What makes a stellar undergraduate thesis? In mathematics, what distinguishes an exceptional undergraduate thesis for the rest? How do original contributions, accessibility of the topic (ie more or less prerequisites), novelty of the topic, etc factor in. Would it, for example, be better for an undergraduate to give an overview of well trotted areas or venture into less significant areas and try to pick some low haning fruit?

For me: significant originality, even if that originality is expressed within the context set by the supervisor.

One cannot expect the student to understand what problems are interesting
to the community, and which are feasibly solved by an undergraduate.
But once the context is
set by the supervisor, there can be significant room for originality within
that context.

I was working on "locked polygonal chains" in 2D and 3D, and posed the question
to my student of whether or not such chains could lock in 4D.
The answer was provided in her undergraduate thesis, and subsequently
published in a journal: No.

The proof was very much an equal-footing collaboration, but she was
inventive and precise throughout. Especially on the algorithm illustrated
above, she was ahead of me.

  Roxana Cocan and J. O'Rourke.
  "Polygonal Chains Cannot Lock in 4D."
  Comput. Geom. Theory Appl., 20 (2001) 105-129.


Is it possible to work on my thesis on my home country? I was wondering if it's possible (and how frequent it is) to work my (math) PhD thesis in my home country if I am an international student?

That is probably possible, provided that your advisor approves. You will need to set up a communication channel with the advisor, of course. You will also need to make sure the all fees are paid for your degree. But many advisors will permit this. And, I hope, most universities.

I know of at least one such case, but here, the candidate had to make several trips between the US and UK to make it happen. The degree was awarded in UK. The student and advisor were also able to meet at international conferences in this case.

But communication is normally needed, so don't neglect that.

Most likely you would need to start in the country of the university and would almost certainly be required to return for the thesis defense. But the work itself can probably be carried out anywhere. A good local library might be a requirement, which would give you access to needed background papers.


Is there a correlation between GRE scores and family income? I've heard a claim recently that GRE scores correlate more strongly with family income levels rather than academic success. Is there any validity to this claim?  Does anyone know of any study correlating GRE scores with this factor?

According to this article on the Fair Test website,

  The GRE is particularly susceptible to the influence of socioeconomic class. ETS' own research has shown a strong relationship between family background and test scores. One study of applicants who scored between 750 and 800 on the exam found that only 4% of these high-scoring test-takers had fathers who had not completed high school; around half had fathers with bachelor's degrees or more, and of these, a whopping 90% had fathers with graduate or professional degrees. When family income was held constant, most of the test score differences between races disappeared or shrank dramatically.

The correlation between GRE scores and future academic success is much lower, according to the same source.

  The ability of the GRE to predict first-year graduate grades is incredibly weak, according to data from the test's manufacturer. In one ETS study of 12,000 test takers, the exam accounted for a mere 9% of the differences (or variation) among students' first-year grades.2 Undergraduate grades proved to be a stronger predictor of academic success, explaining 14% of the variation in graduate school grades. An independent non-ETS study found an even weaker relationship between test scores and academic achievement - just 6% of the variation in grades could be predicted by GRE scores.


Having a hard time understanding reviewer's comment I received a major revision decision from IEEE Transactions and one of the reviewer comments is as follows:
"With the defined optimization problem and optimization method, wouldn't this yield a closed-form solution to the problem? How is this described?"
I do not understand the question which prevents me to write the appropriate response. Can anyone please explain what does the reviewer want out of this comment and how should I respond to it.
Thanks

A closed-form solution solves a problem in terms of a finite number of functions/operations from a "standard" set. If your method solves the optimization problem in a defined number of steps, it could potentially be described as closed form. In which case, you could describe this by writing the algorithm as pseudocode and/or providing equations establishing that your solution is closed form. It's likely that adding or substantially revising content is expected as you've been asked to make major revisions.
If your solution is closed-form, I think the main consideration is if whether that adds to the focus of your paper. If it isn't relevant, it'd probably be best to include pseudocode/equations in an appendix. You could also reply that "it's a closed form solution for insert reasons; however, we don't think that extended discussion will add to the focus of the paper (insert paper focus)".
If your solution is not closed-form, reply that "the solution is not closed form as insert reasons".
If you're still unsure and have asked your colleagues, I would reply that "we're unsure specifically what you're asking". Ideally, this would be followed by comments addressing a couple of possible interpretations.


Will taking no courses from physical sciences as an undergrad affect my chances of going to grad school for mathematics in the US? I have been admitted to a 4-year B.S. in Mathematics program in an Asian country. The mathematics courses are excellent and at par with the finest universities in the United States and there will a generous number of courses from the humanities. All the same, there is a provision for taking 7 more single-semester courses, to get a minor (alternately, I could dabble in many other subjects other than math).

I was wondering if taking a total of 7 courses in English and Economics instead of courses like physics, chemistry and biology could seriously affect my application when I apply to grad school in the US for PhD in mathematics. I would almost certainly apply to  good grad schools like UChicago and Berkeley depending on my interests.

  Will taking no courses from physical sciences as an undergrad affect
  my chances of going to grad school for mathematics in the US?

If you're applying to a pure math program, then it's unlikely that graduate admissions boards will be expecting courses in a particular outside discipline. If you're doing applied math, however, it would be much more logical to expect to see some coursework in an outside discipline.

However, economics may be suitable as an "outside" discipline if you're taking advanced coursework with a mathematical bent to it.

But overall, demonstrating that you are a strong candidate will make a much bigger impact than the specific training you have. Research experience, a strong statement of purpose, and great letters of recommendation will increase your chances of admission much more than if your "off-subject" courses are in economics or physics.


Writing ads to attract female PhD candidates As a researcher in computing science in Western Europe, I get depressed seeing the number of female students in our department. (Hint: near-zero.)

I recently heard that certain words in a PhD candidate ad seem to "scare" female applicants off, for example, "excellent", "commitment", etc. (I got my information from our anti-discrimination representative and a female researcher. I did not check the information myself. The latter claims having spoken to students herself. I agree that the ad is not the only problem with skewed gender distribution, but if this contributes to the problem then I definitely want to eliminate it.)

Is there a list of DOs and DONTs when writing ads to ensure that female students are encouraged to apply?

It is believed that the use of "gendered" language in job ads can make ads appeal more to men or women [1]. See no reason that this should not also apply to ads for PhD students.

There are several websites that claim to test your job Ads for gender bias based on the word lists in [1].

E.g.

http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/

or

https://www.totaljobs.com/insidejob/gender-bias-decoder/

The other common advice is to avoid specifying requirements that are not really requirements, but actually nice-to-haves. Widely cited research [2] suggests that men are far more likely than women to apply for a job even if they don't meet all of the requirements. So for example, if you say that you require students to have taken a class in X, but when it actually comes to it you get no good applicants that have, but decide to take a student who is really good in all other ways, but does not have class X, then class X shouldn't be specified as a requirement, but a nice-to-have. Saying in your ad that applicants must have X is then biasing against women.

Mind you, I always follow all this advice (the gender checkers even rate my ads as slightly feminine bias), but I still get next to no female applicants.

[1] Gaucher, Friesen, and Kay, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2011, Vol 101(1)

[2] https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified


How to handle dislike of/lack-of-interest in sub-specialty of research area I am a PhD student studying in a field that I enjoy. Furthermore, I enjoy the area within the field that I am specializing in. However, my specialty generally has two major application arenas, which in some ways are disjoint. I came to the program knowing I would be working in one of them, sub-specialty A, despite having no prior experience in it. I did have experience in the other, sub-specialty B, but the faculty in my department who work in sub-specialty B either didn't have openings or didn't see me as a fit for their group (i.e. they didn't support my application).

I arrived planning to give sub-specialty A a fair shake, as I honestly knew little about it and for all I knew I'd enjoy it. After a semester, I am finding it hard to stay interested in the research, and this feeling is compounded by the frustration of feeling like I have to start over in the field. It's also tough watching my peers work on problems of sub-specialty B that I find so much more interesting than my work in sub-specialty A.

I know a PhD is the start, not the end, of a career, and that what you do during it is not what you have to do for the rest of your life, but, that being said, I do have to spend 4-6 years working with this material.

How does one handle this sort of situation? Is it appropriate to bring up my concerns with my adviser? Could trying to bring in a co-adviser from sub-specialty B be a feasible way to bridge the gap between the sub-specialties? (NOTE: It's worth mentioning that this is literally the only problem I am having with my PhD; the school is great, the cohort is great, and my adviser is great) Have other people been in these circumstances? If so, what did you do about it?

How does one handle this sort of situation? Is it appropriate to bring up my concerns with my adviser?

YES. That is exactly how one handles this sort of situation.

Try something like the following:

  I knew coming in that I'd be working on A, and I thought I'd enjoy it. But after a semester, I'm feeling.... How do you suggest I move forward?

and see where that gets you.

  Should I wait until I've published a first-author paper in this sub-specialty first, so that I can veritably say that I have definitely given it a shot?

If you believe you've given it a fair shot, there's no reason to wait to voice these concerns (in a professional manner). There's no "milestone" at which point you can say "I definitely don't enjoy this area" - there will always be more things to try. The reason to speak to your advisor is that he may be able to advise you on what to try next.


U.S. grading system: Why discrete grades? Background

In the U.S., many colleges adopt an A–F grading scheme, topped with pluses and minuses.

Professors vary in the way they assign A to F grades, but my sense is most rely on discrete “bins”. For example, some professors use relative grading and (roughly) give an A to the top third or the class, a B to the second third, etc. Others will give an A to students who get between, say, 100% and 95%, and A− to students between 94% and 90%, a B+ to students between 86% and 89%, etc.

Using discrete bins necessarily implies some knife-edge cases where a student is right at the border with the next bin, and it would have taken very little for that student to jump into that next bin and improve their letter grade by one “level”.

That would be all fine (I guess) if letters where only honorary titles, and what mattered was the actual underlying percentage grade. However, in most places (i.e., all the places I know), it is the letter grade – and never the percentage grade itself – that is attached to the student’s academic record.

This could be an issue per se if a student wanted to show proficiency in a particular topic and got, for example, an A− that was in fact very close to an A. That student’s academic record will forever show very good but not perfect for that course, whereas it should really indicate almost perfect. This creates understandable frustrations from students who nearly made it.

Things get even worst when averaging through different courses and computing one’s GPA, since most colleges then use a scheme like the following one:

A: 4.00
A−: 3.67
B+: 3.33
B: 3.00
B−: 2.67
C+: 2.33
…

Again, this means that the half of a percent a student needed to jump from an A− to A will have a significant effect on that student's GPA, where really, the effect of getting one more half of a percent should be negligible, regardless of the baseline percentage one is starting from.

In a world where GPAs are taken so seriously, this means that half of a percent can make a significant difference in a student’s life and career. Again, this can create understandable frustrations for students who nearly made it.

My question

I know that there are “palliatives” to deal with the discrete grading scale and avoid some of these knife-edge cases, such as rounding up decimals. In all fairness, I don’t think those are real solutions (rounding up decimals just moves the problem from one threshold to another), but that's not what I am interested in here.

What I would like to know is:

Are there any arguments in favor of using a discrete grading scheme like the one above?
Or is just a product of history and the difficulty to coordinate practices across the vast number of U.S. colleges?

In other words, is anyone claiming that the discrete scale has virtues of its own other than the fact that it is used in so many places – creating comparability –, and that it would be hard to coordinate a change at all those places at once?

I am in favor of using the US discrete grade system. Some thoughts I will address are as follows:

As the OP mentions, in the US, the ABC grade system is relatively standardized and well understood by a large variety of institutions. It makes comparisons among students from a variety of schools more compatible (although, yes, not perfectly comparable).

Beyond this, I feel that the ABC system delivers the appropriate amount of granularity. After all, you have to truncate grade percentages somewhere. In some sense every system is discrete.

One method that I have used for my students in math classes in the US is a clustering system guided by the grade cutoffs. The percentages are guarantees. After that, I cluster students into grade groups, with students who barely missed the cutoff still usually getting adjusted up. For example, let's say that we have the following percentages:

  93.23%, 93.17%, 92.88%, 92.81%, 92.08%

I would give the first four students A's and the final student an A- under normal circumstances. (It is usually more nuanced than that). I feel that the grades I gave my students usually very accurately described their proficiency relative to the stated outcomes of the course.  This was also vastly true when I was a student. In fact there were times where I would prefer to take my A grade than my raw percentage. An 'A' sounds much better than "I got 83% raw, but I was the second highest grade in the course."

In my opinion, the ABC system actually is a stronger system than a raw percentage system. Is a 95% in Dr. Haskin's Calculus I class better than a 97% in Dr. Bodrel's Calculus I course? Both would result in an A grade. Or how would a 97% in Calculus I compare to a 97% in Floral Design? By using the ABC system, we effectively run a sort of "low-pass" filter on the grades. In my opinion this actually allows for a fairer comparison between students.

Let me also add that having a raw percentage system would be awful from the perspective of an instructor. Students already anguish about their grades. Now picture if they had to anguish about not just getting an A, but getting 100%. You would end up having students with 98% in the course worrying about getting 99%. It just becomes excessively fiddly. As a former student myself, I would actually hate a raw system. I was grateful for being able to get an A with 94% in a class without having to worry about pushing it up to a 95%.

I will close by saying that school and grades are not always fair. Such is life. No matter what system you use, there will be drawbacks from one perspective or another. There is no system that is perfect.

Addendum: Several comments have mentioned thoughts on being graded relative to others. Note first that my proposed method never moves a student down a grade, only up. Several comments seem to overlook that.

  @BartoszKP: "You are grading not 'their proficiency relative to the stated outcomes,' but 'their proficiency relative to the stated outcomes and relative to other students.' Did other students doing well make this student suddenly know less?"

How could raising a grade indicate a student "knew less"? It seems that raising a grade would actually indicate a student knew more.

I guess I could grade students solely on their raw scores, 100ths of a percent be damned. Then students would be graded with less relativity to their peers. But wasn't such a "zero-tolerance of rounding up" system one of the named drawbacks of the ABC system? It seems like we are trying to play both ends of the flute here. I can see that it would be patently unfair if I rounded students down a grade. I must say though, I have never had a student complain about being graded "relative" to their peers when I rounded their grade slightly up.

Secondly, to continue the thoughts on being graded relative to one's peers, we need to keep in mind that it is next to impossible to provide students from current semesters the identical exam experience as students from previous semesters encountered. By adjusting scores within semester, this can help control for slight variations in exam difficulty from semester to semester. Note that I do not always have complete control over exams, since they often must be written on teams with other professors. All told, which system seems more "fair," a system that does not control at all for variability in exam writing styles or a system that attempts to account for that?


How to cite a Linkedin Profile in IEEE format? The IEEE standard specifies said format for all website citations:

  World Wide Web

  Author(s). “Title.” Internet: complete URL, date
  updated [date accessed]. M. Duncan. “Engineering Concepts on Ice.
  Internet: www.iceengg.edu/staff.html, Oct. 25, 2000 [Nov. 29, 2003].

In particular to Linkedin profiles, the format I decided on so far looks like this:

  John Doe. "John Doe." Internet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndoe/, 2017. [Nov. 10, 2017]

Is this the correct format for a linkedin profile?

Print a copy of the document as a pdf, and host the document on your public Dropbox directory. Then cite it as a webpage, corresponding to the location of Dropbox directory.


Research between different campuses of the same university I was recently applying for a tenure track position at a university.  I had found people who had adjacent research interests, and thought it would be good to mention them as possible collaborators for research.  However, I just found out that these researchers work at a different, smaller campus under the same university structure.
How common is collaboration between different campuses of the same university? To clarify, in my case,this isn't a state university either (for example,university of X- cityA vs university of X- cityB... these do tend to feel more like separate universities altogether), but rather a private university with various campuses and satellite locations. I'm sure that this is dependent on the university culture, but I wanted to see if anyone had any experience with this.

With the growing prevalence of networking technology, collaboration is easier than it ever has been before. I would think that collaboration across two campuses of the same university would be even easier. It is very probable that funding and resources can be more easily shared and that graduate students will have even an easier time working in such collaboration. I see nothing that would impede collaboration here.
I have worked with a national lab (which, although not a university, can at least somewhat resemble academia a little bit) that had two locations. We collaborated commonly between campuses. It made funding considerations quite simple and we produced quality research.


Should I send professors money for illegally downloading their books? I illegally download almost all the books I need for my studies. While I'm more than happy to give a middle finger to the publisher mafia, it does of course mean that the author of the book is not appropriately compensated for their work.

But: it is well-known that professors do not make substantial amounts of money for each copy sold of their textbook. Perhaps 5–15 % of the sales price of each unit sold. This usually corresponds to roughly 5–10 dollars.

With that in mind, would it be appropriate to simply send those odd 10 dollars to the author of the book that I am illegally downloading? If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

With that in mind, would it be appropriate to simply send those odd 10 dollars to the author of the book that I am illegally downloading?

First, I would be concerned about your legal exposure. You would be effectively admitting piracy.

Second, you cannot unilaterally change the terms of sale. When the professor published the book, they agreed to sell it through the publisher in exchange for certain terms. The legal and (in my view) ethical options are to accept or decline these terms; you cannot invent and execute your own terms instead, even if they seem reasonable. In short, this is a rationalization. (That said, I personally am sympathetic to your concerns about publishing companies exploiting college students.)

Thus, the "appropriate" thing to do is to buy the books through legal channels.

  If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

Not a professor, but I have taught and written a book with thousands of copies sold. I'm sure I am losing money due to piracy, but I have never received a payment like you describe.

Realistically, if I were to receive cash anonymously, I would probably chuckle and pocket the cash, or maybe set it aside for a few years to see if anything came of it.
If I received money from a known student, I would be very concerned about the appearance of impropriety, and would not accept it. I would also be concerned about whether I should report the piracy, though I probably wouldn't.
If this "caught on" and I was receiving a non-negligible amount of money from many pirates, I would have to talk to the publisher and seek guidance.


How to get letters of recommendation when you work alone There are a number of questions on this site about lacking (good) references from people who know your work, but none seem to address a situation where you lack references because there never were any people who know your work: Due to the nature of the department and especially the projects my supervisor is responsible for, I work entirely alone. This means that after one year I have no one whom I can say "knows" what I can do. Whom do I turn to for references in the case that I work entirely alone and I'm too new for anyone to be familiar with me?

On a given job application site, for example, I have to provide not just one but three references. In my case, even getting one is uncertain because my supervisor is only aware of my work on a superficial level. My previous degree was finished 5 years ago, so I doubt that my supervisor from back then could provide much of a reference, either. The job I held before starting was also for only a very short period, as was the one before that...

Addendum 29/10/2017: I am leaving the department, so I do not have much time to cultivate any possible sources of recommendation letters; I have to make due with the relationships I currently have, which are very few.

I think the elephant in the room is that, in your case, your issues finding letter writers is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem. You not only fail to collaborate in your research (which, in many disciplines, would be a severe career hindrance all by itself), you appear to not even communicate what you do sufficiently. I understand that situations come up where collaboration with the faculty in your own university simply does not happen, but if literally nobody (inside or outside your institution) is aware of what you are doing and how it is going, then why are you getting paid a stipend to do it in the first place?

So to answer your question:

  This means that after one year I have no one whom I can say "knows" what I can do. Whom do I turn to for references in the case that I work entirely alone and I'm too new for anyone to be familiar with me?

Change this immediately, not primarily because you don't have somebody to turn to to write a letter, but because you will not have success on the job market anyway if nobody knows what you do. Network internally and externally. Give talks. Go to conferences. Actively look for collaboration opportunities. If you are just one year in, you have plenty of time, but now is definitely the time to start becoming more proactive.

Note that a letter writer does not necessarily need to be deeply embedded into your daily work to write an effective letter. If an experienced researcher has broadly observed what challenges you work on, how you work, what your best research contributions were, etc., they will be able to write you a letter. You don't need to meet with a letter writer multiple times a week - just seeing you give a department seminar twice a year and chatting occasionally in the hallway may already go a long way towards being able to write a letter, if no more suitable options present themselves.


Academic Positions: Following a campus visit, when are referees contacted? I`ve had my phone interview followed by a campus visit for a tenure faculty position. I was wondering if anyone has an experience as for when references are usually contacted?. This is in reference to universities in the U.S.
Thanks,

In my experience, with universities that are often considered to be among the top 50 institutions in North America, referees will be contacted prior to a campus visit. Often times the decision to invite someone for a campus visit is expensive - time and $$$ - and universities/departments use as much information as they can get beforehand to decide on inviting a candidate for a visit.


Publishing research software that was developed by professional programmers - attribution ettiquette I wish to publish a software platform that was developed for a research project. The usage-logic and user interface design were largely specified by the academic team, but the code was written by professional software engineers.
Is there known precedence for this? (citations)
And how would the community tend to handle attribution?

EDIT (due to request for more information):
Software engineers did not make 'creative' contributions, in other words they received a brief and executed it. One could argue that they acted much like a physical research service provider, for instance technicians who install/manage research equipment in labs. The main confusion is that the publication directly concerns the software. The research for which it was built is reported in another paper.

What I was hoping for here was some reference to existing publications with a similar focus, to see guiding examples.

If the software engineers made a direct contribution to the research product, then the should be listed as authors on the paper.


What is an example graduate admission grading system? How much is GPA weighted? It is said in a variety of sources that the graduate admission committee uses a grading system. For example, if the total score is 10, the adcomm will assign 6 points to research and recommendation, 2 points to GRE, and 2 points to GPA. It is also heard that GPA is only used for the initial screen because different school grades differently.

So my question is, where I can find an example grading scheme? i.e. How much is GPA, GRE, research, and recommendation weighted? I need to know what is the best thing to work on for the grad admission.

Don't bother looking for a magic formula. Everything that is considered by the committee matters, and it's unlikely that you'll ever find someone who will tell you explicitly a specific cutoff for GPA or GRE that will get you in, because you could have a high GPA but lousy letters of recommendation or vice versa, and neither case will likely result in admission.

Moreover, many schools will not operate on such a system, particularly in smaller departments that do not have huge numbers of applicants. I know that I've never used such a system at any of the institutions I've worked at.

So the best advice, trite as it is, is to try to work on everything. It's more important to find someone who's willing to champion your application in the admissions committee than try to "check boxes." You never know what it is that will get you in—perhaps someone's letter of recommendation resonates because he or she was a classmate or personal friend of someone on the committee, or perhaps you expressed an interest in your personal statement that attracted the attention of someone looking for a new graduate student. (And, of course, a high GPA never really hurts.)


GRE verbal: Score per Question Is there any exact or approximate measure for the score of each question in GRE verbal?

Can I estimate my verbal score for answering n questions correctly?

No. The GRE is an adaptive exam. Different test-takers are given a second section of varying difficulty, depending on how well they scored in the first section. If you get a section with more difficult questions, they will be scaled differently than if you would have answered easy questions.

The number of questions you answer correctly on the Verbal and Quantitative sections become your "raw score" for each section. Then,

  The raw score is converted to a scaled score through a process known as equating. The equating process accounts for minor variations in difficulty among the different test editions as well as the differences in difficulty introduced by the section-level adaptation. Thus a given scaled score for a particular measure reflects the same level of performance regardless of which second section was selected and when the test was taken.

You have no way of knowing how your scaled score will be computed based only the number of questions you answered correctly, because it also depends on the difficulty of the section you took.

(Reference: How the Test Is Scored, ETS)


My research work stolen and published as his own by the co-author without my consent My research paper was stolen by the co-author and published as his own. What do I do? All the  data the paper is based on is my own work. I got it accepted in another journal but now I cannot get it published according to the copyright terms and conditions.

Let me echo scaaahu's excellent advice: Calm down.  Obviously you're scared, and with good reason, but you need to approach the situation calmly and professionally.  Otherwise, even if you are in the right it will be difficult for other people to take your concerns seriously.

Your comments suggest (to me) that the situation is not as straightforward as your initial post describes.  Without considerably more detail about what  happened — which would be inappropriate for you to post here — it's difficult to make specific suggestions.

I think you need to discuss the situation with someone who understands both the politics in your department and the publication culture in your field.  Find another senior faculty member in your department (or in a different department, or in the dean's office) who you can trust to keep confidence.  (Yes, this can be difficult, but ask around.)  Write up a timeline of events in advance, and make copies of documentation for each event in the timeline.  Calmly and carefully describe the situation.  Just present the facts; don't panic, and don't accuse.  (One of the facts is "I'm scared"; that's okay.)  Ask your confidant how to proceed.  Listen to them.

In the best case, this is a simple misunderstanding, and talking to an informed but neutral third party is the best way to convince you to relax.  In the worst case, your department chair is being egregiously unethical, and in particular threatening your chances at graduation, in which case you absolutely need a senior faculty advocate to help you navigate the resulting political mine field.  (Your primary goal in this case should be to graduate and get out, not to optimize your grade or to punish your department chair.)  Most likely, the actual situation is somewhere in between those two extremes.

Good luck.


Are publishers making less money on textbooks now? A colleague of mine, who teaches chemistry, claims that these days, sales of copies of college textbooks are no longer profitable for publishers. He says that their revenue is now from services, such as answer-checking services like MyMathLab. I asked him to provide a source for his claim, but he didn't. I have a pretty hard time believing this as stated, because his statements sound categorical and extreme. But is there at least some truth to this? Is there any way of knowing, since the publishers may not make the data available?

My suspicion is that a $280/copy o-chem text is even more profitable than it was before, because the online services can be used to force the students to give money to the publisher. Before the online services came along, a student could just buy a used book, which would put no money in the publisher's pocket. Now, the student may have no choice but to buy the book shrinkwrapped with a card providing access to the online service.

The publisher can also rent the book to students in electronic form, with a DRM scheme that makes the book evaporate after a year. This also helps to kill off the used book market.

To be honest, I'm not sure even to what extent a book can be seen as profitable separate from the online tools because of the ever tighter integration between the two. A number of textbooks in newer editions have started offloading (er, onloading? uploading?) activities that would traditionally be in the textbook to online systems.  This is especially egregious with audio or video activities that used to come on CD/tape/VHS/DVD, and now are only accessible online (those materials are important for us in foreign languages).

And to really drive home the point that they are considered to be a single unit, I've used at least two textbooks now in the past few years for which the physical book + e-book + online tools cost less than the physical book alone.

So I guess in that sense, you could say that the online tools are where the money are (because that's where they're pushing people), but it's not like they could discard the textbook and just sell the online tools, at least in my field.  A good book can go without online tools, but the other way around isn't so true.

Now there is a trend to goto single-use sells, and again, it's easy to conflate that with the online portion (and hard to fully separate out the economics of it without detailed numbers none of us have): they've always been able to grab people on single-use sells via workbooks, but now I notice there's a small trend to try to integrate textbooks with workbooks in a single print to reemphasize the formers' single use nature, with or without an online system.


Valuation of existing Systematic Literature reviews before starting a new one I will start a systematic literature review of my research topic. Before embarking on this venture, I searched for already existing systematic reviews, mapping or survey papers but I have not found any literature review or survey that directly relates to my topic although I have found many surveys which are related to one aspect of my research area but not whole. (e.g. my topic is Methods of Y in Z. I have found existing reviews related to Methods of Y but they do not cover Z.)

I have been taking notes from these papers as I read them. Now my question is: What would be the value of these existing reviews in my literature review? Can I refer these to justify my review with the fact that they do not cover my whole research area? or refer some interesting points raised by existing reviews in my review?

Yes and yes:

"Can I refer these to justify my review with the fact that they do not cover my whole research area?" When publishing any scholarly research, it is important to demonstrate the originality of your work. If you can show that people have done work similar to yours yet not quite on topic or not as comprehensive, then it shows that you are aware of other scholars' work and that you are clear on your unique contribution to the body of related literature.

"or refer some interesting points raised by existing reviews in my review?" Since the other reviews are similar, then certainly you should summarize and quote them on aspects that do have some bearing to your own topic. After all, you probably learned something from reading them that informed your own work; you should present these parts to your readers for their learning as well.


How to get good recommendation when working under a phd student as an undergraduate I am not sure whether this is normal. I worked under a PhD student last year and I don't think I had any contact with prof.

After I finished my work last year, we arranged a meeting so I could present my work directly to the prof. Back then, the Prof acknowledged my work and decided to provide a reference.

Ok. Here is the problem. As you can see, I am primarily working under a PhD student, and I almost never talked to the prof directly (except during our only meeting). I think he has a good impression of me. But the problem is that the Letter of Recommendation should usually come from someone who knows you well, which isn't in my case. So the question is, is it normal for a undergraduate student involved in research, to have very little contact with the prof? Is it normal for this to happen?

My country is Canada, and I worked on a robotic research project. My role was to  set up a platform for the PhD student so that he could implement his algorithm (which is the main part of the research). In fact, Phd student and I have published a paper together (offcourse, with the prof's name on it as well).

As O.R. Mapper notes, this may vary by country. Undergraduates will usually have much less contact with professors than graduate students, because of the sheer numbers of students involved - professors don't have infinite time to meet with each undergrad for an hour every week.

That said, even German professors write letters of recommendation for undergrads once in a while (e.g., for student grants). Usually, they will get their information from the graduate students that do have a lot of contact with the undergrad. For instance, they may ask the grad student to draft the letter of recommendation, then review, improve and sign it. That way, the undergrad gets a recommendation written by someone who actually knows him and may have more time to invest in the letter than a busy professor, and the grad student gets a little experience in writing letters of recommendation (which is a good preparation for later academic life), and everything is done under the supervision of the professor.

Bottom line: your situation is routine. Don't worry. Just do a good job, and your letter will be fine.


How many papers does a mathematician publish (on average) in a year? I wondered about the number of papers published by mathematicians because I heard that they publish less than other academics or scientist.
It would be nice if you could distinguish between the number of papers published by PhDs, Postdocs or Professors.

This varies on a lot of things (e.g., by field and what kind of institution someone is at), however, there have been various studies.  For instance Figure VII (p70) of this study (which seems a bit strange to me) graphs the annual number of papers per mathematician and their most recent data (2005-2008) appears to put the average just under 0.7 for "high-exposure mathematicians" and 0.2 for "low-exposure mathematicians."

That said, things vary a lot by area and what one considers as "research active."  I would guess that it rather pure, theoretical areas (which I am most familiar with), among people I consider professors research active 1-2 papers/year is pretty typical.  For postdocs I imagine the average is < 1/year (including those who are not "research successful") and for US PhD students < 0.2/year (most PhD students probably don't have anything published by the time they graduate, though they may have 1-2 preprints).


Why do we not introduce the concepts and professions of "Academia" to younger students? I'm a first-year student at a private university in America. One of my classes for my first semester is essentially our English General Education requirement - it's called "Rhetoric & Composition". However, the class completely surpassed my expectations of the depth of discussion that would be had - we are learning a lot about research, academic integrity, academic "conversations" and professional mediums like academic journals and papers.

In our first unit we wrote rhetorical summaries of a few articles, our second unit had us researching different areas of health in refugee camps - a specific research area. Now, in our third unit, we're really delving into research - focused on the subject of cosmopolitanism vs. patriotism.

Our professor started today with a presentation on research in general - showing us the process of discovery, how researchers commit their lives to just a few academic ideas and submit their new perspectives on the world for ruthless critique by their peers... It was a very eye-opening discussion on how the real world works, where our cultural and scientific ideas come from, and why I'm even here, at college.

My question is... why did it take me eighteen years to receive this discussion? Why did our education system wait until adulthood to tell me these things: how ideas are discovered, why people go to graduate school...

Frankly I think education on "academia" should be a big part of your primary schooling. Ask an elementary schooler what they want to be when they grow up, and you'll probably get an answer of "firefighter" or "astronaut" or "doctor". Ask any high-schooler and most won't be able to tell you, because they know those easy answers aren't what they want but they don't know how most other professions work: as many as 75% of college students enter undecided on a major or change their major at least once. If we educate students on how academia works, where new knowledge comes from, they can start developing a well-informed decision on their career - whether it be in research or applying knowledge to a profession.

Our present high school english classes largely educate us on classic and modern literature - both fictional and non-fiction narratives or other types of creative works. Why not provide a better balance with academic english? Showing youth how degree-professions really work could inspire more to pursue higher education as opposed to stopping after high school because "why should I continue learning this boring literature and math and history when I could just go get a job and pursue my hobbies?" (Which is not a bad way to lead a life - but if  someone has academic potential, we shouldn't be discouraging them like this.)

My aim with this question is primarily to open discussion about it, but I still think it's suitable for the stack exchange format. An accepted answer would look like an actual discussion/debate/set of arguments from political bodies or researchers or really anything that's  established, but I like the idea of opening the discussion because all insights are valuable.

In terms of work:

Because the world is gigantic and varied and for all its intriguing features, academia is only a small part of it.

Think about your high school cohort and where they ended up. Some of them are seeking a baccalaureate degree. Many aren't. Some of the latter group are in trades, others working retail or food-service, others health or other personal service, others finance, and so on. The number that will even so much as consider a career in academia is tiny; the number that will actually achieve one even smaller. Why, then, privilege academic work?

In terms of information sources:

I do think it would be worthwhile for more high-school-age students to be taught a little epistemology ("how we know what we know") with specific reference to academic research. This happens to some extent with science fairs and National History Day and so on, but more would be welcome!

Again, though, academic research is only one information source among many... and given how much of it is paywalled away from everyone who isn't a career academic, what's the point of making a big deal out of it to people who mostly won't ever have access to it?


Is there other way to get into more advanced study of math, with a low GPA? I am a second-year undergraduate majoring in mathematics. In my first year of studies, I didn't do really well on my exams and therefore my results were not good, with a GPA at around 2. I didn't really put time into it, but when I started learning advanced probability, I found that I am interested in it and want to study more and am even thinking of doing research. Also I think I have found my way to study math as I didn't quite do before. In that semester, I got 2 A+. In my school, I heard that people who apply for a master's degree normally have a first-class honors degree. Is there another way to get into more advanced study of math, even with a low GPA?

Admissions committees (at least in the US) are generally forgiving of low grades in your first year, especially if you (and your recommendation letters) tell a compelling story about hitting your groove/finding your passion for the material in your second year.  Keep your grades up, get some undergraduate research experience, and you'll be fine.


How to cite the same author multiples times in IEEE style? For example:

According to Smith [5]...

For the second reference to the same author, would I write the following:

[5] argues that...

Is it appropriate to begin a sentence with a bracket?  Can someone please show me the correct options for referencing the same author multiple times?

In the IEEE style, and more generally in numeric citation styles, one only rarely writes the author names.
I'd thus rewrite the first sentence as

According to [5] [...]

Starting a sentence with a citation may not be inappropriate but may reduce readability (this kind of issues if frequently fixed by the copy editor anyway). I'd thus rewrite your second sentence as

In [5] it is argued that [...]


Prolonging undergraduate school to do research I am an electrical engineering (communications) undergraduate student. But my main interest is physics ( and/or CS, esp. it's common fields with physics - but it doesn't affect my question here ), and I want to pursue my graduate studies in physics or computer science. However for application, as an engineering student  I'm at a disadvantage as

I think my major is not considered rigorous enough by people in those fields
I don't have much (official) coursework in those fields, although I have studied (and am studying) even more than is expected from physics majors
because of the time I've put in studying ( and more importantly, exploring different areas of) physics and computer science,  my GPA so far is not good in electrical engineering.

So with these circumstances, I think the best or maybe the only way is to continue my studies in physics (and/or related areas) more seriously to do more rather good quality research projects and this way, show my ability and qualification for graduate studies in physics (and/or CS).

But, doing so I'll need more time for these additional studies and projects, and  I think I have to stay one year more at undergraduate school (5 years). Is this considered a negative point in application for graduate school?

No.

Nobody cares how long you took to graduate.  There is no advantage to graduating early, and there is no disadvantage to graduating late.  It is extremely common for students to take more than four years to get an undergraduate degree, especially if they change majors, as you are effectively doing.


How do I tell whether I need another advisor? I am a second year PhD student in math. I recently feel miserable working with my current advisor so I am considering switching advisor or adding a second advisor.

A few problems I can think of at this moment which make me want another advisor include:

He constantly forgets meeting. For example, I schedule it with him on Wednesday. He would probably forget it on Friday. Of course this is minor if I send out a reminder in the morning on the day...
I feel he is not able to suggest me good references or offer help. I am surely not an independent enough student that can work on my own yet. I kept desperately seeking answers online, asking everywhere, and probably spamming the authors who wrote the papers... This is probably the right way of doing research, but I doubt whether I could speed up my progress a bit if I could get more help from my advisor.
I guess one reason also for the last paragraph is he is giving me something that he is not very familiar with. I believe this is probably the case with most advisors. But once I tried to search for a long time and just could not find an object in the problem that he suggested me, and it turned out he remembered it wrong... I just wish he could be less careless.

I actually kind of transferred following my advisor to this university, so I tried to work with him since I came here, though I actually did not really start working with him in my previous school and came here as a first year student. I always thought seeking for another advisor would again take effort, and the miseries come and go, so I just did not do anything with it.

What I am thinking now is, if everything like the above is normal for a math advisor, then I would like to convince myself and go along with it. My miseries are probably just what I need to bare to do math, but If it is not, I really hope to get more help and support from my advisor for my next a few years in grad school. I guess one direct reason why I am posting this is I have not made any progress reading one paper (not even doing a problem) since 3 or 4 months ago. I could not answer my advisor's questions about the paper perfectly as he wants and he would not let me move on. I do not really see the meaning of doing it and he could not give any suggestions, and I started to hate the math and lost motivations, so I think I definitely want some adjustment, either real or mental.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

He constantly forgets meeting.

That's normal (and perhaps a good sign). You need to take control and establish a procedure to ensure meetings take place. (It's perhaps a good sign, since it suggests your supervisor is busy.

  I feel he is not able to suggest me good references or offer help.

For good references, that's probably normal: You've been conducting research for over one year and your knowledge of the research domain now exceeds your supervisor's, hence, you are more familiar with the good references. An exception arises if the good references are unspecialised, but that doesn't seem to be the case, since "he is giving me something that he is not very familiar with."

For offer help, you'll need to provide more context. As it stands, I cannot judge whether the degree of help is normal.

  once I...could not find [what] he suggested me, and it turned out he remembered it wrong

That's normal, he's human.

  I guess one direct reason why I am posting this is I have not made any progress reading one paper (not even doing a problem) since 3 or 4 months ago.

This is perhaps your real problem.

  I could not answer my advisor's questions about the paper perfectly as
  he wants and he would not let me move on.

That's good; you probably need to understand the material before you move on.

  I do not really see the meaning of doing it

Why not?

  and he could not give any suggestions,

What suggestions do you expect?

  and lost motivations,

See elsewhere on this forum for questions regarding lost motivation.


How to approach principal investigators for internship/job positions What would you recommend as the best way of approach principal investigators for internship/job positions? I'm undergrad, with a planned graduation this winter and I want to get some experience before grad school.

Should I try 'cold' messaging? I want to go abroad and I'm not well networked there.
I've been on exchange and performed rather well. Can I use this experience to my benefit?

(Somewhat less important) Ideally I'm looking for research experience in Computational Neuroscience. I already have some research experience, I've done graduate work and I majored in cognitive science and mathematics but I come from a Liberal Arts & Sciences college. Will my LAS background be seen as a disadvantage?

The absolute best way to approach someone to work in his group is to be recommended by another researcher in his field, preferably someone he has heard off previously. So, either a big name or someone with close or overlapping research interests.

So, I would advise you to approach some of the professors in the field you are interested in, at your current institution, and ask them if they know a research group or a professor meeting your criteria. Try to be flexible when you discuss possible names/places with them, to gather a relatively large list, even if you later decide against some of these names. Once you have decided on a few names, either you can get your professors to contact them for you or, barring that, you can contact the abroad PI and mention your shared acquaintance.


Rebuttal in a journal Recently our paper was rejected in an journal.

Now, after two resubmissions a Reviewer was not satisfied and the editor sent it to an independent reviewer, who was satisfied with our previous revisions.

But now he asked a new set of comments and thereby the editor rejected it.
Our main objection is that the new comments were based on a comment bya  Reviewer and was already answered in the first resubmission.

So is there any chance for rebuttal as the editor already gave 2 chances for resubmission before? and as the independent reviewer has misunderstood the work and is asking the same question?

Only the editor who rejected the paper can respond to this. But before you send it, be sure that you have somehow addressed all of the objections and improved the paper based on any helpful reviews.

You don't have to actually do what a reviewer would like, as you still have ownership of the work, but you do need to consider them in any revision. But don't just put in "a few lines" out of context or in rebuttal. Weave any updates into the text. I doubt if you have done this, but including a comment in a paper like "In response to a reviewer we would like to add..." is awkward. That stands out both for the editor and later the reader.

You can send the editor your best version and ask for reconsideration, but it is up to him/her. If you don't get a positive response, consider submitting elsewhere.


What are the disadvantages of having postdocs or visitor in the lab? I have seen professors clearly stating that they do not accept visitor students or postdocs.

So, what are the disadvantages of having such positions?

This can vary a lot from professor to professor or even school to school. Some ideas:

Cost. This varies heavily from school to school. At some schools, tuition is waived for graduate students but not for visiting students, and the professor would have to pay tuition for a visiting student. If tuition is waived and the professor only has to pay the research stipend, the graduate student stipend is typically cheaper than the postdoctoral stipend. If visiting students come from abroad, there can also be immigration costs and living stipend requirements that the professor must provide for.
Training time vs. research produced How long it takes to train someone varies from field to field. In my field, it's probably about a year of training before you can really pull your own weight. If you're a visiting student who will only be here for one year, you might be a net-drain on the research production in the group: we spend a lot of time training you, and then you immediately leave. What do we get for that sunk time?
Fear of being scooped. Less so for a postdoc, but with a visiting student present for a short time, some professors in highly competitive fields might be concerned that the visiting student will go back to their "main" lab and work on very similar projects, potentially scooping the group that hosted them.
Desire to focus on graduate students. Some professors especially later in their career, enjoy mentoring and working to develop new scientists. Often you see the most progress and development from graduate students, who are with you longer and have had less training. For some professors, this can be very gratifying.
Minimizing group turnover and recruiting. Some professors might prefer to have students for longer periods of time, to allow them to focus more on research and less on the periphery of recruiting and training new members, especially if professors are retired or near retirement. Graduate students are typically around for 4-7 years, whereas visiting students may be around for as little as 8-10weeks, or postdocs only 1.5-3 years.
Transitioning into retirement. Some professors when they are considering retirement will try to focus exclusively on getting their last few graduate students finished with the program. (On the other hand, some professors might prefer postdocs who could more easily be pushed off into a job whenever they decide to retire.)

Edit: If you're seeing this on a website, the professor may not have a standing rule against visitors or postdocs, but may simply not have room or funding for them right now.


What are unique job titles in academia called? Occasionally a university gives a famous professor a job title individually designed for that one person only.  Thus:

Donald Knuth is "Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming" at Stanford.
Gian-Carlo Rota was "Professor of Applied Mathematics and Philosophy" at M.I.T., although he had an appointment only in the mathematics department.

Is there a common noun referring to such custom-designed job titles for rare famous professors?

PS inspired by things written below: This is not the same as an endowed chair or a distinguished professorship.  Some universities use the titled of "Distinguished Professor" and have rules saying only a limited number of professors can have that title; some universitites call the appointees "University Professors"; M.I.T. calls them "Institute Professors" (Isadore Singer in the math department is an Institute Professor). But with Distinguished Professors there is some codified rule saying these can exist and setting forth certain criteria for granting such a title.  Similarly for endowed chairs.  Knuth's title was based on the name of an influential and famous three-volume work on computer programming that Knuth had written; it would be absurd to promulgate a rule saying who might be appointed to this position in the future and according to which criteria, since it's a title that can fit only one person.  Nor could it have been contemplated in Rota's case that others might some day have that title; it was awarded only because of the unique circumstances of Rota's life.

In the United States, these types of "one-off" titles are typically given as a stage of promotion beyond full professorship.  The typical generic name would be "chaired professor," "distinguished professor," or "titled professor."  This is a rank that many faculty never reach, and typically the highest rank that a professor can achieve in the university as a professor---any further "promotion" is actually a change of position into management, e.g., dean, provost, president.

Such positions often come with a set of funds dedicated to support them, giving the faculty promoted to the position additional freedom of operation.  Often the exact title is set by the person or organization that endows support for the position.  For example, my thesis advisor is the "Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering" at MIT, meaning that his particular "one-off" position was endowed by the Panasonic corporation.  Such ties, however, typically mean little besides the name.


Google scholar citation count, There's a researcher whose work I'm studying, and I was curious and looked him up; Google Scholar says that he has 16,000 ish citations.  But when I scroll through his publications on Google Scholar, some of his top papers have a couple hundred citations only.  That can't possibly add up to 16,000.  So, how is that total number actually derived?

Google Scholar sometimes counts different papers with similar names into the same publication (marked with an asterisk*) -- these usually add up the citations from multiple papers, which might or might not even belong to the same author. Some scholars also just rack up a lot of citations from spreading themselves out with quantity. It's just as possible that he's published a lot of papers with hundreds of citations.


Is it possible to hire graduate students as freelancers? I am currently working in the engineering industry. I am developing software in this field in my free time. I got stuck in some algorithm, and I'm looking for help from academia (either professors or students).

Is it possible to hire professors or students from universities to develop an algorithm for me?
Do universities have some kind of forum to invite projects for its researchers?

(I also considered the option to hire from popular websites for freelancers; however, it is difficult to find many people who freelance in engineering. My budget is  between 500 USD to 1000 USD for around 10 hours of work.)

While people are, perhaps rightly, poking at your estimate of how long this will take and your budget, yes, its entirely possible to hire graduate students as freelancers. I worked on several projects during my graduate career as a consultant or freelancer. Generally speaking, there aren't great university resources for it, though you might contact a professor who works in the area to see if he or she have any students who might be interested in a consulting gig.


How can I fix a relationship with a professor that has recently cooled? What would be a good way to overcome bad experiences with a professor in my department, who is not my main advisor, but from whom I would like to get advice regularly?

During the first year of my PhD, I worked with the Professor in a class on a project that I didn't perform well on (because I was not very interested in that particular project + I didn't feel very confident on the topic by that time). Our relationship has cooled down since, and he was even debating whether or not to put me as a co-author on the paper that came out of the project with multiple students. (the authoring-issue is not part of this question; I mention it to describe the status of our relationship)

Now in my second year of my PhD, I realize that it would be quite valuable to have his advice on other projects that I work on, potentially even as a co-advisor, but I fear I messed up the relationship too badly.

What would be a good approach to overcome the bad/non-existing relationship? Or would that be a waste of time and I'd rather look for someone else, which could potentially even mean I need to change the focus of my PhD?

My general impression is that professors quite like giving advice (it's almost a job requirement...) but are incredibly busy. I would thus suggest you do not try to change 'your relationship' but focus on the task at hand, i.e. directly but politely ask whether your professor would be available to give you some advice.

Of course there is the possibility that your relationship is so bad that your professor will not even consider meeting with you. In that case I would not try to change his/her mind. Just treat it as a lost cause and move on.

In the more likely scenario of you managing to schedule a meeting it's important you are prepared and respectful of his/her time clearly signaling to your professor that his/her advice will be not be wasted. If you are clueless about your questions that will quickly signal to your professor that s/he is wasting her time. If however you seem genuinely interested and it looks like you are indeed benefiting from the advice I wouldn't be surprised if your relationship improves significantly and could even develop into something more formal like that of a co-advisor.

Either way: simply ask that you would like some advice, ideally explaining what makes his/her advice valuable to you. You'll find out how to proceed after that. Good luck!


Recommendation letters post master's I'm presently in a master's program. The program is much more relevant to the area I wish to do a PhD in (I switched majors from Bachelor's->Master's). I took two recommendation letters from my undergraduate institution to apply for master's, but the strong one was about a relatively unrelated subfield and I have not kept touch with the professor in question due to the switch. I'll be applying 3 years post undergrad. In this situation, can I forego the folklore rule of 1 letter of recommendation from an undergrad university ?

I don't see much value in a letter from an old relationship that is no longer relevant. Your recent work will almost certainly be considered more heavily than anything you did as an undergraduate. (Extraordinary cases aside.)
Get letters from those who know your work and can make a (positive) prediction about your likelihood of success in the new program. That probably means professors and/or advisors from your MS program.


How can I show the admission board that I'm better than my academic record says I'm a last year student of a degree in mathematics ( and another in physics) in Spain.

I'm starting graduate education next year and I need some advices on how to improve my chances to get into graduate programmes.

Here in Spain the grading system is based almost entirely in exams in which I'm not very good at. I will explain this, since I don't want to sound like I'm complaining.

I have some concentration issues while working under pressure so I loose stupid points that matter a lot in the academic world. Somehow it is very hard to me to detect mistakes in these situations and fix them.

I'm writing this because working on my own I managed to get quite a high level in some topics that I'm interested in. This could be confirmed by some  teachers that spent some time talking with me.

I think I could function in academia for a number of reasons:

My supervisor thinks my thesis is promising and advanced.
I participated in summer schools (research oriented) having really good results. Some speakers are willing to write a recommendation letter for me.
The few hand out problems that I get to do here usually are marked as A.
Classmates rely on me when the need to understand some subject related to my interests. They appreciate my way of thinking.

I'd love to learn how to show this in my applications. How can I tell the universities that maybe I'm better than what my academic record says?

Abellán,

I grew up and attended college in Spain myself, then jumped to the US for a Ph.D. and been here for 20 years already. So I know the Spanish system well and have first-hard experience with the transition.

Your best bet is the recommendation letters. You really have to make sure that they come from people that know you well and that can speak at length and in depth about your qualities and potential. Letters from Spain don't always go to this level of depth; it would be best if your letter writers have had prior experience with this (of course not at the expense of their knowledge of you).

Letters are very important--the most consistently underrated component of an application by the students in my experience.

@lafemmecosmique's advice is very good. The best way to make your letters look outstanding is to do outstanding work with the people that will write them.

Good luck to you.


Should I write a rebuttal for all for the reviewers or just the rejecting reviewers? From a computer science conference, I have received 4 reviews. Two of the reviewers have accepted the article and have appreciated the work, while the other two have given "weak reject". The conference has asked us to submit a rebuttal within 3 days (seems a hard deadline; but it is okay).

My question is:

Should I write the rebuttal for all the reviews?
or
Should I write the rebuttal for the comments on the weak-reject decisions?

You should address comments from all the reviewers, but focus on responding to the negative reviews.

Also, it's always good to say something generic like "we thank all four reviewers for their time and thoughtful comments".

If the reviews include questions, definitely respond to those questions. If the reviews include helpful suggestions, acknowledge them and say that you will implement them in the final version.

When responding to the negative reviews, acknowledge what they have said and then explain why you think differently. Avoid sounding combative.


Student asks TA if his result (figure) is correct I'm TAing a class that uses Piazza (an online student forum), in addition to the traditional office hours. A student made a (private) post, where he uploaded a MATLAB figure and asked whether it is correct. The figure is what the first question of the homework assignment asks for.

Am I supposed to tell him whether his answer is correct/wrong? Especially over an online forum?

I don't think so, because that would be giving out the solution. How do I reply without sounding "mean"? Do I tell him to come to office hours instead?

(It's my first time TAing ever...)

Welcome to the most standard "trick" students use to get answers out of professors/TAs :).

My answer is as a professor, but I think the basic principle works for TAs as well. What I usually do is turn the question back to them. Something like:

  S: Is this answer correct ?

  Me: Well, what do you think ?

now things can go in different ways:

case 1: S says "well I'm not sure". In which case you can say, "well how might you go about verifying that your answer is correct" ? this might then lead to a discussion of how to check answers without you having to commit to commenting on their particular answer.

case 2: S says "Well I think it's correct". Then you can say "Ok then :). I understand that you think it's correct" and leave it at that.

They might persist and say "can you tell me if you think it's correct". At which point you can say "No, but how would you go about checking its correctness" taking you back to case 1 and the "methodology" of checking.

The underlying pedagogical point is this: you don't want students checking answer correctness with you ahead of time because

a) learning to check your own answers is an important part of learning. It allows you to diagnose problems and identify the correct path to an answer.

b) it's unfair to those who don't ask, and it's a waste of your time

c) using this socratic approach allows you to assess how they are approaching the problem, and allows you to guide them in their approach, rather than spoonfeeding a prescribed answer. Everyone approaches problems differently.

p.s Students often also ask for hints. The material I teach is usually mathematical, so they're asking for hints for a proof. There you have some more leeway, but the trick is to draw them out into explaining their thought process, and then trying to gently nudge them without revealing the answer. It takes some practice and a lot of Socratic dialogue.


Why would an international applicant with a perfect GPA and an undergraduate thesis get rejected from 16 grad schools? I applied to 16 graduate schools for this coming fall. I am a transfer student at a Top 10 Public US school. I had GPA 4.00 at the time I applied (Not yet took graduate course yet, but I wrote that I would have taken 8 graduate courses at the time I applied).
I didn't have the REU (but I was proceeded algebraic geometry research thesis), and a few experience of presentations. I am an international male applicant.
The person who wrote my letter of recommendation is famous/reputable (one Fields medallist and one very famous mathematician of algebraic geometry). But, I couldn't hit any of the graduate schools (including the Top 50-60 US math department schools). I am not sure what was the reason I can't get into any of the graduate schools to which other students in my school were admitted.
What can I do to improve my prospect of getting into any graduate schools?

I can suggest two possibilities and a possible solution.
First, your English writing seems awkward, so possibly you didn't express yourself well or made many misspellings. It is Fields Medal, by the way. This might have blown up your statement of purpose, which can be quite important.
Second, it is possible that the "famous mathematicians" wrote you mediocre letters of recommendation. I wonder how well they know you and your work. What they say about you is probably much more important than who they are for these purposes.
You can address both of those issues in various ways, but I also suggest that you simply broaden your search. Send a few applications, tailored to the individual institutions, but cover the full range of R1 universities (and maybe even some R2 places), not just the top of the range.


A year + for first review, one referee report in, want to withdraw paper A paper of mine has been under review for more than a year now. About 6 months ago I heard from the journal that one referee report is in while they are waiting for the 2nd. The editor promised he would get in touch with the Associate Editor to speed up the process.

In any case, nothing has happened until now.

I am thinking of withdrawing the paper citing excessively long review times. Could I ask for the one review that the journal received on my paper?

What is a good way to frame the withdrawal email with the request for the journal office to be kind enough to share at least the single referee's report they received?

I actually had a similar situation some years ago. I don't think my experience is very useful, but I will briefly recap it in any case.

I submitted a paper to a journal in October 2009. In April 2010, after several requests, I was told that one referee had given a report, and the journal was still waiting on the second report. The journal then sent me the report at that time (in April), though I gather that was not standard procedure, and as far as I can see, I did not explicitly ask for it, though I had been repeatedly asking for feedback of any kind. The journal wrote:

  In fact, we got a report from the first referee. The referee's opinion
  is rather negative. As a rule, we do not send a negative report before
  we get a report from the second referee. Taking into account your
  will, we send the first referee report to you - please find it below.

  SInce we have not yet got the second referee report,
  there is no editorial decision concerning your paper.
  We hope to receive the second referee report in April.

I don't know exactly what was meant by "taking into account your will".

The second report never arrived, and I withdrew my paper in September 2010, slightly less than a year after submitting it.

I suggest that you ask your journal for the one report. You might want to wait on withdrawing it till you hear what the report says. You could say that you would like to use the first report to improve the paper while waiting for the second.

If they refuse, I guess you could then say that you are withdrawing the paper, and then ask for the report again. If you are going to withdraw the paper, this marks the end of the process from the journal's point of view, and I don't see why they would refuse feedback that might help you. Of course, they might refuse regardless. I imagine that individual journals would have different policies about such things.


My former prof switched university and now I can't ask him in person for a LOR - should I try to see him? My former prof switched university and now I can't ask him in person for a letter of recommendation - should I try to see him in person? I've read on here that asking him via email might not be the best approach.

I could travel to that city - I have a friend living there - but it's not close and I am not sure how important it is I see him in person. I also don't want to annoy my professor with this, so I'm not sure.

The problem is only that it's been 2 years since I studied with him, and I did not do research with him, just submitted an excellent essay. So I think it would probably be good to remind him a bit of who I am. What would you advise me to do?

edit: It's not a duplicate of Should I ask my professor by email or in person, I'm asking whether travelling to that professor in order to see him in person is overkill.

I don't think a visit is necessary (and I don't see where in the linked thread it says otherwise). Even if you were to visit him, you would contact him first to make an appointment, presumably by email.

Why not send a mail in which you both ask for a letter of recommendation and whether the prof would like to talk to you to refresh his memory (be it in person or on the phone)?


When referring to races, should 'black' and 'white' be capitalized? (MLA) I was assigned to write about the relationship between poverty and crime, and in my research, race came up as a factor. I'm supposed to use the MLA format. Should 'black' and 'white' be capitalized when referring to the respective races? I see that APA specifies that they should be capitalized, but I can't find anything for MLA.

Firstly, the MLA has the following on its website;

When Merriam-Webster indicates that a term is “capitalized” or
“usually capitalized,” the MLA capitalizes the term in its
publications. When Merriam-Webster indicates that a term is “often
capitalized,” our practice varies. We usually lowercase sun, moon, and
earth, but, following The Chicago Manual of Style, when the does not
precede the name of the planet, when earth is not part of an idiomatic
expression, or when other planets are mentioned, we capitalize earth:
The earth revolves around the sun.
The astronauts landed on the moon.
The space shuttle will return to Earth next year.
The four planets closest to the sun—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—compose the inner solar system.

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Part of the Definition for black

(1) often capitalized:  of or relating to any of various population groups having dark pigmentation of the skin  (black Americans) (2) :  of or relating to the African-American people or their culture (black literature) (a black college) (black pride) (black studies)

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary Part of the definition for white

a :  being a member of a group or race characterized by light pigmentation of the skin

This makes no reference to capitalization. From the MLA definition it appears that they should be lower case.
This MLA stylesheet also says;

Capitalization in MLA style is mostly conventional, with the
exceptions noted below.  Generally, specific designations are
capitalized, as in the American West. But more general
designations--or designations used as adjectives--are lowercased: The
western United States, eastern Europe.

The names of ethnic or racial groups are capitalized if they represent a geographical region or language group. For example,
Hispanic, Asian, African American, Appalachian.
Terms based only on color, direction, size, habitat, customs, or local usage are usually lowercased

Irrespective of the above, as per guifa, Ben Crowell, and ff524 comments, a number of other factors can also be considered in making a decision to capitalise or not such as

Those that read MLA will be pretty flexible so you can always explain your choice in a footnote. It's actually quite common to do that with certain terminology issues. For example, you could say "In this paper, for [insert reason], we/I capitalize all adjetives referencing ethnic or racial groups."
You could preface an article on this kind of topic with an explanation of your usage and why it suits your purposes.
Capitalization can be field specific (even irrespective of the citation style). For example, in medicine lowercase is used most often, while uppercase is often used in some social science fields.


Applying to PhD programs in mathematics: would a letter of recommendation from my department chair at the community college be of any advantage? I finished my MS in mathematics 5 years ago.  Over these years I have been teaching at a community college (primarily calculus 1,2,3 with analytical geometry and Ordinary Diff. Eqs).  When I was in my masters program I was having trouble narrowing my interests and decided to stop at my masters and start teaching. During this time as an instructor I have become very interested in some applied mathematics (biology in particular).  I plan to apply to several PhD programs in the near future.   With that said, I didn't keep in touch with too many people from the university I attended.  I did stay in touch with a couple of my professors (on a minimal basis) and plan to ask them for letters of recommendation.

My questions...

Would a letter of recommendation from my department chair at the community college be of any advantage (and even suffice as 1 of the 3 required)?  Or should I call a professor from 5-7 years ago that may remember the grade they gave me?  To me the latter seems very generic and I feel my department chair could say more about my dedication to mathematics and teaching.

Thanks!

I agree, the letter from your current department is likely to be more meaningful than a letter from someone who barely remembers you. The people reading your file will immediately recognize you as a "non-traditional" applicant (i.e., not straight out of undergrad), and will not be surprised that the letters in your file do not follow the pattern of traditional applicants.

While many employer letters are utterly dispensable in graduate admissions, it's a different story when the employer is a math department, "even" at a CC. Chances are that some of your target departments (at least those that combine pure and applied math) are struggling to staff their remedial courses. Slightly cynically speaking, they will be happy to have an instructor with faculty-level experience and TA-level salary (in addition to research prospects).


Why would a grad school make admission offers prior to the deadline? The University of Illinois physics PhD deadline is January 15th. When I submitted on January 1st I got an email confirming submission and it included the following:

  "Committee reviews will begin immediately after the application deadline, January 15 for Fall term. Admissions decisions are typically completed by March 15 for Fall admission. Decisions will be sent to you via e-mail."

However, the GradCafe results board shows that multiple applicants received offers within days of applying.

The more I think about it, the more this doesn't make sense for the program to do. Aren't they missing out on potentially more qualified applicants who are busy and haven't applied yet (deadline isn't for another 5 days)? What if these offers they are sending out BEFORE the deadline are accepted? They are reducing the number of spots in their program.

Sending offers too late to a very good applicant also involves the risk that the applicant will accept a different offer, and the university will lose out. Very good applicants also tend to receive many offers, so this risk should not be underestimated.

Similarly to the case of hiring employees at a company, if a university wants to admit the best students, the optimal strategy would probably be to make sure to admit the very best applicants as quickly as possible, while delaying the decision for the "good but not best" applicants until the end of the deadline, in case someone better shows up. The difference between study programs and hiring processes is that universities have plenty of statistics from previous years that let them know what a "great" applicant is and what a "good" applicant is, so the could optimize this process much more if they wanted.

In the German system, some universities have this explicitly built into their admission procedure. For example, at the Technical University of Munich, great applicants are immediately admitted, and good applicants are invited to an interview:

  In the initial stages, the grades you obtained during your Bachelor's program, as well as your written documents, will be evaluated using a point system. Depending on the number of points accumulated, applicants are either immediately admitted, rejected or invited to a 20 minute admissions interview carried out by the department faculty.


Personal quote at the beginning of a PhD thesis? Is it appropriate to put at the beginning of my PhD thesis a personal quote that very few people would understand ? Could it make my work seem not serious ?

More specifically, it would be lyrics from a song that reflects a personal problem , that my phd helped me to deal with eventually. There is no direct link with the actual content about my research. It just feels right to me to acknowledge what these 4 years of phd brought to my life, beyond pure scientific aspects.
 99% of the people reading my thesis would not understand the meaning, and it may even sound quite cryptic for them.

Yes, it is appropriate and harmless. At worst, it will be ignored, and at best, it will serve to remind readers of your thesis that you are human, and maybe that they are, too.

More generally, academia.se seems to have many questions that follow the template "Is it appropriate to do [insert completely innocuous but slightly nonconformist action that isn't mindlessly emulating the way everybody else in academia does something]?" The answer to such questions is generally Yes. Moreover, for what it's worth, I personally have a favorable view of people who are not afraid to do things in a slightly unconventional way, and I'm sure there are others who take the same view as me.


How necessary is research for a collegiate teaching job? I am finishing up a PhD and looking toward teaching. I have a Masters in Math, Masters in Computer Science and am finishing up a PhD in Computational Science. I am wondering how important research is to academia jobs.

I love to teach and am very good at it and I could honestly see myself teaching for the rest of my life and not doing research (writing paper, presenting at conferences, etc is very stressful for me). My question is how important is research to getting a job in academia. For example, I see one person at my university is an associate professor and does no have a PhD. Is this person publishing?

Are full-time professors at community colleges publishing and active in on-going research?

Are there ways to become a full-time, tenured professor without a great track record for research?

Yes, it is possible.  Of course, you will probably teach more than you would if you were in a "traditional" professhorship (with teaching and research), but if you love teaching, maybe that is great.

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education has some useful statements, to wit:

  research and writing are not part of a faculty member's typical workday at a two-year college.

Also:

  The good news is that the vast majority of two-year colleges do not require faculty members to publish a single word in order to earn tenure.  [...] most community colleges do still offer tenure. In many state systems, earning tenure is simply a matter of doing your job in a satisfactory manner for a set period of time—generally, three to five years.

There are also positions at four-year liberal-arts colleges that are primarily teaching-oriented.


Should recommendation letters be from the home university of a student? Possible Duplicate:
  Does a recommendation have to be from a professor from your university?

I am applying to an applied math graduate program in the US. I frequently interact with professors from other institutions. Some are from math departments and others are from other departments. Could they write letters of recommendation for me?

Yes, they could write letters for you.  In fact, strong letters from faculty outside your home department or university will likely help your application.

One caveat, though: A strong recommendation letter must praise your potential for research in applied mathematics, not just in the writer's native discipline, in specific and credible detail.  Moreover, it must be clear that the writer has the expertise to judge that potential; that expertise may not be clear from their departmental affiliation alone.  So you should consider asking your references to include a short paragraph in their letter, explaining their own applied math background (either as a researcher themselves or as a reference for past successful grad students).


Study of code share practices in science I am searching for a study that presents statistics of how often you can get code that claims to be available in scientific communities. I found the following interesting study, which is very similar to what I am looking for: http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/

However, this one is specific to computer science, and I wonder if something similar has been done in biology, physics or other research areas. I appreciate your hints and clues.

This study is more qualitative than quantitative but might provide you with some more information about the scientific software space.

James Howison, Ewa Deelman, Michael J. McLennan, Rafael Ferreira da Silva, James D. Herbsleb; Understanding the scientific software ecosystem and its impact: Current and future measures. Res Eval 2015; 24 (4): 454-470. doi: 10.1093/reseval/rvv014


How best to use "downtime" during undergraduate research Due to the nature of my research, I find myself waiting many hours for my computer program to finish running in order to find more bugs in my code so that I can debug. I generally have a pretty good idea on the big picture of my project and what the next two or three tasks I have to complete are.

As an undergraduate, I am not directing my own research but I feel that I'm not using my time as well as I can during these "downtimes". There's a lot I don't understand in my project, so my mind wanders and I end up reading textbooks or general papers in hopes that I can increase my base knowledge in my field. This base knowledge doesn't directly benefit my capabilities in this project though.

I also journal my thoughts and keep a constantly updated TODO list and list of questions I have which I work on, but I feel a sense of slow progress as I wait. Things I can do for example is read the library documentation or practice GDB debugging, etc. Of these things, I am not sure if they will even be that helpful.

I kind of want to ask for more work, but at the same time, there are a lot of unsolved problems in my current project; it's just that I can't constantly work on it since I must wait for some response from my programs I run. Thus, I don't feel that it's right for me to ask for more work since I can't even wrap up the work I'm doing right now. Am I doing something wrong?

It's often a good idea to have multiple things to do in parallel on a project, so that if one avenue is blocked for a short period of time (e.g. waiting for code to run, waiting for a supervisor to return a draft paper with comments) you can put effort into another avenue.

The things you're already doing sound good. You are basically using your time well - spending some of your time enhancing your base knowledge and skills pays off in the long run. You just feel uncomfortable because you don't see immediate tangible payoff for your current project. There are things you can do while your code is running that have a tangible payoff i.e. they directly contribute to things that you will have to do for your project at some point in the near future:

working on the slides for the next presentation you will have to give (the parts that don't rely on the results of the code that's currently running)
adding to an ongoing draft of a report, paper, or poster that describes your work (the parts that don't rely on the results of the code that's currently running)
searching for and reading literature that is directly relevant to your project
data analysis: when your code finishes running, start the next "run" and analyze the data from the first run while that's going

You can spend most of your time on the thing that is most immediately important (e.g. fixing and running your code) but work on the others in parallel when that is blocked.

For bits of work you can do that generally advances your knowledge and abilities, but not necessarily specifically for your project, see What productive academic work can you do with minimal attention in a small (<30 minutes) block of time?


Have I embarassed my supervisors by solving a problem that a PhD student in my group was working on without success? I'm a bachelor student in mathematics writing my thesis at a small university in the US. A PhD student that has the same supervisor has spent a very significant amount of time working exclusively on a theorem which he hasn't been able to prove, so the supervisor offered me a thesis on the topic. No one was really expecting me to make any real progress, but everyone was very nice and enthusiastic.

It turned out that I was able to prove the theorem essentially straight away using a different approach to what they've tried. After this happened I've felt a distinct change in attitude towards me. There is no excitement, there is no discussion on how to strengthen or generalize the result and I generally get the feeling that they are pretty embarrassed about the whole situation.

The PhD student has a severe lack of publications and is probably feeling quite stressed because further progress on this problem seems unlikely. So what is my best plan of action here? Keep in mind that stepping on toes is the last thing I want to do given that I was hoping to pursue a PhD in this very department. How do I act diplomatically while at the same time making sure I get due credit for my achievements? Is it possible they will try to bully me out of first-authorship to protect the reputation of the PhD student?

First, if you haven't already, I suggest you have a discussion with your advisor about what to do with the result.  Is it worth writing up?  Is it worth trying to publish or try to go further?  If so, you should write it up and make sure there are no errors, and hopefully your advisor will be willing to help check over this.

  Is it possible they will try to bully me out of first-authorship to protect the reputation of the PhD student?

Anything it possible, but nothing you have said gives any indication anyone else thinks they should be a co-author for this result, assuming it is publishable.  It's common in math that a problem seems difficult from one perspective, but is easy from another.  This can always be a little embarrassing, but usually it's no big deal if you're dealing with reasonable mathematicians.  However, it may mean (for a variety of possible reasons) that the problem is less interesting to them than originally thought, and this could be part of what you're sensing.  I've often gotten excited about discovering things, only to realize later that they weren't so novel, or been interested in problems because I thought my methods could solve them then lost interest when I found out other methods are much better.

Anyway, hopefully an open chat with your advisor about this will clear things up.  I would not mention the PhD student in this discussion, just focus on the questions in my first paragraph.

Edit: I forgot to say, your situation may indicate that this department might not be your best option for a PhD (there may be a trend of weak grad students or not-on-the-ball advisors).


I am 58 years old, can I pursue a PhD? I am interested in doing a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at any of the premier American Universities. I have a postgraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, which I completed in 1983. I have about 30 years of working experience in India as an Industrial Engineer.

Well, I was 58 when I applied for the Ph.D. program from which I received my doctorate, so the answer is yes.