for-proper-nouns-which-sound-plural-such-as-band-names

Generally speaking, either is legitimate - it depends in part whether you think of "Jackson and Kim" as the name of a single entity, the paper, or as referring to two individual researchers who happen to be mentioned together. You can also avoid this entirely by using the past tense - "Jackson and Kim (2014) showed that..." is the same whether you think of J&K as one entity or two. (Ditto for "found", "proved", "refuted", etc). This would be my personal preference.

Ultimately, though, all questions of style in academic writing can be answered with "have a look at what other papers in the field use; if you're thinking about a specific journal, have a look at what's common there." If they all use "show" for multiple authors, you probably want to use "show"


Who holds intellectual property rights on a thesis? I thought of an interesting idea for a thesis for my Masters program and I think I would eventually be able to sell a product that is built from the algorithms/code that I develop for this thesis.  I realize my thesis is my work and I have the copyright permissions, but I am wondering what rights I have and what rights my school has if I were to take my thesis and develop it into a product which I then sell to customers.

Would I have all rights for selling this product or since my professor is essentially guiding me and assisting me in my research, does he/she own a part of it as well?  I can only seem to find answers on the internet that pertain to the copyright permissions of the actual developed thesis, not products that might be derived from such efforts, or code that was developed in tandem with writing the thesis.

Any links to proof or legal precedence would be very helpful as well.

Your institution almost certainly has a policy on this, and an office dedicated to administering it.  You should consult them.  If you really think this is serious, you should also consult an intellectual property attorney rather than relying on the babblings of some goofball from the Internet (e.g. me).

In the US, employees of a university are commonly required to sign an agreement that the university has an interest in any patent or other profitable invention that they develop in the course of their work.  The agreement usually specifies that the royalties and other profits are to be split between the university and the inventor.

I have not heard of this being required of students, and if you had signed one, you would presumably know.  However, if your advisor had a significant part in the project, he or she may have some rights in it as a matter of law (and the university in turn would get a share of your advisor's, per their agreement).

Note that it may be relevant where the funding for the project came from, and what if any financial support you received from the university.


What does "masters 2 level" mean? I saw an offer in a research group described as 'Research position at master 2 level'. Can anyone clarify for me what that means? Is it a 2nd masters or anything else? Does it always need a masters degree for applying (sorry, it's not clear in the requirement, that's why I am asking).

At least at the universities in Paris where I took courses, there is a strong distinction between the first and second master year. In the first year you still take general courses in a variety of topics, whereas in the second year you really specialise. Someone explained to me that this is a remnant of how it was a while ago: first 4 years of undergraduate (which is now 3 years of bachelor, then the first year of the master), then 4 years of graduate (second year of master and 3 years of PhD).

I know that some of my friends in physics had something which could be called a research position at the master 2 level, i.e. they were integrated in the research group, doing some type of research, whilst not yet being PhD students.

So no, it should not be a second master degree, it should mean that you are in the second year of your master.


Is is necessary to include computer code into thesis? During my research, I have developed some computer codes to optimize the coefficients of theoretical equations against the experimental data. The computer codes was developed to make things easier through automation which I would otherwise need to do it manually (rather painstakingly).

Do I need to include the codes that I have developed in my thesis, or it is just sufficient to provide an executable (.exe) in a disc?

I had the exact same situation with the completion of my thesis.

The first thing I did was to consult with my supervisor - seek your supervisor's advice - particularly if they have supervised someone doing similar before.

What I ended up doing (in my successfully completed thesis) was to include pseudocode and explanations of that pseudocode in the context of the experimental data (and with any theoretical background also). I was advised and did put the .exe in a CD in the back of the thesis.

Additionally, I published papers about the program and made reference to them in the thesis.

Another option is to upload the code in an online code repository (e.g. GitHub), only if there is no issues with sharing the code.

(Note: where I am, research theses are peer-reviewed for assessment)


Should I include volunteer work in my SOP and/or CV? I have been involved in two volunteering groups for the past two years and I'm not sure If I should ever mention it in the SOP/CV.

Should I mention it in one or both my SOP and CV? Also, how detailed should I write on the type of activity/nature of the work/vision/reasoning/accomplishments, etc.

Note: I'm applying for Electrical and Computer Engineering for a master's degree.

The volunteering work is totally unrelated to the degree. The activities are focused on aiding homeless and abused animals

I would recommend against mentioning unrelated volunteer work in one's statement of purpose---after all, you have said that it is unrelated to the career that you are intending to pursue.  If it were directly linked, then of course it would be useful to mention it.

Likewise, there is no space for this type of work in any of the main sections of an academic CV: this isn't like applying to college, where you are encouraged to list a bunch of extracurricular activities to show your breadth and interesting personality.  Graduate admissions is instead more typically about showing that you have the mix of skills, drive, and focus necessary to succeed in you intended program.

It is often the case, however, that people will have some sort of "other significant experiences" section at the very end of their CV in which they put miscellaneous things that they think are important.  If you feel that your volunteer work is an important ingredient in understanding you as a potential professional, then this is the appropriate place to include a brief note.  It may help you if it catches the eye of somebody who finds it significant, and it is unlikely to hurt you.


Ex supervisor published last month a photo from my PhD (5 years ago) with other co authors Can anyone of the members of the committee of a PhD thesis use data of the former doctoral student’ PhD thesis without attribution to the PhD thesis?

An ex-supervisor used data at a conference with some co-authors. Unfortunately this data has been already presented in another conference as a poster 6 years ago by myself with different co-authors. This data was derived from my PhD thesis 5 years ago.

When I asked her, she told me that she had the right to. In my PhD thesis, I wrote that I retain the intellectual property rights. However in my PhD program, the university policy is that results from a PhD thesis can be used by both the student and its supervisor.

It's hard to say for sure without knowing all the details and both sides, but typically, whenever an academic paper uses material that's been previously published (and a PhD thesis would count), academic ethics require that it be cited.


Is it ethical that the PhD student is not offered a chance to become the communicating/ corresponding author? Usually a supervisor has to focus on many project at once but the PhD student on the other hand has only his project to focus on, PhD student is the person who usually does all the literature work as well as the experiments, so technically he is the master of that particular project then why the PhD student is never offered a chance to become the communication/corresponding author of those manuscript that are published by him on his work. One could argue that in the first 2 years of the PhD work he might have less command over the subject to which I might agree but what about in the last stage of the PhD program or after the PhD program for that matter. Why is he never offered a chance to become a communicating/ corresponding author?

Communicating/ corresponding author here represents the person who would respond to queries and reply to emails, where as the last author is usually the supervisor who wrote the project or took the lead.

Things might vary across fields, but I think that you might be overestimating the impact of being the corresponding author.

In my experience the corresponding author handles the communication with the journal (hands in the article and revisions, copyright form, etc). Furthermore, you might get a question every once in a while from a fellow researcher, but they are mostly like: "can you send me the article", or "may I use your figure".

Reasons for your PI to insist on being the corresponding author might be that articles may get questions long after you left the institution, and in some fields the corresponding author indicates who is the PI.

I would not worry too much about this. When your publication list is assessed, people will look how often you are the first author (when that is applicable for your field, some fields put the authors in alphabetical order). And when somebody has a question about the content of the article (which happens less frequently than you might expect) they either write you directly, or your PI might forward you the question.


How do I effectively use tags to organize my bibliography? I use the online tool citeulike to manage my bibliography. The main tool to organize the library is tags (functionally equivalent to tags here on this site). One problem I seem to be having is I do a very poor job of initially choosing tags, so I need to continually re-tag my library to keep it organized.

Is there any advice on choosing an intitial set of tags? Or will it be necessary for me to continually maintain my library to keep it organized/updated as much as I would like?

Tagging is only useful if you use it with discipline. Look at Wikipedia or Stackexchange, most articles can be determined by 5-6 categories (science - math - geometry - euclidean geometry - metric). Stackexchange has a max. of 5 tags, often you only see 1-2 on questions, which is often pointless, as those tags will appear often in the question/paper title and abstract too. Wasted time.

So, if you decide to create a tagging system, use at least 4-6 tags depending on how interdisciplinary and specialized your paper/link collection is.

Also consider to not only tag by topic but also kind (review, letter, peer-reviewed, experimental results, theoretical analysis, explanation of new measurement method, meta-discussion...), year, personal rating (very interesting article you learned a lot from and should read again from time to time), rarely/often/top cited, new theory/model, strongly discussed in the research community

A last note. I use myself Copernic Desktop Search as a supplementary tool, I download all papers of possible interest (disk space is cheap ;) ), papers I read, will read or maybe will never take a look at. The point is that Desktop Search software often has more powerful search operators and sorting mechanisms than Google Scholar & Co. If you know how to use them, you can save a lot reading and tagging time or tagging at all. You know, if you are smart in using Google & search operators and have a good vocabulary, you don't have to ask a lot questions on internet boards.

Conclusion:

Don't use tagging for creating a pure thematic and linear directory structure, if finding again your papers or bits of information can be done by learning a good Desktop Search software. Use your tags in a personal way and remember, the point is not to structure your bibliography like a folder directory for categorized files, the point is to find again the bits of knowledge and most memorable papers, which will rather look like a strongly interconnected nonlinear tag cloud. If you look how people tag sites on del.ic.ious, often only 2 or 3 tags, sometimes using up to 10 pure thematic redundant tags, they are doing it imho wrong and waste a lot of time.


Is it worth self-funding a PhD to attend a top 10 university? What should I opt for?

Option A) very well paid PhD, around €3000 per month at a respectable university
or;

Option B) a non-paid PhD, where I have to pay €2000 per year at one of the top 10 universities of the world?

EDIT: Actually they are both UK universities, Option B  is ranked between the top 10 in the world in engineering and tech, and I do get a scholarship that pays 18000 pounds which covers the difference between international student tuition and EU tuition. In Option A, I will be doing research in a good university and will be working alongside giants in the industry.

Unless you're independently wealthy I think it is always unwise to do an unfunded Ph.D. program.  With the current academic market the way that it is, there's just no guarantee that you will get a good job with the Ph.D. that will allow you to quickly pay off your debt.  There's also no guarantee that you'll get a Ph.D. at all.  We're talking about over a hundred thousand euros!  There are some advantages to a top ranked department (as ff524 says, university ranking is irrelevant), but it's not 100K euros worth of advantage (especially since often a lot of the advantage of a top dept. is that they're better funded and so students can concentrate more on research).


Any tips for preventing perfectionism when it comes to notetaking? This is a slightly seperate question from before.
I was curious on hearing any tips from the community regarding: Preventing perfectionism when it comes to notetaking?
It can be trying to make the notes look perfect (aesthetically + information-wise it troubles me not understanding a couple of key points after having written a bunch of notes down and I'm reviewing them).
I don't do color-coding and doodles, but I like underlining key parts of my notes a bit too much.
I feel like it's all about having this nice condensed packet of beautifully written notes for future review, which is wrong. I know some people will address how this is not a good way to get information in my brain and I agree you should address that, but also please address the perfectionism aspect of my notes because I will still have to take notes in life anyways and that is why I'm asking this question
This is tied to preventing perfectionism in general I guess too.
Note: I wouldn't say I have OCD as I'm not at that level in other aspects of life or to an extent in academics, but still it is a 'perfectionist attitude' or 'minimalistic, beautiful notes', etc

This question, combined with your previous one, makes me think that you are confusing two issues: transcribing information and understanding information. These are not the same thing.  In fact, if you focus more on transcribing information in detail, but you might actually learn less than if you had taken no notes at all.  See for example this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/
I think you need to break yourself of the habit of taking too many notes.  Here's what I suggest: read an entire chapter or lesson without taking a single note.  Don't write anything down at all, just focus on understanding the material.  Sit on your hands if you have to to prevent yourself from writing.  If you don't understand the material, read it again (or maybe look in a different book, find a relevant website etc,).  Once you think you have an understanding, try to summarize the entire chapter very concisely, for example just 10 bullet points.  if you can't do it that concisely, you probably didn't understand it.  Go back and read again.
After while, once you've broken yourself of the habit of taking too many notes, you can go back to taking a few short notes as you read.
Edit: To clarify based on Buffy's comment: I'm not suggesting this as a long term strategy.  Long term you need to find a balance with the right level of note taking.  I'm suggesting this as a short term (say a week or two) approach to get you out of the habit of excess note taking.


How to address an Editor if I have new proof techniques of old results? I read an article published in a High Impact Factor journal and on reading I find that almost all of the proofs could have been done in an easy way.

I devised easy techniques myself and I find that the results obtained in that paper match mine.

Shall I publish my easy techniques stating in my paper that I have found easy proof techniques for the paper already published?
Is it publishable?

How shall I address the Editor and let him/her know that I have obtained the same results but using much easier techniques?

How should I give a title for my manuscript?

What makes this question challenging to answer is that it’s addressing the wrong level of generality: you’re asking about a very specific situation (publishing a simpler proof of a known result) but your questions suggest you’re missing basic facts about publishing of math research in general (how to “address an editor”, how to select a journal to send your paper to, and how to know if your research is even publishable) that have little to do with the specific situation you’re describing.

In terms of answering these questions, only one strikes me as answerable with the information you’ve provided: in math you don’t “address an editor” in any special way, you simply send in your paper using the process described on the journal’s website. If this involves an email to the editor, this need not contain anything more than a factual statement that you are submitting your paper to the journal. There is no need to “address” the contents of your paper or attempt to support the paper’s case for publication in the email - that’s the job of the paper itself.

For the other questions, I think you’ll have to find a knowledgeable person to actually look at your paper and give you advice about whether the results are publishable and what journal they will be a good fit for, how to choose a good title, etc. Those are all important questions but they would depend on much more detailed information than the mere fact that you’ve found new proofs of known results - papers meeting such a description can range anywhere from near-worthless to something that belongs in a top journal. Anyway, good luck!


Does a low acceptance rate imply quality? I am presenting a paper in a conference with a 20% acceptance rate. However the conference is just 3 years old and does not figure in the tiered rating system for conferences in my field Computer Science (that some universities use) . Recently I found out that another reputed international conference (that figures in the conference rankings) has almost double the acceptance rate. Did I make the right choice. How should I evaluate conferences in the future??

Low acceptance rate does not necessarily imply quality, but it is correlated.  Crappy conferences often have high acceptance rates because they don't care.  Broad-community high quality conferences often have low acceptance rates because lots of people are trying to get their material into the same conference.

These are just correlations, however, and not causal in nature.  For example, some very good conference have high acceptance rates because they serve a highly specific community; thus they tend to draw high-quality submissions from within that community and few submissions from outside.

Complementarily, I know of at least one conference that games its acceptance rate by artificially regulating the number of papers accepted.  They decide in advance how selective the conference will be, and set the cutoff not in terms of quality but in terms of their judgement of "good conference" acceptance rate.

Finally, having too high a selectivity may be bad for a conference.  A colleague of mine who is an insider at one of the extremely selective CS conference told me that they were worried that their acceptance rate was too low, and that therefore they weren't getting very interesting work any more: a single dubious reviewer was enough to sink a paper, so only conservative and incremental work was making it in.

Thus, acceptance rate is not a very good metric.  It's much better to look at who the people are who go to the conference, what they've been publishing there, and whether you want to be associated with those people and that type of work.


Rephrasing and Reproducing some part of the Introduction of a Research publication without citing that publication. Is it plagiarism? I want to rephrase and reproduce some part of the Introduction of a Research publication without giving citation to that publication. Will it be considered an act of plagiarism ?? I am not using and citing any result or any table and figure of the publication.

Unequivocally, yes. Plagiarism isn't limited to results or figures alone. As for automatic plagiarism-checkers, they will make even less of a distinction, and will almost certainly flag it as plagiarised if a certain contiguous amount (I am told it is 2 sentences, but I don't have a confirmation on this).

You mentioned rephrasing - this could help avoid automated checks, but if the changes are trivial (changing voice, shifting subject/object, substituting synonyms), a reader may spot and report this.

That aside, why would you want to reproduce it? Different papers should have different introductions if their motivations are different. Is it to save writing time/effort or something else?


What should be put in the final slide when preparing teaching presentations? When preparing my PowerPoint slides for a lecture, I often find myself wondering what to put as the final slide.

For presentations in industry, when not in a university setting, I often have a final slide which simply says "Thank you." The intent is to thank the audience for attending the presentation. However, this feels a little out of place in a university setting, especially where students may not have a choice of attending (well, the choice is attend or definitely fail).

So, I started using a final slide that says "Questions?" However, I recently read something indicating that a teacher should not ask if students have questions (the teacher should either ask a probing question to check for understanding or the teacher should simply expect the students to speak up without prompting).

It seems the final slide should somehow indicate that the slides are done and doing that with a content slide does not seem right either. I recently started using a final slide indicating what homework was expected of the students before the next class session (sometimes the slide simply says 'no homework'). This works several sessions into the semester once students see that every time the homework slide appears it is the final slide; however, it does not really work well at the start of the semester.

Returning to my question, what should I put as the last slide?

Take a cue from TV. Pretty much every serial show I watch ends with "next time on..." It is simple, not prone to misunderstandings like trying to be funny, and actually serves a purpose of indicating what the students might look at before they come in for the next lecture. This is how I wrap up my lectures even though I do not use slides in the classroom. (I like to juggle multiple columns of coexisting text on a blackboard instead.)


Finding a place in interdisciplinary sciences as someone who develops computational methods and algorithms for other fields? I have a strong background in programming and I'm interested in solving computational problems in other areas like physics or economics. During my bachelor studies I have been involved in several research projects. However, my contribution was mostly limited to solving computational problems. The theoretical side of our research was done by others and I'm far away from really understanding it.

Is there a possibility for someone like me to find a suitable job in academics? Someone, who likes to apply computer science, but not just as a tool for solving simple problems. I'm thinking more in terms of developing algorithms or methods for other sciences, which can be reused and published.

Or is it the fate of computer scientists, who work interdisciplinarily,  to only be "used" for programming purposes and not contribute to their group's research any further?

There is a concept of a research programmer, but it's pretty rare. My primary degrees are in maths and social sciences. While my PhD is in computer science, I use programming as a tool to do social science and am not really a great programmer. However, there is a lot of programming in the research projects that I tend to be involved in. For some projects, we would include a research programmer - someone with excellent programming skills who is doing methods development research. That is, the person would be developing new algorithms to solve some social science problem and implementing it. It sounds like this is what you are trying to find.

If so, such jobs do exist. However, they do not lead to a stable academic job since there's not a clear set of subjects that such a person can teach. Furthermore, the jobs are fairly rare.

Nevertheless, if you want this sort of job, you really need to work out what you ARE interested in. That is, economics or physics or whatever else. After that, you can think about what sort of problems are amenable to computational methods for their solutions. For example, look at computational social sciences (I do network science and agent-based modelling) and computational economics.


If you know a family member who is much more qualified and capable in mathematics than you are, should find another field of specialisation? Imposter Syndrome and depression: I feel pretty depressed that I am not as "qualified" as a close family member. In particular, this family member has undergraduate and graduate (PhD) degrees from Ivy League schools in mathematics. Whenever I try to solve a problem, this family member does it in half the time. Does this mean that I should try and find another field to specialize in?

Research in math (and I assume in general) is hard. It doesn't get better over time, but rather we seem to get used to the accompanying depression and angst.
When I feel down, I try to remind myself that I do math because I enjoy it, not because I want to be the best at it, and for some reason people continue to pay me money to do it. If they stop, I'll figure out something else. In the meantime, I get to think about problems that I love, even if the process of that thinking isn't always fun.
The above is also hard. There are still rough days. It helps me to know that other people, including really smart people doing great math, experience the same feelings.
If you want to switch fields, go ahead. But in general, any field will have someone (seemingly) faster than you - this is not personal, we all feel like this.

[Picture Credit: David Whittaker]
I would recommend reflecting upon why you are in mathematics in the first place. If you're in it because you love doing it, does it matter if someone else is a bit faster? There is plenty of mathematics to go around.


Evidence that 'spoon-feeding' is bad or otherwise for learning What research has investigated the influence of 'spoon-feeding' on learning?

By 'spoon-feeding' I mean providing extensive information about topics that will be assessed.  This related question discusses one example, which is the provision of model solutions to maths problems, after grading.

A quick search reveals a few articles, blogs and forum posts, which offer opinions along such lines as spoon-feeding being less effective because of not engaging students' interest, or because of not encouraging critical thinking, problem-solving, research, and so on.

My question is whether any serious research has investigated the outcomes of spoon-feeding.  For example, some research might have found an optimum amount of information that ought to be provided to students to maximise their performance in assessments as well as their ability to solve problems for themselves.

For those self-motivated learners, clearly you need to give them enough information to pique their curiosity enough to invest the time to study more outside of class. Give them too little and they will feel overwhelmed. Give them too much and they do not feel the challenge. Daniel H. Pink wrote about this in his book "Drive" (he refers to "Goldilocks tasks") which is about motivation (including motivating students though not limited to students). Clearly the "right amount" of information needed to pique one student's interest could well be more or less than that needed by another student.

That said, I think you are asking the wrong question. The goal must be to get the student to engage with the subject. Students already have so much information at there fingertips. The problem is not that they do not have access to the information, the problem is that they do not acquire the information. If they don't read the book or notes or watch the video or pay attention to your lectures, they will not get the information regardless of how much "food" you put on their spoon.

Today, the general consensus is that student engagement is key to learning and active learning is a powerful tool to improve student engagement. Active learning is not about how much information you give, it is about how you give them information (for example, discovery-based learning).

As one man said a long time ago "ya gotta wanna" meaning that one must have a true desire in order to excel. So, the issue is about motivation overall.

That said, one could ask a question, when students are engaged and asking questions about a task you have given them, how much should you answer directly and how much should you guide them to find their own answers? In this case, the discussion would move to quantity of information but it would seem that the answer to "what is the right amount" must be unique to each student or at the very least dependent on the quality of the group of students overall.

In the school where I teach I have different levels of students (different programs) and one group (weaker, less self-motivation) requires much more information to get them interested in solving problems. That is, I must get them 90% there before they will try much in the way of research. Other groups I only need to give them 20% there and they are happy to do the work to get the other 80%.


whether my phd interview might have gone well or not I had applied to a top-10 university for a PhD in mathematics, and the funded vacancies there are limited. I knew that in case of being shortlisted I was going to be interviewed. Hence, I recently checked all the university’s guidelines of how I should prepare myself for an interview. For example, according to those guidelines, I was going to be asked such questions as why I chose that university, what are my strength points, and so on.

Around one month later after my application I was invited for an interview by two leading mathematicians there. However, they directly started asking me ONLY technical questions ranging from foundational mathematical questions to advanced topics, and questions about my CV and the like. Anyway I answered the foundational and CV-related questions normally but I could not answer only two advanced phd-level questions, one of which was not related to my master’s major at all. I also talked about a rare but relevant mathematical topic which I have been reading explaining to them in general what this topic is about and how it is related to my major.

In the end, one of the interviewers asked me if I have an external fund, my response was no and as far as I remember he said in one week I will be informed of the interview’s result, and finally he said “nice to meet you”.

1) Does mentioning the means of funding in a PhD interview imply that the applicant did well enough in the interview? 2) Moreover, it may look funny to ask this but what can “nice to meet you” in the end of a PhD interview imply? Is it a commonly used expression by interviewers or does it mean that the interviewer is pleased to admit the applicant?

1) Does mentioning the means of funding in a PhD interview imply that the applicant did well enough in the interview?

No, it could mean many things. E.g., they might be trying to establish whether you could be hired without using their own funds.

  2) ...what can “nice to meet
  you”...imply? Is it a commonly used
  expression by interviewers or does it mean that the interviewer is
  pleased to admit the applicant?

It is a generic expression, it carries no hidden
meaning.


What are some efficient ways to keep a note of results of a research article in mathematics? I learn and produce mathematics. In that process, I had to read quite a number of research articles.

Question :

  What are some efficient ways to keep a note of results of a research article in mathematics?

I keep a note of definitions (in detail) and results (with out proofs) for each paper I read.

Are there any other efficient methods to keep track of what results does a paper contain?

Reading introduction or abstract of a paper does not count as they are written in cryptic manner.

I'm a big believer in using simple index cards for this sort of thing. But there are modern alternatives also.

For the traditional approach, make a card for each paper. It contains title and author as well as publisher/source. It also contains a one or two sentence summary of the paper. What is the reason that this paper is important/interesting?

Cards are kept in a file box, perhaps in author order.

The advantage of this approach is that your card deck will still be available to you in fifty years after multiple operating systems and software systems have become extinct. Paper lasts. Another advantage of index cards is that they are small so you can only write essential things.

As a supplement, you can keep a notebook with a page or two for each paper. The index cards contain a page reference into your notebook system.

But the disadvantage is that such a paper-only system is hard to search. So you might consider an alternative. There is software for "digital index cards" that let you do the above on a computer and provide the opportunity for both searching and for updating the formats and organization of your notes. This might be a better solution for you in general, but don't overlook the permanence of paper. If you are really serious, use such a software system but also use a printer that conveniently and efficiently prints real index cards. Now you have your bomb-proof backup that you will be able to refer to in your 70's in the post-computer era.

Personal note: I have, in fact saved such things as my college course notes from deep into the previous century and have, very occasionally, gone back to refer to them. Later, I kept things on floppy disks that I can no longer access, even though I have the equipment to do so. They degrade as paper does not. Provided you use fairly good paper, of course. I found my first "paper" done back in secondary school (on paper, obviously, created when computers were made of vacuum tubes) and found it "interesting". Since it was typed (on a typewriter), I can scan it for more modern use.


How do I cite a dataset from a database (Datastream)? I have some data that originally is from OECD, but downloaded from the database Datastream. How do I cite this kind of data? I don’t even know the original name of the dataset, just what it’s called in Datastream, which is not necessarily the same thing, right? And what year do I put down?

Edit: Someone edited my title. The original source is not unknown as is clear from the text. I just can't find the data on the OECD website.

Edit2: The topics linked are not about citing third-party databases, which is what I would like an example of. For example, do I call the dataset what it's called in Datastream or do I need to find the original source and find its name? That doesn't seem possible in this case.

A question similar to mine with a satisfying answer can be found here: http://libanswers.brunel.ac.uk/faq/49262


Promising things in the rebuttal phase of a review In computer science, many conferences have a rebuttal phase, where reviewers ask questions to the authors and then, basing on the answers, decide wether to accept or reject the paper. However this seems to be ambiguous on what I can say to the reviewers.

For example, in a paper I submitted to a conference, reviewers lament the absence of certain experiments, that, in my opinion I could easily add to the paper.

Is it ok to state that I can actually add those experiments, if the paper goes to the next phase, or is not this what a rebuttal phase is designed for?

Rebuttal phases offer authors an opportunity to swing the opinion of reviewers. To swing the opinion of a reviewer, authors must present convincing evidence. If a reviewer wants more experiments, then it is (IMO) reasonable for authors to promise them. However, that won't swing the reviewer's opinion. To swing their opinion, authors need to convince reviewers that the additional experiments can be added before the camera-ready deadline. That is, authors must show that these experiments can be conducted quickly.


Open versus Blind reviewing process A question I have been wondering for a while is if there exists an actual proof that a blind reviewing process (i.e. where the reviewers are anonymous, and the reviews not published) is better than an open one (i.e. where the reviewers are not anonymous and/or the reviews are published along with the accepted papers).

Basically, whenever I question the fact that having a blind reviewing process does not guarantee any quality (which, somehow, usually coincides with receiving a poor review for a paper ...), I'm told that anonymity is crucial for the reviewing process. But is there any proof of that? I don't believe there exists any perfect system, but I'm just not sure why does the blind (or even double-blind) one is considered as the best (or the "least worst").

The 2008 study entitled Peer Review in Scholarly Journals - Perspective of the Scholarly Community:  An International Study aimed "to measure the attitudes and behaviour of the academic community with regard to peer review."  Some quotes from the summary:

  Double-blind review was preferred. Although the normal experience of researchers in most fields was of single-blind review, when asked which was their preferred option, there was a preference for double-blind review, with 56% selecting this, followed by 25% for single-blind, 13% for open and 5% for post-publication review. Open peer review was an active discouragement for many reviewers, with 49% saying that disclosing their name to the author would make them less likely to review.

and

  Double-blind review was seen as the most effective. Double-blind review had the most respondents (71%) who perceived it to be effective, followed (in declining order) by single-blind (52%), post-publication (37%) and open peer review (27%).

A 2008 article in Nature (and a correction) discusses the above study but the article is about double-blind review versus single-blind review, and not about blind review versus open review.


Reputation of university versus quality of work for research assistantship I have a couple of offers for my bachelors thesis in computer science (machine learning, to be precise). The options are such that one is interesting work at a not-so-well-known institute (in my home country), while the other is at a better institute (foreign university) with less interesting work. What is more important given that I want to pursue research in future in terms of masters / PhD?

Please note that I have only provided the information below to give context, so that if someone is interested in having more information before answering he/she can do so by reading below. This is NOT meant to be a "shopping" question where one asks others to make the choice. The information exists only to provide context for those interested.

Some context in this regard (optional details):

In my final year, my university allows me to pursue my undergrad thesis at any university / research institute where I can find a professor willing to advise me.

I have a couple of offers for my thesis in this regard. One is at a not-so-well-respected institute in my home country (India) with a great professor. I call him "great" based on his publications – most of them are in top notch conferences, and his projects also seem very interesting to me.

The second is in Germany, at a slightly better known institute (again, not very well known). The professor and my potential supervisor seem to do good research, but their publication record is not as good as the first professor mentioned above. And while their project is interesting, I don't find it as interesting as the project above.

So I seem to be faced with the question of choosing between quality of work and the reputation of the university. On the one hand, option India provides me with interesting work and the recommendation from a professor who has a strong publication record. On the other hand, option Germany provides me with foreign experience on my resume and a potentially bigger name to throw around, along with a recommendation from the same.

What should the relative importance of reputation versus quality of work be?

All other things being equal I'd take the Germany option. Reasons:

You can't be sure if you want to do research yet. I know you said you do, but if your undergraduate was anything like mine then this thesis work is your first real contact with research. Research is nothing like coursework, and it's possible you decide afterwards that you don't actually want to do a Masters / PhD. I would therefore try to hedge a little, and in my experience with job searches, the institute's brand name is more significant a factor than the identity of your supervisor or the topic of your thesis (this assumes you'll complete regardless). Exception: if it's likely you'll work in India and the Indian professor is well-known in the country, then consider staying.
You can't be sure which project is more interesting. Yes, you can say that the ultimate aim of one project is more interesting than the other, but the actual research work is different. For example you might start the project and then find that the best way to proceed is to make your code more efficient. If you dislike figuring out how to vectorize code, then the ultimate aim matters less than the fact that you still have to do something you dislike to get there. Taken together with #1, this means I would not place much importance on first impressions of which project is more interesting.
Exposure. Assuming you did your undergraduate studies in India, then going to a different country gives you experience you cannot get by staying. You'll see a different culture, different way of life, different people, different currency, and so on. This can't be quantified, but it's valuable.
Networking. You will reach a different group of machine learning specialists by going to Germany. The wider your personal network is, the better.

Other things to think about:

Timezone. Going to Germany puts you in a very different timezone from India. You'll also be able to visit home less often. Will you still be able to socialize with your friends / family / significant other?
Finances. Germany is more expensive than India. Can you afford it?
Personal happiness. Will you be happy in Germany? For example my mother, if she went to India, would probably be eating at McDonald's every day because she can't stand Indian food. If something similar may happen to you - stay in India.


How much depth should I have into a topic before I can claim it to be one of my research interests? I have been applying to Ph.D. programs in bioinformatics and have already gotten interview invitations from a few of them. My background is mainly on the computational side but I am interested in applying that knowledge to biological problems.

In my application I mention that one of my research interests is modelling physiological systems (e.g. the cardiovascular system). However, I have not done substantial reading on the topic other than from a few websites and Wikipedia (mainly because of the little free time that I currently have as an undergraduate). From what I have read, I find the field to be very appealing and something that I would like to do research on. Nevertheless, my knowledge is basic at best and I am wondering if I can claim it to be one of my research interests.

You can be interested in Japanese even if you don't know more than 3 words in Japanese.

You can say it is your interest.

If they ask about your research experience - then usually a publication is a good indicator that you have some knowledge of the topic.


What the difference between full research paper and WIP? Recently, I have got a notification from a conference saying that my research paper has been accepted to be published in LNCS proceedings as Work-in-progress paper. Therefore, I am asking if there any differences between WIP or full research paper when it becomes to be public and available online.

Will the reader differentiate whether the paper is a full research paper or work-in-progress paper? also, will the paper be citable by others(has ODI or ISBN)?

When you later publish the full research paper, you can (should!) cite the conference proceedings as that work will have been incorporated into your research paper. Many researchers that find your conference paper will look for some follow-up to the conference paper, particularly if you make a note in the paper that it is a work in progress.

With online publishing there are often citation connections made in both directions, so as well as the reference list showing which papers are cited in that paper, there is often a reverse-reference list showing which papers cite that paper. This makes things considerably easier, although I have no information about how comprehensive such reverse referencing is, and it may vary by field.


Would having some flaws in a perfect English SOP be bad? I have my native friend who is willing to check my SOP. I just have added a part to present the reasons why I want to pursue in department X. Unfortunately my friend is on their vacation and I don't want to bother them. The rest of the SOP is already written and proofread. Of course I will proofread it myself, but in case I cannot find any mistake, how would this be bad if I just submit this SOP?

My TOEFL writing score is 23 btw.

From the survey Kisses of Death in the Graduate School Application Process by Drew Appleby and Karen Appleby:

  According to several respondents, spelling and grammatical errors found anywhere in the application are an immediate Kiss of Death.

My job should finish here, but I want to summarize the paper after a quick skim. 5 major Kisses of Death are:

Damaging personal statements: personal mental health, excessive altruism, excessive self-disclosure, and professional inappropriateness.
Harmful letters of recommendation: undesirable applicant characteristics, letters from inappropriate sources
Lack of program information: not researching the general focus of the program, not exploring how the applicant’s research interests fit the focus of the program.
Poor writing skills: spelling and grammatical errors, poorly written applications
Misfired attempts to impress

Thanks Roger Fan for linking this survey.


Is there a way to save my students money on a textbook? I'm considering requiring a textbook that sells for $140 on Amazon.  Used copies cost $95 and up.  I expect about 60 students to take the course.  Our students are not wealthy, and some will skip buying the book (and their academic performance will suffer) if they feel they cannot afford it.  I'd like to find ways of saving my students money.

One idea I have is to see if it's possible to get a bulk discount and pass the savings on to students.  Another idea is to set up an Amazon affiliate link and refund the kickbacks to students, although I'd probably be liable for income tax.  (Of course, I'd request approval from the Provost's office before trying something that could appear to be profiting off of students.)

I live in the United States, the publisher is Pearson, and there does not seem to be an international edition.  There is only one edition of the textbook.  (For other classes, I've saved the students money by letting them use an earlier edition.)  I have been unable to find a textbook of comparable quality that is significantly cheaper.

Has anyone tried any of the above ideas or others?

RESPONSES TO COMMENTS:

Why require a book?  I do not always require a book, but I think it is necessary for this course in order for students to learn the material.

Why not write my own book or lecture notes?  I have co-authored a book on a topic on which I am an expert and made the book available for free online.  I could not do as good a job as the expensive textbook's authors in this subject matter, especially because I expect to only teach this course once.

Why not use a free online textbook? I was unable to find a free book that did a good job covering the required material.

Why not encourage the students to find an illegal copy online?  I consider copyright legitimate and would not encourage my students to do something illegal or unethical.

UPDATE:

After I assigned the Pearson textbook, a student discovered that it was available for free online through the local public library. I immediately informed the other students of this option and let them know how to get a public library card. I will always know to check this option in the future. It had not occurred to me that a publisher would allow a popular textbook to be made available for free in this way (with no limit on the number of simultaneous viewers).

SECOND UPDATE:

I learned that ACM Student membership, which is $19/year (with possibly lower rates in the developing world) includes access to Safari Books Online, which has a book I am requiring this semester (in the Head First series) and has many other great computer science books (typically used by developers, not as textbooks).

An easy thing to do that can be very helpful to your students is to put a copy of the textbook (or two or three copies) on reserve in the university library.  Students can then photocopy critical sections of the book (e.g. the homework exercises.)  This is particularly helpful at the start of the semester when students are waiting for copies of the book that they've ordered online to arrive.

If you have control over the choice of the textbook, you should consider moving to a cheaper book or even an open educational resource (OER) that is completely free to students.


Referring to a result that comes later So in writing a math paper, if I am writing a proof of a theorem and I need to refer a lemma that comes later in the same paper. What is the proper way
to say that? For example if I am proving a theorem in page 10 and I need a lemma
in page 15, how should I say that in the proof?

The proper way here is to rearrange your paper so that this does not happen. It might be possible to put the theorem into the paper twice. Once in the introduction, possibly without some technical details but with more context and intuition around it and once after the required lemmata a proven with all the technical details.

The main reason is that the proofs of your various lemmata and theorems depend on one another but you want the dependence to form a tree and not have any loops. If you have a theorem that depends on a lemma proved later on, it could look like the proof of the lemma also depends on the theorem stated earlier on.


When writing about something done in another paper, should I write referring to the study itself or to the author? Should I write:

Click et al. (2018) through a linear regression analysis for the period 2000 - 3000 , carried out an analysis of the relationship between x and y. In the presence of structural breaks, They also included regressions for three regimes.

Or shoul I write:

Click et al. (2018) through a linear regression analysis for the period 2000 - 3000 , carried out an analysis of the relationship between x and y. In the presence of structural breaks, it also included regressions for three regimes.

Referring to the authors of a paper (or group of papers) using the pronoun 'they' can certainly be done, but as always the journal's style guide will decide what you can do in a given paper. Just to drive home the point that it can be done, here are examples from two famous review articles published in Reviews of Modern Physics (arguably one of the most prestigious publication venues in physics). Both articles were written by native English speakers - one from USA and one from England - who both later were awarded the Nobel prize.

N. F. Mott's Metal-Insulator Transition (1968)

  The theoretical description given by Adler and others at Harvard is reviewed by Adler [15] at this conference. They point out that a lattice distortion occurs at the transition point,...

Kenneth G. Wilson's The renormalization group: Critical phenomena and the Kondo problem (1975)

  Schotte and Schotte (1971) have calculated the susceptibility χ(T) by Monte Carlo methods for the Coulomb analog. The violation of universality means that the value of TK they they calculate is unreliable because...

Referring to a given paper as 'it' also seems fair, but if you refer to "Click et al. (2018)" (i.e. a list of names) as 'it', well, it doesn't quite sit right. Still, a non-native speaker would probably get a pass on that one. Now, it gets worse if you refer to Click's previous single-author paper "Click (2016)" as 'it', however. I think most people would read that as a reference to the person Click, and a dehumanizing one at that. I think you should either avoid this usage altogether, or establish more clearly that it is the paper you're referring to. It probably is better to rewrite the sentence using a noun to make it more clear.

Actually, this is one of the big risks that comes with using pronouns: it might not be clear what they're referring to, even though it seemed so obvious to the author. In your first example, most readers will probably assume that 'they' refers to the authors. For a slightly more ambiguous sentence, however, they might think that 'they' refers to "x and y". In your second example, does 'it' refer to the paper "Click et al. (2018)", the "linear regression analysis", or the "analysis of the relationship"? Personally, I'd assume you meant the third option.