Is it usual to ask for several references for postdoc positions? I have seen postdoc job adverts which were asking for as many as three recommendation letters, despite being supervised positions and inviting freshly graduated PhD students.  Is this practice common and reasonable?

As a more practical question, how should an applicant deal with this situation?

It seems to me that it is not unusual that the only person a student worked with extensively is their advisor. In fact it would even seem like a good thing to have an advisor who does not lead a large group and has time to work closely with all their students. Yet such students would find it rather difficult to obtain three recommendation letters.

In my experience in Mathematics, three letters is very common.

So who to ask for these three letters? The better your letter writers know you and your work, the more meaningful their letters can be. But this does not mean that you must have worked closely for an extended period of time with them. Perhaps there are others that are familiar with your work, for example because they are on your thesis committee, or they have invited you to give a talk. Depending on the types of positions you are applying for, you can also have a letter that focuses on your teaching skills.

Finally, an advisor that has plenty of time to work with you, does not preclude you from also working with others. In fact, the value of building a network of colleagues cannot be underestimated. This does not necessarily mean collaboration with others, but it is important that you get out there so that your peers become aware of you and your results. These are the people that eventually may have to decide to hire you or not, or could write a letter for you.


Submitting theory papers to EECS conferences with hard 8/10 page limit Paraphrasing the 'Call for Papers' for the popular networks conference INFOCOM, submissions on a wide range of research topics, spanning both theoretical and systems research are invited. INFOCOM also has a hard 8 page limit on submissions including appendices etc.

For papers on the theoretical side / relying on proofs, the 8 page limit is far too short a span to submit self-contained papers. Is there a general protocol for submitting longer theory papers to such conferences which do not explicitly mention anything about an extended-paper being submittable alongside.

A common approach is to submit an extended version of the paper to arXiv containing all the additional material needed (e.g., full proofs), referencing the arXiv paper from the submitted conference paper for further details as necessary.

If that does not sound like a good idea, it might suggest that the paper is better submitted to another venue, or perhaps directly to a journal.

Edit: Just looking now specifically at INFOCOM requirements, peer review is double-blind, which means publishing on arXiv becomes more complicated (obviously you cannot reference an extended paper where the authors are given). What may perhaps work is to informally publish an extended version of the paper online (in a "neutral" location of course, not giving away the identity/affiliation of the author(s)) and reference that in the submitted version, then if the paper is accepted, consider publishing the arXiV version with author names and reference that from the camera ready version. Admittedly this gets more complex, where you should probably contact the PC chairs of the specific conference to see what it the norm in such cases.

Searching further in the case of INFOCOM:

  Papers with the same title and abstract should not be posted on a public website, such as arxiv.org, or transmitted via public mailing lists.
  We allow the use of an anonymous Microsoft OneDrive link for the reviewers to download an extended version of the submitted manuscript with details of mathematical proofs. Needless to say, the extended version of the submitted manuscript will need to be anonymized, following the guidelines above.   It is the responsibility of the authors to make the OneDrive link (and its content) anonymous, with respect to both the owner of the link and people who visit the link. The reviewers, however, are not obliged to read the extended manuscript when evaluating a submitted paper.


What tools make it easy to maintain (or avoid!) the N versions of your CV? Academics need various forms of their CV, depending on what purpose it's being used for. In my case, here are reasons I've had to re-format or have a different version of my CV:

promotion and tenure,
research proposals (each grant program requires a different format),
program accreditation for engineering universities,
my official web page at my university (with a French and English version).

It's a lot of busy work to maintain these CVs, especially as they evolve.

In Canada, there's a program in government-funded research to have a common format for CVs, called the Canadian Common CV. It's a great idea, but doesn't really solve the global problems. Not all funding organizations support it (or the same version of it).

Can anyone recommend tools that help in preparing academic CVs in various formats? Probably this means centralizing the information in one place and having it output in customizable formats. Obviously, there needs to be some understanding of the elements of an academic CV: publications, students supervised, grants awarded, community service, courses taught, distinguished awards, etc.

In addition to using LaTeX with a makefile, I find that using the LaTeX package splitbib is very useful. It allows you to format your publications with different subtitles for different category of publications, and you can pick and choose which entries from your publications (which I maintain as a BiBTeX file) should be included.

Since LaTeX allows you to include files, it's relatively easy to create separate files that contain the base material and then include them as needed in different formats.


What are typical formats of “scholarly work”? Regarding the meaning of scholarly works in a job application I found What are typical examples of scholarly works?
But I have been confused about the format of this document. Is it just listing my peer-reviewed paper and presentation? I have been asked to provide up to ten scholarly works and an overview of them and also "a complete list of publications." I do not know what I shall write exactly.

Yes, a simple list of citations of your scholarly works. In most fields, that's journal articles and books, in others it would also include conference papers. If you have a small list of papers, you could also include poster presentations.
Even if your field typically uses really brief citations, I would suggest something like APA with complete author names.
If possible, people often bold their names in the list of authors, or star their first/shared-first-author papers.


Is it acceptable to change affiliation to new employer when submitting an updated manuscript when old employer provided limited research support? Background: I have published a paper with no co-authors in a CS workshop a few months ago. I have put as my affiliation the place in which I was lecturing at that time, say university X. The work was made by myself, with no use of resources from my previous place of work. I applied for some financial help to cover the expenses that I suffered (registration for the workshop, tickets and accommodation), but they agreed only to give at most the 10% of the expenses roughly. This amount has not yet been paid.

I now work at a new university that is research oriented; and there is the opportunity to submit the research paper that I was doing to a journal, after some modifications. So I was wondering:

Is it acceptable to change my affiliation from my old university to the new university when submitting an updated manuscript?

This is mainly because the former one did not bring any kind of support for this research activity.

I would recommend to use both. If the journal differentiates "address" and "current address", then:

"address" is X (where you did the research)
"current address" is Y (that's where people can reach you now, right?)

If the journal doesn't distinguish them, I would put Y first (you seem to consider Y more important). If the journal doesn't allow two affiliations, them the journal is strange; just try to put both affiliations in the one field and see what happens.


What's the point in "the paper is structured as follows"? Inspired by the recent question on list of figures: what is the point of ending your introduction with a paragraph saying "The paper is structured as follows: in Section 1 we do BLAH, then in Section 2 we do BLAH, we move on with BLAH in Section 3, and conclude with Section 4 in which we do BLAH"?

Many papers in my area do it, my coauthors add them to our papers, and I kinda took the habit, too, but I never really understood why. It looks like a poor man's table of contents. After all, we already write what we plan to do in the introduction, and remind the reader in the conclusions.

Unlike Dave and Henry, I am going to argue against the style The paper is structured as follows..., though not against inclusion of content serving the same purpose.
Quite some time ago, I took to heart advice by Simon Peyton Jones on this, which can be found here (slide 19), also echoed by Sandro Etale in his advice on writing introductions. In essence it boils down to this:

Don't write The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the problem. Section 3 ... Finally, Section 8 concludes. That is most of the time only a waste of paper.
Instead, use forward references from the narrative in the introduction. The introduction (including the contributions) should survey the whole paper, and therefore forward reference every important part.

In a consequence, the position I take on this part of writing introduction is that while it is important to inform the reader about the structure of the paper so that he/she can take the path of few surprises and easily follow the discourse, it should be however done with style. Doing it in such a poor manner as "The paper is structured as follows ..." is simply bad literature. I would argue, that it is better to firstly, clearly state the contribution of the paper and then write up the paper's plot summary leading from the introduction to the culmination of the paper in supporting the claimed contributions and discussion. I mention the references to the individual sections, and sometimes even deeper structural parts, only in passing, or include them in parentheses.
On a similar note, regarding Conclusion section, I took to heart the advice of D. J. Bernstein on writing conclusions. Citing other authors, he suggest to simply drop the conclusions part from papers and put all the important conclusions into the introductory section. Well, unless there really is something important to say there. Since then, I conclude my papers either directly by a loose paragraph at the end of the Discussion section (renamed usually Discussion and final remarks), or if I feel like there is something important to say, by a standalone short section Final remarks. However, never re-iterating what was done in the paper. The reader is anyway free to "rewind/relist" in the paper (see the very last point by DJB).
P.S.
The links to homepages of the two guys include many more good tutorials on aspects of writing/research in computer science.


Awaiting Referee Selection in 11 weeks Recently, I have submitted a mathematical paper to a journal published by Taylor & Francis. After some days, the status of the paper was changed from Submitted to Journal to AWAITING REFEREE SELECTION. Up to now,  11 weeks passed but the status is still AWAITING REFEREE SELECTION. I have contacted to Editorial Office several but the result is not changed. How should we respond to them in this case?

There is little you can do, actually, and eleven weeks doesn't sound excessive. That is especially true if the number of potential reviewers is small, as for an esoteric paper. But kicking them more isn't going to get them to move any faster, and might make them move slower if they get upset. Adding to their workload by needing to respond to you doesn't speed them up, of course.

Some academics have a different schedule at the end of a year and the first of the new year, so that might account for the delay.

But they really have no incentive to slow it down and every incentive to make it work. If you have no trust in them, withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere, knowing that the clock restarts if you you do that.

There is also, possibly, some time delay in changing the status even after reviewers have been found.


Choosing an undergraduate research advisor I'm looking to complete a senior thesis (I would also want to do other research, but I doubt the viability of this) as an undergrad and I need help understanding how I would go about choosing the research advisor.
I am not really looking to do a masters/PhD as of right now, although this may change in a couple years. As of right now, I plan to go into the commercial market after college and would like to optimize for this.
Talking to some people in the workforce, I was told it would be very helpful to have a good thesis with an advisor that is well-known (high status) in the field. However, this seems to go against the prevailing sentiment on this site (1, 2). Why is it better to find a new prof rather than using a well-known prof?
Another problem is that undergrad research seems to be very infrequent (so there are maybe only 1 or 2 people I can ask about any specific prof a la this suggestion), so sampling bias is a large concern.
The third, and perhaps greatest concern, is I'm not sure what subfield I would like to work in (finishing all the lower division courses taught me almost nothing of actual use about the field, as there was a lot of hand-holding in those courses). Talking to some other students who went through this before me, I have heard that one should take a class with the professor before asking them to be one's research advisor (I thought this was BS and tried reaching out to profs, but got stonewalled - this seems to be systemic in my uni/dept). This only gives me a couple terms to take classes with different professors, trying to select classes where I get to both explore the field and get a good prof to research under. However, professors that tend to be more famous tend to teach more specialized classes where I don't get to explore as much. I am ok with pushing by GenEds out to take more classes in my major and explore right now, but am unclear on how to proceed beyond just choosing something that has an interesting title, hoping I'll like one of the 4 shots I have, and running with the best of the lot.
Any advice would be helpful.

Talking to some other students who went through this before me, I have heard that one should take a class with the professor before asking them to be one's research advisor (I thought this was BS and tried reaching out to profs, but got stonewalled - this seems to be systemic in my uni/dept).

Well, take it from a professor's point of view. They received an email from a student they don't know, who's only vaguely interested in their work. If you don't even know what subfield you're interested in, it's hard to write a convincing email explaining why you're interested in their work.
Mentoring an undergraduate is a time investment, not a time saver. So professors like to see motivated students who understand the problems they work on in their lab, which is part of the answer to your question below.

Why is it better to find a new prof rather than using a well-known prof?

Some people might say that older professors are busy as heck, and a newer professor might have more time to invest in a promising undergrad. Unfortunately, with COVID, finding a professor with time for an undergrad will be harder.
However, this isn't universal, and you should talk to previous students before assuming a professor is a good or bad mentor.
In summary, identify a few top professors, take their classes (as was suggested), and do well. That's at least a foot in the door to open the conversation.


Getting into gradschool from a "real job" I'm interested in going to grad-school but I have been working at a "real job" as a software engineer for the past few years (since I graduated with a BS in Math in 2010).  What are the best ways to to break back into the academic world?  How can I spin my work experience in a positive way to departments?

Ideally I would be getting a phd to study Mathy CS, or CSy Math.

We see a number of students who apply to graduate school after an undergraduate degree in math/cs followed by some years spent working at a not-any-realler-than-faculty job. In short, what admissions committees would like to know is:

what have you been doing since then, and in what way does it influence your current interests and desire for grad school
have you continued working on projects on the side ? (not a problem if not, but good if yes)

In other words, I don't view work experience as a negative in CS. In fact it's a bit of a positive because the student then usually knows what they want to do and is a lot more focused about it. There's a lot more maturity as well.


Is teaching experience of any value in a National Laboratory job? I know that national laboratories prioritize research work over teaching experience.  Of course, I have some research papers published in my name, but I also have over 4 years of professional (full time) mathematics teaching experience at the university level, which includes teaching a senior level and graduate level mathematics course.

Is my teaching experience of no importance/value to the national laboratories?  Is there a way I can sell my teaching experience as an asset to a research position in a national laboratory?

Preface: I worked at a US national laboratory for five years.

Under most circumstances, I don't see teaching experience being very useful in a national laboratory career. You won't lose anything by having it, but you're not likely to be able to spin it as a true "positive" in an interview. The only exceptions to this would be:

If you're going to be in a "customer service"-type position, where you are going to be working with people who are using the services or tools your team is providing.
You're in a position co-sponsored by a university, in which case you may have to do some teaching anyways.

Also, if you're invited in for a technical interview, you're almost certainly going to be interviewed by multiple technical staff members, so don't try to spin the teaching into something it's not; it won't win you any points with most of the staff members. (All of the staff members I had the fortune to work with had excellent BS detectors.)


How do I understand the main concepts in a paper by just skimming through it? What's the best method to understand the real concept that a paper is trying to explain?

Should one go through the paper as it is presented, from first page to last page? Is there a specific walk-through to understand it faster, such as first reading the result section, followed by the concept section, and then discussion/conclusion section? Is there a best practice to be followed?

If the paper is well written, then the abstract should tell you most of the story at a high level. Then the introduction should give more technical coverage again of the whole story – you should then know the problem and the results obtained, though not all the details. The remainder of the paper then will contain just the details.

Of course, most papers do not do that, so you may also need to read the conclusion, the discussion section, and perhaps any other introductory sections. In the end, you may need to read the whole paper before you get what it is about.

However, to really understand the paper, you will need to go through it very slowly, with pen and paper at hand, and try to replicate the reasoning/ideas given in the paper, filling in the gaps – possibly with the help of additional literature.

Not all papers need to be read so deeply. Reading just the abstract and maybe the introduction and conclusion should help you decide how deep to read the paper.


Can a single college course section be taught by two professors? For example, having half of the lessons taught by one professor, and the other half of the lessons taught by another professor.

If this isn't possible, why isn't it possible?  Can you provide any links to further information on how it's done (e.g. dividing the compensation)?

For several years I taught a doctoral level course with a colleague. We were both always present for every class. Each of us took a different "perspective" with the material. One of us would take the lead at any given moment and the other would comment as he felt inclined. Students could ask either of us questions at any time.

The course was very broad, but, generally speaking, centered on Agile Software Development, both its technical and managerial aspects. It was a bit broader than that implies, actually.

We were both salaried, as is typical in US, and each of us got "full credit" for a course taught. The course was considered important enough by the university that the pay issue was basically ignored.

Not every university would be willing to ignore pay issues, of course, and, I suspect, no university would make a general practice of it for many courses. Few would, anyway.


Italicization of mathematical symbols: quantity symbols vs units symbols The SI conventions state that variables and quantity symbols should be italicized, while unit symbols should be roman (see, e.g., this useful reference/cheat sheet).  For example,

Here the proton mass (m_p) is being used as a quantity.  But you could use the same quantity as a unit, in which case should you use a roman font?  For example,

Or is it really that SI units specifically should be in roman font, and everything else should be italicized?

The general approach (see e.g. NIST or IUPAC for sources) is to consider physical constants, such as the proton mass, as quantities. They are thus usually italicized, even when used as units.

Certain units, notably the electronvolt (eV) and the atomic mass unit (u), are considered so important that they are "accepted for use with the SI system", see the SI brochure. These should be given in roman type.


I want to quit my PhD and it's only been 6 weeks Long story short, I realise that I do not like the field of study I have chosen and I Cannot see myself having the ability to successfully complete a PhD in it. I studied physics and went onto enrol on an applied mathematics PhD- whilst it doesn't sound that far removed from physics, I am a physicist at heart and I do not have any enthusiasm for the field I thought I'd love.
I guess the number 1 rule was to listen to my true feelings- I feel genuinely depressed at the thought of having to carry out the work.
Moreover, I feel that my supervision team have taken far too much on as my principle supervisor takes over a week to reply to things I send them, even after they request I do so. I feel that the best option for me is to resign and take some time to evaluate what I really want to study--I'm a physicist at heart and still want to pursue a PhD, just not in applied maths. My question is two-fold:

How do I approach this with my supervisor?
Is it okay to quit a PhD?

Yes, it's OK to quit if what you signed up for is really not what you want (professionally). Plenty of people who start PhD's don't finish.
That said, in your particular case perhaps consider finishing the year. Use the time to learn the kind of applied mathematics you could use when (if) you return to physics. It's too late for your department to use your slot for someone else. They might save a little money if they are supporting you - but if you are earning that support by teaching or grading then your leaving has  no financial value to them.
I don't think you should decide this rashly. You should be able to talk about it with your advisor. Perhaps try to set up an appointment (virtual if necessary) rather than discussing in email.


Is it common that the last author gets all the credits when the work becomes hugely successful? Whenever I read news about some scientific breakthrough, names that come up are mostly of the group leaders, a.k.a. last authors. I believe in most cases, it is rightfully for the last author to get the credit. The first authors are usually inexperienced Ph.D. students who work under the guidance of their supervisor. Ideas from their first author papers mostly come from the last author, and they often only implement the ideas.

However, there are certainly cases where the first author is also the idea provider. Who will then get the credit when the work later becomes a huge success? How can the public then determine the contribution? What if the paper one day is considered for a Nobel prize? I am thinking about the CRISPR-Cas9 papers. It is speculated that the two last authors will be awarded the Nobel prizes. How about the first authors of that papers?

Note:  A Nobel prize here is just an extreme example that popped out of my mind during writing. I want to talk about more common situations where the group leaders go around the world and give talks about an innovative work, whose idea might actually came from a student. He might give the student full credit but in the eyes of the community he is still “the one” simply because the student is just a nobody.

There is no absolute way of assigning credit for a really groundbreaking project.  Depending on what is known of the laboratory dynamics where a discovery occurred and the roles of the specific individuals involved, sometimes graduate student contributors get a large part of the credit, sometimes not.  Here are a few examples of how things can play out, drawn from the list of Nobel Prizes for Physics:

The 1996 prize went to David Lee, Robert Richardson, and Douglas Osheroff for their discovery of superfluidity in He-3.  Osheroff was the graduate student who was doing most of the experimental work.  The original goal of the experiment was different, and Osheroff was the person who realized that they were seeing something very interesting and unexpected.  Because he was felt to have made a key intellectual contribution to the laboratory work, he shared in the Nobel Prize and other accolades.
The 1993 prize recognized the discovery of the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar, which could be used to measure orbital energy losses due to gravitational waves.  Russell Hulse shared the prize with Joseph Taylor, his dissertation advisor.
In contrast, when prizes are given to the work of very large collaborations, such as in the 2017 prize for LIGO's observation of gravitational waves, it is only possible to recognize the top individuals in the research collaboration—those who are felt to have made the key strategic decisions that led to the discovery.  Most of the junior contributors in such a large collaboration are doing work that, while it may be quite important, is only a relatively small and technical part of the project.  So the 2017 prize went to the three top (surviving) LIGO managers:  Rainier Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne.
Other times, even when the groups are smaller, sometimes it is felt that the driving force behind an important experimental accomplishment was the head of the laboratory.  This was the case for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001, given for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation, in two labs, one led by Wolfgang Ketterle, and the other by Carl Weiman and Eric Cornell.  Both groups had numerous graduate students, but the faculty leaders were felt to be predominantly responsible for the key design of the experiments, and so it was Ketterle, Weiman, and Cornell who got the Nobel Prize.

Moreover, the graduate students working on these projects, even when they are deemed by the scientific community to have been relatively minor contributors to the most groundbreaking results, can typically count on successful careers ahead of them.  Working a Nobel-Prize-winning (or otherwise widely recognized) project is a real advantage for one's academic reputation.  I personally knew most of the people in Wolfgang Ketterle's lab when he won the Nobel Prize, and they generally enjoyed very successful careers in either academia or industry.

Sometimes, however, there are still some recriminations afterward, in situations where graduate students may feel that their contributions have not been adequately recognized, and this can still be a real problem.  I think that for a long time, there has been a growing understanding of the importance of the contributions of the people actually performing the benchtop lab work that may lead to a discovery, but the situation is still by no means perfect.

For example, Cecil Powell was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for Physics on his own, for the discovery of pi mesons.  At the time, prior to 1960, the award was not given except to the heads of laboratories, meaning that the post-doc Cesar Lattes, who designed the photographic emulsion that observed the first pions, was left out of the prize.  He did, however, have a very distinguished subsequent career, and was one of the foremost members of the scientific community in his home country of Brazil.
Even more egregiously, Anthony Hewish claimed credit for the discovery of the first radio pulsar, even though he had initially dismissed the discovery by his student Jocelyn Bell Burnell.  Hewish got half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974, but Bell Burnell was shut out.  However, her contribution (and Hewish's unethical behavior) did eventually come to be understood in the scientific community, and she has enjoyed a career as one of the most prominent astrophysicists in the world.


Do your PhD fast or strong? I am in the middle of my PhD and have some strategic decisions to make. I have the opportunity to finish my PhD more rapid, although it would compromise some perspectives/research, it will still (probably) be accepted.

Alternatively, I can use my last year of PhD to research more to deliver a better overall PhD package, but then I would have to delay postdoc (and better pay).

My supervisor's concern is that my PhD delivery is important for future references, so it would be in my(ours) benefit to make it as strong as possible.

Is his suggestion valid? Would a stronger PhD delivery potentially be better on a "CV" than one year of postdoctoral research?

I think the quality of your research depends a lot on the quality of your environment. If you publish a few good papers, you have a higher chance to find a postdoc in a strong group and publish even more good papers, which will improve the chance to find a faculty position. No one will ask how long your PhD took. If you get lucky with your first postdoc, in the sense that you keep publishing high quality work with them, you may not have to do a second, or you would get a very strong second position and then obtain a faculty position.

On the other hand, if your intention is to eventually find a job in industry, or you already have some great opportunity, finishing early is a good idea. The extra-year would only give you more time to do a proper job search in this case.


Is an internship in theoretical physics valuable for me? I am planning to do an internship in a theoretical physics area for a year before applying for PhD. My current masters' thesis advisor (who is a hardcore experimentalist) warned me that I might not actually learn anything new in a theoretical intern, and that I will only end up solving some textbook problems. I was wondering how plausible this is, and if it is a strong possibility, how I can make sure that there is a significant addition to my skillset during my intern in theory. Anyone?

EDIT : This internship will NOT be a part of my M.Sc. I will be doing it to bolster my otherwise ordinary profile. I basically want to publish something or at least get a good recommendation letter before I apply for PhD.

Answering is an experimental physicist who had authored a few theoretical papers. I find the suggestion given to you incorrect (maybe voluntarily, as your MS advisor would like you to be his/her PhD student right away?). As a Master student, the level of work you will do is not limited much by your skills/knowledge, rather from your supervisor's wits and guidance. An excellent supervisor with a brilliant idea waiting to be executed can guide you to a very valuable research publication in three months or so. And of course you can be left in a corner with a textbook and generic instructions which will only leave you confused and isolated. It really depends on your supervisor and how much effort will you both put into it.


Extracurricular activities in cover letter I am a science PhD student applying for a workshop on documentaries and video art forms, organised for liberal arts students. In the past few years I worked part time as a reporter; in your opinion, what is the best way to describe my background?

What I have now is

  I am a PhD student in bla bla with [a passion for]/[experience in] journalism and multimedia storytelling

But I am not very happy of any of the solutions. Let me know if you have any tips on how to improve the phrase!

Your extracurricular activities are certainly relevant here, so you can just say what they have been.  You've done so quite clearly here:

  In the past few years I worked part time as a reporter.

Now just add a sentence that notes how this connects to your interest in the workshop, and you should be fine.


How can I validate a citation that is genuine in google scholar but as a *? Google Scholar may mark citation counts with an asterisk (*), meaning:

  This "Cited by" count includes citations to the following articles in Scholar. The ones marked * may be different from the article in the profile.

How can I validate citations in my Google Scholar account that are genuine but are marked with a *?

Why not just open the different articles, search for your name and see the citations for yourself? Usually, this is quickly done. If some of the articles are not available at your institution, it may be harder.


How To Professionally Address A Mental Breakdown I’ve been fairly strong throughout Covid, able to push myself to work every day (6-7 days x week) because my thesis project has been somewhat compromised by Covid that this is my unfortunate reality. However, we have just entered our country’s third lockdown recently and just yesterday - out of the blue - I broke for the first time in my life.
I won’t go into the details, and I’ve made efforts to reach out to a therapist.
I have signed a contract with another faculty member to work with them because my supervisor can no longer support me, and right now I am unpaid because of an agreement we made so that I could be paid “up front”, but I can no longer do this work given my extremely broken state of being. So in essence, I owe them hours, and I am currently on no income for the foreseeable future.
I am unsure how to communicate this in a professional manner, though, because I don’t want to hold the project back out of respect, and I also signed a contract. So I’m hoping to get some advice on the best way to approach this. Unfortunately, taking an official/medical leave of absence is not possible for me.

Ask your therapist before you do anything.  They may know something we do not.
If you have a union, they may know about local rules you need to follow.  Ask them.
Tell the faculty you have been ill.  They do not need to know the details of your illness.  Nearly all faculty know that illness, including mental illness, is a common occurrence and not under your control.


On a Conflict of Interest disclosure, what's the difference between 'ongoing' and 'current'? For an upcoming publication, the corresponding author has forwarded me the copyright release and conflict of interest disclosure form.

On this form is a table to be completed regarding "Did you or your institution at any time receive payment or support in kind for any aspect of the submitted work", with rows for grants, consulting, support for travel, and so forth.

One of the columns is a multiple-choice question "Is the relationship
current (C), ongoing(O), or past (P)?"

It's pretty clear what it means for a relationship to be 'past', but what is the difference between 'current' and 'ongoing'?  Is 'current' a relationship that existed at the time of the work, and 'ongoing' a relationship that exists at the time of submission for publication?

The additional guidance in the instructions for this table is quite unhelpful, as it gives external instructions to consult for every other column but this one.

  Note: Items 1, 2, and 3 listed below come from the ICMJE Uniform Disclosure
  Form for Potential Conflicts of Interest at http://www.icmje.org/update.html
  (dated July 2010), except for the columns in numbers 1 and 2 that ask
  whether the relationship is current, ongoing, or past.

You'd have to check with the journal to be certain, but based on what I have seen in other places, I would guess that the difference is whether the relationship causing the conflict of interest is open-ended or not.  Thus, for example:

DrugCo is a major sponsor of a conference, which Prof. X is chairing this year.  This would be "current" because the relationship is expected to end when Prof. X finishes as conference chair.
DrugCo retains Prof. X as a consultant to assist with patent actions.  This would be "ongoing" because the relationship could persist indefinitely.


From post-assessment to interview in a faculty recruitment in Denmark I have heard about cases in Denmark where candidates for a faculty position got through an assessment by some committee members as "qualified" but did not get interviews eventually. What is the process to go from post-assessment to interview in a faculty recruitment? For example, is there a ranking from the assessment committee? I am just curious since this procedure (post-assessment -> interview) seems obscure and hardly written in a university's hiring policies, even in a highly transparent system like in Scandinavian countries.

The University of Copenhagen documents that part of their recruitment process as follows:

Assessment

• The Assessment Committee makes a non-prioritised assessment of the academic qualifications of applicants with respect to research, teaching and outreach and other requirements listed in the advertisement.
• HR undertakes legality checks and sends assessments out to applicants for consultation.

Interviews

• The manager tasked with recruitment decides in conjunction with the Appointments Committee which of the applicants submitted for assessment are to be invited for interview and possibly a trial lecture.
• Academic and personal characteristics are assessed and explored in more detail at interview.

So, there is a selection, but no ranking.


What kind of index of papers is behind the search functionality of web applications and services related to the scientific literature? There are many, many websites that include a search function that returns a list of papers matching some keyword: Scirate, Shortscience, Brevy, etc.

Do all these sites run their own crawlers and build up their own index? Or is there a shared index somewhere?

For example, if you go to shortscience.org/search, and type in 'computer vision' it comes up with a list of relevant papers. Where is this data coming from?

There are various APIs that other services can use to search assorted indices from other sites

For example, according to the about page of ShortScience.org:

  The search can access all papers in the DOI, arχiv, dblp, and Bibsonomy databases

Some of those (e.g. DBLP) only host bibliographic data; others (e.g. arXiv) host the full text of articles or preprints. Some allow access to their data by API, others make their complete database available for download.

SciRate uses arXiv. Brevy does not seem to have an index; it's just a wiki, and the search function just searches user-submitted content.


thesis: a plethora of technical parameters, how to present it concisely? I'm writing my masters thesis at the moment. The topic of my thesis is the evaluation of one classification algorithm. Due to its technical nature I have to give a lot of context for each experimental setup. Something like the choice of signals to be classified for example:

The signals tested in this experiment were fsk signals with the following technical parameters:

Shift/Symbolrate

500/75
500/150
500/200
500/250
350/150
350/75 Each of the signals contained 20 header information and 80% payload

500/75

Due to the thesis containing about 20 experiments of various sorts, I'm not sure on how to best present my information concisely.

Would you try and make a subsection for each experiment, use a table or present it in plain text?

As a general rule, if you are presenting a large body of numbers in a structured way (e.g., similar parameters corresponding to a set of experiments) it is best to present them in tabular form.  I would suggest trying to put your parameters into a clear table-format that allows the reader to consult the parameters for each individual experiment easily.  If this is material that must be included for completeness, but is not interesting in its own right, you might also consider relegating this table to an appendix, and referring to it in the body with an appropriate reference.


tips for mathematics student giving interview for physics (quantum information) As suggested by @PiotrMigdal I am putting a separate question regarding the title mentioned above.

I am  a Mathematics PhD student doing work in functional analysis / operator theory aspects of quantum information. My basic training (up to masters) is in so called 'Pure Mathematics' ($C^*$ algebra, representation theory, elliptic curve etc.).  I am about to complete my PhD and applying for post doctoral positions. It seems most of the jobs in this area are for experimentalists and a few for theorists. I do not have much knowledge about experiment. Moreover, my understanding about quantum measurements as very basic. These  can be considered as negative points. Positive sides: I have a few published papers in some reputed physics journal, a few (in discrete mathematics) preprints, and a few works in the draft stage. However the published papers are not reviewed by math. review.

My question is, what a mathematics student, like me, should focus/emphasise  if he/she go for a job (for me post doctoral) interview in front of physics faculties.

Also more general question can be regarding the job perspective    of mathematics students in quantum information. Advanced thanks for any suggestion, answer etc.  Feel free to edit and/or retag it, if you think it is necessary.

It may be too late for this, but I'd suggest giving a talk for physicists in a lower stakes setting (eg a seminar at a school that isn't interviewing you). Physicists often have different names for things and ways of talking about them, and it can be really nice to have some exposure to the kinds of questions you might get asked.


Should I resend CV if I just have an accepted paper after submitting the application? I recently applied for several assistant professor positions. Today I was just told the paper I submitted was accepted. Also, I just had a presentation accepted by a conference.
In this case, should I contact the universities I applied for to update my CV?

Most searches move slowly, so if you contact everyone with an updated CV, you may have to update them again later (and later again and again), which will really annoy some search chairs (I can attest to this, having served as chair on search committees).

Best approach? Wait until there is another reason to interact with the search committee. For instance, if you are going to talk with them on the phone, see them at a conference, or even if they call you to clarify something, then you tell them that your CV has been updated and you want to send them a new CV. If your initial CV was fairly strong.

Did you indicate that these works were under review when you first submitted your CV? A good rule of thumb - when on the job search, put the titles of papers on your CV as under review and leave off the name of the journal you submitted to in order to.

Good luck!!!!


Deletion of author when submit the revised version of the submitted paper I have a question about the general regulation of VLDB for deletion of author when submit the revised version of the submitted paper (but the paper was rejected finally).

I found a link https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policies/sample-correspondence-for-an-editorial-office/addition-or-deletion-of-author-before-publication/ about making author changes before paper publication but not for my case.

Suppose our team (3 members) submitted a paper to VLDB, we revised the paper after received the comments from the reviewers.

We didn't include the work from one of the members in the revised version of the submitted paper.

Is it possible for us to remove this author from the paper when submit the revised version of the submitted paper?

What are the procedures required for such change?

Thank you very much!

Best Regards,

Chris.

Is this third author willing to give up authorship?  If so, the third author should contact the editor and explain that they want their name taken off of the revised paper and explain why.  In my experience, this is not a problem if the departing author has requested that their name be removed from the paper.


ambiguity about informal postdoc offer I am concerned that an email I sent can be interpreted as an (informal) acceptance of a postdoc offer.
The email was in response to a PI who emailed saying that he hoped to have an official offer out soon, and then asked about an ideal starting date.
I replied,"Thanks for the update! I could start at the beginning of xxx."
My intention with my wording was to give the information requested without accepting the offer, but also without explicitly stating that I was looking into other options. After sending this email I applied to other laboratories, and received a couple offers. All the offers, including the one referenced in the email, are almost equally attractive and I would like to select the option that works best for me. However, I do not want to be guilty of any dishonesty with regards to the original offer. Does my email pass as a firm commitment? I have since clarified to the PI during a call that I was considering other options and he did not seem too bothered, but I do want to make sure I am acting ethically.
I can provide more details but I have tried to include the most relevant.
Thanks!

I replied,"Thanks for the update! I could start at the beginning of xxx."

You're almost certainly okay. You haven't gotten the actual official offer, and though you've shown clear interest you haven't accepted anything. Of course, the PI involved could be disappointed, and if they're a jerk they could even retaliate by speaking badly about you. Unfortunately, though, just about anyone can choose to be a jerk whenever they want and it doesn't necessarily have to be a consequence of something you've actually done wrong.

I have since clarified to the PI during a call that I was considering other options and he did not seem too bothered

Now you are definitely okay. Some people would suggest this level of honesty is somehow not strategic; personally I think in most cases it's better to be clear. People who are hiring for a position should always assume the people they recruit are pursuing other offers, just as people applying for one should always assume there are other candidates.


Are industrial bachelor/master theses worth it? We had a job fair at our university recently, and there were renowned IT companies like Cisco, for example, who offered us topics for our bachelor/masters theses (I'm double major in physics and math, they were interested in math students mostly).

The question I have is, are "industrial" theses made under big IT companies worth it in fields of applied math/machine learning, in case I would like to continue to do my Ph.D. in future? Or is it better to do some "academical" thesis with this aim?

Thanks!

This is a common and healthy practice around the world. Companies are usually facing difficult problems that can potentially have many different solutions and are looking for the most innovative and efficient ones. Offering these projects to masters and PhD students saves money for the company and helps make the student more experienced in solving real-world problems. In addition, if you do a good work in your masters, it's not unlikely that the company may offer you a scholarship to do your PhD in the same field, which is extremely important. Not to mention that you can establish contacts with people from the industry.

There is really very little difference between what you call "industrial" theses and "academical" theses. In both cases, you have to do literature review, problem motivation, implementation, and evaluation. All of that has to be in the thesis. Also, both pave the way to do your PhD in the same or similar fields.


Code in journal papers Most papers do not specify a separate license for the source code, so presumably it would be licensed under the same terms as the rest of the paper. Typically, this means that the copyright lies with the publisher. Then,

As a reader, do I need permission from the publisher to use source code contained in journal articles?
Would using the source code be considered fair use in the US? What about countries that do not have comparable laws?
As an author, what should I do if I want the code I publish to be freely usable by others?

I think the codes available in papers are provided as materials for several purposes, including

Help reviewers and journal's board to efficiently evaluate the work and identify its technical merit.
Enable readers to better grasp the algorithm/method proposed
Enable researchers to utilize the code in their future research to avoid duplication
Help (novice) researchers to play with the code for educational benefits
Provide opportunity to peers to further improve the proposal

However, you may contact the author(s) if the want to use the code for

Commercializing the algorithm/method
Use the code for activities that generates money
Register patent using available contents

In my institute, I see lots supervisor ask their master students to read recent papers and identify a small research problem to alleviate during their project work. Students either use the given code or contact the authors for code, which authors usually provide the code.

So, I think you don't need to explicitly state the code copyright in the paper. But, if you are really interested to do that, you can have a footnote in the first page allowing readers to utilize the code in full, if the EiC does not mind.

Hope it helps


How to break this perception that my research trajectory will be almost the same as my research senior’s? I am PhD student working in computer science. I am worried about the perception that my research career is going to be almost the same as that of former students in my group. I am not satisfied with this because:

I came from very good university as compared to my colleagues.
While I don’t think I am a genius, surely I am a very hard worker with discipline. To me it appears that I can do much better than other if I work hard for long period of time in academia.
I could have gone to a slightly better university for my PhD, but here I get to work with a professor who works in the research area I am interested in.

Please note, I am not saying these former students are not in a good place – they now have post-docs in good universities. I also know that I should focus on my research and should not compare myself with others, but this is difficult in practice.

Question: How can I break this perception that my research trajectory will be almost the same as that of the former students in my group?

I hate to break it to you, but after a (very) short time in grad school, once you start making a name for yourself, people will predict your trajectory based on how they perceive you are doing right now in grad school, not based on your previous school and certainly not based on a self-assessment of your work ethics. If you have been there for a non-trivial amount of time, and nobody thinks that you will do exceptionally better than everybody before you, consider that this assessment may be more realistic than your rather rosy outlook.

  How to break this perception that my research trajectory will be almost same as my research senior's.

Easy. Achieve substantially more impressive results than your peers in the same career phase. If you can't do this easily, what makes you think you will certainly do much better than them in latter career phases? If you think you have truly impressive results but everybody else in your institution does not agree, your problem is much deeper. Then you are either surrounded by people who can't see your potential and vision, or you are yourself blinded by arrogance and can't see when you are wrong. Both of these options are pretty bad.


What is a wise way and the right timing to inform a professor that supported you of your rejection? Let there be some professor who whole-heartedly supported your application to some position in academia; let the decision be a rejection. Then what is a wise way and the right timing to inform the professor of this matter?

I think: if I inform the professor right after I am aware of the decision, then I may hurt his/her feeling, because he/she was for me; if I inform him/her later, then the same concern takes place and I cannot justify why I procrastinated letting him/her know it. Moreover, I am not quite sure what is a wise way to draft such an email.

I know that there is no "the" right timing; I just want to know a win-win timing, so to speak.

Thank you for taking time to share your wisdom.

I think: if I inform the professor right after I am aware of the decision, then I may hurt his/her feeling, because he/she was for me; if I inform him/her later, then the same concern takes place and I cannot justify why I procrastinated letting him/her know it.

You shouldn't worry about this at all:

Faculty members generally aren't particularly emotionally invested in these decisions.  For the students involved, they feel (and in fact are) incredibly weighty, but faculty members are involved in dozens of cases per year, so they get some good news and some bad news and it all averages out emotionally.
Even if this professor is unusually emotionally invested in the outcome, delaying reporting the result won't make it better.  They might end up feeling unhappy with the unfairness of life or the poor decision-making skills of whoever turned down your application, but they won't be upset with or disappointed in you, so there's no reason to worry or delay.

I'd recommend just letting your letter writers know when you find out, without stressing out about when or how you tell them.  You could just forward the rejection e-mail with a brief note (such as the "Many thanks for your support; unfortunately I did not succeed." suggested by iayork).


Does being a poorly-performing undergraduate researcher mean that I have little chance of being successful in graduate school? I am an undergraduate student in mathematics, and I will be starting my third year of university in the fall. I recently attended an NSF "Research Experiences for Undergraduates" (REU) program.

Unfortunately, the program did not go well for me. I can't engage with the material at the proper level, and I've accomplished very little while I've been here. For reference, the others here are writing multipage papers about things they've done or at the very least, learned, and some plan to submit theirs journals or present their findings at undergraduate-friendly conferences. I could probably write a paragraph of what I "learned" but in my opinion, I don't have enough background to even coherently think about what I was supposed to accomplish.

Here's a rundown of other possible reasons that I performed poorly:

As I said before I don't have much background. I've taken all of the pure math courses my school offers, but the others here came in knowing things like category theory, algebraic geometry, etc. that I simply haven't been able to learn well in my short time here. Notably, the program website never indicated that I would expected to know that stuff. I certainly exceeded the "minimum" requirements to apply.
My research advisor is advising three students and we're sharing projects. Since the others knew so much more than me, I feel like he was unwilling to help me with things that was probably trivial to others. (I know that in graduate school that attitude from professors might be common, but the other students had semester long classes on things I was trying to pick up in a few days.) This was also his first experience involving undergraduates with research.
While my program is considered competitive in the sense that they apparently get 300+ applications only accept 9 - 12 students each summer, I'm pretty certain that I only got in because I'm a member of an "under represented group" in mathematics and the program tries to favor such individuals. I was clearly not accepted on merit based on the caliber of the other students.

I am concerned about my performance because these programs are "designed to expose undergraduate math students to research to the extent that they are encouraged to attend graduate school in the mathematical sciences". Considering this experience makes me want to do anything but graduate school in math, I'm worried. Should I let this experience be a wake up call?

To address the titular question, no, being a "poor undergraduate researcher" does not mean you are not cut out for graduate school.  First, many people who go to grad school in math have no research experience in advance.  Second, having one bad research experience does not mean you are a poor researcher--you're not even in your third year yet.

Having bad research experiences is pretty common, and I know several professional mathematicians who've had bad experiences.  I was part of a summer program and a workshop where I felt I was in over my head and everyone else seemed to know the topic much more than me.  Fortunately they weren't my first research experiences, and they didn't last as long as an REU, so they weren't too discouraging as a result.  These experiences also provided no gauge as to whether or not I could be a successful researcher.

Research takes a lot of time, usually more than you expect (even when you expect it's more than you expect), as well as adequate preparation.  It's also hard to find good problems that are suitable for undergraduates to do in 6-10 weeks.  Part of the problem is, before you work on a project, you don't know how hard it will be or exactly what it will involve.  Therefore lots of REU projects don't amount what was hoped for.  It sounds a least like this project wasn't appropriate for you at that time.  Whether that was due to the supervisor being too ambitious or you not having the expected background, I can't say.  (There could be other reasons for your admission besides your "minority status.")  What I can say is that is easy to get the impression that everyone around you understands or knows more than you just because they're more vocal or they know different things from you.

To address what seems to be your principal concern now, the primary reason to go to grad school in math should be because you want to learn and do more math.  Getting a master's or a PhD in math does not mean you will be a math researcher, and you often don't even need to do any research to get a master's.  It's unfortunate if this experience turned you off from math, but I suggest you wait a little while to see how you feel about math.  Maybe after this experience fades from your memory, you'll get more excited about math again.  Or maybe you'll find something else that excites you, which is good too.

By the way, if you've already taken all the math classes offered at your school by your second year, then possibly your school doesn't have an environment as conducive to developing mathematical maturity as other schools.  If you do want to pursue math further, you might look into transferring, a semester abroad, or taking classes at other nearby schools.


Does posting a paper on an online forum establish priority? I have finished writing a paper and am a high school student. Since I'm sure this has no chance of being accepted to arxiv, I want to simply post it on a public forum. (This also has meaning for me because the forum helped me develop in the field where I wrote this paper, and I have friends there.)

My question is: Even if this is a not-that-important paper, imagine hypothetically that someone more prominent (ok, this is highly unrealistic, but just imagine) steals the main result of my paper and publishes it in a renowned journal, or at least somewhere more prestigious than a forum. Would he get credit for the discovery? This seems unlikely since the date I posted it on the forum will show that I came up with it before him.

Note: Although I don't wish to name the exact forum I'm talking about, it's similar to Physics Forums.

If somebody copies your text, then the fact that you posted this text publicly and earlier on the internet (in a location you can't feasibly control, so it won't look like you faked the historical record) will prove that they plagiarized.

It's a little trickier if somebody in inspired by your idea and writes their own paper that doesn't cite yours, since there's no way to distinguish this from independently coming up with the same idea.  It would be unethical to do this, but it could in principle happen.  If you pointed out your prior posting, you would deserve to at least share the credit.  However, people might still downplay your contribution.  "Sure, there was an earlier internet posting outlining the basic idea, but it wasn't nearly as well developed and nobody noticed it since it was posted somewhere obscure.  The real scientific breakthrough occurred when the idea was independently rediscovered, properly understood and worked out, and disseminated to the research community."  You could end up as a footnote, which is still credit but a sort of grudging credit.

I don't expect this will cause any problems.  It's not worrisome unless your ideal is attractive enough to seem worth stealing, while remaining obscure enough that someone could hope to get away with it.  The biggest barrier to intellectual theft is publicity: once enough people know about your idea, anyone who claims to have found it independently will get shot down by someone saying "You may not have known about this, but that's just your own ignorance, since the rest of us know Awesome Academist came up with this idea in 2015.  You should pay more attention to the internet."

Furthermore, if your idea really stays obscure enough that someone could get away with stealing it, then your posting evidently didn't have much impact on the community and you arguably deserve only a footnote's worth of credit.  (People deserve some credit for reaching the goal first, but more credit if they make a bigger contribution by circulating their ideas and influencing the research community.)

I doubt you need to worry about theft, but trying to publish your paper formally could help address this possibility by putting your work before a broader audience.  Anything worth stealing is worth publishing in the first place, so if theft worries you then you should consider publication.


How to pronounce 'et al' in presentation speech? For giving a research presentation, I will need to refer to papers with multiple authors. When citing in the slides, I use the convention (as does everyone else) of 'et al.' How should I pronounce this when speaking during the presentation? I don't speak French fluently, but I know that the French pronunciation is 'ai-taal'. I am not sure how this would be pronounced in the English speaking world. What is the conventional pronunciation of 'et al.' in presentations for English speakers/researchers?

The standard English pronunciation can be found in a dictionary, see, e.g., et al. at MacMillan dictionary.

However, during a presentation, instead of reading that abbreviation, it is probably nicer to say something like: "Smith and his/her group/coauthors/colleagues published the paper [...]".


Timezone of "AoE" for a conference submission deadline? I noticed this submission deadline for a conference listed as

  January 12th 2017, 23:59, AoE

(that's not the real date, just an example). An explanation says "Anywhere on Earth". Does that mean the deadline is at the first point in time there's someplace on Earth which hits 23:59, or the last point? In other words, does Hawaii get discriminated against or for? :-)

This means that as long as there is a place on earth where the deadline has not yet passed, you can still submit.

Thus, it is the time zone of e.g. Baker Island: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/usa/baker-island


How to cite in an appendix (and where to put the Citation list) of a PhD thesis? I have a table of studies and formula per study in the appendix, so sth like

study A     E = mc²
study B     v = ma

etc. For each study I need to cite a source. Now normally the citation list for the main part of document appears before the appendix. How do I handle this? Do I create a new citation list after the table?

For a PhD thesis (as indicated in the tags of your question), check your university's reference style guide. I suspect, however, that it doesn't go into that much detail. So:
do what you like best, as long as it's clear and coherent.

If you have many citations in the appendix, and you suspect that people will want to read the appendix and main document separately, just maintain two separate lists of citations. It makes each of them shorter, and thus easier to read.

If you have very few citations in the appendix, you can also consider citing them in a different style, such as footnotes. It keeps them separated from the main references, for clarity, but doesn't necessitate to have a full “appendix list of references” if it's very short.


How to scale grades to take into account how strong the students are? I am interested in different methods for scaling grades from a class test, say. In this case there is only one test and this gives the whole class grade. I remember from years ago a method that took into account the relative strength of the students taking the class by looking at their grades in other classes. However I can't remember the details at all.  The idea was that a hard test taken by strong students would be scaled up more than an easy test taken by weak students.

Is anyone familiar with this idea and how it might work mathematically?

In response to comments let me give an example. Say there is an optional class on Semiotics and Structuralism that the strongest students typically choose to take. The mean for this unit is 60% typically, say. Say there is also another optional class on how to spell the words in Harry Potter book one that the weakest students take. Say this gets the same mean of 60% typically.  It would be interesting to know what formulas have been used to scale the former class  so that the mean is higher than the latter.

are you asking about just converting everything into standardized scores?

In which case, you take the mean of relative performance (for example, if you are teaching a senior level course, you might take the major gpa distribution rather than overall gpa distribution) assign everyone a z-score based on their position in the calculated normal distribution.

you do the same for your test, standardize the score. For example, if your test average is a 50 with an SD of 10, a person who got a 70 has a z of 2 while a 45 has a z of -.5.

Now if you are planning on basing their recorded grade based on expected performance you are probably opening up a serious can of worms.  For example,  a student who consistently scores in the z score range of 1.8-2.1 and then only scores at a 1.5 is given an 75 (assuming mean 80 score, and 10 sd) while a student who consistently scores at a -.5 to -.8 range and scores a zero is given an 85 on the test.

If this is your plan, I would seriously rethink it. Not only will it upset students, it penalizes high performing students and rewards low performers.


Type of non-university, research jobs suitable for a mathematician turned computational neuroscientist, with coding experience I've asked the same question on Math Overflow

Background:

I'm a Ph.D. in pure mathematics (late '13, related to differential geometry, low dimensional topology) turned into computational neuroscientist as postdoc. I've been coding in matlab for the last 9 months, this being my only serious coding experience. I'm also doing some differential geometry and longitudinal statistics and have a minor in statistics. I'm neither an American nor EU citizen, but a research position in the European Union would be ideal (although I'm open to other options.)

My postdoc will not be extended beyond September. So, apart from searching other postdocs, which are the only university positions I can get at this moment, I am therefore also looking for non-university positions (it could be still academic, but the stress here is outside universities) in industry or research labs (e.g. MITRE), preferably permanent. I prefer a research position where I can do pure mathematics and continue coding.

Questions:

Which types of jobs are there?
Which role do the hired candidates play in them?
How can I find about their job advertisements?

Your questions are rather broad, so let me just point you to some resources.  For the first two questions (and possibly some info about the third) check out some info from the AMS:

http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/math-work/math-work

http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/new-phds/new-phds

For 3, some online academic resources to find jobs both in and out of academia are: mathjobs, the AMS's EIMS, the LMS site, the EMS site.  Some universities also have Career Fairs and Career Service Departments which may be able to give you more help in your job search.


What is the relationship between credits and course hours? Why can courses at the same department have an apparent disproportionality between credits and hours?

For example at my French university my department offers a 12 credit course with 48 hours of lectures and 72 hours of practical work, a 9 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and 12 hours of practical work, a different 9 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and no practical work, a 6 credit course with 24 hours of lectures and 36 hours of practical work. There are also 0 credit courses with 1 hour of lecture, but these are not really courses and are just included in the course catalog as bonus content to make up a bit for courses not offered in the current year. All of the courses I refer to are Master's level.

How are the number of credits calculated? Intuitively, one would suppose that the number of credits should be somehow proportional to the number of hours, but it is clearly not simply: a x # of lecture hours + b x # of practical hours.

Question: What is the relationship between credits and course hours?

In the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) one credit point
equals 25-30 hours of workload and you are supposed to do 30 credits
per semester or 60 per year.

The number of ECTS credits assigned to a particular class is not
directly related to the hours in class but to the total workload for
the class.

For example, the master thesis is worth 30 ECTS in most German
universities, yet there is 0 class time for it. On the other hand, I
once took a chemistry lab course with 6 credits => 150-180 hours
workload of which 120 hours where time spent in the lab, which was ok
because you can't really do much at home except finishing that day's writeup and taking a look at what is planned for the next day.

In your examples, subtract the class time and you're left with around
180-240 hours of self study (reviewing the material, doing homework
assignments) for the first three classes and half that for the last one
- so the 9 credit classes seem to involve more self study and less time
in class.

That's perfectly fine as long as the overall workload is between
25*credits and 30*credits hours.

Since your university is in France, I want to mention that France has
specified the workload for 1 ETCS credit point to be 29 hours.


Notations for integer in thesis I am creating a list of notations for my thesis and I have difficulties trying to avoid overlapping notations. The main problem comes from indexes notations, for example:

e_{i}, e_{j} with i,j = 1,2,3 when j is already the current density
d_{lambda,mu} where lambda is already the wavelength

Can I leave these overlaps or not? Would there be a way to mark them as integers without over-complicatiing the notations? Should I include these integers in the table of notations?
EDIT
The document Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry from the IUPAC seems to write the notations with the indexes included without  describing the indexes themselves (see page 57, resistivity and conductivity tensors).

It is okay to reuse or “recycle” symbols - I sometimes joke that this is actually good practice since it is “environmentally friendly” and saves mental overhead. However, you must make sure that you do not use the same symbol to denote two different quantities within the same proof or calculation. That is a mistake and invites potential confusion or misunderstanding, even if in some cases the reader can perform disambiguation of the symbol based on context and figure out the correct interpretation.
A way to think about this is that each notation has a scope: it is created, used, and then discarded, often within the space of a single proof or even a couple of paragraphs. Some notations are local and live for a short time; others are global and retain the same meaning throughout the paper or thesis. Overlapping notations are fine if the scopes of the notations do not overlap. This is analogous to the use of variable names in a computer program. (Or to use a physics metaphor, notations can overlap in alphabet space, but not in spacetime - their world lines should not intersect...)
Finally, a list of notations should only contain notations that exist for a significant length of time (say for a whole chapter of the thesis), not “temporary” or ad hoc notations that are used in a short argument. That’s what matters, not whether the quantity represented by the notation is integer-valued. The main consideration is whether the notation is used long enough that a reader might encounter it far from where it is defined and have difficulty figuring out its definition.
It is also a good idea for the notation table to include columns to specify the page number where each notation is defined and which chapters or sections it is used for, to make lookup easier.


About assistant professor job postings with no set deadline Every once in a while I see assistant professor job postings that don't have set deadlines. Sometimes they would add that applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, or that "until the positions are filled". Usually how long are these review periods? Does it mean that the job is still open as long as they have not taken down the notice? I am aware that one possibility is that someone simply forgot to remove it from their web site.

One possibility to be aware of is that tenure track hires usually need to made after a national search. Yet some departments like to hire by going after "targets of opportunity". These are individuals already in faculty positions whom the department have identified as exceptionally talented and potentially willing to move. In order to facilitate this process, some departments keep an open search on the books for a protracted period of time.

The point is that some fraction of these rolling searches are probably not intending to hire from the pool of applications that come in unsolicited. That said, I also know of cases where the applications that come that way turn out be so strong that a department ends up hiring from that pool.


Can an F1-visa student pursuing masters in US teach in community college? Is it possible for an international student who is pursuing masters in USA, to teach in a community college after MS as a full time employee? I am interested in teaching and I work as a teaching assistant for undergraduates. I conduct classes to these students thrice a week and I really enjoy the experience. I would like to look for job opportunities in teaching field with a Masters degree. Are community colleges a good shot or are there any other similar opportunities?

In the US, F-1 visa holders can apply for an extension called Optional Practical Training (OPT) after their graduation. The default is a 1 year extension, and STEM field graduates have a slightly longer period.

Talk to the people responsible for international student affairs in your school for more details.


Is it common for a university to buy a plane ticket directly? I was just accepted to a PhD program and they wanted to fly me out for an open house. They said they would reimburse travel costs up to $500. However the issue is I have less than $500 in my bank account and certainly not enough to buy a plane ticket. I emailed asking if they could buy the ticket directly. Is this common? Can universities do this?

You should definitely ask if they can buy it directly for you. I know my department has done this in the past with students who don't have the cash on hand to wait for a reimbursement.


What should go in a diversity statement if I believe I have had no relevant experiences? So I am completing the application for UCSB, and they ask me to write a Personal Achievements/Contributions Statement, however, I feel I have nothing to say, since I have never experienced anything like examples they give. So what should be talked about in this kind of essay except examples they give?
Here is what on their application:

Personal Achievements/Contributions Statement
UC Santa Barbara is interested in a diverse and inclusive graduate student population. Please describe any aspects of your personal background, accomplishments, or achievements that you feel are important in evaluating your application for graduate study.
For example, please describe if you have experienced economic challenges in achieving higher education, such as being financially responsible for family members or dependents, having to work significant hours during undergraduate schooling or coming from a family background of limited income.
Please describe if you have any unusual or varied life experiences that might contribute to the diversity of the graduate group, such as fluency in other languages, experience living in bicultural communities, academic research interests focusing on cultural, societal, or educational problems as they affect underserved segments of society, or evidence of an intention to use the graduate degree toward serving disadvantaged individuals or populations.

I agree with the other answerer in that some self-examination will probably yield many ways in which you have overcome adversity or worked to support others from diverse backgrounds.

But here's another angle that's worth considering: Why does the university require a diversity statement in the first place? You'll encounter many forms of diversity at a large, public university like UCSB, where there is a substantial population of international students, federal student aid recipients, students with family/work obligations, and so on, and the school wants to know how you expect to integrate into the diverse community at the target university and how you believe interacting with a diverse student population will help you grow in your career and as a person.

Therefore, you don't have to "be" diverse (how can any individual be diverse?) to help foster a diverse, inclusive campus climate. I found this diversity statement from a faculty application written by an Asian American to be very successful, even though the author makes no mention of his personal background, focusing instead on the things he has done to support diverse students and explaining why he thinks diversity is a good thing:

  I believe that diversity is fundamentally the relationship between a community’s distribution along a multitude of dimensions (e.g., physical traits, interests, cultures) and that of of the general population. I am strongly in favor of a diverse community that samples broadly from the general population.  From a selfish perspective, it lets me learn from a variety of different, strange, and interesting people.  From a larger perspective, it creates a robust community that is immune to "jumping on the band-wagon", and, as the UC diversity statement notes, it is "the source of innovative ideas and creative accomplishments".

In a case like yours, I would recommend being honest about your blind spots and expressing your interest in learning more about people from other backgrounds. What was it like to grow up and attend college within a homogeneous community? What challenges do you expect to face as you transition to the target university, and how will you overcome them? What are the characteristics of the university's community that attract you to studying there? Bonus points if you can name specific student organizations, courses, or other features of the university that align with these goals.

On the flip side, it's worth pointing out that writing a diversity statement isn't necessarily any easier for those who are from "diverse" backgrounds. A diversity statement that simply enumerates one's demographic characteristics without reflecting on the meaning and importance of diversity can ring hollow. And there is a danger in invoking false parallels, i.e. assuming "Because I am from marginalized community X, I understand the challenges faced by those from marginalized community Y."


Under what circumstances would a professor be offended at students taping or recording his or her lecture? Are there any policies on taping or recording or even streaming a professor's lecture?

What do professors think about students who do this?

Obviously, most circumstances the professor would never find out, but there was this one instance when a professor got really angry because a student was recording him without his permission.

I don't understand why he would be offended, most likely the student is only using it for review and not commercial purposes as the nature of the class is quite obscure, could anyone shed a light?

I do not believe it had anything to do with the act of being recorded by itself. Most universities are beginning a process of recording lectures for later consumption by the students anyway.

Instead in this case it is likely because the professor was unaware they were being recorded. They may do or say something that they regret or which gets them into trouble. If however they knew beforehand that they were being recorded it would be unlikely that they would do that since they know the repercussions would be more severe. I think it was an instinctive reaction to protect themselves from others using the recording against them.


I'm looking for an application or workflow which integrates data values into the writing process Currently, on all of my projects, I do my data analysis, create my figures, put them into a word document, and then I start writing. I say things like "We saw a 35% reduction in the effectiveness of..."

100% of the time, these numbers change. We reach the discussion section and a co-author requests we change the analysis this or that way, or finds an error in my thinking.

Then, I need to go back and re-do the analysis. Then, I'll need to find every point of data that was potentially affected and manually change it in a word document. Occasionally, this back-and-forth leads to the introduction of errors.

I would love a writing platform that would allow me to integrate my data into the writing process. Instead of writing

"We saw a 35% reduction in ..."

I would say:

"We saw a <% print(reduction.round()) %>% reduction in.."

Of course I could do this from scratch on my own computer, but I then lose the ability to collaborate.

I'm wondering if anyone has had this problem, and how they have solved it?

One possible workflow is using R for producing the results, LaTeX for writing the report, and Sweave to integrate both. With either TexStudio or LyX (or any text editor that supports track changes) as writing environments and Dropbox, you can set up some sort of "collaboration".


How to decide whether a statement requires citing a reliable source When writing a paper, I usually face the problem of deciding whether a sentence is cite-able or not. Let's say I am writing about optimization of an algorithm. And I used Java to implement it. So, in the introduction, I would say something like "Java is a class based object oriented language..."  This information is available in many java books and online tutorials. Does the ubiquity of the sentence make it un-citeable? Or do I cite that fact. I have read many prominent papers that simply use that sentence without quoting a source.

Or do we only cite numerical facts that go like "Java is x times slower/faster than c++". I once read an article that says "when writing a paper, you should cite every sentence that you happen to read some where." But this is unrealistic; and we might have almost as many citations as the number of sentences in the paper.

Is there any rule that dictates on what is quotable or not?

Yes, there are rules on what requires citation.

Generally, publicly-known information (widely known, common knowledge, etc.) does not need to be cited. Your sentence about Java being class-based would fall under this category.

Information which is based on someone else's work (analysis, research, pictures, etc.), whether quoted or paraphrased, should always be cited. Your sentence about Java being x time slower/faster than C++ would fall under this category.

If you are unsure, cite it to be safe.


Advice for getting a paper published as a highschooler I have possibly found a somewhat novel method of proving a famous theorem, and after some research, I found a variant of the method published as a paper. So, naturally, I reached out to the professor who wrote that and asked him for opportunities and I am waiting for a reply.
If he declines my request for help on publishing the paper, what other ways is it possible to get a paper published as a person who isn't affiliated with a university/ Has major connections?
Other than that, the process from an outsider's perspective looks a bit tedious right now, but what are the general things to keep in mind while approaching it?
My educational details are that I've passed out my HS this year.
Note: I've checked with some grad students, the result is indeed correct. The current state of whether they'll help me follow through with publishing however is a 'maybe'
Update: Got in touch with the prof and sent the tex file containing the paper to the publisher which he had published too. Hopefully gets some acknowledgment :-)
Update 2.0: Seems to have been done already (See here), not sure if there exists a paper on this but that killed of the novelty.
A word from me to all the answerers: Thank you all. Turns out that my proof was posted before on MSE and I do not wish to publish something already done before. However for the actual question which I had asked, I have received many great answers and I honestly can not objectively choose a single answer which have helped me the most since all of them provided value to me in one way or the other.
As is most relevant to my individual problem of me publishing this result, I will accept Kostya's answer as they were the ones who found that the proof was done before. Again, thank you all.

I'd recommend not trying to submit a paper to a journal without guidance from a more experienced academic. That academic doesn't have to be a professor; anyone with more experience with the field than you should be good.
You've contacted the professor, which is a great start. If they don't reply, you can/should also talk to your teachers. Since you're fresh out of high school, there's a good chance your somewhat novel method might be wrong, or not novel. Your teachers have been in the field longer than you, so they probably know more than you; furthermore they know you personally so they'd be more likely to look at your method. If your teachers are unable to help, you could also ask friends/family for anyone with more formal training in the field.


Do I stand a chance in US universities? How can I ask for so many recommendation letters? I'm a fresh graduate with a bachelor degree in electrical and electronic engineering, currently aiming to study in the US for my masters degree. I am an international graduate from an accredited university. I graduated with a GPA of 2.61 which is low and I know it, my transcript is a combination of extremely bad grades and real good ones too, I have them all, As, Bs, Cs and Ds. I even have an F.

My question is, do I stand a chance at US universities?

I graduated from a university that is ranked among the top three in my country, I know I may have a bad record of grades, but I have been involved in scientific research group and I have also been part of the student community and club managements.

keep in mind I'm not aiming for the top ranked US universities, but I am more concentrated on the universities that have a good program regarding my area of interest.

Any advise is highly welcome here.

Also, seeing that I did bad in plenty of my courses, would it be okay to ask for a recommendation letter from a professor whom I did bad in his course?

keep in mind that I might apply to about 15 or 20 universities, that's a total of 60 letters ! How can I pull this off?

What is your best recommendations for me to conduct a strong enough application?

Also, seeing that I did bad in plenty of my courses, would it be okay to ask for a recommendation letter from a professor whom I did bad in his course?

It is generally not a good idea! What do you expect the professor to write if he only knows you through a course that you failed? Best case scenario: he tells you honestly that he can not write a strong letter for you. But he may also write a bad letter, which would seriously compromise your application.

  keep in mind that I might apply to about 15 or 20 universities, that's a total of 60 letters ! How can I pull this off?

You would of course send the same set of 2-3 recommendation letters for all your applications.


Tenured professor’s husband convicted of a drugs-trafficking felony – are there any career implications? At the university I work at in the US, a tenured professor’s husband has been convicted of drugs trafficking. Would there be any likely (career) implications for the professor?

Obviously, their personal life will be affected, but is it likely to have implications otherwise?

This is a question which can only the respective university can answer. (I assume in my answer that the police has not proven involvement of the professor in the drug thing.)

Ideally (and most likely also by law, but you do not specify your location), husband and wife (or husband and husband, wife and wife) are treated as two separate people -- if one does a crime, it does not mean that both are involved. That the professor is not involved should also be the default assumption of the university unless the police proved otherwise.

Of course, people often talk and make decisions which are not backed up by the law. It may be of course that there are implications for the professor -- most likely, it's not explicitly said that they are connected to the drug thing.

For implications outside of the university, the same holds. Ideally, nobody treats the prof differently, but people sometimes do.


Offer to chair a session - how should I decide whether to accept? I am doing my PhD and presenting a paper at a conference, which I have already done a few times. However, I just saw an email from the organising committee asking if I am willing to chair one or more sessions. How should I decide whether to accept this offer? What are the reasons to accept, and what are the reasons to decline?  Is it a very common thing to do for a graduate student, who does not even have a Ph.D, to be invited to chair a session? While I feel honoured, I am also somewhat overwhelmed and not sure if I should accept it.

Yes, you should.

Whether this is common depends very much on the conference.  The last time I was at a conference, I was invited out of the blue by someone I didn't know to chair a session, in a very short and very informal e-mail as if it was coming from a long time friend in a hurry.  This was less than a year after I obtained my PhD.  A PhD student in our research group did the same.

All it means, really, is that you sit on a chair in front of the room, make sure the presentations are on the presentation computer, announce the speakers, etc.  You will get detailed instructions.  Unless you mess up (and why would you?), you really have nothing to lose.


Would it be rude or helpful to ask a foreign coworker if they'd like for me to correct their English when there are obvious mistakes? I have a colleague who is very new to this country (USA). His English leaves a lot to be desired, to the point that it often actually hinders communication. I think he's trying to learn, but it's obviously hard.

Sometimes in an email, there will be a few mistakes that are fairly glaring, even if I get what they're trying to say. I was considering asking him (so as to not just give unsolicited advice), "would you like me to correct any errors in your writing I see when you email me? It could help you improve more quickly."

It could definitely help him learn, but I'm also aware that it could be embarrassing for him, as well as presumptuous on my part. Personally, I (like to) think I'd really like it if someone made me that offer if I were in that position, but of course I can't know for certain.

Is that a good idea, or is it better to just mind my own business?

It is hard to say what your colleague would feel since I cannot predict how anybody would feel in any situation. Yet, if I received an offer like this, I would most certainly not get offended. I often consult my native speaker colleagues about my writing and get useful feedback.

One thing you definitely want to do is to not do this in front of others. Doing it in an e-mail privately would certainly decrease the "embarrassment" if there is any.


How to get the letter of commitment of the host institution for ERC Calls? For applying for European Commission grants, specifically ERC ADVANCED GRANT, I need to get an official letter from the host instuttion that they support my proposal.

How is the procedure to get this letter?

Do I need to contact the institution research office OR I need to find a collaborator in that institution to recommend me to get that letter?

Do they need to review my detailed proposal to decide if they want to support me OR they review my CV only?

How long does this process take?

If you want another institution to provide you with space, office, computer access, mentoring, etc, then they will need to know and approve of your proposal. Every university has a sponsored research office (or other name) that is in charge of these things. Contact the department head or the university you want to host you to provide you with the necessary contacts.


How can I best adapt my seminar slides for a virtual presentation? I was recently invited to give a seminar talk at another institution. Ordinarily I would have travelled there for the day and given my talk in person. However, due to the travel restrictions imposed by the UK government in the wake of the coronavirus, I will instead be giving my talk via video conferencing.

I had already prepared some slides for this talk, and have given variations of the talk before. I tend to prefer a lighthearted style of presentation, and have a couple of humorous slides. I'm concerned that this style will not work well with a virtual seminar, as the audience feedback will be non-existent if everyone has their microphones muted and cameras switched off. I'm also not sure if I should change the layout of my slides in any way, to reflect the fact that people will be looking at them up close on their small laptop screens rather than from a distance in a lecture theatre being projected on to a large screen.

My question is this: how can I best adapt my talk in this situation? I'd appreciate answers that address dealing with the lack of audience feedback and interaction, as well as practical points regarding slide layout and so on.

There is nothing more boring that watching static slide after static slide while listening to someone who you can't see. If at all possible, come up with a system where for the most part, people see you via video chat, and if you have something that absolutely needs a slide -- a picture, a formula -- switch to screen sharing.

This kind of system requires you to think carefully about what actually needs to be on a slide. Minimize the amount of text, maybe to zero on many of the slides you would ordinarily have (and then skip those), so that your audience doesn't actually need the slides. This way they also get to pay attention to you.

All of this is of course good practice anyway: Packed slides often lead to people reading ahead of what you have to say and not paying attention to what you actually say. The best talks are those with minimal text that serves to abstract and highlight what you say, but not distract. This is your chance to practice this!


Is it ethical to withdraw a conference long version paper after being accepted as a short paper? Is it ethical to withdraw a conference long version paper after being accepted as a short paper?

Just recently we got an accepted short paper at a decent Computer Science conference. However, we submitted as a long paper and there is not a single instruction cautioning us that the PC could demote the paper.

Yes.

Publication requires both the consent of the publisher (via the editor or program committee) and the consent of the authors.  If you do not consent to publish under the conditions imposed by the publisher, you can just say no.