Contacting a Potential Supervisor about Funding (after agreeing on project) I am in the process of contacting a potential supervisor to pursue a PhD in his group. We have agreed on the project and that I am a good fit for the project. However, there remains the funding issue. The professor is only granted funding for a UK citizen (since it's a university in the UK) from the department. But since I am an overseas student (the fees are double that of UK/EU citizens) he has to make a case to convince the department to fund me. I emailed him once, a week after our agreement, asking about updates regarding this situation. I got an update but no definitive yes-no answer and I am still waiting for more information. He said he would contact me when he has more information. But it's been more than 10 days since our last contact and I haven't received anything. Should I email him again? If so, what should I mention in the email (without seeming too pushy)?

I wouldn't push unless I had another option to consider and might need to back out of acceptance for another position. Ten days isn't a lot of time to move a bureaucracy.

However, if you need to write to him on another legitimate matter you could add a note at the end whether anything has developed about funding. If your acceptance is contingent on funding he should know that.


What does it indicate if a professor from other departments is included in applied math department? Currently I am preparing for postgraduate application. My research interest is fluid mechanics. There are several professors whose research interests are similar to mine and all of them are included in both applied math department and some non-math departments, such as geophysics department. Most of their papers are published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, which is one of the leading journals in that field. However, it seems that those papers do not involve advanced math knowledge, such as abstract algebra or analysis. Even epsilon-delta terminology seldom appears in those papers.

This slightly contradicts to my previous understanding. In the math department where I finished my undergraduate study, real analysis is a basic requirement for every postgraduate student. Does this mean the field of applied fluid mechanism does not require students with solid math background? What does it imply if a professor is included in applied math department? Does this indicate he/she will supervise a student with only math background? Or does this mean he/she has an intention to publish papers in math journals?

Affiliate faculty are common in many university departments. This indicates faculty who have a departmental home (faculty line, voting rights, tenure and promotion line, office space) but for a variety of reasons are given courtesy appointments (sometimes called in the USA as 0 FTE appointments) in another department. This may be because they teach a crosslisted course or occasionally sit on doctoral committees of the other department, or occasionally just for the academic lulz (ie, they requested an affiliation and there was no reason to deny it).

Affiliate faculty rarely occasionally (depending on discipline and university) serve as chairs of doctoral committees and similarly are rarely/occasionally (depending on discipline) given students in that department to supervise. Their ability though to sit as members on committees is useful if you were to want to do a project in geophysics (in this case) but otherwise you can ignore them.

Note that this is different from faculty with dual appointments where their faculty line is split (0.5 FTE in one department, 0.5 in another). They have voting and advisory rights in both departments.

FTE = Full-Time Equivalent, the essential counting unit of faculty lines.
A department with two full-time faculty and two joint-appointments would
have 2*1 FTE + 2 * 0.5 FTE = 3 FTE

TL;DR: Don't worry about affiliate faculty. Focus on the core faculty and their strengths when making decisions.


(Relatively) stable research careers other than tenure track? (For the purpose of this post, relatively stable doesn't necessarily mean "job for life" like tenure, just that you don't have to constantly worry about losing your job.)

I have observed that tenure-track professors are incredibly busy, and most of what they are busy with is not research but teaching/administration/service/managing their lab, and that they often get very little time to do hands-on research the way a PhD student or postdoc does.

For those looking for an alternative career path where you do get to spend quite a bit of your time with hands-on research, what options are there?

I know that there are "research professors" who are non-tenure-track, often 100% soft money, but that level of job insecurity sounds incredibly stressful...

My questions are:

1) How do jobs at "research institutes" work? Or jobs at major hospitals that have research programs?

2) Are there any positions where you have relatively good job security because you are there to help/consult/collaborate on multiple other peoples' projects, but still get a chance to have a little research of your own too?

(FWIW, my PhD field is epidemiology, so I hope I could be useful to consult/collaborate similar to the way the biostatisticians do - but I'd hope to have at least a little of my own research too - either the option to get my own grants when I can but not be worried about losing my job when I can't, or even just doing secondary analyses of public datasets that didn't need funding.)

I'm an Epidemiologist, so I'll answer things from that perspective:

  "How do jobs at "research institutes" work? Or jobs at major hospitals
  that have research programs?"

Assuming it's not, as mentioned a 100% soft-money faculty position, you're essentially working as part of a larger research group. This does mean that you get to spend lots of time doing research, but it also means you're still both beholden and dependent on grant money. It's just someone else's job to get it. So you have as much job security as said grant money can provide, which can range from a huge amount to almost none at all. This is also true for hospitals - you're essentially a staff scientist, but that money needs to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is grants.

It might not be as stressful if you don't have to get them yourself, but there's also no promise of any sort of academic freedom. There may not be the time and resources to do any of that.

  Are there any positions where you have relatively good job security
  because you are there to help/consult/collaborate on multiple other
  peoples' projects, but still get a chance to have a little research of
  your own too?

This is a very hard path to climb. I'm a modeler, so much of my work is essentially doing this - shoring up my own research agenda while spending a lot of time as "Specific Aim 3" on someone's grant. I'd suggest that doesn't actually have a lot of job security behind it because it means there's lots of points of failure and a perpetual need to keep things going so that you're 100% covered. There are research organizations which hire epidemiologists, and where you're essentially paid through contracts with other companies, which may be what you're looking for, but again, the chance to have a "little research on your own" might not exist. You're working on someone else's dime, so your own passion projects are essentially an indulgence on their part.

If you're genuinely interested in research without grantwriting and a stable career, I'd suggest looking at research positions in the federal government. What agencies will depend on what aspect of epidemiology you work in.


Should I choose an tenured advisor good at research but bad at teaching or an untenured professor good at teaching? I have a Phd option with two professors.

Professor A is tenured and is doing  very good in research .But many people have complained against him that they cannot understand his class. He has 2 Phd Students -one has been working on Phd for 5 years but still hasn't given his candidature. The other student joined his lab in 2012 as Masters Student and is planning to graduate from Phd in 2016. He closely works with corporate and is very well funded and pays his students very high stipends (like 3k+).These students regularly go for internships in these companies. But i see these students working very long hours on weekdays and weekends to complete their class and research projects.He was recently made an distinguished professor of research in my university.

Professor B has been in university for 3 years and has just graduated a PhD student(after 3 years). He is looking for tenure and is very prolific publisher. However he also published to some questionable open access journals  (one's included in Beall's List) to achieve his tenure requirements. There are  3 students in his lab -2 Master's and one 20 hr working CS student to help them out with programming. He has few projects to work on but not as big as tenured professor's. But people have high hopes on this professor as he worked in industry for 6 years prior to becoming an assistant professor.He is also very a good teacher .His Phd student could not get a job in his research field and is now working as a full time research software developer.

Which professor should i choose for an Phd and what should i look out for in each of them like pitfalls and advantages .

I'm not sure why a professor's capabilities as a lecturer should have anything to do when considering her competencies as a mentor and research advisor. The two skill sets are almost completely separate from one another. Moreover, if part of your concern is that you want to become a teaching faculty member some day, then there's probably a chance to be a teaching assistant for another faculty member who is more qualified as a teacher (such as your Professor B).


How best to approach an industry based research program at another university (with independent ideas) I am an engineering masters by coursework student. For my final project I have implemented something I have since found is a current topic of research for another university (their project aim aligns with mine exactly). They have partnered with a company specifically as it seems to be a something that the industry is particularly interested in. Furthermore, it looks like the company in question is part funding the PHD involved. (i.e. there is a commercial concern at some level)

At heart, my project is the definiton of a conceptual backbone, a collection of ideas put forward in a way I am yet to encounter. Work—perhaps above my level of knowledge at this stage—would be required to optimize it, but I have implemented a working example of it. My goal would be involvement with the university research (co-authorship?) and/or involvement with the company itself (work + potential income). Of course this depends on if my project is actually worthwhile and aligns with their approach; there is only one way to find out…

So, without advice I’d simply contact both the head of the company involved and the research head at the university. My question pertains to the fact that I don’t know what I don’t know about this situation.

How can I both protect and further the interests of all parties?
Is there anything I should be aware of regarding intellectual property? According to my university, we own the IP for our projects.

Other details: My project was 1 year long and I am just a masters (it is the equivalent of 2 standard courses in terms of grades). The deadline to apply for the PHD program at the (foreign) university is over (2 months past), and regardless I am not interested in doing a PHD. I am more interested in getting involved in the industry.

Additionally, I gave a formal progress report of my project to my supervisor and examiner yesterday and there was immediate discussion about submitting it to an upcoming robotics conference (I would work with someone to make sure it has the required academic rigor). If it were successful, would conference proceedings impact the situation in any way?

One aspect of research to be aware of is it patentability. If you publish your results in a paper, it may become ineligible for a patent. If you feel that your research has significant commercial value, it would be best to go through your institution's patent department. It would also work best as a point of negotiation between all parties involved.


Learn to write scientific papers in medicine I'd like to learn how to write scientific papers in medicine. I saw searching on google that there are many books regarding scientific writing but reading reviews it seems they are more oriented to editors that to writers. Is there a sort of reference which focus on grammar aspects or conventions about writing style that is suitable for a beginner? I'm a non english native speaker

You are looking for something like this one? English for Writing Research Papers. There is a series of books by Adrian Walwork on English usage in science, or a book by Hilary Glasman-Deal. Anothers are A Scientific Approach to Scientific Writing or Introduction to Scientific Publishing. Just don't read them all.


Is it appropriate to ask an author for an English translation of a paper? I have found an interesting paper which is very relevant to my research. After reading the abstract in English, I would like to continue to read through the methodology and its discussions. However, only the abstract is available in English, and the content is in another language which I don't know.

I really want to read through the content as some of the figures are very interesting to me. I have tried to translate it using Google Translate, but it is very difficult to understand.

Is it appropriate to send a polite email to the author, asking for a translation of your paper in English? Does the author have the obligation to do so?

As far as I'm aware there is no obligation to provide a translation of a published paper from one language to another.

I think it would be rude to ask for a translation of a paper. However, it would generally be fine to enquire as to whether such a translation exists, or whether similar work has been published in English.

More broadly, it may be in the author's interests to provide an English translation in order to increase the impact of his or her work.
If the work is really important to you, you could always pay for a translation. At the extreme end, perhaps where there are a large number of important works in a particular language, you may even want to learn the language.


Instructor's manual -- model answers from it by instructor For a textbook, there is an instructor's manual provided by the publisher to the instructor that has prescribed the textbook in a course. The instructor sets some questions from the textbook as assignment. After the assignment is due, the instructor takes the solutions from the instructor's manual verbatim for the questions on the assignment and shares with the students as model solutions without stating that they are from the instructor's manual that he has access to. In this particular case, it seems clear that if students also have access to the instructor's manual (via free document repositories) and turn in answers verbatim from the instructor's manual, that would count as academic indiscipline. But what of the instructor's actions?
Another variation of this is the following. The students at the beginning of the course, ask for some model questions with answers to help them prepare. The instructor chooses questions and answers from a different textbook (for which he has the instructor's manual) than the one prescribed for the course. He shares with them at the beginning of the course these questions with solutions without citing the source.
If the source is cited by the instructor, and the students ask for access to the instructor's manual, on what basis can access to it be denied? At present, it seems that the only basis for such denial is an agreement with the publisher that the instructor will not share the complete instructor's manual.
What is the consensus view on these issues?

Assuming that you want to teach your students good academic practice in general as well as your specific subject, then you should let them know the source of the answers you provide, at least in general. "This comes from the book's authors" is probably enough. Otherwise they might get the idea that copying and plagiarism is fine. And if you represent the answers as your own work, then, yes, it is a form of plagiarism..
However, providing the answers verbatim, raises also the issue of over-copying from published material. It may be, however, that the instructor's guide provides specific guidance for use, possibly granting (or forbidding) such release. For some books, the questions/exercises are the most valuable part, and releasing this information can definitely lessen the value of the book, especially if students are likely to put such things online or otherwise cache them for others. That would be a copyright problem, but not a plagiarism issue if you give the source.
Third, while not an ethical issue, courtesy and respect for the authors might imply that you not give out answers verbatim, to protect the investment they made in producing it. And also courtesy and respect for future instructors (and students) who want to use the book in a way that maximizes learning and lessens the likelihood of student cheating.
Finally, there is the issue of serving your students. This can raise many issues, but, in general, hints for producing solutions are more valuable to their learning than just providing answers. In fact, minimal hints, that help them develop insight, are more valuable than extensive hints. There is a vast difference between developing an answer on your own and reading a solution. Developing a solution with minimal hints is very much closer to the former than the latter. This will aid their education rather than giving them the false impression that they have developed some skill or insight when they have not. Hints are also sometimes necessary to dispel misconceptions. Unfortunately, tailored hints don't scale very well.
To answer one of your concerns directly, you can deny them access on the basis that having those answers would inhibit their learning and that they should try a bit harder to work out the answers themselves.
So, my suggestion, as an experienced educator, is that you don't give these out for a variety of reasons, the most important one is the value that actually doing the exercises has for your students. Even if they struggle. Perhaps especially if they struggle. The purpose of education isn't "answers", but learning.


Graduate school with tinnitus I’m a Syrian refugee residing in Europe. I am about to complete my undergraduate degree in mathematics, and have applied to several graduate schools. To my surprise I got into a few very good ones. However, the last years I have suffered from tinnitus as a result of an explosion in Syria. I am afraid that the concentration problems that come with it (usually manageable, but sometimes severe) will prevent me from success when the difficulty level of study increases. Especially because I have never heard of a successful mathematician that suffers from the same condition. Being a mathematician is my dream, and it would be hard on me to give it up. I lost a lot already.

Could you give advice on how to proceed? Are there strategies to adapt for people in academia with tinnitus?

Frame of reference: I am a mathematician with disabilities that impair my focus and my ability to do mathematics, but not tinnitus.

Disabilities and chronic illnesses suck. Very often, there is no easy way around them. But that doesn’t mean that you should give up on mathematics, not remotely. Giving up means that you don’t even have a chance of living the life you want to live, whereas not giving up means you have that chance. Go and try. If it doesn’t work out it doesn’t work out. But don’t decide it’s not going to work out ahead of time.

It may be the case that your condition prevents you from pursuing a career in mathematics. If that happens, it happens. In a year or two you’ll be in the same position you are now, and not much will have been lost. But I promise you that if you give up on it without trying you will wonder for the rest of your life what would have happened if you had tried.

Every school in the US has an office dedicated to helping students with disabilities, and I can only assume it’s the same in Europe. I’ve taken exams in silent, distraction-free environments, gotten large extensions on assignments, and extra time on exams. The process of obtaining those accommodations can be frustrating, but they’re totally worth it. Since healthcare in most European countries is so cheap, it shouldn’t be that expensive. In the US, the required tests can run you several thousand dollars. The disabilities office might not advertise themselves particularly well, but any academic advisor and many deans or other figures of authority should be able to point you in the right direction.

Again, I cannot speak specifically to your condition, but I and many people I know have similar conditions it seems. Here are some suggestions for coping techniques:

Buy the best noise cancelling headphones you can afford and wear them all the time, even when not listening to music. These changed one of my classmate’s life and enabled them to do homework again.
Find the quietest places on campus and spend your working time there. Many universities have some libraries or reading rooms dedicated as silent zones.
Seek out locations where you’re unlikely to be interrupted. My concentration comes and goes, and the worst thing for my productivity is interruptions. If you’re working near/with friends, tell them how it’s really important that they try to not interrupt you or distract you. I had a habit of working in the astronomy tower, which was not only out of the way but had a locked room that only about 20 other students had access to.
Seek out others with similar conditions, and see if there are any disability advocacy groups near your university. The moral boost you get from being around other people with the same or similar struggles is incredible, and they might have location-specific coping suggestions.
If you feel comfortable doing so, tell all your professors. In my experience professors tend to be extremely accommodating, and will often go above and beyond what the law or university policy dictates. I understand if you don’t feel comfortable doing this, but it was a huge boon for me to out myself to my professors.
Be kind to yourself. It’s really hard on your psyche to struggle with things that used to come more naturally, and it’s extremely common for people with disabilities to become depressed. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. You’re not worth less (or worthless) because of it. Anecdotally, severe depression as a result of disability tends to cause more people to drop out of school than disabilities do. Keep an eye on your mental health and focus on healthy behaviors.


Reapplying for a PhD with a Master's degree I am a senior undergrad studying internationally and majoring in electronics. I applied to graduate physics programs in the US. I was able to get into some schools, but not the top ones. I have accepted the offer from University of Minnesota for the PhD along with a Master's.

However, I got a few great positions in the upcoming summer and a couple of papers which seem to be completely deal breaking. I also have a feeling that my undergrad major might have been a problem so getting a master's could be helpful.

I wanted to reapply for grad school with my Master's (along with good GPA). There is a lot of negativity in academia about transfer students. However, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not talking about transfer student. I want to reapply as a first-year graduate student. And, I am also not bothered by getting recommendation letters from UMN. I can get sufficient letters from other professors.

I contacted a few schools asking about it. They said I can obviously reapply as a first-year graduate student (that's what I want). But many people (on the internet) say that it is something that is highly frowned upon, and this decreases the chances of admission (even with Masters). I want to get some perspective as to what extent is it common, and how much is it frowned upon?

Since you, in part, ask how much this type of thing is frowned upon, I can provide a data point (or at least an anecdote). For the purposes of this question/answer I am going to pretend there is an absolute ranking of all U.S. PhD programs in my area (since you are concerned about moving to a "top" school).

The first PhD program I entered was one that does not even appear on the listed of schools that I typically see ranked by various reports. So let's say for my absolute ranking of grad schools that my first program was ranked not even in the top 100.

After a year (or 1.5 years) in this first program, I decided I did not want to get my PhD from there, so I applied to other schools. In the statement that I gave my advisor to help him write me a letter of recommendation, I included 2 reasons that I wanted to leave, which were basically the following

The program I was in did not match my interests. Basically the department was more applied-oriented (almost exclusively so) than I wanted to be.
I basically said that I wasn't a great undergraduate and that now that I had some successful grad courses under my belt, I wanted to re-apply to grad school and get to a better school.

After reading this statement, my advisor said almost verbatim,

"Please tell me you have not shown this to anyone else. You can't show this to anyone else without removing [item 2. from above]."

The major moral here is that there are reasons for switching PhD programs that will be perceived as legitimate, but prestige may not be one of them. I came from a liberal arts background with not much knowledge of the different types of research, and learned after a year in grad school that I was not in a location that would support my research interests. This is perfectly reasonable (in my opinion), and it was also plausible, given the department I was in.

I don't know anything about your field, but I imagine that if you enter a rather top-notch* program like Minnesota and then want to go to a different school to somehow start your actual PhD, I think you will cartainly have to explain your reasons for switching.

You want to go to the higher-ranked school for prestige? Probably this reason will not be well received.

You couldn't find a match for any of your research interests in Minnesota's department? Well, Minnesota is a great department that many tenure-track seeking new PhD's would love to work in. If you can't be a successful researcher there, what kind of researcher are you?

Of course I'm inventing the answers to these questions, and there are many reason's one might switch grad schools. But the point is that you should have a good (by some measure) reason for switching grad programs. If such a reason exists, I think there is nothing negative about changing programs, and I doubt getting into your second program will be more difficult with your Minnesota Masters degree.

*I'm assuming this department is perceived as top-notch based only on jakebeal's comment to the question.


Tutoring is depressing because my students are struggling too much with my exercises. What do I do? I am a tutor for first year students in mathematics, and I feel pretty bad about it.

I recently changed universities. At my previous university, where I also tutored, the exercises were very demanding for the students; the problems were interesting and not easy. So I was really glad to be able to help.

Now, this is not the case anymore. Exercises consist simply of paraphrasing the definitions, and almost all the students are struggling pretty hard on these very simple exercises. Typically, they think that solving Ax = 0 when A is a 3×3 matrix is too hard. They have very little intuition about what is going on, especially in algebra. When they ask me questions, I try to answer so they see a way of thinking that can be generalized. But sometimes they just look at me as if I was an alien.

I am not here to complain, but to ask for advice. What should I do? Should I simply answer their questions as simply as possible? What I really want is to push them to work harder and become more familiar with mathematics. On the other hand, I am probably doing this already a bit and I don't want them to be disgusted by mathematics. I really don't know what to do.

Edit: Thanks everyone for your answers and your comments! This is really helpful. As asked here is some more detail: I am a tutor for students in the first year of a university in Europe. We are two tutors, staying in a classroom during 3 hours and answering every question they ask to us. I am paid by university, this is not private tutoring. They are studying mathematics, so they are not e.g. engineers. (In fact, two years ago I did teach complex and Fourier analysis to engineers in my previous university and I was surprised by the high level of the class! They were only in second year but got very hardcore stuff to do, and some of them were doing very well!) My current university does not organize one tutoring session for each class but only one "big" session where we should answer questions on all subjects: geometry, algebra and calculus.

What you're experiencing is pretty much what all college teachers are wrestling with all the time everywhere.

Allow me to point out that the abyss of need can go much, much deeper than what you're currently dealing with. In the U.S., most college students are attending a community college. And most students entering U.S. community colleges do not have 8th grade algebra skills, nor even 6th grade arithmetic skills (e.g., fractions, proportions, negatives, estimations, times tables). I've had a good chunk of a college math lecturer career at this point and I've never taught anything as high level as matrices.

Here's how I've been able to jiu-jitsu it in my own mind. Think of it like a diagnostician. Doctors have to find it fascinating to track down hideous diseases. Detectives have to find it compelling to decipher ostensibly horrible crime cases. So too: I find it endlessly fascinating to diagnose what exactly is the block or problem in students' heads, or to track down the place where their reasoning first went off the rails. Ask questions to try and find where their reasoning starts and where it stops. Do something of a binary search to try to narrow down the problem spot. I'm continually discovering new gaps in people's knowledge that I never would have expected. It's surprising and amazing every day.

Usually I do find that students simply cannot remember starting definitions. If they've come up through a system that depends on raw faith and memory (and not mathematical reasoning), they don't get how important that axiomatic basis is. Many also clearly have learning disabilities that make this difficult for them. "All your answers are back in the definitions", I say several dozen times per semester. Have the book handy so you can turn back to the starting definitions at any time, and see if they recall or can see how their reasoning got off track that way. In fact -- this explains why at your current school they're asking students to reiterate definitions; whereas for us that's natural and obvious, for some it's an overwhelmingly difficult blind spot to fill in.


PhD without compulsory publications hurting profile At the University of Cambridge, PhD students are not required to publish papers in order to be able to defend a thesis. One consequence of this is that some supervisors, especially in more experimental areas (e.g., some fields of biology), adopt a policy of deferring all publications until after the end of the PhD, to suck up as much of their students' time as possible for lab work.

This has a detrimental effect on the PhD's career: at the end of the PhD, he/she cannot apply to most positions since virtually all of them require publications. So the student must convince the supervisor to leave extra time for publishing during the thesis, and some supervisors are clearly against it.

In such situations, what can the PhD student do? In theory, if there was postdoc funding available for the student immediately after the thesis, this could be allocated for publishing the accumulated results, but this is not the case.

Is there a way to pressure the university to require such publications, to minimize the amount of "paying technician"1 work? How can PhD students change this perverse incentive system?

1At Cambridge, PhD students in such fields end up paying to work (as technicians), instead of being paid to work, which is a huge incentive for supervisors to keep the status quo.

Programs do get reputations.

And a program that produces good students who don’t have publications, especially if they are a well known school, will still have good placement rates.

Faculty too can get reputations, positive and negative.

Post-doc and hiring committees take these reputations into account when evaluating applications. If we know a school or a particular faculty member produces (otherwise stellar) students who don’t have publications, we’ll use other criteria to evaluate them.

The same thing goes for faculty who are known to write over the top recommendations and those who write acerbic ones. They all get calibrated in the end.

Where it does hurt you is with industry positions as there, reputations aren’t as well known.


How to cite editorial article? If admins allow me I would like to put a link, https://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v11/n9/full/nnano.2016.180.html
as a example, I dont know how to cite it since this is not really paper and it is not signed by any author.
Also I took a lot of from it. Can I say: According to NN editorial?and than put quotation mark? is it same as citing a book?

Since you did not specify the citation style, I chose APA at citethisforme.com, selected journal article and entered the DOI. This is the result:

In-text: ("A matter of scale", 2016)

Bibliography: A matter of scale. (2016). Nature Nanotechnology, 11(9), 733-733. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.180

Even so it is an Editorial and has no author, it is still sort of a journal article since it is published in a journal with volume and issue and has a DOI. Therefore, I'd suggest this solution.


Do I owe potential collaborators an explanation for late follow-up? I had a meeting with a potential collaborator month ago, and at the meeting I had agreed to email them within a week. However, shortly after I began going through a stressful divorce. I am worried that the potential collaborator may judge me for failing to reach out in a timely manner. Should I give them some form of minimal explanation for the delay?

You would be wise to bring them up to date and apologize for your absence. If you value the collaboration then you don't want the other person to think you just gave up on it.

The explanation could be minimal or not, depending on your personal relationship to the other person. "Going through a divorce" or "Time consuming personal situation". You judge, but definitely stay in the game.

Also, if the situation is expected to continue, you can warn the other person that your time, but not your commitment is limited in the short term.


Academic career in pure math? If I (completely hypothetically) got a PhD in pure math with a minor in philosophy, what would be my chances of getting an academic job (research most preferably)? I live in Northern Europe.

This varies enormously between people.  I've known some students where it seemed clear that they had a 99% chance of getting a job at a research university (with the most likely failure mode being some major personal difficulty, such as an accident or illness).  I've known other students who I thought had little or no chance.  Most have been in between, of course, with only a few outliers.

There's little value in statistics over large groups, since they can give a terribly misleading impression for any given individual.  (Different departments or advisors can lead to radically different outcomes, and averaging over them is pointless if you aren't choosing at random.)  Instead, I'd recommend doing two things:

Talk with faculty you know to see what they think of your chances.
Look at placement records for particular graduate programs or advisors you are interested in.  There will still be a wide range of outcomes, so you can't learn anything definitive from this, but it will at least give you an idea of the range of plausible outcomes.  You can usually find lists of former students on people's web pages or the math genealogy site, and then you can try looking these students up.  (If you can't find a former student online, then this person is probably not in academia.)


Is it okay to send my professor humorous material? I found a one-panel comic that is relevant to the content of a course I am taking. I think my professor would enjoy it. Is it socially acceptable to send him a hyperlink to it?

If you need to ask this kind of question on Stack Exchange then the answer is no.

You're contemplating engaging with them on a personal level, which requires a some degree of a social relationship with them.  You clearly don't have that relationship.

If, on the other hand, you had a good social relationship with your professor - shared tea and cakes during your supervision meetings, say - then of course this would be appropriate, but you would know that already.


How do I make submitting letters of recommendation to multiple institutions easier for my supervisors? I presently work for a biotech company in biotech manufacturing with some other duties (QA/starting a research project) thrown in.  I graduated with my bachelors degree in 2010 and am 31 now, and now am finally getting to apply to some PhD programs this year after gaining industry experience and dealing with some psychological  issues.  I currently work with two supervisors both with MSc and 10+ years biotech experience.

I am presently working/volunteering with a professor at a local university for just over a year who has encouraged me to apply to do a PhD.  Right now he will write me a letter of recommendation and also my supervisors at work will write me recommendations.

My question is then if I apply to 5 different grad programs, will my supervisors have to email the same letter to 5 different institutions?  What if I had them email the letter to HR and then HR emailed the letter to the different institutions?  I'm just a little unclear on this.

If I apply to 5 different grad programs, will my supervisors have to
  email the same letter to 5 different institutions?

Unless they write customized letters for each institution, then yes.

Or more likely, they'll have to email their letter one institution and fill out four different forms on four different web sites.  At least one of those web sites will require setting up a new account with a secure password (containing at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, one digit, and one special character, but no spaces, hyphens, asterisks, or emoji) and two-factor authentication.  Four of the institutions will email instructions for submitting the letters to the email address you provide; one will assume that you've already given the submission instructions to each of your references.  One of the reference web sites will require a recent version of Java; another will silently fail if an ad-blocker is active.

(I'm exaggerating, but only a little.)

Some of your references may be able to delegate the submission process to someone in HR, or to a clerical assistant, but everyone needs to agree on the precise protocol well in advance, so that you can include the correct contact information in your applications.  As Buffy suggests, be sure that the actual letters are written by people who know you personally, who have the technical expertise to judge your suitability for graduate study, not by a random person in HR or by a clerical assistant.

I also agree with Buffy that letters that are customized to each institution are stronger, provided the customization is truly substantive.  If there are clear significant differences in emphasis at different institutions—for example, one department that focuses on biology, versus another that focuses on manufacturing—then you should communicate those differences to your letter-writers.  (That said, the vast majority of recommendation letters I read for successful graduate school and faculty applications are not customized, so customization may not be necessary.)

Finally, do not, under any circumstances, write the letter yourself.  You do not know how to write a strong recommendation letter.  You certainly do not know how to write strong recommendation letters in three different voices, all different from your own, which are consistent with previous letters "written" in those voices.  I think even drafting the letter yourself is dangerous.  If one of your references needs more information about your background (that isn't already adequately described in your statement of purpose and your CV, which of course you've already shared with them) to write a strong letter, talk to them face to face.


Where is it acceptable to mention an abnormally high stipend? Student X's GRA stipend is more than double that of their peers in the same major. They wonder if this is appropriate to mention this as a negotiating tool in certian scenarios. One reason for this is their past merit and performance. Another major reason is that they are in an interdisciplinary field, and their expertise leans towards the more higher paying portion of that interdisciplinary field.
I will start with the scenarios where I think it is likely most appropriate – and go from there.
Salary Negotiation:
Should they mention that their stipend was higher than peers in the same field, thus they should have a higher staring salary than their peers? Would this matter more or less for a fellowship?
Interviews:
Should this be mentioned during an interview before salary negotiations to attest to ones merit and domain expertise?
PhD Applications:
Probability would sound bad to mention here. How would you feel if an applicant mentioned that they were awarded a stipend at double the rate of their peers?
Resume:
Similar to reasoning stated in 'PhD Applications'.
Grants & Scholarships:
I think this could be a negative to mention here. Obvious reasons. That is why I put it last.

One might say, "Why not focus on the reasons why their stipend is
higher in terms of merit and domain expertise for all of the above?"
The reason one may want to use explicitly state that they were awarded
more is as a proof of merit and domain expertise.

Salary negotiations are about supply and demand.  If your stipend has come to an end, it is no longer relevant to that supply and demand.  If your stipend is ongoing, you can say you will only accept a new position if it pays more than the stipend.
Your past stipend pay is not very convincing evidence of your merit.
Your past stipend pay is not relevant to the selection of PhD students.  Discussing money may give the impression you would be more suited for an industrial position.


How widespread is the use of "last author = teacher" on student papers? In our lab (at Nankai University, in China), students often write papers where they are first author.  However, we use a convention where the last author signifies the student's teacher.  I feel that this is uncommon.

I have not heard of this done outside of our lab, but maybe this is more common than I would guess.

Question: How widespread is the use of "last author = teacher" on student papers?

As pointed out by others in the comments, this is very common in my field (Operations Research); at my institution this is the norm and is common in other disciplines.
A professor told me during my PhD that the marginal benefit of having their name first was small compared to having the student's name first.  Moreover, papers coming from a masters or PhD usually deserve to have the student's name first anyway.
I'm sure the community will have various opinions but I find this a good practice unless there's a clear contribution level issue.

Updates:
It is common to place students first then rest of contributors in alphabetical order. Further, as @BryanKrause points out (comment), it may be beneficial to not have your name first if it helps make the case you're capable of supervising the research process.


What to expect for an on site interview in German University? I have been invited for an interview at University in Germany. They have asked me to prepare a 10-15 minutes presentation. What should I expect in the interview and what should I include in the presentation? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

For a Ph.D. position, they want to know:

Are you really familiar with your master thesis' subject? Can you answer questions about it? Can you explain your thoughts? This is mandatory.
Which relevant experience do you have for the institute and the future research? Some of your competitors may not have any. This is where you can enjoy the interview and get information for yourself.

So ideally you start with reporting about your previous research (your master thesis). Then you can say something like "as I wrote my thesis, I noticed that (bla bla), and as your institute does (bla bla bla), which is somehow similar, I hope to deepen (bla bla)." This would be very good. First, because it shows that you have relevant experience and second, because it helps you to check if the institute is actually relevant for you.

Remember that a job interview's purpose is to get to know each other, it's not a one-way police interrogation. For a Ph.D. position, this is especially important because in Germany, your final failure at a Ph.D. programme would also make you inadmissible for similar programmes in Germany. So it's vital for you to sense possible (interpersonal, academic, financial) difficulties early.


Courses to take for a statistics PhD I'm wondering in general how courses from outside statistics/math are viewed in general PhD admissions.

In particular, are courses in graduate economic courses like macroeconomics valued at all or is it just econometrics and nothing else.

It certainly depends on what the school you're applying to and the career you'd like to have. If the school is heavily interested in pharmaceutical statistics for drug development in clinical trials, macroeconomics probably won't be the most important course for you to take. In general though, if you're heading for a PhD, it can't hurt to have a very broad background knowledge on the different application areas in which statistics is used.

I'll also mention that if a course is important to you, you should detail (in your admissions essay or other medium) why and how it helps you to be a better student in statistics. Macroeconomics isn't the same as probability theory, but if you make a convincing argument that your knowledge of macroeconomics has helped you to better understand the field of statistics, then the admissions committee will probably take that into consideration.


open-note essay exam with the questions given ahead of time, what is considered cheating? I'm taking a class this semester through an online program.  We have an essay exam due on Thursday every week that is open-book, open-notes, etc., we're even asked to cite the textbook and other course materials.  The professor emails us the question or questions two weeks in advance.

I've been preparing my essay responses ahead of time, then submitting them after I open the exam, I work 2 jobs and so I rarely have the time alotted to sit and write the essay, I figured this was ok since it's open-notes.  Last week I was slammed with work and didn't have as much time to proofread my own essay for grammatical errors so, not really thinking of it as a test so much as a regular essay, I asked my mother to look it over and sent the rough version to her in an email, she found one sentence fragment and on run-on sentence which I only changed when I put the exam into the online submission portal.

Jump forward to today, I was trying to look up my grade and there was a note saying there was no submission for my essay exam.  I knew I had submitted it but freaked out and in a rush, emailed my professor offering to send him the email sent to my mother (early in the day on Thursday) as proof that I had basically finished the essay Thursday morning so there was no reason not to have submitted before it was due that night.  (We get no confirmations on submitted work and there are no timestamps on past work submitted online) I also sent him the word document on my computer with the basic essay, pre-changes.  He responded basically just saying he would forward it to his grading assistant, and that's it.

My question is, could I get in trouble for cheating since I had my mother proofread the essay ahead of time?  I have the emails from her proving she only looked at grammatical stuff but it didn't occur to me until after I sent the email this morning that this could be considered academic dishonesty since it's called an "exam" and technically I received outside help.  Thoughts?

I think the other answer is a bit more scolding than is necessary.

Your professor has your email to your mom, didn't comment on it, and forwarded it to the person responsible for recording grades. It sounds like what you are worried about is not a worry to the professor, and it sounds like your professor is quite a reasonable person where technical issues are concerned (i.e., by accepting your evidence that the work was done).

If I were in your position I'd concern myself more with making sure your submissions are fully accepted in whatever software you are doing the submission with in the future - hopefully the software provides some sort of feedback or way to check.

You can also consult the course syllabus to see if there are any specific policies on what is allowed and not allowed for exams. I don't think you are crossing any lines by asking for proofreading help (presuming you are not taking a course where proofreading is a major skill that is being taught). I also don't think it is necessary to explain yourself to your professor unless you find a written policy that makes what you did clearly against the rules: by sending the email, you haven't made any attempt to hide what you did so there isn't really anything to come clean on.

Besides that, I would stop worrying about this and focus on any other studies and responsibilities you have. You're doing fine.


Are all postdoc jobs advertised? I recently had a postdoc interview (at a research institution) in which I wasn't selected. After receiving the interview outcome, I decided to directly email the panel a few weeks later asking for a feedback. One of the professors replied and invited me for a chat the following week. He said that he has other opportunities that are a good fit for my profile. I know that he's talking about the university where he's working and not the research intuition where I met him (with the panel).
The issue, is that I checked the university's website and I didn't find any job postings. Can a PI hire a postdoctoral researcher without first advertising the job?

Many job postings are written after the candidate that will fill the position has been selected. This makes sense in academia - I usually want to hire people who were trained by people I know. University policies often require that postings are made for all positions though.
It's therefore very common to interview for a position that hasn't formally been posted. Especially if you have fellowship money coming with you.


Why do I underestimate my own research ideas? Before continuing on working on a specific problem, I do plan on few things which have not been explored in the available literature. However, instead of developing them (in terms of mathematical models), I feel that my ideas are quite simple and not so novel. Sometimes, it also happens to me while I read research papers.

I feel this is one of my weakness which makes me unfocused on a particular problem and makes me switch to various such ideas which are flushed by me.

Is it normal in research? How should I deal with this problem?

I hear you. I also know the flip-side of this phenomenon: Reading a paper and thinking: "That's a very simple idea they've published in this decent journal here. I could have come up with this on my way to work while riding the bike, would have written it down in a few weeks". But, alas, I didn't; someone else did.

I suggest the following procedure, although I can't claim that I've tested it:

Write down all silly ideas, especially the simple ones, and store them in a file; shortcut to your desktop.
Go through the list on a regular basis, every fortnight or so.

Move the (still) infeasible ones and the (yet) too silly-sounding into a "discarded idea" file.
Pick a quite simple one that you find intriguing and highlight for later use.

Reserve an hour in the morning to write down why the simple idea is so simple. This should force you to think clearly about all the implications that you took for granted when you said "oh, that's trivial". Now, is this still a simple idea? Are there any follow-up puzzles and questions that perhaps aren't so simple? I bet one hour is not enough to write down all the stuff that's implied and needs to be explained in order for the problem to appear simple. There, you're drafting your next paper.


Applying to graduate school in an unrelated field after a year working in unrelated job? I'm in a predicament.

I majored in Computer Science as an undergraduate at a top university, and landed a job straight out of college at a web development firm. After a year of working at said company, I am itching to get back to school pursue a study of a topic in college that I found fascinating, which is East Asian Studies.

My problem is that the only experience I have with EAS is the minor in it that I acquired during my undergraduate career. The list ends there. I fear that I won't be able to get 3 recommendation letters from the professors that used to teach me (it's been a year, my study was only a minor, the school I went to didn't have the strongest faculty supporting the focus in East Asian Studies I wanted to pursue, etc), and that there isn't a strong enough background of experience, research, or published works to make up for it.

Is a graduate program still something I can think about pursuing? I am more than willing to spend a few months patching up my resume and my background to not only better my application but also actually get involved in this topic of research, but I am not sure where to start...

Any thoughts?

In terms of "logistics," I would try to get one recommendation from a Computer Science professor, one from a language professor, and maybe one from an East Asian Studies professor (if not, then find the closest equivalent).

You are in a stronger position than you may think. Most applicants in East Asian (or similar studies), are stronger than you on the topic, but weak on "tools" that they need to pursue the degree. Two of those "tools" happen to be computer science (they call it quantitative methods) and languages, in which you are strong.

As a person that may be weak on the topic but strong on "tools," you are actually a rare commodity. Most faculties in soft sciences and social studies fear that their graduate students will be unemployable outside the field. You are the exception to the rule, and therefore represent a "lower risk."

My father, a retired engineering professor, used to say that it was easier for a good math and computer science person to take a graduate degree in Economics than for someone with an undergraduate Economics degree (and not the others).

Your minor in East Asian studies is enough to demonstrate your interest in the topic. The strength of your "tools" probably gives you an advantage over others.


Is it okay to ask a professor if he is going to attend a certain conference I am planning to attend a prestigious conference in the near future, and I was wondering if a certain professor who I wish to meet and I would love to do my phd degree and research under his supervision will be attending this conference. So is it appropriate to ask him (by email) if he plans to attend or participate in this specific conference? Or are there other ways to know this information?

P.S. My research interests are an exact match to his research interests.

My two favourite techniques for stalking potential business contacts (including professors):

Email them asking questions about their work.  Once you've built up a bit of rapport, then you can move on to asking about meeting in person.
Check conference programmes to see if they are giving a talk/seminar/poster, and visit them in person then.


How to professionally interact with a famous scholar (e.g. asking for a photo from a Nobel laureate) My specific question is:

Is it improper as a researcher to ask a (more famous) scientist to take a photograph together?

Longer version of question

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher and recently had the opportunity to have a private meeting with a famous scientist in my area of research (a Nobel laureate) to discuss my research. In this situation I acted like it was any other research meeting with a colleague/potential collaborator and just discussed science with the person. However, I would have liked to have asked to take a photograph with the person but was uncertain if this would have come off as unprofessional in any way.

I had similar situations when I was still a student and felt that there was already such a clear demarcation between famous scientist and student that it was appropriate behavior to ask for a photo as a student, however is this appropriate for a professional (e.g. postdoc or young faculty etc)?

I met one Nobel laureate who was very personable and comfortable with photo-ops; then I met another who excluded me (by physically closing the conversation circle) as I approached him during a conference reception. Since personal relationships have a huge impact on the success of your career, you are right to consider this matter carefully.

I often practice reading/speaking a script in front of the mirror, and then just wing it in real life.

If humor comes naturally to you, consider using a short joke. "You know, football players get way too much publicity. Would you autograph your famous fusion article after we take a picture?"
Perhaps you might prefer the direct approach, "I've appreciated you taking time to collaborate. Before leaving, would you mind taking a picture together? I want to show my grandchildren that I've worked with a Nobel laureate."

The quality of your interpersonal relationship is key. If during your collaboration you strike a balance between respectful deference to his ideas and humble pride in your own work, you will lay the foundation for a lasting professional friendship. I recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie as a guide on building buoyant, effortless relationships.

Remember, by asking for a photo-op, you will be paying him a complement. Feel good about this -- the world needs more happiness.


How often do people find mistakes in papers and not tell anyone? I found a significant error in a paper with 1000 citations.  My advisor agreed that it is a significant error, but discouraged me from telling the author.

It occurred to me that maybe other graduate students also found the error, and never told the author, or they did tell the author and he just never corrected it.  I think an author would have very little incentive to correct his own work, especially if they were famous for that work, and readers are strongly incentivized against writing a correction paper, because the author would be mad at them.

How often does this sort of thing happen?  Can we really trust the literature?

I'm not sure what you are looking for. I know for sure that the seminal paper that made one of my bosses famous had glaring mistakes in it. Despite the fact that his result was completely wrong, the paper started a new research field and is now highly cited (around 1700, I think). No one ever bothered to point out the calculation mistakes, without which the paper would have never gotten accepted, because his proposal got confirmed experimentally. More detailed calculations done by others showed his mistake, but confirmed his intuition. In any case, I can't find survey data in my field dealing with un(der)reported mistakes in papers. But, as you do research, you are bound to find quite a few.

On the other hand, I found this oncology paper on unreported mistakes in oncology papers http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3031354/

Looks like less than 25% of those who spotted mistakes in the papers, actually went on to report them.

The practice in my field is to write the authors about the possible mistake. If they are willing to correct it, there is not much point in escalating. If not, you can write a comment on how wrong the paper was, post it on arxiv and send it to the journal editor. This, assuming you're sure they made a mistake. Most people aren't willing to go through all this pain, but I've seen this many times.


How to select a Master's thesis topic if your advisor won't suggest one? If a master's degree candidate needs to select a thesis topic, but their advisor is unwilling to offer suggestions on the matter, how should one go about selecting a thesis?

How might one select an area to study?
How can one evaluate if if is a suitable topic?
Does the thesis need to focus on an area which is relatively unexplored by prior research?

One approach is follows:

Find one or two good recent PhD theses in your chosen area. Read these thoroughly. As you read, write down every question that pops into your mind, write down every time the author states that something is left for future work or needs further investigation.
This will have a dual effect. Firstly, you will get a good introduction to a particular research field. Secondly, you will have a bunch of questions that need to be investigated.
Prune trivial questions, non-sensible ones, etc.
Next, organize your questions thematically and see whether you can find a common thread to these questions, something that could form the basis of your research.
Remove any questions that do not fit will with the others.
Based on the remaining questions, formulate a couple of coherent questions that your research could address.
Write a plan to address these questions.
Work through plan.
Write thesis.


How much does the impact factor vary from year to year? Journal impact factors are averages of samples of a power-law distribution (most papers are not cited, lots are highly cited). Wouldn't you expect the year-to-year impact factor to vary widely...? At least for journals publishing few papers? What is the catch?

For completeness, I will start by stating the underlying calculation for the impact factor (source):

total cites in year X
Year X cites to articles published in the two year prior to year X (this is a subset of (1.))
number of articles published in the two years prior to year X
= (2.)/(3.) = impact factor for year X

For most journals the number of papers published per year is relatively constant (item 3.). This means that what in most cases really changes the impact factor is item (2.), how many times papers in the years prior have been cited. This number will vary according to how successful the journal is to attract good papers that can accumulate citations. Under normal circumstances the influx of papers probably follows some form of distribution in terms of "quality" (whatever that is).

If we accept this as the model (deviations are likely to exist), then a journal with a small number of papers per year will likely be more sensitive to changes in citation rate of a few papers whereas a journal with a large publication rate will likely be less sensitive.

To change the citation rate of papers in a journal is not easy. The reputation of a journal takes time to build and can be destroyed in a minute. To increase the index is therefore likely more difficult than lowering. Being editor of a small to medium international journal, I have seen that introduction of thematic issues can significantly raise the index. This comes from the fact that such issues constitute a concentration of paper on the same topic which will strongly help each other to attract referenceing; as opposed to a single paper "hidden" in melee of other unrelated papers. So there are means (strategies) to change the index, but for business as usual it will vary but not fluctuate widely. If you find journals where the index varies strongly (more than on the decimal level) it might be interesting to take a closer look and see what factors have influenced the changes.


My previous advisor published a paper with my work and did not include me as a coauthor or give an acknowledgement. How to continue? During my undergraduate degree I was involved in a research project under a new, young professor. I was much more involved than a typical undergrad researcher (at least from what I have seen during the past year in a PhD program); I was a major contributor in developing the theory and solution codes, and I was a first author on one paper and a coauthor on another during that time. A long story short, the professor had a really bad attitude and had no problem making enemies. Within two years he was gone (rumors that he was forced out) from his first professorship, which is a top 10 engineering school to a much less prestigious one. I graduated at the same time and started my PhD at another school.

An extremely long story short, we had a falling out not long after because I had had to shift my priorities to my PhD as any reasonable person would; however, I had agreed to keep working with him during my spare time as we were nearing in on one last paper. In short, he sent me some pretty disrespectful emails, and any time I tried to defend myself in any way, he took it as inappropriate. I tried my best to remain professional and respectful, and in my opinion I succeeded with that. I just decided I had my whole future ahead of me under a much more prestigious advisor and one relatively low impact paper was not going to mean much. So I told him that I could no longer contribute to the project.

A few days ago, I see that he published the paper we were working on. Unsurprisingly, I was not included as a coauthor or acknowledged in any way, though he did cite our previous papers. What was really bizarre was that he included as a coauthor another undergrad researcher who was less involved in the project. This guy happens to be my good friend, so I know he hasn't worked on it at all in the last year. To make things even fishier, my friend didn't even know he was going to release a paper nor was he ever notified that he was going to be a coauthor. I was the one that told him about it, and he was completely shocked.

The paper contained nothing new from what I had done, and the results were most definitely produced with the subroutine I wrote. Also, the wording was very very similar (not quite word for word) to what I had written in the past. The figures (containing conceptual designs) had been reproduced directly from my own unpublished ideas.

I am wondering just how unethical this is, if at all. I know typically undergrads might not contribute much, but I genuinely feel that I was the major contributor of this work. I even secured two external fellowships to fund the project. I have developed a lot of close contacts that are in high positions that I am confident would support me in a dispute, not to mention his reputation in the community isn't the greatest. I am just trying to decide if its even worth it and what route to take. Should I just let it go or am I in a position to act? I haven't contacted him yet since he will surely try to sabotage me in some way, which I am not that worried about; I really just don't know if I want to deal with it.

I am just looking for some thoughts, so I can approach this as unbiasedly as possible. Thanks a lot for your time.

Contact the editor responsible. Talk nicely to him, and ask him how to proceed.

Since a friend of yours is included as coauthor without his knowledge,  you have quite some leeway. If one of the authors asks for the paper to be withdrawn because of incorrect attribution, this may very well happen. Such behavior is considered scientific misconduct.

Also many universities will have an office responsible for processing with plagiarism and other scientific misconduct, and may be able to assist you with drafting such emails.


Combining absolute and curve grading? I know some advantages and disadvantages of using absolute grading as well as curve grading. Next semester, I plan to combine both by first grading absolutely, and then use curve grading to add points to the students.

For example, if one gets 80% (usually an A) absolutely, but when curved he gets a B, then I will use only the absolute letter which is the A. However, if one gets 70% (B) absolutely but when curved he gets an A, then I will use the A.

My reasoning is just like those who support curve grading. I might prepare too difficult exam tests or some things might not go according to plan during my course. While I actually support absolute grading, I think this might be a good idea. (?) I don't like the idea of just purely using curve grading that can lower high grades, or purely using absolute grading which is not always appropriate as university students' and instructors' performance are not absolute.

Of course, evaluating each course will always be the top priority, but this grading I hope can provide some small "healing" to error-prone college courses each semester.

ADDED:

The curve I use is the usual bell curve for distributing A, B, C, D, and F..
I am teaching mathematics for undergraduate.
There are less than 30 students each batch.
This is a new program in this university..and there are only 2 batches..so "past grades" are not recorded just yet unless I take data from other universities..which might not be a good idea?

All the inputs are very helpful. I do not plan to strictly use curve grading as I mentioned. I also believe the longer this program goes the better we can get..

You have assumed that students' performance follows a normal distribution, with a grade of C in the middle of that bell curve and very few grades of A or F at the tails.  My own experience, and that of my peers, is that a typical college class has a cohort of good students who will mainly earn grades of A or B, some number of poor students who will earn unsatisfactory grades, and a few "in the middle" students.  That gives a bimodal distribution, with the valley just about where the peak is in that bell curve.

I urge you to look at past classes and check the grade distributions when you have used absolute grading.  If you don't already have something very like a normal distribution, forcing one will distort the assessment results badly.

Your question says your goal is to help students, and the problem is that assessments may be too difficult or the course didn't go as planned.

I'd like to suggest a different approach that's a little more work than artificially distorting the grade distribution, but is much easier to explain to students.  (Um, and to department chairs, if it comes to that.)  You haven't mentioned your field, nor whether your students are undergraduates, but if your examinations can have a reasonable number of questions, measure the performance on every question and then exclude from the computed grade any where performance of the class as a whole is below some cutoff you establish heuristically.  Almost everyone's grade will go up, and you can easily explain that you excluded those questions or problems that were "too hard."  (In the rare case where a student gets only the "hard" problems right, you can make an independent adjustment; that never happened to me.)  I do this with a spreadsheet that has student names in the left column, then one column for each question.

Once you've evaluated an assessment, you must look at the questions you excluded as "too hard" and If the difficulty was with the question, fix it.  If you believe the question is reasonable, then you need to review the material with the class again.  When that happened to me, I'd warn the students that they would see that question or problem again, and so they should prepare for it.

If you do this for every assessment, you will find that your exam questions and your coverage of the material converge, and after a very few semesters, you will no longer have questions that are "too hard" and you'll be comfortable with absolute grading.


High Latency Communication with Potential Thesis Supervisor I'm currently pursuing my Masters in Switzerland and got in touch with a Professor at a major UK university a month ago via E-Mail for a potential thesis project. I immediately got a positive reply mentioning my interesting background and the good fit with his current research.

Two weeks ago we talked on the phone for a little more than an hour. It was almost exclusively him explaining three research projects that would fit my background and interest. It all sounded very positive and ended with his request for me to think it over and tell him as soon as possible if I was interested in any of the projects, as he was "super busy".

I decided on one of the projects that I really liked and wrote a nice E-Mail the same day.

I have not heard back from my potential supervisor yet (2 weeks in now). I wrote a brief follow-up E-Mail one week ago, asking if he knew whether he wanted to go ahead with our collaboration. This week he will be attending a conference abroad (according to search results on Google), so surely he is very busy.

While I have had Professors not reply to E-Mails about thesis opportunities in the past, I am confused both because of the good conversation we had on the phone and what we had agreed on in that conversation.
After all, if he really has lost interest in a collaboration, he could easily drop me a line via E-Mail.

Right now I think another E-Mail by the end of the week would be the only option - reaching out by phone is difficult, because he seems to rarely be in his office. How do I come across without making the impression of being pushy or annoying?

They sound sincerely interested in working with you. There's no right answer to this; you're right that there's a balance between staying engaged and giving them polite space to reply. It's likely they will be coping with various life events, not just work; who knows what may be filling their time and attention. It's normal that people may be responsive in one period and then less so.

I recommend perhaps lengthening the time between check-ins, so 1 week for the first follow-up, and then 3 weeks, and then maybe 6; and then stop. Alternately, you could call as much as once a week, if you don't leave a message. Most of the risk of too much contact is because of making them read or respond to a message, so if there isn't one, that's less of an etiquette problem. Ultimately, there's no way to control whether they experience this input as pushy or annoying. I would also continue exploring other potential advisors.


Elsevier's confusing guide for authors I am trying to submit a manuscript to an Elsevier journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (RSER) and found the author guidelines most confusing. For example, under author guidelines, it is said that

Use of word processing software

It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the
word processor used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep
the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes
will be removed and replaced on processing the article. In particular,
do not use the word processor's options to justify text or to
hyphenate words.

Then it recommends

to use the latest Elsevier article class to prepare your manuscript
and BibTeX to generate your bibliography.

Now, there are two classes and templates available for Latex: cas-dc and cas-sc, one for the double column and one for the single column. Now I am confused,
(a) Which template to use for the submission? Single column cas-sc or double column cas-dc? The author instructions or the user guide for the templates does not guide when to use which template.
(b) The aforementioned instructions are for the source file? Latex source file is already in the single column format.
(c) What should be the layout of the output PDF? Single column or double column? The journal publishes article in the double column format!
(d) Should the PDF files have justified text or ragged right? Latex templates provided by Elsevier produce PDF files with justified text.
I will be thankful if someone can help me out with this. The confusing author guidelines can be found here.

Different fields have different conventions. I am a mathematician, and my advice reflects what I know about publishing conventions in that field. So please take this advice with a grain of salt.
This said: Echoing the comments of m123, sleepy, and Lewian, I would advise you to ignore Elsevier's guidelines entirely. Submit your document in any format which looks attractive, is normal for your field, and is convenient for you to prepare.
You can worry about their guidelines once your paper is accepted, and maybe not even then. My own opinion is that if Elsevier charges $4,034.00 for an annual subscription to this journal, then perhaps they can afford to employ staff to do their own formatting work.


Compressing a huge paper for a double blind review process Continuing How to cite a technical report for a double blind review process?, how would you proceed if your paper is acutally 53 pages long, most of it occupied by mathematical proofs, but you have to compress it into 10 pages (including all the appendices, and allowing for two additional pages for the bibliography) for an A*-level conference with a double-blind review process, a rebuttal and an explicit ban on relying on supplemental material? The time between the submission and the 2-day-long rebuttal is 2.5 months, which is then followed by a month till notification.

Here is a part of the guidelines:

  Do not rely on supplementary material (your web site, your github repository, a youTube channel, a companion technical report or thesis) in the paper or in the rebuttal submitted during the clarification period. Supplementary information might result in revealing author identities.

Or would you consider not submitting to that particular conference, since it involves too much work which does not improve any of your results?

Several technical options are available, but I'm unsure about their acceptance in the community:

Use the PDF file with the main paper text as a container for the anonymized proofs as an embedded file, or
Upload the anonymized proofs to a  (megaupload-like) file-storage service and provide the reader with a URL, or
Any of 1. and 2., with password-protected supplemental material, where the password is exposed with/after the rebuttal.

Are such solutions accepted by the community?

The real problem with such a paper is that conferences have deadlines. Therefore the review process needs to be expeditious. Journals can in most cases handle long papers since they don't need to promise when the paper will appear and try to have a big enough backlog that they can fill an issue with interesting work. But if the call asks for 10 page papers that is what they really are depending on.

I don't think the "method" by which you make the longer work available is the issue. You can probably find a way to make it blind. But the length isn't copacetic for purposes of their very hard deadlines.

For the conference, write something else. Or write some small excerpt of the longer work that fits the expectations of the committee.

But if you prove a long standing and important theorem, a short, even one page, announcement is probably enough for a conference, ending with "Proof will follow." You will want to include some information about why you think your proof stands up  - vetting by some other folks. If you want to get bold, mention the key element of the proof (the crux) that made it come together. Now you are up to around, say, 10 pages. All is good. The full proof can appear later in a more appropriate journal.


Getting into grad school with a low gpa I'm new to these forums, but I thought I'd take a stab at asking about my situation. I have two BS degrees, one in electrical engineering and the other in physics. I'm wanting to go to grad school in either physics, engineering, or something in between. My problem is that I have a 2.3 cumulative gpa, however I do have a slew of other things going for me that I was wanting to get opinions on how much they would help with admissions.

I've done research in plasma physics for over 2 years. It was due to that project that I was place into the McNair Scholars program and was given the opportunity to travel overseas to perform research at a European fusion energy lab last year. I've graduated, but was hired by the same research group to perform data analysis work for the project. I learned alot about experimental physics: solid state particle detectors, vacuum chambers, spectrum analysis, linux operation systems, and so on.

In my engineering major I become involved with a team that built, tested, programmed and will be launching an amateur radio satellite. I worked on the power systems of the craft, and learned alot about surface mount soldering, solar cells and battery charging power circuits, etc. I'm also planning the building and programming of a rotating machinery for our ground antennas. Out of this might come the chance to work with a mechanical engineering group launching their own satellite.

I also work in the power industry, currently as an intern, where I've done a few projects related to internet monitoring of devices attached to power lines, learned pcb design skills here. My job also had me write a paper (so I'd be first author there) related to cyber security that will be going to a conference later this year. Not sure if this will help specifically since that work isn't necessarily what I want to do graduate research in.

I'm currently taking a year off to work, pay off debts, and study for good scores on the general and subject GRE's. I was also plannig on taking 1 or 2 grad courses and planning to ace them. My bad grades came from my first year courses, not from my junior and senior in-major courses. Come application time I can get plenty of good recommendation letters from various sources (not just in my university). I know my gpa is going to hurt me, but I was wondering if anyone has any experience about how much things I've done outside the classroom would offset that. Thanks for any opinions that might be helpful. Sorry for the wall of text.

It sounds to me as if you definitely have a chance, though the GPA is somewhat low.

The fact that you became better over time with regard to GPA is a very good sign. You may want to calculate your GPA by year so you can cite some figures if asked. Be prepared to explain why your GPA was low, or at least what you did to improve it. While interviewing, do not be late for an interview with faculty - study the campus maps and be sure to let any prior meetings to end soon enough to give you ample time to get to your next meeting! Being late may give professors time to look at your transcript and possibly ask some awkward questions that you otherwise likely need not worry much about if you have already gotten to this stage in the application process. Not to mention being late is not a good thing in general.

Make sure you can secure some good letters of recommendation from your research projects. This is absolutely critical.

Hopefully, the job you get over the next year is also somewhat research related. If it is not too late, I would try to find such a job. Also, I don't know if it will suit you, but if you can find such a job, then you may even want to keep it longer than a year depending on how things go. If you can finish a good project, that will boost your chances even more.

Finally, I think your plan for the subject GREs may be alright, if it does not interfere too much with my suggestions above. Taking tests is not a big part of most PhD programs, and even those where it is, only a few of the most selective programs require the subject GREs last I checked (which was a while ago).


What lessons have you learned over the years as a TENURED FULL Professor that you wish somebody had told you when you started as an Assistant Prof? As a Tenured Full Professor and given your long experience in Academia, what valuable lessons have you learned over the years that you wish somebody had shared with you earlier when you started as an Assistant Professor? Given these experiences what would you do differently if you had the chance?

You do not have to accept responsibility without appropriate authority.
It's a classic problem in any organization, and it's related to Dave Clarke's answer. Some concrete examples:

Rather than extend the deadline for homework when the bookstore doesn't have enough copies of the course textbook, give the students the email of the manager of the bookstore so they can write him directly about their situation.
Rather than ask meekly for a bigger classroom when there aren't enough seats for the 47 students enrolled in your class, give the email of the department coordinator who's responsible for assigning classrooms and say this is the person to whom you should vent your unhappiness.
Rather than teach a course that is watered down because it has no prerequisites, teach to the higher level students and explain clearly in the syllabus what you expect people to know. If students complain, explain to them your predicament (if you teach the basics, half the class will feel they wasted their experience). Students have more power to change an academic program by organized, constructive complaining than a non-tenured professor.
If the department chair doesn't involve you in selecting TAs for the course you are responsible for, and students are not happy about the quality of the TA (or the TA hounds you for a lot of help because he wasn't qualified to teach the course), encourage the chair to allow you to be involved in the selection process (refer to the principle of authority and responsibility).
If you're asked to be on a committee, insist that the committee have a clear mission that's feasible within the authority of its members. If a mission cannot be clarified or you can't identify with the mission, then minimize the amount of time/energy you put into it.


Postdoc application problem I cold emailed a lab I really wanted to work in and received a positive response. I had two phone calls with the PI and she seemed very responsive and said she thought I would be a good fit. They asked me to write a rough project proposal and organize a lab visit. She assured me that she would be able to respond within 24 hours regarding the proposal.

As I don't live in the US and am uncertain currently about when I would be available in the next few months, I asked in a follow up email if the lab visit was a necessary part of making a final decision -- I wasn't really clear if I was going to be offered the position. They also didn't mention if I would be reimbursed for the visit, and that's kind of important, but I stressed that I will do my best to organize it if it is part of the process. Also, if I'm not actually being offered the position, then I should know in case I should be applying for other positions.

Anyway, it's been more than a week after I sent the email and I haven't gotten a response. I even sent the proposal and haven't heard anything. I'm confused what happened, it seems like I did something wrong.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

It’s winter time and many people are sick. Your email could have been caught up in a spam filter. She could be on travel. There are any number of explanations that don’t involve you having done something wrong.

Just send a follow-up email politely asking if the proposal had been received and proceed from there.


Is it OK to discuss a student's work without them present? At my university, PhD students need to give a presentation at the end of their first year. A panel of academics judge the work and then have a Q&A session with the student to assess their progress and aptitude. The panel has the power to delay progress if they have any concerns. It can be a stressful time for students.

There has been a suggestion from a colleague that we arrange a discussion after the presentation (during the Q&A time) so that junior students can learn what is required. However, I'm not sure that this is right because the student is not present - they're answering questions of the panel.

Though I do see value in the discussion, I think it might be best for all involved to be done as a separate, trial presentation. This way the PhD candidate can modify their presentation to make it better and the discussion can be had without the student being absent. However, this means two talks so it's more time for all involved and may add stress/confusion for the candidate.

I'd be happy to know how other universities do things and what you think.

I think the basic rule is that you should not evaluate one student in the presence of others. The problem with carrying out a public evaluation "with the student's consent" is that that the student may feel pressured to give their consent.

On the other hand, if a student gives a talk in a friendly environment, then I believe it is appropriate to hold a public discussion about how the presentation could be improved. Care is needed, but I have found that it works. We usually start by asking the student what they would do differently next time.


Graduate advisors: what are some qualities that make a graduate student difficult to supervise? I am asking this question to seek some perspectives from graduate advisors.

My question is: what qualities of a student makes him or her difficult to supervise? It is all the more valuable if this is based on actual experience.

Note that "difficult" is open to interpretation. The student may not necessarily be a bad student or poor learner; after all, most of the people who are admitted to a graduate program has went through some rigorous examinations in their lives. Maybe a student is such a genius, that he/she won't listen to you, and hence that presents a difficulty.

Strange question, but here you go:

Knowing better than the advisor (in reality or imagination) and hammering that point in to the advisor
Knowing better than the nature of the matter at hand and continuing to hammer at it without it sinking in (thanks to Darkwing and computercarguy for the original suggestion)
Being disorganised
Having to be told to do the same thing repeatedly, without effect, without proposing an alternative, or without explicit (justified) refusal
Being unable to write, even while having results
Being a brilliant writer, making weak results look better than they are
Being perfectionist to the point of ineffectiveness
Being sloppy, so that everything that the student does needs to be double- and triple-checked for correctness; sometimes, reintroducing errors after they have been corrected already
Being afraid of success and/or one's own greatest enemy

One thing that does not constitute a difficult to supervise student is a genius who doesn't listen, but gets results and writes them up. It may give a dent to the ego of the adviser, but, like a dent in a Jeep, it's a dent worth having.


Is it considered rude to enroll at a funded conference and then retract your enrollment? For background, I am a mathematics graduate student.

Now, it happens once in a while that I find an interesting conference/workshop which I would be happy to attend, but which I'm not sure about (for reasons which might appear later on, such as not enough funding, finding a better conference etc.).

Suppose that in case of acceptance, the organizers offer some travel/accommodation funding, and that enrollment closes a relatively long while before the conference takes place. Also, suppose that I am not offering to give a talk.

Is it inappropriate to enroll with the knowledge that there is a relatively big chance I won't be able to participate, and retract my enrollment after being accepted if I realize that I indeed can't go?

Does the answer change if I enroll at several conferences "just in case" and then go to one of them if I'm offered enough funding to cover my expenses?

Is there a point after which cancelling my participation is considered rude? What is the polite way to do it? Is it common, in your experience, that (student) participants cancel their participation after having been accepted?

Thanks!

The negative effect is that it may be difficult for the organizers to re-allocate the partial funding they'd allocated to you, so someone else missed the chance for funding to attend.

On the other hand, "the system" is not really actively worrying about your larger welfare, nor about the welfare of whoever missed funding due to your change-of-heart, and "the system" will not be "harmed" by your withdrawal. The organizers will scarcely notice whether you were there or not, funded or not. It's small potatoes.

Between those two extremes, granting that you yourself do have to reasonably play the odds for funded attendance at conferences, you should aim to be "a good sport", not inducing commitment of far more resources than you'd possibly use, thus, freezing them and denying use to others. But don't be exaggeratedly altruistic toward "the system", since the relationship is very unsymmetrical, not in your favor.


Prerequisites for Master's Degree in Pure Mathematics (and eventually PhD) This will be my first post on the Academia SE so apologies if there are some conventions I break!

I am an undergraduate student of mathematics at a university in the UK whose emphasis lies a lot more in statistics and applied mathematics than it does in pure mathematics, there being only 2 modules in the entire degree program that focus only partially on higher algebra, and only 4 weeks of the entire 3 year program that have anything to do with number theory. I am in this position because my A-Levels did not go as well as I had expected as I had a few issues and did not achieve the grades needed to go to a more "pure based" university. I am deeply interested in the area of Algebraic Number Theory and intend to go on to study a master's degree in pure mathematics and eventually/hopefully a PhD.

My question is this; what should I/can I do to "boost" my application to a master's degree in pure mathematics if my undergraduate degree has a relatively low pure mathematics content?

I will be applying for an undergraduate research bursary from the London Mathematical Society to fund an 8 week research project, be it expository or otherwise, in the field of Algebraic Number Theory.

Thank you in advance for any information you can give me.

Although I am doing a PhD in the field of Computer Science, I of course cannot give specific advise on what you should do about mathematics MSc, but here are some of my observations on the general case.

In the last two years, I have applied a lot of PhD programmes across Europe. I have been accepted to one recently. And that is probably one out of fifty if not more.

As far as I have observed, the priority is not a student with "a lot of knowledge", but a student "who can study hard on the given task." This observation is based on the profiles of accepted students instead of me (stalker alert).
Some of them have lower GPA, and almost none of them have publications. I think what they somehow proved that they can study harder and be more productive.

The interesting part that matches with your question is, both their theses and their stated area of interests were less related to the research area.
Surprisingly, someone who took his degree from mathematics was accepted to a research group that focuses primarily on application rather than theory.

If we switch from PhD to master's degree, I don't really believe having a relative background should have more weight than being a hard-worker (of course I am not talking about another discipline like psychology) in the process of decision.

If I were you, I would direct the exactly same question to a professor from the department you want to apply. Questions like

  How can I convince you that I am good enough to pursue a master's
  degree?

or

  Are there any specific criteria you are seeking such as having a
  relatively strong background on pure mathematics?

would do no harm. I think being deeply interested as a master applicant in a research topic puts you one or two steps further. Of course you somehow have to show that you are actually deeply interested (this is the hard part that I could not figure out how).

In short, do not over-try to "boost" your application and do not hesitate to contact one of the faculty members.


Which is more important in academic promotion: getting funding, or its secondary effects? Follow up question to How does research funding work in determining academic promotions? since it was too broad.

Take two equally talented researchers, Alice & Bob. Alice has acquired a large amount of funding, while Bob has not. How large is the effect of the grant itself compared to secondary effects in determining who gets promoted, such as the fact that Alice is likely to be more productive thanks to having the funding, for example due to being able to hire more postdocs and PhD students?

In other words, can Bob compensate for not having acquired the funding by working harder (writing just as many research papers, attracting self-funded PhD students, etc)?

I think this is largely moot. Alice will only achieve that large amount of funding by being productive. If Bob is sufficiently productive, and in a place where external funding is important, then he will likely attract such funding since he would be foolish not to seek it. In that sense, productivity trumps funding.

But, again, the world of academia is very diverse. Some places external funding is an extremely important factor (maybe THE factor) in getting tenure. Other places not so much. But in research universities you need to be productive and to help others (students) be productive.

And it may be much more important what a lab overall is able to produce, not just the PI.