Assignment due dates Last term I taught a large undergraduate course. I had assignments (online) due a week after we finish a chapter. There were two minor problems with this. The first was that I had to deal with students who enrolled one, two or even three weeks into the term and gave them extensions of the first several assignments, which involved logging into the website, finding the student, setting his/her new deadline and answering the student email. Secondly for some of the chapters that take more time than others, some students would bombard me with requests for extensions. So I am thinking of adopting a different method next time. Specifically, I plan to divide the 12 chapters into 4 modules with 3 chapters in each. Each module has a deadline for all 3 chapter assignments. I am hoping this would give students more flexibility on their time management, and have a little more time working on those long assignments. It also saves me from handling those extension requests because of late registration or others. The potential peril I can think of is that some students may not start on the assignments until the last minutes and it would be very difficult to crash 3 assignments within a short time. I would appreciate other thoughts on the pros and cons of this method.

I would recommend not batching up assignments to a common deadline, because that makes it even more challenging for students to manage their time properly. If someone waited to the last minute on an assignment in the prior regime, now they'll be waiting until the last minute on 3 assignments and be in even worse shape -- compounded by the mental effort in prioritizing which one they should work on first. Under the original regime, they have more opportunities to engage in this cycle and get feedback on how their study skills work for them.

My response to these types of problems is to have a blanket policy of dropping a certain number of grades from consideration; for example, in my classes, there are 12 weekly online quizzes, and the lowest 3 are dropped for each student at the end of the course. There are absolutely no makeups or past-due work allowed for any reason, which massively clears out my own time (absolutely no chasing students or managing late work after my grading process is completed). Plus, the "drop N grades" is automatically supported by the Blackboard management system.

In my classes, I don't give any special allowances to students who first show up later in the semester (but this may vary for your institution). I had a student join my class in the 2nd meeting last week, and he had already missed the first quiz submission; he asked "Can I make that up?", and the answer was simply, "No", and being pointed to the syllabus for the drop allowance, which in the years I've been using it has always been accepted quite gracefully. In my opinion, it's the most efficient use of your time as an academic.


Should I disclose invisible disabilities to my supervisors during my PhD? Long story short, I'm halfway through my PhD and have recently started receiving help for invisible disabilities from the university, although I have not disclosed the details of these disabilities to my supervisors. My supervisors know that I receive university support for 'medical issues' but they do not know specifically what these are.

A recent discussion with my supervisors lead to them saying they cannot support my request for accommodations or advocate on my behalf without knowing exactly what 'medical issues' I have. I have no problem disclosing specific situations I sruggle with (e.g. that I can be distracted easily, that I often misunderstand people etc), but do not want to put a label on the actual diagnoses as it does not describe how these disabilities affect me specifically and there can be a lot of misunderstanding around these diagnoses.

So my question is, do you think it is fair for me to not disclose my exact disabilities to my supervisors but request their support for accommodating my 'medical issues' and impairments?

As an aside, as per university policy I am not required to disclose to anyone except our disabilities branch (which I have done), through which we can request accommodations, support, and advocacy without needing to disclose to other university staff (lecturers, professors, supervisors) our disabilities (for example, someone who is visually impaired can request audio recordings on medical grounds without being obligated to tell the lecturer the reason for the request i.e. being visually impaired).

I have no problem disclosing specific situations I sruggle with (e.g. that I can be distracted easily, that I often misunderstand people etc), but do not want to put a label on the actual diagnoses as it does not describe how these disabilities affect me specifically and there can be a lot of misunderstanding around these diagnoses.

This is key. It sounds like you are fine with going into detail on your symptoms (and therefore your need for accommodations), but you're not comfortable disclosing the exact diagnosis. Given that your advisor is not your medical professional, they don't need to know the diagnosis.

So, if there is a need to, you can tell them your issues, but don't tell them the diagnosis. Be polite, firm, and center the conversation on your genuine need for accommodations.

  "You've asked me about my medical issues and my need for accommodations. I'm not always comfortable discussing this, but it's important for you to know that the main symptoms cause me to be easily distracted, occasionally misunderstand people, X, Y, Z..."

If your advisor presses you for the "name" of the medical condition, you can say

  "The precise diagnosis isn't really relevant - what's important here is I have genuine medical issues that need accommodations. Thank you for helping me do my best work."

The last sentence here reframes the conversation to the advisor's role of helping you to achieve success, rather than on their morbid curiosity about your specific diagnosis.


The average decision time of math PhD application (Brandeis, Tennessee, York, SFU) I've applied for the math PhD program for the upcoming Fall 2018. The schools I applied include Brandeis University, University of Tennessee, York University and Simon Fraser University. Since it has already been about 10 weeks from the deadline and I have not heard any news from them, I would like to ask anybody with experiences of applying the math graduate program of the above schools: What is the average decision time of the schools I mentioned?

I am struggling with this since one high school in my country is inviting me to be their math teachers, and I need to sign a one year contract if I accept. It's impossible to let them wait for months for my response. Or anybody can give me some advise on this issue?

For most American grad schools, April 15 is a significant date for admittance offers.

Here is the relevant link about the April 15 deadline. In essence, students who receive offers for grad school admittance are allowed to wait until April 15 to respond. What can happen is that students who receive offers sometimes wait until the last minute to decide, and thus the grad schools don't know if they have enough slots to offer someone further down their waitlist until around April 15.

Thus, I think the latest you might get an offer from a grad school is April 15, or perhaps a day or two later.


Are Graduate Fellowships or Research assistants in state university considered a government employees in US? I am applying for a post which asks me
you ever part of government entity like federal/state/local government entities including publicly funded universities.
I was a research assistant with fellowship in a department under the state university.
So is this an Yes?
There is question here: Are professors at a public university in the U.S. considered to be "employed by the U.S. government"?
but it concerns federal employees. Mine includes any level of government entities. Hence the question.

It likely depends on the source of the funds. If you were paid by the department at a State university, then the likelihood is that it is a Yes. But if you were paid through a grant then the answer might be no, but might depend on some things.
I suspect you should ask the department, or, alternatively, answer Yes, but qualify it somehow/somewhere with the actual arrangement.
But, as Paul Garrett notes in a comment, things vary by state.


How to recruit PhD students when industry pays so much more? I'll be starting as a tenure-track professor in a few months where I'll be doing research on software developer tools. I have seen that it is extremely difficult to recruit good PhD students in this topic area (even at elite schools), since most of them are heavily recruited by industry. Understandably, it is hard to say no to 120k+ USD salary straight out of undergrad.

How should I go about attracting talented grad students in a topic area that has to compete with such high-paying companies? I do have funding for these students but it isn't anything like industry.

The person who wants to go into industry is a different sort of person than one who wants a PhD. That isn't a universal, as some people want to do one to enable or enhance the other, but it is pretty generally true. You are likely a pretty good example yourself, so look at how you differ from those among your peers who chose as you did or otherwise.

Therefore, think of the possible pool of candidates as bifurcated and try to appeal to those characteristics that are more likely to appeal to those in the desired half (well, less than half, probably).

Future professors are likely more interested in ideas and personal growth and less interested in money. Both may want to do something to improve the world, of course, but in different ways. The potential PhD is more interested in deeper issues and longer term results than the general public. Future professors, especially, are obsessed with ideas and their development.

Another positive aspect of the professorate and the desire for a PhD is the ability, in the large, to control your own schedule. You work all the time, of course, but you get to decide when to work and (mostly) what to work on.

The people you probably are not going to attract are those with heavy life responsibilities already, and who really need that paycheck. On a more positive note, they are also more likely to want to do something now, rather than to work toward more distant goals.

If you actually have access to some of the people you want to attract, then introduce them to interesting parts of your research and those of colleagues. Take them to an advanced class that you teach in some esoteric subject - maybe even one for which you are the premier source in the world. That is very cool. If you have research labs and advise advanced students, take them to a lab and ask them to contribute - ideas if nothing else. Introduce them to your advisees and assistants. Show them how wonderful it is to work with other smart people on important problems.

When you speak to groups, emphasize the excitement of developing new ideas and how a new PhD is, at that moment, the world's foremost authority on some (perhaps small) thing.

Finally, convince them that they will never be bored and that if they work with you, you will never waste their time. Then live up to that promise yourself, of course.


How to send a research proposal to find potential PhD supervisor? I am trying to look for a PhD position by contacting potential supervisors through email. I have made a list of professors who I found interesting through searching some papers and their department websites. Now I decide to write to them for asking opportunity and in order to show my sincerity, I would like to attach a research proposal.

I know it seems not necessary to do this if my credentials are good enough, but in order to stay out of the crowd, I don't know if this is actually a good idea to attach a research proposal. Anyway, I want to have some advice on writing a research proposal in this situation.

What should the appropriate length be? 2 pages, 20 pages? with cited reference?
How much deviation is allowed with the professor's research interest? Because if everything are the same with the current papers, it seems I am just copying its content into the proposal.
Should I include all necessary experimental steps? (I am from engineering)
Any other suggestion on writing research proposal in this situation.

I don't know if it is worth the time to do this, I would like to know if you have also some suggestions in impressing potential supervisors solely through email.

In most branches of engineering, sending a research proposal to a prospective PhD advisor is not particularly helpful, unless you are providing your own funding.

The reason for this is that most PhD students are funded through grants obtained by the professor, either from traditional research funding agencies (NSF/DOE/DOD/NIH and their counterparts in other countries), or through industrial contracts. In such cases, the projects that are to be worked on are well-defined, so the possibility of deviating from those projects and using the money to fund other projects—such as the one you propose—are remote.

On the other hand, if you can provide your own funding, things change significantly. Under such circumstances, you could propose a project of your own design, so long as it fits within the general scheme of the professor's existing research (or moves slightly outside of it). However, proposing a project that lies too far outside of the mainstream typically is unlikely to be well-received, since the professor won't be able to provide much useful support.

However, even under such circumstances, the initial proposal should be more like a "white paper"—a faculty member, if he or she reads such a document at all, is not going to spend more than a few minutes reading it. So the initial idea will need to be compellingly presented in a short amount of space—two or three paragraphs at most.

The best way to show your interest in a professor's group is to explain how you could contribute to ongoing research in the group—that is, do you homework before writing to the faculty member. Your email should make it clear that you are writing the specific faculty member, and addressing the concerns and interests of their group. Anything that has the whiff of being a form letter will likely be ignored, unless your CV looks like a perfect fit for the research group!


How to get reviewed (undergraduate student's work/research) I am an undergraduate student (final year, Computer Science). I am interested in research. I have worked and progressed (I believe) on a specific problem, namely graph isomorphism. Instructors in my department are not interested in that topic. I have contacted them a couple of times, and they did not reject my work nor confirm it.  How can I proceed now, i.e., how can I get reviewed to  confirm or verify my work?

Edit 1: The answer below by pjs36 seems to be"personal" (pointing my poor writing skill), but the answer should be general. I may have this problem, others might not have. So, what one can do to get reviewed  by others?

The title suggests you want new individuals to review your work, while the last sentence seems now like you need advice reviewing your own work. I'll focus primarily on the title question.

I think you should ask why is nobody commenting on my work?, rather than who can I get to comment on my work? and I'll share my thoughts on that question.

I don't know how you're presenting your work, but if it's anything like this question, that might play a significant role.

What I mean to say is this. You did not explain your situation very well. Sure, I got the idea, but this is a relatively mundane situation, "Nobody will pay attention to me." It's just not communicated clearly (or professionally, do you really need to abbreviate department?), as I've pointed out that it's not even clear what question you're asking.

But when it comes to actual scientific research, we leave the world of the mundane. You are potentially discovering something nobody has seen before, or at least working on very technical material. Anyone reading your work or listening to you cannot simply fill in the gaps or correct any imprecision. If they could, it is overwhelmingly likely not 'research' in the academic sense of discovering or clarifying things that are new to the world, not just you.

My point is supported by your posts on MSE about Brocard's Conjecture (see, for example, here). You used very unusual notation, lots of handwaving, and were generally unable to explain yourself sufficiently, by mathematical standards, in the body of the post or in the comments.

If you are asking faculty members to comment on work that's presented similarly, dismissal seems like a likely outcome. The flaws above are so serious that I can only assume (in that example) you hadn't made any real progress on Brocard's Conjecture, and thus it wasn't really worth my time to continue attempting to make sense of what you had presented.

You need to sit down and ask yourself some serious questions about what you have produced and how it's presented. Questions like "Is this true? How can I tell? Is my argument correct beyond a shadow of a doubt, and has it been tested on several examples? Have I made any conclusions that simply don't follow, or used leaps of logical faith to justify anything? Have I explained things so that, with minimal effort, this can be read and understood by a professional?"


How to mark/cite text that you only translated? In my thesis I included some pages of a foreign specification. To improve the reader's convenience I have translated them as they are vital to my topic and I can't paraphrase them.

How do I properly cite these five pages/mark them as not my own?

If this section of the thesis contains only the translated passage, then it is silly to use one of the quotation notifiers. As I said in my comment, preface the whole section with a notice about the origin of the passage. Then, present the passage unaltered (except for the translation). The contents of that notice will depend on which of the following categories the original passage falls into:

Public domain

The original passage is in the public domain (for example if it was written by a government employee in the course of their normal duties or if the author released into the public domain or if the passage is old enough that any possible copyright has expired) - then say something like

  The following section is was translated by (your initials) and is reproduced without any further alterations from (original source). This passage is in the public domain (rationale if possible).

Fair Use

Since a thesis is a document created in the course of obtaining an education, you can claim fair use for educational purposes. The passage represents less than the fair use maximum set for the original document (typically around 5% or less of the original work), then you can state something like

  The following section is was translated by (your initials) and is reproduced without permission and without any further alterations from (original source). Since this passage represents a minimal part of the original document, it constitutes fair use.

Public License

The creator of the document could have released the document under a license that allows reuse for non-profit purposes with appropriate attribution. See Creative Commons Licenses and GNU General Public Licenses. Licenses like these generally allow you to reproduce the work if you include the appropriate statement. Make sure the license allows derivative works (because that is what your translation is).

  The following section is was translated by (your initials). It is reproduced from (original source) under the  Creative Cmmons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) License. The original copyright is held by, and all other rights are reserved by, (original copyright holder).

Express permission

If you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the work in your thesis, then you would state something like the following. You should include the evidence of written permission in your appendix.

  The following section is was translated by (your initials). It is reproduced from (original source) with permission of the copyright holder. The original copyright is held by, and all other rights are reserved by, (original copyright holder).

None of the above

Without permission, a license, fair use, or public domain, you are violating copyright by reproducing the passage, even if you translated it (translations count as derivative works, which are still a no-no). Get the appropriate permissions or reduce the length of the passage so that it becomes fair use and see above.

US Copyright

Note that this answer primarily to US Copyright Law, with which I am most familiar. The copyright laws in other nations, as well as international copyright law, will vary, but many have similar provisions. However, some parts of my answer will be inapplicable in some countries. In these cases, behave as if the material is copyrighted. The concepts of public domain, copyright, and license are fairly similar in most places. Generally, the existence of a license supersedes copyright, with the exception that a license cannot supersede the public domain status of a work. Fair use may not exist in all jurisdictions. If you are unsure whether your nation has a fair use or similar exception in its copyright law, act as if it doesn't. Better safe than sorry.


Self plagarism with co-authors I think we can all agree that if I am presenting work that is intended to be new ideas and I present a previously published result of which I am the sole author, that this is self-plagiarism. The clearest example of this is reusing an already published result in a journal article without attribution.

If that already published result is in a co-authored work, is it still self-plagiarism, or does it somehow make it worse?

The essence of plagiarism, self or otherwise, is an intention to mislead by passing something off as your original work when it is not. You can never be guilty of self-plagiarism if you say/write something along the lines "As I [and my colleagues] showed/claimed in ...".  If you repeat as an original comment something that is not original, it is irrelevant that you wrote its true original form with the collaboration of others.

That said, I am beginning to question the premise of this question. What kind of 'job talk' is that demands wholly new material never before published? That means material never before subjected to peer review - surely of lesser quality than peer-reviewed published stuff? And, anyhow, it is surely a practical impossibility to cite full references in a talk: your audience would either sleep or find something of more interest on their phones.


The first teaching job: prior knowledge or do people get trained? I am soon going to finish my PhD (neuroscience; India) and am interested in working as a post-doctoral fellow, eventually going down the teaching and research line. My question is specifically about teaching. So far, I have had zero formal teaching experience (unfortunately such opportunities do not exist at my institute).

How does one go about learning how to develop and design a course and to get a grasp of teaching to undergraduate/graduate students? I have seen some questions here and also some job postings (from various countries). A lot of them require you to come and even give a demonstration of your teaching style, or be aware of latest teaching methods, or to give examples of how you would design a course and so forth. Do young faculties/post-doctoral researchers get trained in these areas or are you expected to have figured it out by the time it comes to applying for a faculty position?

Some do teaching as part of their Masters or PhD studies.

Others do a teacher training course before, or after, Masters or PhD.

Some do teacher training without wanting to do a Masters or PhD and teacher training courses can be short (about 1 year) or longer.


What affiliation to put on paper? I finished my Master one year ago and now I am writing a paper from my master thesis. But now i am a PhD student in another university (another country). Which affiliation i should write in the paper?. Is it ok to write both university names on paper?
Thanks

Put the current affiliation and make a comment in the title page (i.e., a footnote) stating "this work was conducted as part of a master's dissertation [in the older university]".


Computational Physics or Engineering Physics, which deal with new technologies related to energy? I currently on track to graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science and Physics. I am on the fence on which masters program I should pursue. I want to deal with new technologies like sustainable energy and things like Tesla motors.

Which degree would be more beneficial for the field I described or is there another engineering program that would better fit?

If you want a hands-on approach then Engineering Physics seems like the logical option, if, however, you want to think about the problems on a more abstract level, Computational Physics seems like the right choice.

Since you are doing Computer Science, you probably love, as many of us do, the power of coding languages, and might feel more comfortable using these to solve problems, once again that would mean computational physics might be more your thing.

The real question is how you want to deal with these new technologies. If you want to really work with these new technologies, I'd opt for engineering physics. You might want to take a look at some of the courses in these master programs and see which suit you more, or you could engage with master students of these courses to get a better insight in the course.


Difference between grants and awards The tag grants currently has the description "Academic grants are non-repayable funds disbursed by government, trust, foundation or a society."  The tag awards currently has no description.

I am currently in the process of formally naming the forms of monetary support that my university's research council is providing to its employees.  My question is:

  Is there any formal document that describes the difference between a grant and an award?

I'm also interested in how the terms grant and award differ from other terms such as incentive, fellowship, scholarship, professorial chair, and so on.

For example, I know that one who is applying for a grant submits a proposal to be able to get funding for an activity that has not yet been done.  I also know that some awards require nominations (and some disallow self-nomination) and are given for work that has already been done.  I know that grants usually require liquidation of the monetary support given; I am not sure if the same is true for awards.  Grants sometimes have clauses where the recipient is to return the monetary support if he or she fails to submit the expected outputs; I am not sure if the same is true for awards.

I think you basically answered your own question: grants are something where you apply and get money based on what you say you will do. Awards are something you get for work you already did. Some awards do not include any money. I doubt you'll find an authoritative document, because there's no organization that sets rules for the entire academic community. I could image a certain amount of overlap/fuzz, so there could be things that one school/organization calls a grant that somewhere else might call an award.

A confusing additional fact is that the term "award" is also often used as a verb applied to the noun "grant", as in "Professor X was awarded a grant for . . .".  I would not call this "an award" in the noun sense; it is a grant, and "awarding a grant" means "giving a grant" or "deciding who gets a grant".  To me "an award" is the sort of thing described with "Professor X won the ABC Award for . . ."

Here is a page talking about grants vs. "gifts" that restates some of the distinctions you already mentioned, but this is just one accounting context at one university.


Advice for preparing a virtual presentation I have a paper that has been accepted for a conference abroad, but because I have been put on administrative duties on my university I will not be able to make the presentation. So, I have spoken with the PC of the conference and has given me the option to make a presentation and send it to him to present it in the conference allotted time. For me is the first time that I will be doing this, so I would like to know some advice on how to do this presentation:

For example, should I make a simple Powerpoint and just recording my voice? or should I make a presentation like those that are on the MOOCs courses? As silly as it sounds I have no clue on how to prepare a presentation in this format.

Any advice?

First of all, you need to know the specific requirements from the conference host. Do they have a specific file format that they want you to use? Otherwise, you might want to do a screencast recording. There are free software available such OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) where you can record your screen and microphone at the same time. That way, you can go through your powerpoint presentation while recording both the screen and audio. Make sure you use a good microphone when recording and try to minimize as much background noise as possible.

Good luck with your presentation, I'm sure you'll nail it!

PS: Let me know if you're struggling with getting OBS to work, it's fairly easy and straightforward so there shouldn't be any issues (also many guides available on youtube).


Why do professors give talks on published work without their coauthors present at the seminars? They simply say that it is joint work with somebody.

Is it primarily because one is a better speaker than the other?  Like, do some professors publish a lot but choose to stay behind the scenes and let their coauthors present the work?

An incomplete list:

Because they're invited to give a talk, and their coauthor(s) aren't.
Because their coauthor(s) can't afford to travel to every talk they give on that piece of research.
Because their coauthor(s) are busy with other things.
Because this way they and their coauthor(s) can disseminate their ideas more widely, by giving more talks for the same overall investment of time.
Because the work is interdisciplinary, and the conference at which the work is being presented is devoted to some of the disciplines involved but not all of them, so attending would be irrelevant for the coauthor(s).

(Thanks to the commenters who suggested further additions.)


Nice vs. ugly numbers in homework and tests This question revolves around using integers (−1, 0, 1, 2, 3) or simple fractions (½, ⅓, ⅗) vs. real numbers (−1.254, 42.72) in teaching concepts, assigning homework, and preparing tests for math, science, or engineering. For the rest of this question, I will call integer or simple fractions nice and real numbers ugly.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that you are teaching a math class, and the first topic is basic addition. The first time that you teach it, I would assume that you would want to teach it using nice numbers. For example, using 2 + 2 = 4 would be preferred over 1.234 + 5.678 = 6.912. Sometimes you can get lost in the weeds of the calculations ("just plug these numbers in here and get the answer out") and completely miss the concepts. While concepts are important, it is important for the students to be able to apply the concepts for more complicated problems. While part of me thinks that learning concepts should be the same for nice numbers and ugly numbers, my personal experience says that there is a difference (perhaps just a small one) between these two.
In order to facilitate better learning and better application of course material to real-world problems, should you also include homework with ugly number inputs and answers? How about tests? During my engineering studies, it seemed like there were lots of problems that had nice inputs and/or answers. Most of the questions did not have really ugly answers. Is this typically done to make it better for the students learning, or is this done to make grading easier? Perhaps calculator use can also influence the type of number being used too. Overall, it would be nice to understand why professors and/or teachers often select nice numbers for assignments.
If it would help to know, the main drive of this question is that I would like to automate some of the homework or maybe even tests for classes. I would like to be able to generate multiple versions of homework or tests so that students can’t simply copy answers from each other. If I am generating homework, it might be tricky to find nice solutions vs ugly solutions. I think I have a method for automatic grading, so that is not a problem. The main thing that I want to maintain is a good learning experience for students.
Note on π and other irrational numbers: For my studies, π was of course in lots of the problems, and this technically makes problems have answers that are irrational. For most problems, it is acceptable to include the symbol π in the answer instead of including the numerical form in calculations. These problems could be still written nicely with implied multiplication like 2π or 3π/5.

I think I'm going to be fundamentally disagreeing with a lot of the answers here.
Nice numbers definitely make problems easier, and I make a habit of using them when first introducing a concept; they make the students more comfortable, and let them focus on the key idea that I'm trying to teach. But I never rely on nice numbers for tests or assignments. There's three major reasons here:

I have had many students over the years who genuinely stop understanding a concept when presented with "ugly" numbers. For example, I've had students who can easily find the average of 2 and 6 but when asked to find the average of 2.3 and 6.7 don't even know how to start. This isn't an issue of getting confused by the calculations; it's that they think about "nice" numbers differently than they think about "ugly" ones. In the case of the average, the issue was probably that the student in question thought of the average as "the number in the middle", not "the sum divided by two", which makes sense when working with integers but not otherwise. The problem is that you can't capture failures of comprehension like this without using ugly numbers at least occasionally.
Not a grad student and Per Alexandersson pointed out that many students use the "nice number" test to tell whether their answer is right - they tend to trust the answer if they get "2", not so much if they get "2.134". So from the perspective of "be nice to your students", you should use nice numbers; but the thing is that, in literally any application they will have for this material later in life, they won't be working with problems that were carefully curated to produce nice numbers. If you're teaching them something you expect them to use later, it's a disservice to allow them to continue to use the "nice number" test.
Loosely speaking, there are far fewer "nice" numbers than "ugly" ones. I've had students "solve" problems by assuming the answer will be a whole number and then guess-and-checking their way to success.

That said, if you're using ugly numbers, you do need to make some concessions to make that work. Here's what I do:

I allow scientific (not graphing) calculators on every assignment and test.
I allow unsimplified answers, except when the problem is about simplification; so, they're welcome to leave their answer as a complicated mess of radicals if they want to.
I warn them specifically that the numbers involved in some problems may be messy, and I go through "messy" problems in class.
I take some class time to teach techniques for judging whether your answer is correct that don't rely on niceness of number; my preferred one is "ballparking", where you use the context of the question to estimate the general size of the answer (is it positive or negative? Bigger than a thousand? Etc.).
Problems that involve ugly numbers tend to take longer than ones that involve nice numbers - even I find that I go slower when a problem involves weird fractions or decimals. Take that into account when writing tests.
Problems that involve ugly numbers are more prone to minor error than ones that involve nice numbers; for example, you probably don't want to be counting an answer in a calculus class as "completely wrong" because they typed "2.146" instead of "2.156" into their calculator. I always offer extensive partial credit based on work shown, and do not generally mark off for errors that don't show a lack of comprehension or change the difficulty of the problem. For online tests, to make this work, I allow students to submit their work alongside their answers.


Do I have to acknowledge the company where I started a project when I later publish related research in college? I completed an internship at a company. During the internship I worked on a generic and publically well-known problem statement and delivered its solution to the company.

After the internship, I wrote a research paper under the guidance of my college professor on a similar problem statement (a kind of subset of the problem statement) with a very different solution as compared to the solution delivered during the internship. The paper was accepted at an A+ international conference. When the company got to know regarding the paper, they demanded an acknowledgment towards them in the paper.

But I feel that the only role of the company was to give me the problem statement. The paper was made possible only because of me and my professor's hard work. And the solution developed by me during the internship was also due to my skill and hard work.

So, how legitimate is the demand of an acknowledgment by the company, should anyone demand such acknowledgment in someone's work? Am I obliged to acknowledge the company in my paper? As an ethical practice I can show gratitude towards the company by mentioning in the paper that "the company gave me an opportunity to work on the statement etc". But it should be my decision that I want to or not?

What are the consequences if I don't acknowledge the company.

At least in my field, Acknowledgements are generally regarded a fairly informal mechanism. There are few rules dictating what must and mustn't go in there. However, given that mentions in the acknowledgements don't dilute formal credit, I see no reason not to be as generous, gratuitous and grateful as possible in an acknowledgements section. Its not like adding an author, it costs you nothing and makes you look like a better person. Why wouldn't you?

Also there is probably an argument that you spent time thinking and learning about the general problem domain while being supported by the company.

I recommend adding something like "The author acknowledges BigCorp PLC for first bringing the problem to the authors attention and [financial?] support for work on related approaches", to the acknowledgements.


How can I find a PhD position to work on a highly specific idea of my own? I know exactly what I would like to research within my field, however, the ideas are too specific and indeed one of my feedbacks for the reject of one of my PhD applications based on my personal statement was that the university did not have the staff researching my interests.

My friend told me that being too specific, I limit my opportunities. On the other hand, being more general I would risk that I would have to research what the supervisors tell me to and therefore postpone solving the question I am interested in.

What are general strategies for finding appropriate places for studying PhD for someone who has a specific research problem one would like to solve? I am afraid that I may face a similar problem later when searching for a postdoc or an academic place in some research group.

You should look for faculty working in the field that you are interested in researching, and then pitch your research idea directly to them.

Make sure that you do a good job with a preliminary review of the literature for your idea and understand the professor's specific research interests, so that your letter does not sound like any of the hundreds of mail-merge messages that professors get every week.

If your idea is really worthwhile and you do a good targeted job of pitching it, changes are that someone will agree to work with you on it.  However, the reality is that most students come into a PhD without a really good sense of existing literature or the feasibility of their ideas.  It is for this reason that there is great value in being open-minded about your PhD thesis.

Many students make the mistake of thinking that the PhD should be the pinnacle of their career, solving some grand problem in human existence.  This might happen for a few figures in history, but, more typically, the PhD is the start of a research career and not the end of it.


As a new PhD supervisor, how should I deal with taking a student to a wrong direction? I am a postdoc who was supposed to co-supervise a PhD student along with another academic who invited me for that. However, I ended up fully supervising the student after the supervisor became too busy to attend meetings. Eventually, I also ended up defining a problem for the student, which, after 2 months of work, we discovered it is invalid. How should I deal with this situation? I feel that it's my fault and feel bad for the student. The student is in his first year, and this is his first research problem.

Any ideas on this from experienced supervisors over here? Thank you.

Edit: Thank you, everyone, for contributing your answers and comments. For those of you talking about failure/recovery/publishing what's in hand, I would clarify that the discovered issue is in the problem formulation, where the solution would involve inverting a rank-deficient matrix and differentiating a non-differentiable function. Thus, a mathematical solution is not defined. Therefore, the formulation is invalid. This wasn't foreseeable at the beginning, and only when the student made some deviations, it was possible to reach this conclusion. Now, in terms of publication and thesis content, the efforts exerted thus far don't mean anything.

On the grand scheme of things, what you just described is not the worst I've heard of. There are cases where a student spends years of their Ph. D. on a problem with nothing to show for in the end, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes even experienced advisors will, intentionally or unintentionally, end up letting their students work on ideas that are terrible in hindsight. A couple of months wasted in the first year really is not a big deal (and there are certainly worse ways to waste one's time as a grad student). Besides just learning the lesson and moving on, here are a couple perspectives that I find helpful:

Defining the research question is not the sole responsibility of the advisor. It is true that the advisor sometimes has to act as a quality check for the students' work, but the point of PhD is to take responsibility for your own work. So the fact that the student just accepted the research question without asking whether it's valid or not (I assume) is partly the student's fault as well.
Try to salvage the effort spent as much as possible. Oftentimes it is possible to recast what you've done in light of a different research question, and you should consider whether that's possible in your case. I'd go so far as to say that one should always work on things that will be publishable even if your original hypothesis turns out to be wrong.


What are the different acceptance levels in peer review? I'm new to academic writing. I submitted a paper which I co-authored with my supervisor to an upcoming conference. I wasn't too confident that the paper would be up to scratch because I'd never submitted one before, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the paper was accepted. Of the two peer reviews, one was a "weak accept" while the other was a "weak reject".

I couldn't really find anything by Googling. What exactly do "weak accept" and "weak reject" mean, and what are the other levels of acceptance? Where do weak accept and reject fall in the scale?

Edit: The conference did state that at least three reviewers would be selected. I have only received feedback from 2 at the moment.

In my discipline (CS) in conferences you can find several levels of reviewer recommendations that are different depending on the venue's regulations. You may have:

Strong Accept (+3)
Accept (+2)
Weak Accept (+1)
Borderline (0)
Weak Reject (-1)
Reject (-2)
Strong Reject (-3)

Not all conference have the same levels. E.g., The Borderline level is not very common (I have only met it in one conference) and Strong Reject or Strong Accept might not be there as well.

Usually, for your paper to be accepted in good conferences, when we are talking about 3 reviewers, you usually need at least 2 weak accepts and 1 accept or something similar. Getting accepted with a weak reject is not very likely, unless the other two reviewers gave an Accept or better, but I do not think this is very common.


What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing a postdoc in France and UK/USA? I am concluding my Ph.D. in the UK, and currently I have two postdoc offers one from the US and one from France. I am not a British/EU citizen and would like to take on an academic path preferably in an English speaking institute. Both projects that I managed to get a postdoc offer for are very interesting, and the PI's are well-known academic in the field.

Given that becoming an academic in France requires fluency in French, I was wondering what would be a wise choice here? What are the general qualities that are important for a lectureship position? I am under the impression that for STEM fields, USA is a no brainer, but acquiring a visa might be difficult for me!

Any advice is really appreciated.

I would say prestige-wise, the actual supervisor is more important than the location: A well known supervisor in France will be just as good for you as a well known supervisor in the US, there are just more of them in the US. Of course, you'd choose an unknown at Princeton over an unknown in Grenoble, but you said both are well known.  And all this only works if you are trying to stay in the same field when you move on, if you want to move on then prestige of institutions counts more.

Research in the US is likely to be better funded than in France, and you'll likely have more chance to interact with other top researchers other than people in your own group.

There will be far more opportunity for faculty positions, long-term, in the states than in France.

On the flip side, employment conditions will be better in France: max working times and compulsory breaks are observed: everyone takes a proper lunch and is home in time for tea, and it would be almost impossible to sack you. For the breaks and work/life balance, its is possible find this in the US, but you have to be selective about the culture of the group you join. Unfortunately no amount of selectivity can mean that the boss can't just sack you if they don't like you in the US.


Updating a review paper after several years by publishing a new review paper Six years ago, I published a review (survey) paper about a topic in my field.

Since then the literature (and the topic) has evolved substantially, so I think it’d be worthwhile to update the review by writing an “update paper”. I can think of at least hundred papers published in the meantime that could be worth adding, and a few interesting points (new perspectives, etc.). However, I have never seen a paper revisiting a previously published review paper and updating it. My questions are:

Does such situation warrant a new publication?
Is it common to publish a review paper updating a previous review? Any examples?
How to title it?

Updated review papers are not particularly unusual, as a Google Scholar search readily demonstrates.  You should definitely explicitly declare the paper as an updated review, and it is probably best to send the paper to the same journal as before.  If you can get in touch with the journal editors, they may even be able to expedite the review process, since they already know and have accepted the first version.


How to act as an editor? I have been on both the author and the referee sides, but I was wondering how editors approach their task. In particular, to what level of detail do you read the paper you assign to referees, and when (i.e. before or after receiving the reviews)?

From conversations with a mentor who was the editor-in-chief for a major journal, if you take the responsibility seriously, you need to have enough of an understanding of the papers assigned to you to figure out which referees will be suitable for a paper, while not taking so much time to read it that you can't process all of them for lack of time. As mentioned above, you need to at least a "high-level" read of the paper before assigning it to the referees. If the paper comes back with mixed reviews, it probably requires a careful re-read; if the reviews are uniform in recommending for or against publication, then it may not be as critical.

However, the editor will want to read papers when revisions come in, so that may mean going through a paper several times during the course of the review process.


Can I refer readers to link to a large figure? I am preparing a journal paper and I have a very large figure in the SVG format that I would like to include in the paper. However, the figure is very hard to fit it inside the paper without affecting its resolution. I'm thinking to upload it to my website and refer the readers to it (by giving them its URL) because it will be very clear and they can also interact with it (e.g., zoom in and out). That way, I will be also able to shorten the length of the paper because right now it's longer the maximum number of pages.

Can I do that?

Thank you

In the journals I help edit, we receive figures such as these. Some can be extremely massive, involving high-resolution images of photomicrographs or diagnostic tests. If the figures are a necessary part of the paper, then we would insist that they be submitted to us as is and we will work with the authors to find a suitable option for presenting the work if it passes peer review.

We have never allowed pictures or files to be hosted outside our ecosystem for two reasons. First, we have no control over those files so we will not know whether they have been modified in some way. Second, there may be issues with copyright.

I suggest that you flag this issue with the associate editor handling your manuscript for discussion following the peer-review process.

Good luck.


Teaching Robotics to Mechanical Engineering Students Vs Electrical Engineering Students My background is in electrical engineering. I have taught robotics to electrical, electronics and CS students. This time I have to teach robotics to mechanical engineering students. How do I keep the interest level high in the class?

I am afraid the concept of programming (microcontrollers), and electronics will lower their interest. But I think programming is a must for them as well.

Any suggestions how to proceed, go in depth, and keep the interest level high? Should there be much difference between the syllabi of the two trades?

You could focus on the kinematics and classical mechanics of robotics, particularly in anthropomorphic robots such as robot arms and human analogues. A good example would be the inverse kinematic equations required for translating end effector position and orientation to revolute joint angles. That can cover things such as Devanit-Hartenburg models and numerical vs. analytical solvers.


How does the PhD thesis examination result impact academic job success? In majority of universities around the world, the PhD examining committee should meet and allow PhD student to defend his/her thesis. Based on the thesis content and student performance in the viva, the committee decides whether to grant PhD to the candidate or not.

In most of the cases that I have seen, there are 4 types of decisions

Accept as it is (Distinction in some universities)
Accept with Minor Revisions (without re-examination of thesis)
Accept with Major Revisions (without re-examination of thesis)
Major Revisions with re-examination
Reject (No PhD; some universities grant MSc instead of PhD if the work is fine but its contribution is small).

Now my questions are:

How often do employers ask for PhD examination Committee decision report at the time of application/interview?
Considering the PhD requirement by almost all universities for the professorship positions, how the decision by the committee members impacts employment. My main concern is about the first three decisions of "accept." Can a PhD graduate who has "accept with major revision" never gets job in good places"?

At least in the US context, I've never heard of such a report being asked for.

In fact, in the case of my own PhD (at MIT) no report ever existed. In the major US research universities I've been at, PhDs are  ungraded. You either get one or you don't.

For sure, the outcomes on your list are all possible. Where I've been though, there is a sheet of paper that has to be signed by the faculty committee members saying that the thesis was successfully defended and accepted. The details of what needed to happen to convince the faculty that the thesis or its defense was good enough were the criteria that the committee used to decided when to sign the sheet (your cases #1-4) or when to tell a student that they never would (your case #5) but they were never part of a formal report.

Perhaps in countries where the specifics of the examination process are more clear, this might be asked for? It's still hard for me to imagine.

If you're going into academic jobs, the letters from the committee members, and the dissertation itself, will tell folks much more than any formal report on the first draft of a dissertation will. If you're heading into academia, you will be asked for those things.


How to deal with incompetent PhD student as an undergrad I am an undergrad who was recruited to join a lab by this PhD student and help her with her thesis, but since working with her I have come to the conclusion that she is incompetent and probably not going to finish her PhD. I often question her judgment especially related to safety and her research. This is my first research job, so sometimes I am unsure if this is normal, but at the same time I don't want to pick up bad habits. Some of the highlights include:

Lack of safety awareness. No gloves/splash goggles when working with (hot) concentrated acids and bases. Some of these experiments are run outside the fume hood, and sometimes on the floor when there is no space on the lab bench. Lab bench is a mess and when I mention cleaning up she says it'll take too much time.
When I ask her about her research proposal, she seems confused and is unable to answer basic questions about previous results. Previous experiments all seem inconclusive, need to be rerun, or she can't remember. One of the major part of her proposal is to investigate a particular mechanism, but when I ask what tests she plans on running, she has no idea.
I will talk to her about papers that I found, sometimes exactly matching the experiments we want to run, and she seems surprised. I will mention things from papers we've both read or thesis of previous students and she has no clue so most conversations about research is unproductive or she offers very superficial, obvious observations. Conversations with other group members are much more productive.
She (and I) have very little to share during group meetings because experiments are sometimes poorly designed and she does not plan them out. She will have a rough idea of what she wants to do, but no procedures or plan so lab time is spent planning the experiments out. She seems to have a very bizarre attention to some details but not others. For example, when running some high purity experiments she doesn't want us to wash the beakers with soap due to fear of contamination, but then she'll proceed to run these experiments on the dirty lab floor.
She has poor organization and samples are sometimes lost or results are not written down.
She has very rudimentary technical skills. I have watched her use the computer multiple times and instructions on how to use simple programs need to be written down step-by-step with very specific instructions on which button to press... etc. Sometimes she wants me to write a program from a paper, but she is so inept that she is unable to offer any assistance/advice, and after I'm finished writing the program she will have no clue how it works.

At times, it seems like I'm doing all the literature search, running the experiments, writing the programs, and coming up with new ideas while she grades homework. She says she is going to graduate this year.
Our PI is a very hands off person. I spend a lot of time reading literature and have ideas of other experiments we can run related to this research area in general. I would like to run these experiments myself. Since we're working in the same research area, however, sometimes when I discuss these ideas the grad student will mention wanting to include it in her thesis (even though it wasn't in her proposal). And because of how unproductive she is, I would prefer not to work with her anyways. I'm also concerned that the PI will think that these are good ideas and that I should work with this student to test them, particularly because I am an undergrad.
How can I politely distance myself with her and start doing some independent research?

No gloves/splash goggles when working with (hot) concentrated acids and bases. Some of these experiments are run outside the fume hood, and sometimes on the floor when there is no space on the lab bench.

Do not work in this lab.  Do not even go in.  It could kill you.  Obvious safety problems are often accompanied by even worse, hidden problems.
Consult your university's safety policy to determine if you can/should/must report this situation.
The other problems are insignificant by comparison.  Find a new PI.


UK Grading to US GPA conversion I analysed admission requirements for Master course in the US university and found that one of them is GPA from an undergraduate course.

I am studying Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom where the final grade is composed of the second and the third-year grades.

In more detail, the first year does not count towards the final grade, the second year makes 25% of the final grade and the third year contributes to the 75% of the final grade. Each year contains 120 credits split between modules and marks for each module are given in percentage.

Could you please tell how my GPA, scaled from 0 to 4, would be calculated in this situation?

The Admissions department of the institute you apply to will do their own “conversion” as they see fit using the courses or modules they consider relevant or they wish to “credit”...

Trying to predict what and how they convert - well you probably have more chance at the lottery...

See this other answer : How to convert german undergrad grade to US GPA


What is the point of a lecture when you have a textbook? I never really understood the point of having a course with lectures when the course has a textbook. Sometimes the subject is so high-level or specialized or so modern that the contents are changing rapidly that there is no textbook (for example at the graduate level). But more often the textbook includes everything that will be said in the lecture, and much more: extra content, exercises, answers to exercises, appendices, etc.

I assume a STEM context, that is we can assume the textbook is available in the sense that there is one comprehensive source that contains undisputed facts, as opposed to a broad literature with lots of interpretations and opinions (as may be the case in non-STEM contexts).

So what is the point of a lecture?

I started writing a post about all the things I like to do that the book doesn't: offer an intuitive overview, a fresh perspective on the basics, etc.

Then I realized that of course, there's no reason that the book couldn't do these things. Most of them don't, but there's no fundamental reason not to. Everything I do in a lecture to help students see the subject from all sides could be translated to the book.

So I guess the main point of lectures is just that it's another medium. Yes you could learn from only one medium, but it goes faster if you use multiple media at the same time. Not just books and lectures: websites, games, audiobooks, documentaries, programming, role playing. Each medium has it's own slight advantages, and idiosyncracies. Even if the story is the same, the energy you have to put in, the mixture of senses you use, and the parts of your brain you activate are all different.

So what, specifically, are the benefits of the medium of a lecture? Here's what I can think of:

Obligation: You are expected to be there. It may be childish, but for a lot of students, it's difficult to work if someone isn't making them do it.
Interaction: It's not just that students are able to ask questions: lecturers can ask te audience a question too. And even if you're not the one answering, you're definitely checking in your head whether you know the answer, which means you're interacting with the material. A book can do this too, ask a reader to consider a question: but the sense of stress isn't there.
Intonation, rhythm and storytelling: A good speaker can hold the attention of an audience. If you're reading, you have to do all the work to keep the attention. The author simply has fewer tools to keep you interested.
Presence The fact that there's an actual person present in the same room as you, makes you sit up. This is a simple human convention. As most lecturers know, it's a convention that students find easy to dismiss, but the basic sense that you're in a room with another person still changes the energy.
Speaker guidance A good speaker will sense the energy of the room. This lets her change speed, take a break, or spend a bit longer on a subject if she notices the room isn't following along. This makes each lecture tailored to the audience. The smaller the audience, the more different the lecture from audience to audience.

Of course, it takes a special lecturer to understand these points and try to capitalize on them. Many don't and just follow the book.


How do you determine if you don't have interest in research or merely don't have the discipline? I finished my PhD in probability a few years ago and left to go work in the industry as software engineer in operating systems and databases.  I sometimes ponder whether I can go back to doing research, perhaps on a part-time basis, if I somehow transform my character to have more self-discipline.  When I was an undergraduate student, I really loved mathematics.  Even now, on my spare time, I frequently go over my old courses and, as Terrence Tao puts it, learn and re-learn old materials.  Each time it brings me great pleasure and newer insight.

What I have trouble with is actually spending time solving research problem.  With absolutely no intention of offending mathematicians, I find that most of the open problems in mathematics don't hold that much interest to me because I find them too narrow.  I really had a tough time with the proofs in my PhD thesis because they are hard and I couldn't sustain consistent work each day. I prefer discovering new connections and asking my own questions, such as pondering on the connection between complex analysis and probability or asking "what if I remove this assumption" and see if I can derive new theorems.
Even then, I usually can only do that for one day or two.  I simply cannot do it day after day like a professional researcher.  I would go back to my old habit of debugging and writing programs which I can do for 8 hours a day five days a week no problem.

Thank you for reading so far.  My overall question is, how do I determine if my lack of success in research mathematics is due to lack of interest in research or lack of self-discipline?  Can I just use something like the pomodoro technique and build up my tolerance for prolonged mathematics research?

First of all, you completed a Ph.D. in mathematics-- I would hardly call that a "lack of success."

Secondly, I'm a big advocate for getting paid to do what you're good at.  And from an economic point of view, that's the best thing you can do for society.  If you want to tinker with math problems in your spare time or build up self-discipline and concentration skills, by all means, go for it.  Such things will sharpen your skills in every aspect of life.  But humans are pretty straightforward creatures: we tend to pursue and get better at what we're interested in, and we flounder when put in career paths that just don't match our personalities.  You're not a lazy or unintelligent person for not wanting to do math research.  You already tried the path when getting your Ph.D.  If it didn't fulfill you then, it's definitely not going to if you try to force yourself back into it.


Should correlation tables be half or full matrices? With a table showing correlations between several variables, one must choose whether to show values in only ~half the cells (and if so, then choose above or below the diagonal) or all the cells.  Since correlation is a symmetric measure, the same amount of information is conveyed with both options.

Filling the whole matrix might make it easier for people to find a particular value, because they can think of either one as primary and look for it in either part of the matrix.  However, filling the whole matrix might make the presentation more overwhelming to a reader ("wow, that's a lot of numbers") while the half matrix might seem more elegant.

Has there been any work done looking at which is more effective for communication?
Are there widely used style guides in certain fields that answer this question, which might provide a starting point for a field which lacks such a guide?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/79256/36320

For what it's worth, the convention in APA format is for the diagonals to be labelled with a dash and for the upper triangle to be left blank. See e.g. Table 1 in this paper.

Personally, I think that including redundant information in the upper triangle is wasteful and only serves to overwhelm the reader. A table formatted like a lower triangle is, at first glance, obviously a correlation matrix, while a fully-filled-in table could be anything. However, I'm not aware of any studies on the effectiveness of either method.


Is there a chance to get in math phd for a physics student? Let me introduce my background first. I am now a mathematical physics master student in Germany. I obtained my Bachelor in physics in Asia, used to be a M.Phil student in my undergraduate's university, but then I decide to quit, switching to Germany.
I don't take many math course except calculus,linear algebra and topology. Rather I self-study mathematics, including abstract algebra,analysis,geometry,etc. So I am not sure my mathematics background is good enough or not. But at least I got 1.0 in both geometry in manifolds and group and representation. So I am optimistic about my background.
In next semester, I will choose as many math course as I can, but not all of them are basic course. So I do not have a formal background of a math undergraduate student as. Also I don't know if my master degree can be count as a master in mathematics.
Question: Based on my situation, do I have a chance(or how many chance) to get admitted in U.S or Canada school for a pure math Phd? I know that unlike Europe, it seems they required a background of mathematics. So I am afraid it may hurt my chance to get admitted.

There is a chance, but you may need some preparation first. And you may need to make an appeal for a special situation.
In the US, the undergraduate math program consists of approximately 10 - 16 semester-length courses covering the major areas of math and a few less mainstream topics. If you don't have something very close to that, then there are probably gaps in your education that will affect your chances.
Pick a couple of graduate programs you are interested in, and look at the undergraduate math programs at those institutions, especially the required courses. That will give you a sense of where you stand.
But the only way to get a valid answer to your question is to apply for admission to a program, listing what you know and having letters of recommendation that attest to your likelihood of success.
But you can probably also talk to someone at a university you are interested in and ask them for an informal assessment of any gaps you need to fill. Then, you might need to take a year or so seriously filling those gaps, perhaps by enrolling as a non-degree undergraduate somewhere.


Is it acceptable to include footnotes in mathematical proofs? When writing a technical article that includes mathematical proofs: Is it acceptable to have footnotes within the body of a formal proof (to elaborate/clarify non-essential points) or is the use of footnotes in proofs considered bad practice?

Like almost anything else in writing, style should follow function. In other words, if you think that a footnote makes it easier for your reader to follow a text (for example, because it explains an aside that is too long for a parenthetical remark), then it is appropriate to use one. There is no general guideline whether footnotes are acceptable or not. It all depends on what you want to say and how you want to say it -- choose whatever means you think are appropriate to tell the story of the proof.


How to write a research proposal for a PhD position? I want to apply for a Ph.D. position in a group where there is only their research summary written on the homepage. An applicant should write a research proposal and if the PI likes it then they will offer a position. I have gone through their publications and tried to figure out what can be done more. This is a very big research group so the number of publications is huge too and they work on so many topics. Every time I came up with an idea I found that it's already done or other groups are working on that. Now I am wondering if I write the same thing, they might think I copied the idea when it is not the case. Also, some of the techniques I have done earlier and some never. Now while writing the proposal can I write some methods I never did? Can they ask questions like if you have never did it before how can you do it during Ph.D.?

First of all, the research suggestion does not reach to be able to contribute to the professional environment. In fact, this condition is not required for your degree in now. And, this isn't searched. However,  while will give any suggestion to the environment; you have to especially interpret the same topics by a high-level English and the using technical tools which no one minded upon them in more before.


How to deal with animosity between different "factions" in a certain field? In academia, there are sometimes sort of "feuds" between different researchers. For example, one such situation is described here: https://www.quora.com/Mathematicians-What-is-the-story-behind-the-feud-between-Shing-Tung-Yau-and-Gang-Tian?share=1
Lately, something like this has affected me. People I work with will bad-mouth other researchers in our field, or other researchers will bad-mouth people I work with. Sometimes, they will say that so-and-so's results are trivial or that they stole the results from someone else, or that they got a lot of help from a different mathematician and aren't actually very talented. The bad-mouthing seems to happen on both sides and seems to be born out of a kind of vicious competitiveness. Here are some of the ways this has disrupted my PhD:

I am really paranoid about people's intentions and even though it seems like, from the outside, that my PhD is going very well (going into my third year I have one publication already and am making good progress on other projects), I am certain some people in my own university even, have the impression I am not a very good mathematician because they think my advisor is a fraud.
I have recently had the opportunity to work with someone from the "other side" of this conflict and have not yet told my advisor about that. I am afraid she will be very angry with me if/when I do. To complicate things, my advisor has told me some of her research ideas in the past and is extremely secretive about them. I just don't have the same sense of secrecy about my own research ideas. Luckily I don't work on what my advisor works on but she still might be quite upset that I've been "talking to the enemy" so to speak.
Although no one has directly been "mean" to me the ways in which I have seen people try to tear each other down has contributed to my total disillusionment with academia and made my field seem like a place where people compete for reputation rather than trying to do real work motivated by curiosity rather than ambition. It's just very depressing and stressful to imagine having to deal with this kind of thing.

As a young PhD student, I am shocked by the way the "adults" in my academic life behave. My instinct is to pretend this doesn't exist and focus on my math. I do not make any judgments about who is right and generally shut my ears whenever these topics come up. To some extent, it seems very inappropriate to me that my professors and collaborators discuss these kinds of things with me at all. Furthermore, I think one reason I have been successful as a PhD student is because I am very friendly and open to people. This has allowed me to learn a lot and collaborate with a lot of people despite having little to no contact with my advisor most of the time (we are on good terms, she just doesn't really make time for me).
These conflicts seem to have been started long before I was even in college so from my perspective, it has nothing to do with me, it's not really my business, and I don't even pretend to know all the details of who did what and why. And yet people I respect a lot gossip to me like school girls as if they are trying to convince me of a particular position.
Question: Has any of you had to deal with this kind of mean-spirited competitive research environment? How did you handle it? Should I avoid working with people "across the aisle" in order to stay out of conflict with them? Am I being naive to try to be friends with everyone and not hide what I'm working on like it's a secret recipe?

The same happened to me. I stayed friendly towards everybody and participated in both groups. I think it worked for me. It leaves all doors open. I think a key point is never agreeing with any bad-mouthing, ever. Sometimes this is socially difficult. I would play dumb and say "Oh" or "I understand", but never "You're right" or "Yes, totally".


Is it rude to ask an unaffiliated student to leave the PhD student office? I work in an office space shared by 3 professors. We have bullpen style desks and around 75% of them are full. The lab is somewhat spacious.

One of the first-year PhD students (not my advisor's student) brings in her friend with her to the lab everyday. They hang out mostly, often taking naps and such. The friend uses the lab microwave and has lunch in the lab everyday. They are generally very quiet and not disruptive. The friend is not a PhD student and as such not a member of the lab.

Would it be rude to ask this person to not come to the lab? I've spoken to the rest of the people in the office and they don't care at all, but it bothers me that they are treating the lab as their living room (given that they are here from 10 AM to 8 PM, most of it involves sleeping or using their mobile phone). What would be the right thing to do here? Do I just ignore them or do I ask the person to leave given that they are not doing, nor will ever do research for any of the 3 professors.

Has anyone faced a similar situation before?

I will mention that while Nicole Hamilton's answer is fundamentally correct—this is an issue for your advisor, as well as the other PI's in charge of the office space, not you—there is one issue worth elaborating on.

In particular, it is an issue if someone who isn't part of the department is using the department's facilities, because of the liability issue if something were to happen. For those grounds, it would be especially helpful to mention that one of the people coming into the space is not actually authorized to be there at all.


What topics should one master if one wants to pursue a Master's degree in mathematics at a top university? This fall I am starting the 3rd year of my bachelor's degree and I intend to continue my studies with a Master's degree and possibly a PhD. The university I study at is a respected institution in my country but not particularly focused on my area of interest (algebra). I had a first contact, at a summer school, with students from top universities in Europe and I realised I am under prepared for a Master's at one of these universities.

I have a good academic record and did some undergraduate research but there are topics I know nothing about. For example in algebra I had only 2 undergraduate courses (vector spaces, groups and rings- basic definition, properties, isomorphism theorems), no linear algebra aside from the matrix of a linear transformation.

So my question is: what courses are essential to someone who wants to go to graduate school in algebra at a good university and what should I study to bridge the gap?

Edit: I already took all the undergraduate and graduate level classes available in my field,at my university, but all those were still under the level of preparation of my peers from other universities. So I was asking for subjects I should know in order to study by myself.

The simple answer is that if you're interested in a subject and expect to continue on to a master's or PhD (or even if you're not expecting to go for an advanced degree, you simply expect to pursue it as a career), you should take as many classes in that subject as you can.  Pick the best or most interesting to you from whatever is offered by your department to fill out your electives and do your best.


Got into a PhD program but no funding? I got accepted into a PhD program, but I wasn't offered any funding through assistantships. I emailed a person in charge, and I was told that if I receive good grades in the first semester, it would be possible to get funding. The email also seemed to suggest that there is still a chance that I could receive funding, but it's hard to understand since the email was strangely written.

I really want to go through with this, but I need to eat. Not only will I be out of state, but I need to start living like a human being. I don't even have a car for goodness sake. I finished paying off my undergraduate loans, which were significantly smaller because my family helped me out with that. But no one will help me with the graduate program.

What do I do? Do I be really upfront and clear that I need funding? I emailed the person back to make sure that if I get good grades that I'll get funded, and not just a vague potential of it. But I haven't asked about the possibility of getting some funding right off the bat (since they said I haven't been considered yet for it, and I don't want to be a nuisance).

My advice for "typical" students seeking a Ph.D. degree is that you should not pay tuition for the degree and that you should receive assistantship or fellowship funding to compensate you for the time you spend working as a research/teaching trainee with a faculty advisor or advisors.

Reputable doctoral programs have access to one or both of the following types of assistantship funding: teaching assistantships funded by the department, college, or university; and/or research assistantships funded by individual faculty or sometimes by the department. Fellowship funding might come from the university or from external sources.

If a department or faculty advisor has not committed funding for your Ph.D., then this means that other students (new or continuing) have been selected for funding ahead of you. When they tell you that you might receive funding if things go well, it usually also means that either someone else must leave the program unexpectedly early or that they will commit some of next year's funding to you instead of to an applicant in next year's cycle. This sometimes does work out but puts all of the financial risk on you, the student. This is not fair. For this reason, my department does not allow unfunded Ph.D. students. Do not take an unfunded offer of Ph.D. admission.


Will I be too old to apply for Ph.D. at the age of 30 I have completed my master's degree year ago and took a gap of 2-3 years before committing to the Ph.D. Right now my financial condition is worse and I don't want to make any decision in any urgency. My peers are getting enrolled for Ph.D. and I am getting worried by watching them. I am 27 right now and planning to collect enough money and build my resume strong to get into a decent Ph.D. program in Europe or Asia. Is my decision wrong? I need some advice from experienced peoples.

Thank you.

You are never too old, in years, to start a Doctoral program or to otherwise extend your education. However, you need to do a couple of things while you "wait".

Most important is that you don't lose your edge. If you are working in the field of study you should probably be fine and your experience may help. In fact, it may give you some ideas about unsolved issues in the field that might lead to research and a dissertation. But you will also need to try to keep current through readings. You don't say which field you plan to enter, but some move faster than others. New possibilities for research open up as well.

The second thing is that you will need to be prepared to answer questions about the gap in an intelligent and positive way. Getting experience in field is a pretty good answer. Recovering from burn out is not so fine.

However, as you age, you may take on additional responsibilities that you don't now have: family, kids, mortgage, ... Seek life balance of course, but as your responsibilities change, so may your goals. You will also need to deal, increasingly, with the needs of others. But nothing is an absolute block.

Remember that you will age no matter what you do. It is better to spend your life doing something you love than otherwise, even if it takes a while to realize the dream.


If a journal requires "Article Processing fee" does that make it a predatory journal? If a journal take article processing fee then does that mean the journal is predatory? or there are some other criteria to tell a journal as predatory?

No, not all journals that charge to publish are predatory journals.  Some genuine open access journals charge article processing fees.  For example, the journals by Copernicus, by the European Geophysical Union (EGU), charge moderate article processing fees.  These cover the costs of the publisher, which then makes the articles available open access free of charge.

To label a journal as predatory you need other (additional) criteria.


I didn't acknowledge someone who helped with my thesis, is there anything I can or should do now? I received help with some aspects of my PhD thesis from a tutor (proofreading and graphics). Of the help I received, some mathematical notation they provided made it into my thesis.

However, I did not acknowledge the tutor in the PhD thesis for this help (since received).

Is there anything I could (or should) do to rectify this?

If ever the thesis is published elsewhere, say as a paper in a journal or a conference, or perhaps as a technical report, include the name of the person there.


What are specific strategies to help someone who does not do well under pressure Most of the time I do my work, any work, I always do it to perfection when not under pressure.
How do I deal with pressure especially now that I know I need to work under pressure to deliver this due to the high expectation?.
I want to hear from people who have Ph.D.'s in Applied Mathematics, what are the challenges and how is it, and what kept you going. I don't want to start then quit due to pressure?

Not sure about the specific department about which you speak and in reality most departments and supervisors vary according to organisational policy and personal/relational differences. Having said that however, my understanding of the Ph.D.process is very different from undergrad studies for both the student and supervisor.

Optimally [and again this depends on egos etc.] your supervisor will encourage a collegial/peer based relationship with you whilst providing support and guidance which will diminish over time as you become more independent, assured and gain ownership over your work. In this scenario being timed should not be a factor.

However, this implies a sense of responsibility in your actions leading to academic/professional independence - and at least the potential for this has to be apparent to your supervisor and peers from the beginning of your tenure. In this respect, I would suggest the following:-

Approach your supervisor and discuss the issue in a  solution oriented manner. When doing this try to avoid an attitude of 'well this is just the way I am so suck it up';
Seek out intervention programs at your organization that might assist; things like time management courses, project planning, communication skills and if applicable anxiety management/boosting your confidence therapy/courses.

By being proactive about this issue you are setting boundaries with your peers which can provide breathing space for you thus allowing you to relax into the process and hopefully fulfill your responsibilities with respect to deadlines/time frames and expected output.

**However!**By doing this it is incumbent upon you to take responsibility for the above, find ways to manage what ever it is that causes you to feel as you do and perform as expected. Having a good contingency plan for when things stuff up would also be a good idea. As is being able to re-calibrate if you fall off the wagon so to speak. As they say the best way to deal with a mistake is to learn the lesson and move on. Try not to get embedded in the problem.

And lastly... hopefully not but you may need to acquire some negotiation and/or conflict resolution skills .... sometimes we come up against people who simply don't/wont/cant understand your position and try to impose their regulations/values/modality onto you...

Avoid such people if you can;
Negotiate 'normal interactions' with them carefully and in a non-reactive manner;
Seek advice immediately if they impose.

Hope this helps :-)


Ways to spend gap year/semester before applying to mathematics PhD I was just reading in the answers to some other questions (here and here) that it's not necessarily disadvantageous (and it may even be advantageous) to take a year or semester off after finishing my bachelor's degree before applying to math PhD programs, but I'm not really sure what to do during that year. If the below section is too long, the TL;DR version is: What are my options?

I honestly hadn't looked into any other options since I was planning on going straight to math PhD programs after I earn my Bachelor's degree in May of 2016, but this fall while I was dealing with some personal issues I ended up dropping one of the two graduate math classes I was enrolled in and I missed the September GRE math subject test (as well as the deadline for the October subject test).

While I'm planning this spring to take the GRE math subject test (for real this time) and enroll in another one or two graduate math classes, it's looking like I might have a better chance at PhD program admissions if I wait to apply for admission in the Spring or Fall of 2017, rather than the Fall of 2016. I might apply to a couple of PhD programs for Fall 2016 admission, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on application fees when my application isn't as strong as it could be.

If I do end up taking a semester or a full year off, I want to figure out something productive to do so that the time won't be wasted. I came up with a few options: applying to PhD programs abroad that don't require the GRE (I speak English and Russian, so Canada, England, and Russia), applying to less competitive US PhD programs, or working a full- or part-time job (teaching? computer science?) and using that money to pay for simultaneously taking one or two graduate math classes.

However, I'm not sure if it's kosher to apply for a PhD program if I only plan on staying for a semester or a year. On the other hand, I don't know how feasible it is to both work and take graduate math classes, so I'm pretty uncertain about what to do. Does anyone have advice about the options I have?

Options I can think of (I bet there are even more than these):

Take some upper level undergrad, or first-year grad, math classes as an unmatriculated student
Audit some classes (this saves you some money -- you don't get credit, but you learn the material)
Apply for a master's, in a program that doesn't require a math GRE (for example, with some quick googling, I found a good program in statistics that doesn't require the math GRE)
Take or audit some non-math classes that you find interesting
Become a K-12 substitute teacher (this only requires a Bachelor's degree)
Be a Vista volunteer
Get a job and build up a bit of savings, to make it easier to get through grad school on a TA stipend
Study abroad for a year but not as part of a PhD program for the reasons you mentioned

Note, if you are working full time, I find that one challenging class at a time is enough.  If you are working 20 hours a week, depending on the type of job, maybe two challenging classes would work comfortably.  I remember taking data structures and linear algebra at the same time while I was working a 40-hour week, and I went a little nuts.  In retrospect, it would have been better to negotiate a reduced number of hours at work.


Effect of Research in an Engineering group on Physics PhD application I am a Physics undergraduate and my institution requires that we do undergraduate research and a senior thesis on that research. However, due to some personal circumstances I would like to do research with an electrical engineering group at my university due to their research topic. However, I would still like to apply to a Physics PhD program.

My question is this:
How would doing research in an electrical engineering group or co-authoring an EE paper affect my application for Physics PhD programs in general? I am specifically curious about the opportunity cost of not doing research with a physics group and the attitudes of graduate school admission committees on me doing research with an EE group.

If it is important, the EE group does research in Silicon Photonics and has connections with a national lab working on a Quantum Key Distribution project, which is what draws me to them. I would like to do research in Quantum Information or Computing in graduate school.

Thanks!

This sort of undergraduate research project looks very good on a PhD application.  There is overlap between EE research and physics research.  Silicon photonics is within the area of overlap.


Do new professors typically get paid for course prep done prior to starting their job? I will be starting as an Assistant Professor this fall (in the US). My official start date is one week before the start of classes. This means I will need to develop the course during the summer, before I have officially started my position. I asked the department if there was compensation for class prep, and they said there was not because it is included in my job requirements.

Q: Is this the standard for new professors in the US?

I think it's a little odd, as I'm currently working a full-time job and developing a course on top of that will take substantial effort. If I were being paid for class prep, I could leave my current position earlier. I'm not suggesting that I should be paid for subsequent course preps, but I have never been asked to put so much effort into a job before officially starting the position.

I don't hold it against the department-- I don't think they have anything to do with this decision. I would just like to know if this is typical or not.

It's also my understanding that your situation is standard.

Basically, you're expected to know how to teach that class already.  Any prep you do before hand amounts to you getting ready to do the job they hired you for, which a normal private sector company doesn't pay you for either.

But really, the explanation doesn't matter so much as the fact that this is widely accepted as normal.


Is it appropriate to use the word “like” in a research paper? In a research paper, is it appropriate to use the word like meaning similar or similar to? For example the sentence:

  Like in Eq.(2), we will substitute y in Eq.(6) to simplify the equation.

The word "like" is perfectly OK, but your use of it in the example sentence is wrong. It should be "as" [[because the clause "Like in Eq. (2)" modifies the verb phrase "will substitute" and thus functions as an adverb.  "Like" produces adjective phrases and would be correct if you were modifying a noun.]]  For example, it would be correct to write "This simplification is like the one in Eq. (2)."

EDIT: What I wrote about the example sentences is right, but the reason I gave, now in brackets [[...]] above, is wrong. In particular, a "like" phrase can function as an adverb; "he sings like Caruso" is correct.  The difference between "like" and "as" (when they express similarity --- both words have several other meanings) is that "like" is a preposition and "as" is a conjunction. So "like" should form a phrase with a noun, e.g., "like the one in Eq. (2)", and "like Caruso".  "As" should be followed by a whole clause, like a sentence, but much of that clause is often omitted. Thus, for example, "As in equation (2), we will substitute ..." is an elliptical form of "As we did in equation (2), we will substitute ...".


Is it ok to upload joke papers to arXiv? I have recently stumbled upon this paper on arXiv:
 Stopping GAN Violence: Generative Unadversarial Networks  (mirror), which is a parody/joke paper.

Is it ok to upload joke papers to arXiv?

There is a long tradition of posting joke papers to arXiv on or around April Fool's Day, especially in astro-ph - see the list below. The fact that all these papers were approved for arXiv offers some evidence (though not proof) that joke papers are okay.

It's probably best to limit joke papers to around April 1, though, when people know to be on the lookout for this stuff - or at least provide some indicator which is very clear to experts in the field that the paper is a joke, such as listing it as being submitted to SIGBOVIK or the Annals of Improbable Research.

A history of arXiv joke papers

(mirrored on my website)

Superiority of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) over Steward Observatory (SO) at the University of Arizona (2002)
On the Utter Irrelevance of LPL Graduate Students: An Unbiased Survey by Steward Observatory Graduate Students (2002)
Cosmic Conspiracies (2006)
Natural Dark Energy (2007)
Down-sizing Forever (2008)
Time variation of a fundamental dimensionless constant (2009)
Galaxy Zoo: an unusual new class of galaxy cluster (2009)
Orthographic Correlations in Astrophysics (2010)
Schroedinger's Cat is not Alone (2010)
Non-standard morphological relic patterns in the cosmic microwave background (2011)
On the influence of the Illuminati in astronomical adaptive optics (2012)
Gods as Topological Invariants (2012)
The Proof of Innocence (2012)
On the Ratio of Circumference to Diameter for the Largest Observable Circles: An Empirical Approach (2012)
Non-detection of the Tooth Fairy at Optical Wavelengths (2012)
Pareidolic Dark Matter (PaDaM) (2013)
A search for direct heffalon production using the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (2013)
Unidentified Moving Objects in Next Generation Time Domain Surveys (2013)
Conspiratorial cosmology - the case against the Universe (2013)
"Winter is coming" (2013)
The CMB flexes its BICEPs while walking the Planck (2014)
Bayesian Prediction for The Winds of Winter (2014)
A Farewell to Falsifiability (2015)
Beyond the New Horizon: The Future of Pluto (2015)
Astrology in the Era of Exoplanets (2016)
An unexpected new explanation of seasonality in suicide attempts: Grey's Anatomy broadcasting (2016)
Pi in the sky (2016)
SET-E: The Search for Extraterrestrial Environmentalism (2016)
Stopping GAN Violence: Generative Unadversarial Networks (2017) (the example from the question, included for completeness)
A Neural Networks Approach to Predicting How Things Might Have Turned Out Had I Mustered the Nerve to Ask Barry Cottonfield to the Junior Prom Back in 1997 (2017)
On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines (2017)
Detecting the Ultimate Power in the Universe with LSST (2017)
Sitnikov in Westeros: How Celestial Mechanics finally explains why winter is coming in Game of Thrones (2018)
Independent Discovery of a Sub-Earth in the Habitable Zone Around a Very Close Solar-Mass Star (2018)
Colonel Mustard in the Aviary with the Candlestick: a limit cycle attractor transitions to a stable focus via supercritical Andronov-Hopf bifurcation (2018)
The Long Night: Modeling the Climate of Westeros (2019)
Worlds in Migration (2019)
Forecasting Future Murders of Mr. Boddy by Numerical Weather Prediction (2019)
A new kind of radio transient: ERBs (2019)
Novel approach to Room Temperature Superconductivity problem (2020)
Quantum Godwin's Law (2020)
An Artificially-intelligent Means to Escape Discreetly from the Departmental Holiday Party; guide for the socially awkward (2020)
The search for life and a new logic (2020)
Making It Rain: How Giving Me Telescope Time Can Reduce Drought (2020)
Searching for Space Vampires with TEvSS (2020)
A PDF PSA, or Never gonna set_xscale again -- guilty feats with logarithms (2020)
Defining the Really Habitable Zone (2020)

Note: since this has become what I think is the most comprehensive list of arXiv joke papers I know of, I've made it community wiki so anyone can add to the list. Any additions should be clearly joke papers and, in keeping with the topic of the question, must be posted on arXiv.