Why don't mathematics professors use social media to promote their work? I notice that many computer science professors do a great job of self-promoting; they are very active on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and many of them have tens of thousands of followers.  They post their papers on social media, give updates regarding their research group's progress, talk about interviews they recently participated in, and some even comment about their political preferences and views on current events.  By now, it is also well-known that many of the best CS professors get poached by industry giants, e.g., Google, Facebook, Uber, which at least one professor thinks is beneficial to both academia and industry:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/26/it-isnt-just-uber-carnegie-mellons-computer-science-dean-on-its-poaching-problem/

However, I don't see much self-promotion going on from mathematics professors on social media.  Many that I know of - both young and old - either do not have Facebook accounts (or they are completely private on Facebook), do not have Twitter, nothing on Quora, except for maybe some conversation on mathoverflow.net.  On their school websites, math professors give relatively minimal information - office location, publications, course notes, a resume.  Sometimes they will say whether they are going to some conference to give a talk.

Main question:
Why don't mathematics professors advertise themselves more on social media?
Is it perhaps frowned upon by the math community, and that they would come off as "less serious" about academic research?  Is it some traditional, philosophical reason for not publicizing one's work for the non-math world to see?  Of course, an extreme example that comes to mind is Grigori Perelman, who turned down the Fields Medal and never gave an interview about his important work.

Secondary question: Don't they also want the chance to be poached by an industry giant and make a few million dollars for a couple years of work - and then return to academia?

[It's hard to imagine an answer that isn't somewhat speculative, so let me give a somewhat speculative one.  A lot of what I will say is more or less the same as various commenters already said.]

For context, I am a pure mathematician working in the UK, but I did postdocs in the US and in Europe. Here are some reasons I can think of that a mathematician would not use social media to promote themselves in the way you describe.

First, motivation. It takes a lot of work (as well as good fortune) to become a mathematics professor. It's safe to assume that almost everyone who achieves this goal actually wants to be where they are. (Initially, at least.) If we all wanted to work in the tech industry, we would have made a different choice at some point in the past. But we want to do math, and teach math.

The contrast with computer scientists should be clear: it's plausible to think that a computer scientist could move from academia to the tech industry without changing their research focus too much, and then come back to academia if they change their mind. For most mathematicians, though, this move would mean no longer being a mathematician, and most of us don't want to do that.

Second, nobody is going to poach you! (Probably.) This has already been well-covered in the comments, but it's worth repeating. The idea of a mathematician being poached by a tech company on the strength of their research is not very realistic in most cases.

Despite what we write in grant proposals, a lot of the research done by academic mathematicians does not have much relevance for the "real world" outside math. (Even in what is usually called "applied math", my personal impression is that many people are more interested in the research itself than in possible applications.) Of course there are exceptions, but even among these, many people are working in fields not relevant to the tech companies that you describe as doing the poaching.  Other industries may have use for the outcomes of mathematical research, but not the resources to employ dedicated mathematical researchers.

In particular, the scenario you describe of "mak[ing] a few million dollars for a couple years of work - and then return[ing] to academia" is wildly unrealistic for, I would say, the vast majority of mathematicians. To me your second question feels a bit like asking "Why don't more mathematicians spend more money playing the lottery? Don't they want the chance to win millions of dollars?"

Again, by contrast, it seems very plausible that an academic computer scientist might be working on something that is of immediate relevance for a large tech company, so poaching is a realistic prospect here.

Finally, mathematical culture. OK, but even if being poached is not a realistic goal, or not even desirable, why don't mathematicians promote themselves more on Facebook, Twitter, and the like? Don't they at least want to boost their profile and get a bit more recognition? I think the answer to this involves, more than any philosophical reason as you suggest, the norms of mathematical culture. (To repeat, I 'm a pure mathematician, so my point of view is heavily slanted towards this part of the discipline.)

In my experience, mathematicians as a community tend to be extremely sceptical of anything they regard as boasting or exaggeration of one's achievements. The norms of our culture teach us that self-deprecation and understatement are the appropriate attitudes to adopt, at least in public. (Real example: a seminar speaker writes his big theorem on the board, then says to the audience apologetically "Now, this is not entirely trivial...") In this context, using social media to "promote" your work might have the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of people reading, and respecting, your work more, people might start to think of you dismissively as "that Twitter guy".


Is it okay to start a collaboration with a research group of which you're reviewing a paper? A scientific journal assigned me a paper to review.
During the review process, I realized I have some interesting ideas about the paper project, so I am thinking about to contact the authors and propose them to start a collaboration together.

What should I do?

Should I contact them and explain my proposals directly? But will this invalidate my journal review?

Finish the review and wait until the paper you are reviewing is published to contact them.

Reviews are supposed to be anonymous and by doing this you waive your anonymity away.


How often do mathematics professors move up from mediocre schools to good ones? How often do mathematics professors move up from mediocre schools to good ones?

For example, let's say someone did some ok research at a postdoc and then went to industry for 10 years and afterwards got a professor position at a very mediocre place where they started pumping out solid papers over a few years.

Given that they had the talent to get a top 50 research school position on a traditional route, what are the chances that they get there in this situation?

I think it will be hard for anyone to answer this question in the literal terms it was posed, i.e., by giving you a numerical probability.  I don't know how to compile a list of all mathematicians meeting your requirements and/or those that went on to top 50 universities.

Let me try to answer more qualitatively.  People do move from one university to another, most commonly before they are tenured, but mobility at all levels is increasingly common: a substantial minority of all tenured math faculty move to a different tenured position at least once over the course of their careers.  (One way to try to quantify this would be to look at the Mathematics Genealogy Project; if someone has supervised more than one student at multiple institutions which are not in close proximity, it is likely that they moved after tenure.)

I don't know if you've heard, but things are very competitive now.  I am at roughly the 50th best math department in the US, and the people that we've hired in the last decade are doing a lot better than "solid work"; most of our recent hires are internationally renowned in their fields.  If you're going to hire someone more senior, then you'll have to pay them more and you worry that they will not stick around as long, so in most cases they have to be better than the stellar younger hires.  Exceptions include departments who want to found entire research groups; for this you really need a senior person, and that person's leadership / mentorship / overall activity and connections in the field may be more important than the excellence of their work.

So to be taken seriously as a senior hire, someone needs to have excellent work beyond even the impressive going rate for a younger hire.  These are the parameters independently of how long they spent away from academia: hiring committees will look at the best work a candidate has ever done and compare it to their work in recent years.  You don't need some minimum number of total papers, and you don't get credit for time served.  If you've done several really great things in the last few years, the last millennium portion of your CV is not really relevant.

Let me also say that although I am painting a picture that transitioning to a top university is a hard road, it is certainly not an impossible one.  I can think of at least one person in my field who took several years off to work in his family business far away from any academic epicenter.  When I knew him he was back in academia with a pretty decent position that I, if I'm honest, kind of wondered how he'd landed.  Ten years later he is at one of the world's top universities and has won many awards.  How did he do it?  By doing great work.  Really great work: as in, resolving major pieces of very famous conjectures.  It's just that easy...and it's just that hard.


How relevant a PhD that takes >8 years would be, specially in STEM fields? I am thinking of starting a PhD in CS while holding a full time job. If someone has a full-time job and starts a part-time PhD, it's reasonable to expect the PhD to take more than 8 years to be completed. I am wondering how relevant such a PhD would be, considering how fast some areas of CS are advancing.

For example my area of interest (and where I have practical experience) is computer vision and statistical learning. If I had started a PhD thesis, let's say in 2010, then by 2019 my thesis topic would most likely be redundant, considering all the advancement in computer vision and machine learning in the past decade.

I guess I am trying to get more insight from the more experienced people.

You don't wait with publishing till you finished your PhD, especially in such a fast moving field. So by the end of your education you will have made a contribution, even if at the time your PhD is finished your contribution is already less relevant. This is fine. A PhD is supposed to show that you can do independent research; think of it as vocational training for researchers. So if you show that you made contributions that at the time were good, then you have shown what you needed to show. Nobody expects of PhD students to be able to see the future.


Should equations be formatted in scientific notation? I have an equation that has very small coefficients (f(x) = -0.000014x4 + 0.000044x + 0.002782) should I put the whole thing in scientific notation, or can I leave it as-is in a paper? Thanks.

The specific publication you are submitting your paper to may have specific rules for formatting. If not, be consistent and use your consistency to maximize clarity. Is it crucially important that your reader understand the difference between 0.002782 and 0.000278? If so, scientific notation may be helpful. Otherwise, all those extra zeroes may be fine where they are.


What can I do with like-new, recent-edition textbooks that I'm not allowed to sell? My employer is sponsoring most of the tuition and fees for my master's degree (in aerospace engineering), including required textbooks. Thus, it is unethical and against policy for me to sell those books once I'm done with the corresponding courses. Specifically, the policy is that I cannot "make a profit on" them, but other than that I am free to do with them as I please. I find that having the physical book is helpful when I'm taking the course, but afterwards if I need to reference it a digital copy will suffice. And while having my office/residence full of these high-level materials certainly makes me feel good about myself, it's not practical. Thus, what can I do with these textbooks that will have the biggest, most positive impact on academia?

Ask your employer.

You should be able to work out a solution both parties are happy with pretty easily. The obvious one is to sell the books and then give your employer the profits. If they don't care, you can also pocket the profits yourself, perhaps recycle the books or donate them to your university's library.


Uneven skill set and customer service attitudes of University Support Services I was wondering if anyone had any guidance on how to handle/manage the uneven skill sets and lack of customer service attitudes on the part of administrative units.  I'm talking about concrete issues, such as a person in the grants office who can't figure out research budgets and grants.gov and IT staff who can't keep email up and running.  Keep in mind, these are folks who are not directly under the supervision of my department, but who we are compelled to use.

There are many excellent, competent, and dedicated staff and administrative people at universities, but there are also a visible percentage who are not. Universities face several hiring challenges:

1) Salaries are low and opportunities for advancement are rare. Talented people could make more in industry. Those that remain are sometimes there because they don't have mobility (because of a faculty-spouse ties them to that location, etc.).

2) many people are hired for reasons not related to their skill sets: second-body problems, hiring recently graduated students to reduce the appearance of post-graduate unemployment, etc.

There is no easy solution to this problem. However, even second-body hires are not resistant to getting fired (or worse, transferred to the dining unit). Like all bureaucrats they are afraid of complaints and the additional paperwork this would cause.  Anonymous complaints can usually be made via the university ombudsman (if you have one).


What does "Associate Faculty" mean? What does "Associate Faculty" mean, as used for example in this job advert headlined

  FACULTY AND ASSOCIATE FACULTY POSITIONS

and this brochure from the Perimeter Institute in Canada:

  In just 11 years since the Institute’s inception, PI has grown to
  include:
   - 16 full-time Faculty
   - 15 Associate Faculty

Given the adjective 'full time' above, perhaps 'Associate' just means 'part-time', but I've never heard that usage before.

This usage of "Associate Faculty" may be fairly unique to the Perimeter Institute. They have a number of faculty with joint appointments at Canadian universities, who typically alternate between semesters with the usual teaching duties at the university and semesters at PI with no responsibilities except for research.

There is a list of such faculty here; you can see that they all have an additional affiliation outside of PI.


Are there any metrics considering how heavily cited a paper is within another paper? There are of course, a plethora of citation metrics. Are there any that consider how heavily cited a paper is within the papers that cite it?

Let's consider paper X.

One paper may casually cite paper X along with a bunch of other citations and never interact with it again.

e.g. "Much work has been done in this area of research (A, B, C, D, E, F, X)."

On the other hand, another paper may depend heavily on paper X: adapting paper X's methodologies for its own, utilizing the theory proposed by paper X, and directly comparing its own results to those of paper X.

To my understanding, a typical citation metric would pick both of these papers up as equivalent citations. Thus, paper X has 2 citations.

But that method misses so much of what paper X has contributed towards the 2nd paper.

Are there any metrics that consider this? Perhaps counting the number of times paper X is cited within the papers that cite it?

As far as I know, no.  The problem is that what you want to measure is impossible to accurately automate (even standard citation counts that Google Scholar automates are not 100% accurate) without hard-coding such information into the paper, as in Dirk's comment.  This of course has some issues, in addition to being a paradigm shift for the way citations are made (just as there are pressures now to include a citation, there would be pressures with such a system to make something an "important" citation).

The suggestion you made, about counting the number of times a paper is cited, crossed my mind in the past (along with some other ideas) but the problem is that it doesn't directly measure what you're asking.  There are different reasons to cite a paper, and the number of times you explicitly cite something in a given work depends on too many different factors, a large one being the author's writing style.

Remember the current paradigm: references are just that, references, which put the work in context for the reader and supply details that one uses.  Their purpose is not to provide a measure of the value of paper or researcher.  Once you go down the path of twisting things to measure worth and assign prestige (even if that is not your purpose), you just make things into a competitive game.


What do I do if I don't have anyone to write my letters of recommendation for undergraduate research programs? I'm currently a second year student in maths and I want to apply to some REUs but I haven't made any remarkable relationships with my profs or anyone in the department. As well, I've just been an average student, just As and Bs, so I don't have anything exceptional to show for my attendance in my profs' classes. Thus, if anyone has any advice on what I can do for LORs, I'd appreciate it.

Additional info: I am doing research in my university, just not in maths, it's in pedagogy, but my supervisors don't know what's going on in my classes. I also have emailed this great prof I had last year once this year and have asked her for an LOR already, but I don't know how wiling she will be to give me another one since it's been a couple of months since we've last talked.

Just go talk directly to people who might be interested in working with you. They won't be far away, anyway. You have to build up a reputation to get LoRs, and given your current status you just won't have it.


How to include incremental research in the thesis I employ an incremental approach for my PhD research. In other words, at first, I propose a method to solve a problem and publish a paper about it. Then, I update my method by either improving its performance/optimality or adding more features so that it can handle more cases and I keep publishing papers reporting my progress. As a result, I have a pretty good publishing record, more than 5 papers as the first author in less than 3 years. However, between each paper, I sometimes make some major improvement such as completely replacing an old approach by a new (and better) one to solve the same problem.

At the moment, I am about to start writing up and face the problem of how to include all my papers in the thesis. My initial plan is to mainly focus on the last paper that I have published since it contains the best version of my research. However, doing so potentially makes my PhD research look weak since I have published many papers but only use one as the major theme of my thesis.

On the other hand, I am thinking about writing my thesis as a research diary that reports my journey to investigate how to solve one problem, e.g. at first I start with this approach, then after further research, I employ another one which results in better performance... But I am not sure if it is a right way to write my thesis.

My question is how to write a thesis for a incremental research. It would be great to hear from someone who was in the same situation. My field is computer science but answers from other fields are welcome.

From the point of view of the reader, jumping to the most sophisticated version of a method can be difficult.  A thesis isn't a textbook, but there are parallels.  A textbook often uses an incremental approach starting with almost a toy model to get the basic concepts sorted, before making it more realistic.  The assumed background knowledge of someone reading your thesis might let you skip the first step but not necessarily (don't write just for the examiners). It also allows you to indicate why you made certain decisions in the final version.


Can I accept an offer from a MS program, but continue applying to other schools? I have accepted an offer to a MS program, but after further consideration, have decided I am unhappy with the program and the location of the school. Would there be consequences if I applied to more programs? Would I be burning bridges? If it makes any difference, I am unfunded and would enter as a coursework student. I would like to switch to the research-track after a semester, but I am not currently taking up a spot in a PI's group.

Actually, to behave in a completely ethical manner, if you don't intent to honor your acceptance, then you should withdraw. But that is based on the basic idea that failure to do so could deny an opportunity to someone else. And, in light of the other things you say, I'll have to guess that the probability of that in this case is small.

In some programs, it would be very important that you withdraw. For example if you have been accepted into a program with limited slots that are difficult to fill and that require expensive resources - medical programs, say. But that isn't the case here.

In fact, the program that accepted you has probably accepted a few more people than they need to (course based masters) expecting that a few won't show up. It is fairly typical and is normally a good thing for them to do.

I think that in the narrow case that you describe you can probably go on for a while leaving it as it is. Any transgression would be small. But you should inform them when you know that you won't honor the offer.

I think the only consequences would be to your conscience.


How does Google Search know which paper you have cited? Pick a random paper using Google Search, for instance

Click on the Cited By link, and you will see:

a list of writings, ranging from thesis, conference paper, arXiv paper, etc. etc....
published on a wide range of platforms such as academia.edu, arXiv, semanticscholar.org, ieee, nowpublishers...
using a variety of citation styles

It seems to me that if this was an automated process, then Google would have to keep track of every single new paper which has been published, and find the list of citation section in each paper, find a particular paper which has been cited, update the citation page for that particular paper and repeat for all citations for that paper.

But then it would have to gain access to those papers in the first place and some of them have subscriptions such as IEEE ones. It would have to ignore citation styles but keep track of correct version of whichever paper it has been cited (preprint, etc.).

Is this really how Google keeps track of citations in the Cited By link?
Can someone who has insider knowledge into publish enlighten me as to how Google Search seems to be able to know citations between papers?

It seems to me that if this was an automated process, then Google would have to keep track of every single new paper which has been published

Yes, this is exactly how Google does it. They crawl the web anyway, and if they find something that looks like an academic paper, they add it to their special Google Scholar index. Extracting citations from PDFs is technically not easy, but not something that is a big barrier if you have the manpower and years of experience in information retrieval like Google does.

As for how they get access to IEEE etc. - this is to the best of my knowledge not disclosed. Maybe they are just paying for institutional access like everybody else, maybe they get free access from the content providers so that they can build up their index.


In which type of schools can I have better research experience in Biology, liberal arts college or large research university? I'm struggling with deciding to which type of school to go in order to gain a better research experience. Basically, the research experience is the most important factor for me to decide my college, since I want to be a strong applicant in PhD admission. Most reputable, research universities are far larger than LACs (liberal arts colleges), and they (except for top schools like HYPSM) are not so friendly places for those who want to conduct their own research and engage in research from Sophomore or even Freshman. To get rich research experience, I want to be involved with research as early as possible and not only during the summer but also throughout a year. Just for example, Reed College has mandatory Senior thesis like Princeton, and profs are eager to help even Sophomores to do their research. However, in research universities, I can take graduate-level courses and touch with cutting-edge research as a research assistant. So, I can gain more advanced knowledge than those in LACs.

Could you tell me your recommendation both for me and those who have the same aspiration?

*If my question is too vague, please just compare UC Berkeley/University of Michigan vs. Reed College/Carleton College. I'm sure this will be a good comparison, since the quality of the students are almost equal.

I went to a small liberal arts college and worked at a large university lab, that had undergraduate interns. From both experiences I agree that it is the lab and not the school that matters. However, there are conditions that you will be more or less likely to find, depending on the type of school. In general liberal arts colleges will give you more personal attention and large universities will have more resources. Funding at liberal arts colleges is focused on undergraduate education and funding at larger universities is focused on research.

Personal Attention:

Liberal arts: A lab is led by a principal investigator or PI. Liberal arts colleges often do not have graduate students or have few graduate programs. So, at a small liberal arts college you will work closely with your PI and get to know them well. I left my college with great letters of rec that helped me overcome a poor GPA (due to a medical problem in my first two years) and get into grad school.

University: The undergrads were trained by PhDs and post docs and had little contact with the faculty. Post docs and PhDs can often be great teachers, though, since they either are students or were students recently and might be able to anticipate the student's perspective. At a university, they will normally write your letters of recommendation and the faculty will sign them.

Independence:

Liberal Arts: All of our grants were training grants, so the emphasis was on teaching, as opposed to producing results. This means you will get to do more independent work. I got first hand experience with the equipment (EEG) and techniques (analysis of FMRI and EEG data) that few undergraduates get to use. Additionally, I know of at least two of my friends who published, as first authors, in major research journals. This is not uncommon in my school.

University: The undergrads had to learn a program that is no longer used by most labs in the field. There was little room for mistakes (all of the labs grants were research grants), so the undergrads were given the task of modifying previous work and really did not develop any understanding of how the program actually works. However, this lab was an older lab. I also believe students at an older lab at my undergraduate school had a similar experience, where the methodology they were taught was not consistent with current standards in the field.

Connections:

They are pretty equal in this area. Liberal arts college professors often collaborate with people at larger institutions and can connect you with other labs. I have friends who got summer jobs at Stanford and CalTech this way. At the large university, one of our undergrads got to go to Oxford for the summer, because of the professor's connections to a lab there.

Equipment and Resouces:

Liberal arts: We did not have access to some of the most expensive equipment (an MRI, for example). However, one of my professors also worked at a local university that had access to an MRI and we got to use it there. Ideally, you should get some lab experience at a major research university, so you are exposed to techniques that require more expensive equipment. You can do this during summer internships. Getting more experience at different labs will look good on your application.

On that note, a liberal arts college is more likely to have grants that will help students study at other institutions. My college had several such grants for student research grants. Additionally, all senior thesis was funded by the department. The senior thesis funding and one of the summer fellowships both require students to focus on their own original ideas. In most fields the first author is the person who had the idea for the project. This is how undergraduate students were able to become first authors.

University: Universities will have the best equipment, but they are less likely to have funding for student research. The institution I worked at had grants for students, but they were only for work at that university. They also had no specific grants that would allow students to propose their own projects, based on their own ideas.


Should I wait for the editor's response to my pre-submission inquiry or should I just submit the manuscript anyways? My supervisor suggested that I sent a pre-submission inquiry to a journal editor about the potential suitability of my manuscript. I wrote to the editor last Friday and still haven't heard back from them. I am wondering if anyone who has previously done so could let me know how long it took you to get the response from the editor? I am hoping that I could submit it by the end of November (which is already here) and just don't know if it's worth waiting for the response or maybe just submit it anyways. Would love to hear about your thoughts on this. Thanks!

You wrote the editor last Friday. The time that has passed since you asked that question is a whopping 1.5-2.5 working days, depending on the exact time at which you sent your message.
This is a tiny amount of time in the calendar of many academics. Buffy is right in suggesting waiting at least a week.


How to prepare for Thesis defence presentation? I am doing Master Thesis which is now in a final stage. My Thesis submission is in around 3 weeks and i am almost done with documenting my findings. This is my first ever Thesis writing in my whole academic career. So I am already thinking about Thesis defence presentation.
I want to know that how to prepare for the defence presentation? and how to overcome or reduce stress regarding this?.

Take some of your friends and hold your presentation to them. Don't focus to much on the content at these trails. Instead use them get used to holding the presentation.
Your source of stress seems to be the fact that you have no experience. The only way to get it is to do dry runs in a low impact setting.


Practicality of attaining a law degree despite difficulty remembering facts? I am > 40 years old and have been heavily involved in IT for my adult life. 20-25 years ago I successfully studied 2 years of Information Technology at a polytechnic (I've always been good with computers).   I have subsequently enjoyed a moderately successful career as a systems administrator.

I am fairly certain I have a mental deficiency with respect of memorizing lots of facts - although in my current profession I have been largely able to compensate for this by having strong working models based on fundamental principles, and - of course - ready access to the Internet to help me over memory related hurdles.

I have a solid understanding (for a lay person) of the basis of law and a fairly analytical mind, and would like to study law part time in New Zealand or Australia - either online or in Auckland.

Is attaining a law degree "down under" with my impediment for recalling facts realistic, or does my difficulty recalling the names and minutia of case law by rote preclude me from completing a degree which would allow me to pass the bar?

How well do you remember films?

I had a similar problem, though not as bad as you describe. I found it helpful to think of each seminal case as an old black-and-white movie with a dramatic scene as judge's read their verdicts. I forget dates, but I remember the meanings and that proved much more important.

Side note: A law degree is (typically) a very field-specific endeavor. If you have a good reason to pursue it, then I wish you the best. But, just in case you've never heard this before: unless you plan to practice law somewhere, law school probably doesn't make good sense.


Fields of computer science with good academic outlook I gather that the academic job market is very tough for theoretical computer science PhDs with a low chance of obtaining a professorship.

Some things I have read with regards to this:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-academic-job-market-going-to-be-like-for-computational-complexity-theory-after-5-6-years
https://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/njdyq/so_you_want_a_phd_in_theoretical_computer_science/
https://www.quora.com/I-want-to-pursue-PhD-in-Theoretical-Computer-Science-but-I-am-concerned-with-the-job-options-What-should-I-do

If this truly is the case, I would hope it is completely reasonable to ask what fields in computer science are looking a lot better in terms of their academic job market?

My background: I am an undergraduate and have been exploring my research interests since I aspire to become a researcher in academia. I am reading a joint degree in mathematics and computer science in the UK. Naturally, TCS was one of the first fields I started looking at.

What is hot right now doesn't actually concern you and the job market is volatile enough that in six or seven years when you enter the market it will probably be completely different. It isn't a great life choice to make decisions based on such changeable factors.

You are better advised to study something that deeply interests you so that you are more likely to become hugely successful at it and (a) hope that the market isn't terrible when you graduate and (b) be assured that it will improve in time in any case.

You also need to keep a bit of flexibility in mind as you study so that you can change with the times if necessary without losing your interest in things.

So, do what you like to do and do it well. Doing what you think will give you some 'advantage' may turn out to disappoint you in too many ways to count.


How to write publishable-quality math and science papers? I've learned it a bit, through a thesis paper (not PhD-level), and from reading good papers in good journals.  But I'm interested in best practices, specifically the things to implement in my style of writing to get my work up to publishable quality (assuming that the content is good enough)?

Answers which summarize tips from available, useful resources are welcome.

Two good primers specifically on the subject of mathematics, which is quite different from more empirical sciences in many of its conventions:

Paul Halmos’s How to write mathematics is a classic — still excellent, if slightly old-fashioned in some ways.
Terence Tao’s blog post On writing collects and summarises links to some excellent advice from himself and others.


Should I challenge the GRE requirement for a doctoral program in education (in the U.S.)? I'm just starting to investigate doctoral programs in education in the United States, and I'm considering how to handle the GRE requirement:

Hardline Activism: submit my incomplete application with a well-researched essay justifying my refusal to take the GRE.
Soft Activism: submit my complete application including my first-try GRE scores along with a well-researched essay debunking the significance of my GRE scores related to my value as a candidate in the Ed.D. program, AND flatly stating that I spent no more than four hours (the length of the exam. i.e. No test prep.) on the GRE, in light of my scientific conclusions about it's relevance in this situation.
Passive Acceptance: submit my complete application with my first-try GRE score and hope for acceptance.
Active Acceptance: Study hard and take the GRE, then study some more and take it again. Submit my complete application and hope for acceptance.

Are there other options that I'm overlooking?

My position is not "the GRE has no value." My position is "I'm an excellent candidate for this doctoral program, as evidenced by my application. GRE scores would not alter that conclusion."

I found this discussion very useful, especially the answer and citations by Jeromy Anglim.

As an aside, I admit that I enjoy testing boundaries just for fun, but this issue is more than that. As a proponent of thoughtful, responsible education reform, I'm leaning toward options 1 and 2.

I think the answer to your question is this:

How much do you value getting into graduate school versus how much do you value feeling like you are making a point?

If you value feeling like you are making a point, by all means, pursue the Soft Activism. My guess is that it will come across to the department like a complaint that you didn't do well enough on the test and are going rogue to make your point.

If you value getting into graduate school, then engage in "begrudging acceptance" that this is how you get into that particular graduate school. Like it or not, there's often a line of people willing to take your place, suffer the test, and smile. Moreover, if there's money on the line in the forms of scholarships or fellowships, consider the time/money you put into the test an investment. Study, practice, and prepare until you get a score you can submit in the hopes of getting in. You don't have to actively like the idea, you just need to accept this is the means to acceptance in graduate school.

For middle ground possibilities, I actually think the "hardline activism" approach is softer and less whiney than your "soft activism", because true or false it makes it seem like you've had a principled stand against the GRE since the beginning. Depending on the contours of the education program that might bode well for you. Some education programs might agree that the testing is bunk; my colleagues in education don't like standardized tests.

You can of course just submit the scores you have, but if you think they are inadequate for acceptance, that seems unwise.

After you're in, then write all the principled essays you want against it and try to change the system.


Postdoc application: Should I mention who I'd like to work with? Some postdoc applications specifically mention who the principal investigator. However, other positions don't have a PI; the postdoc is being hired to join the research group in general and, while there's an expectation the candidate will collaborate with group members, there's nobody who is going to be the "boss." Typically these positions just say "the candidate will join the research group X of Professors A, B and C, working on topics such as..."
When applying to this second type of position, should I mention in my cover letter which professor(s) I'd like to work the most with? Something like "I am particularly keen to collaborate with Prof. B, as we share interests in..."
On one hand, doing this shows I'm personalizing the application to the position and that I put some effort thinking whether I'm suitable for it. On the other, it could be seen as being inflexible ("I want to work with Prof. B and nobody else!") and naming names might be perceived as tacky.

I'd suggest that you don't name anyone unless you somehow name them all. Not only do you avoid seeming inflexible, you actually maintain some flexibility until you can judge better who would be best if you need to single out anyone.
Indicate that you are familiar with their work somehow, I think, by naming papers you are familiar with. (Familiar with, not just saw somewhere).
Truly collaborative groups probably think of themselves as a unit in some ways.
On the other hand, mentioning specific topics that most interest you would seem like a better option. That might imply one or the other of the members, of course, without stating it.


Almost identical general statement with different citations – is this a problem? Paper X states that

  A is bla bla, but also referred to as B [1] and C [2].

I recently wrote:

  A is referred to as B [3] and C [4].

where Paper [3] and [4] are about the same topic as papers [1] and [2], respectively.

Would this almost identical sentence be an issue (in the sense of plagiarism), in particular since I cite Paper X for another reason elsewhere in my paper?

This form of basic sentence is common and hence would not be regarded as plagiarism. You are not taking any distinct sentence and hopefully you are not providing the same references as specified in the first sentence.

Plagiarism occurs when you use the work of another without proper attribution. I would not consider your query to fit in this description.


How many reference letters requests is considered too many? The problem with me is that I applied to 4 programs and I didn't get in in any of them. The last program which was almost guaranteed admission (because I already found a researcher willing to accept me); I emailed my undergrad thesis supervisor for, what I called at the time of the email "my last reference letter request ever to make". Unfortunately, I wasn't accepted to the program and now I'm applying again to a different school.
The problem is I feel so weird about emailing him again for another reference letter. Other than the generic email, how can I go about emailing him? I am sure he remembers me , but I don't know how to justify the amount of requests that I've sent him so far !

Any idea on how I should approach the issue?

You haven't asked for too many.  Write to your supervisor, tell him what happened, and ask whether he will write "a few" more reference letters.  People will generally be willing to help you if they understand the reasons for your requests.  (Do not ask for "one more" or you could find yourself in the same situation again.)


Including cartoons in lecture notes? I would like to include some cartoons in my lecture notes, just to spice up things a bit and relax the atmosphere before moving to serious stuff. However, I am not sure if there is any issue with doing this (in terms of intellectual property) or if I can include any cartoon with the corresponding reference?

I am thinking of simple stuff like xkcd, phdcomics, and other nerdy jokes (nothing like the death of Superman or the first comic of Batman).

As an undergraduate, I always appreciated when profs did stuff like this. It made it look like they actually put some effort into their notes, and a laugh was always appreciated in the middle of a frustrating and hard lecture.


Is it permitted to not take Ph.D. students who have girlfriends/are married/don't come in weekends...? As a professor, are you permitted to prohibit Ph.D. students from joining your research group if you know they have a boy/girlfriend, are married, don't come in on weekends, who don't stay late, etc...?

The professor does not intend to make them work on stuff related to his/her research outside of normal working hours.  Rather, the supervisor would like their students to be driven enough to study/read publications and books about topics outside their particular research program during those times.

That way, supposedly, by the time they graduate, they will be very well rounded, and also develop their own research programs in meaningful ways.

Since I observe this behavior with a certain professor I know at a US university, I was wondering if that professor is liable for legal charges, which I could bring up to the dean.

One way I hear about how he "weeds" out the normal people is by telling them how much work it takes to succeed, and gives examples of previous "successful" students, and what their lifestyles were. I suppose he says something like: "this is how much you know from being an undergrad, this is how much you need to know to succeed in this field, here is a humongous list of topics you should know before you can competently do research with me, come back to me when you're ready." But I don't think that's all he does....  I think he intimidates prospective advisees with his demeanor, and so this fact along with his reputation leads to him select students who work day and night everyday.

A disclaimer:  I'm not an attorney.  My opinion is my own but I'll give you my sources.

Here in the US only, universities are probably not prohibited from considering otherwise protected status in admissions, c.f., Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which upheld racial preferences in admissions.

But under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, once the question becomes one of employment (e.g., they work for you and get paid a stipend) you cannot discriminate based on any of the factors you cite.  You should also carefully avoid asking questions that suggest you're even thinking about it, c.f., "Federal Laws Prohibiting Job Discrimination Questions And Answers" and "Pre-Employment Inquiries and Marital Status or Number of Children" on the EEOC site.

Added: I agree with Anonymous. Even if you think you can get away with it, perhaps because it's not illegal in your country, I also think it would still be wrong.

Added:  If you are the victim of unlawful discrimination in the workplace, HR is not your friend. A priori, their objective is to make sure discrimination complaints don't happen. But after the fact, their objective is to circle the wagons and make sure a complaint dies without the institution having to pay a settlement or admit that any wrongdoing has ever happened.  A great outcome for HR is that you just quit and the problem goes away.  From your latest performance reviews and interviews with your co-workers, it's clear you were unhappy and have been for months and it's been showing up in your work.  So you quit.  Poof!  Problem solved.  Separately, they'll figure out what to do with the others involved.  If you think you may be a victim of unlawful discrimination, you should go first to your own attorney for competent legal advice, not HR.


Submitting similar work to two conferences I have a pilot study that I conducted, the results of which I'd like to present at the upcoming Conference X. I am also expanding on this study so that I not only have additional data, but will also have a broader focus, since my original one ended up being rather narrow.
I'd like to present my updated results (not yet available) at Conference Y several months after Conference X, but I certainly don't want to do so if it's unethical. Essentially, if I were to do both, I would be repeating some of what I present at Conference X (similar research objectives and methods, some of the same data), but I anticipate having further analyses to offer. Thoughts?

Certainly it isn't unethical to present new and improved results at a conference. However, the reviewers may have questions about novelty if your earlier work overlaps too much. But that is up to them to decide.
Just cite the old work in the new so that it doesn't appear as if you are doing a double submission. Then, let the reviewers decide.


Is it possible to use Reddit as a source? For a writing assignment, I'm doing some research on my topic (CalgaryNEXT). Most sites I've seen report generally the same ideas and the same stats. Then I found this post of someone who attended a presentation by the project's lead, and he mentions a few other points not covered elsewhere.

Unfortunately though, its just "some dude on Reddit".

Is there any legitimate way of sourcing something like this, or must I rely on cut-and-paste articles from more reputable news sites?

I would shy away from using reddit.com specifically, as the website has even less clout than Wikipedia (which at least attempts to source their material). If the author was a reporter, his job is on the line for being factual. On reddit, there are no repercussions for posting mistakes. Unfortunately, you might have to rely on newspaper articles for this one.


What do I do if my results are not ready before a conference? My supervisor encouraged me to apply for a conference presentation, as he had funding for me to go.  The problem was that I had no results at the time, since the conference date was six months after the abstract deadline.  At the time I thought I would have results in time so I wrote an abstract (stating what I plan to do and why it is important, but posted no results) and got accepted for a poster presentation.

Now it is 1 week before the conference and I have very poor results.  I was able to complete the experiment, but the the results are much too poor to present.  Unfortunately I have no time to redo anything and do not have any previous research (am a masters student).  Which one of these is worse?:

Presenting meaningless results just so you can present
Presenting a vague poster (show the theory, methodology, importance, but no tangible results) to get around poor data.
Not showing up to the conference and get a partial refund.

I would recommend another option: present the current truth of your work and results. You can get feedback on the methods and approach and somebody may even be able to point out adjustments to your approach that may help the work. Even just talking to people outside of your lab can be an important part of developing as a researcher. Don't try to hide the state of your work or pretend you have more than you have: people will be able to tell and it will not help you. Instead present yourself as you are: an early student looking for interaction around these ideas.

Note, of course, that this is all subject to your professor's approval: they know your community better than random strangers on the internet.

Finally: let this be a lesson for the future. Don't give in to pressure to claim results that you may not get. It is always better to say "And here are some new results not mentioned in the abstract..." than to explain why you can't deliver what you promised.


Is it plagiarism to reference a fictitious source? I'm dealing with a student essay that references three books in support of a claim. None of the books referenced have authors listed, and, based on the contents of the student's essay, I can't find any information on these books online. I'm fairly certain they don't exist, but I'm not sure what to call this beyond academic dishonesty.

I read this from the Nebraska Methodist College:

  Other acts of plagiarism are more limited in scope, but are nonetheless cheating. If you decide to make up a quotation or other material and an associated in-text citation, this is plagiarism. If you change or invent the author of a quotation, an idea, or a statistic to make your paper appear to contain more numerous sources, this is plagiarism.

I've run into a few other university plagiarism guides that mention the citing of fictitious sources as plagiarism, but I'd like to know if this is standard, fair, or legitimate to label this practice plagiarism and not just academic dishonesty.

The conflict is this: the student isn't citing these presumably falsified texts directly, but they are referencing finer plot points and characters in them. That is, they are talking about the fictitious dilemmas of the fictitious characters as a way to support their thesis. To me that's dishonest and shows a lack of integrity. I'm grading students on a rubric that awards points for organization, analytical treatment, and language use. If I treat this as academic dishonesty maybe I knock the person's grade down in the rubric criteria related to analysis, but if I treat it as plagiarism I'd give the student a zero.

For example, Merriam–Webster defines plagiarism via to plagiarize, which it defines as:

  : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
  : use (another's production) without crediting the source
  intransitive verb

  : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

This does not include inventing a quotation, which is in fact sort-of the opposite of plagiarism: passing off one’s own idea as somebody else’s. Other dictionaries agree on this and so does my understanding of the word plagiarism.

Moreover, defining plagiarism so broad makes the term rather useless and almost equivalent to the umbrella term academic misconduct. The reason why we have a word for plagiarism is to differentiate a specific kind of misconduct, not a specific severity.

  The conflict is this: the student isn't citing these texts directly, but they are referencing finer plot points and characters. To me that's dishonest and shows a lack of integrity. I'm grading students on a rubric that awards points for organization, analytical treatment, and language use. If I treat this as academic dishonesty maybe I knock the person's grade down in the rubric criteria related to analysis, but if I treat it as plagiarism I'd give the student a zero.

I fail to see why you would be more lenient about academic dishonesty than about plagiarism. I don’t fully understand what you mean by “referencing finer plot points and characters”, but I would classify what you are describing as fabricating evidence, which is roughly as grave as plagiarism. I say roughly, because I see no point in ranking the severity of those misconducts in general and the severity distributions of individual instances of those misconducts strongly overlap.

What is important at the end of the day is whether you are reasonably convinced that the student in question did not just work sloppily, but intentionally deceived the reader (i.e., you). The aspect of intention alone suffices for awarding them zero points, in my opinion.


Can a discoverer give the name he wants to his finding? Let's assume that some scientist discovers a phenomenon that has never been noticed before.

He wants to write a paper about it but he doesn't want to constantly write "effect of change of some properties blahblahblah". Can he therefore name this effect with a name of his choice? For example "Discoverer's name's effect". Or "fluffy puppy effect" (just because he likes puppies)?

The same for constants. Can one name newly discovered constant "my name constant"?

This question can be simplified to: "what are standards for naming new physical entities?"

Usually the way this works is that a researcher discovers some phenomenon and publishes it without giving a name. Then someone else comes along and writes about "Jones' discovery" and before you know it the world talks about the "Jones effect".

Giving things a name yourself is done in some fields - for example, in MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) it is conventional that people who develop a new pulse sequence will give that sequence a "catchy" name (usually some clever abbreviation, never really their own name). So you have names like CAIPIRINHA (which is really the name of a drink, but stands for "Controlled Aliasing In Parallel Imaging Results IN Higher Acceleration").

In the end, the name that the community adopts is the name by which something will be known - so you are free to call it the "teletubby galaxy" but if everybody insists on calling it Andromeda-X42 you will be a lone voice. If you have the good fortune of discovering something new and valuable, name it wisely or be ignored.

Reiterating the point made by Nathaniel: suggesting that a particular phenomenon/constant/equation should be named after you is considered a major faux pas. Others will do it for you - when you try to jump the gun and suggest that it be named after you, you will come across as conceited. I can think of no example of a well known effect that a discoverer named for themselves. Some examples where they did not:

Newton's Laws (he called them "Axiomata sive Leges Motus")

Hooke's Law ("Explaining the power of springing bodies")

Josephson effect (for which he got the Nobel prize... not available for Newton or Hooke, or surely they would have qualified) was described by him (Physics Letters Vol 1, No 7, 1962) as "new effects":

he didn't say "we present here the Josephson Effect".

The list could go on and an. If you are the greatest, you don't need to say so - others will do it. No offense intended, Mr Ali.

If you are interested interested, there is a follow-up question on a sister site, History of Science and Math: What famous laws were named by their discoverer?


First research proposal for a postdoc application I am completing a PhD in area of "applied" mathematics (although technically this general area is very broad and sits in between both pure and applied ends of the spectrum).

I am applying for some one-year post doctoral positions at another university. These positions are not attached to any specific member of academic staff, and are thus open to all applicants from pure / applied /statistics  - a committee decides who gets the position, depending on a "number of various factors". I am meant to submit a research proposal, however. I have contacted an academic there whose research is in a similar area to mine (but still quite different, of course).

In my situation, given that I am still yet to complete my PhD thesis, and publish my results, what would be the best thing to do regarding the research proposal? How stringent are the requirements in general regarding research proposals for first-time postdocs in the eyes of professional mathematicians? I certainly have a number of potential research avenues to pursue stemming directly from my work - should I just write about them?

In mathematics, your situation is very common.  A lot of people don't have any papers written and are still completing their PhD when applying for their first postdoc.  There's nothing "stringent" about "research proposal requirements."  (Are there even any requirements?  Typically, just that something be submitted, I suppose.)  What you'll be evaluated on mostly at your stage is your area of research and letters of recommendation (and possibly your teaching ability, depending on the position).  Yes, people will look at your statement, and you should do a good job at writing it, but don't worry too much about it.

Generally what you should do in a research statement at your stage is:

summarize what you've been working on, and your (partial?) results till now
indicate, in some but not a lot of detail, what are some future things you are interested in working on (these do not need to be things you're definitely going to do)

The point of this statement is:

To see that you can effectively communicate your work/ideas (and possibly to get a sense of how well you understand its context)
To see if what you're doing is of interest to the faculty there
To see that you have some decently thought out ideas for future work


I regret declining a really good PhD offer. Can I ask if I can accept the offer after all? I recently declined a really good PhD offer in the US for another offer from an American university and I'm terribly regretting it now.

I made my decision on the 15th of April and it's past deadline now. I really want to go to the other school and since the 15th of April was the last working day, I'm hoping that they haven't offered my position to any other aspirant yet. I know this is ethically wrong but I feel miserable about my decision and want to contact the university and ask them if they can still accommodate me.

As far as the other university is concerned I have only accepted their offer through an email and haven't formally been given the final offer letter yet. Should I go ahead with this?

Dude I am an old guy and here is my advice:

Never be shy to ask for things you don't know.
Accept the fact that you are an imperfect being. You made mistakes, and will make mistakes.
Be open to hear others views, and take moment to digest their words to fully understand their perspective.

Therefore it is totally normal to email the university back with full honesty and tell them that you changed your mind.

BUT before you do that, think twice, thrice or even more. You have already done a mistake for being too quick. Don't be too quick again. At least learn.

To me it seems that maybe you are unstable and change your mind too quickly. Let me blame you a bit: before deciding too quickly, why didn't you just email them back and simply ask "I would appreciate some time to think. Could you please let me know the deadline for my response? Thanks."?

Lesson #1 when you are at a point in time where you need to make a choice, usually the best decision to evaluate and perform is the following:

Evaluate if it's possible to postpone the decision (you might need to ask questions to ensure whether it's possible to postpone the decision).
If it's possible to postpone, then postpone it so that you have more time to think and make a better decision.

Of course, some times it is not possible to postpone a decision because time matters. That's why you need to first evaluate the possibility (or even more accurately: the cost associated with postponing it; if the cost is low, and the value from a more reliable decision is high, then dude postpone it!).


Should I quit my PhD - workload, self-esteem and social life I don't really want a degree.  I just want to get married, and have weekends and evenings off, and chill out and play board games, and have nice conversations with friends, and have time to exercise and eat good food, and partake in hobbies, and read books and play computer games and watch movies and write a novel or two.  Stuff I used to do as a kid, that I can't do as a grad student.

I like my research, and I like my advisor, but I feel like I work a lot harder than my friends in industry, and I'll be putting my life on hold for at least the next two years, while I'm finishing classes and qualifying exams.  Frankly I don't feel like I can survive the next year, and just the thought of staying here for the next few months makes me depressed.

The problem is if I wasn't a PhD student, I'd just be another fat ugly loser with no social status, and nobody would love me or think I was valuable.  I wouldn't be taken as seriously when it came time to apply for jobs, and people would think I was stupid or at least not any better than someone with a bachelor's degree.  At least now I can apply for internships and get interviews.  And because I am a PhD student at a top school, people assume I'm smart, which also helps me find dates, even though I'm obese, wear glasses, and dress poorly.  It puts me in a different "league" and if I quit I'd have to go back to dating losers who only want me because they can't find any other girlfriends.

Also if I quit my PhD, I would never be able to come back, and what if my new job ended up sucking, or I couldn't even get a job?  I do like my work, and I'm glad I get to do such interesting stuff, I just wish there was less of it.

I don't really want a degree.

There are many good reasons to get a PhD. Probably lots of people get say, bachelor's degrees and master's degrees, because they just want a degree, but the number of people who get a PhD just for the sake of getting a degree is (in my opinion) lower (for example, you might want to teach at the university level, see answers here). This is partly because a PhD is in some sense harder and more time-consuming that bachelor's/masters degree, but also that the degree isn't really the point of a PhD, see for example, this answer here by Pete L. Clark. To very briefly summarize, a PhD is a way to 'learn how to learn' and the stuff that you learn is a lot less important than the process of obtaining said knowledge. So your statement that you 'don't really want a degree' worries me a bit. I mean, the degree is not the point, and wanting a PhD is not at all the same as wanting a degree in general. Why did you apply to PhD programs? What was your motivation? What are your goals?

  I just want to get married, and have
  weekends and evenings off, and chill out and play board games, and
  have nice conversations with friends, and have time to exercise and
  eat good food, and partake in hobbies, and read books and play
  computer games and watch movies and write a novel or two.

Don't we all! Anyway, you know, you can do these things as a graduate student. This is easier/harder depending on your exact circumstances/stage of graduate career, but certainly doable. I recently graduated (with my PhD in mathematics), but in my graduate department on Friday nights a lot of us hung out at the grad student bar and then repaired to the department lounge to play boardgames often to the early hours of the morning. Some of us came in to work over the weekends, but not all of us. Anyway, even while physically in the department, we would visit each other's offices and goof off fairly regularly. Okay, for us goofing off also often involved talking about mathematics, so it wasn't entirely a waste of our time. In any case, chilling out and nice conversations with friends occurred throughout the workweek as well. In the first few years of graduate school, I did a really good job of eating right and reading and such, since my time was a lot more structured, and I was able to plan relatively well. Much of my department were regulars at the gym, and quite a few of us were spotted running on the jogging track (some of us were/are pretty good at this stuff: for example, one of did quite well in the Houston marathon and a current student is doing some awesome Crossfit things these days). During major exams, or thesis-writing, or trying to get a paper out, these things got a bit harder of course. Aside from fitness, many of us did well with hobbies. Some of us were hardcore gamers – we even had an informal Magic the Gathering tournament periodically among the grad students; others enjoyed cooking – the rest of us enjoyed the food they would bring in to share; I enjoyed jigsaw puzzles – for a while we did jigsaws in my office, where others in the dept would drop by to puzzle for a bit when they needed a break from work; one of us was in a band, others in in/formal choirs and such; I and some others were involved to various extents in students organizations; and so on. Some number of us got married while in graduate school (not me personally), and one of the students in my cohort had a child as well. How did we do all this stuff? We had an advantage in being mathematics graduate students, since we are not tied to a lab as our counterparts in the rest of the STEM fields, and we had the advantage of being in a department with supportive faculty (who sometimes joined us for weekly boardgames and graduate student bar hangouts) and awesome fellow students.

The most important part of the above list though, were the awesome fellow students. I was in a small department, so it was natural for us all to hang out together, but perhaps you're in a large department where this is harder. Try to find some fun fellow students. They are possibly feeling much of the same things that you are, and if they are in your department they possibly share your interests. If you don't know too many people (if this is your first or second year in the program), organize something – a movie night at your home, a potluck, or a boardgame night. You might be surprised at how many of your fellow students also want to find someone to chill with.

The second most important thing is time management and prioritization. Figure out what's important to you, and then figure out a way to do it. You might have to be very disciplined and focused during the workday so you can run in the evenings, or play boardgames every weekend. But, if there's one thing I learned in grad school, it's that the number of hours you work is not as important as the quality of work you are getting done. You might end up spending less time overall on work, but if you're happier in general, you will probably do better work in the smaller amount of time. For example, I absolutely need some time every week that I can be at home by myself watching TV, probably with multiple cats napping on me. This might seem like wasted time to the outside observer, but really it's time that I need to recharge so that I can get actual work done at other times. That's just the way I work.

  I like my research, and I like my advisor,

That's really great. I mean this sincerely. The opposite is sadly far too common.

  but I feel like I work a
  lot harder than my friends in industry, and I'll be putting my life on
  hold for at least the next two years, while I'm finishing classes and
  qualifying exams.

Well, to be frank, it is possible that you are working harder than your contemporaries and that you are putting your life on hold, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Lots of people have lots of life-changing stuff happen in their mid-20s. For example, it seemed to me for a while that everyone that I knew in my age group was getting engaged, married, or having kids. I decided to count in 2013 and here is what I found

51 people I know got married i.e. about 1 wedding per week.
31 people I know got engaged i.e. about 2.5 engagements per month.
19 people I know had a baby i.e. about 1.5 babies per month.

(The count is with multiplicity, that is, if two people I know independently get married, I counted two weddings. There were no twins/multiple births that I'm aware of.) That's pretty intense!

These are all cool people and I wish them all the luck, but I don't want to be getting married and having kids just because all my friends seem to be (I mean, what an odd story to tell your grandkids someday).

Again, yes a PhD is hard work, hard work that doesn't ever get compensated for in any 'real' way. But the point of the PhD is not some eventual reward, the point of the PhD is really just the process of the PhD. Most likely I will never make the same amount of money as my friends with MBAs; they will probably have fancier job titles than me, and depending on where we are in the world, they might get more respect and power as well. But (forgive me) a PhD craves not these things. If you want prestige, power and such things, a PhD is not the right way to go at all.

If you're getting a PhD chances are that you have somewhat different priorities than the average person (which is fine, just as the average person's goals are also just fine). My friends who are younger than me have much more seeming grown-up lives true, but they are on a different track than me, and it doesn't really make sense to compare.

  Frankly I don't feel like I can survive the next
  year, and just the thought of staying here for the next few months
  makes me depressed.

This is concerning. Please consider talking to someone directly. It's great that you asked AC.SE this question, but we are after all strangers on the internet. Talk to someone you know and trust. Your university probably has a counseling center. Talk to your advisor/mentor.

Graduate students are often discouraged and depressed (I was no exception, see here), for example, see this article. The 'usual' discouragement often passes, but it is not uncommon for us to have undiagnosed mental/emotional health issues. A trained professional is a much better person to talk to about these things, and I hope you will consider doing so.

  The problem is if I wasn't a PhD student, I'd just be another fat ugly
  loser with no social status, and nobody would love me or think I was
  valuable.

This seems very unlikely to me. From just this question itself I see that you enjoy reading, and playing boardgames and video games, and enjoy good food and hanging out with friends; from this I see that you have hobbies and interests, and enjoy people. You asked this question, from which I gather that you can be introspective and that you are giving actual sincere thought to what you want to do with your life. This is all from this one question. The poster of this question seems like an interesting person to me.

Some of us are fat and some of us are less than conventionally attractive. Each of these things comes with barriers that one has to overcome. Conventionally attractive folks have their own set of hoops to jump through too. Yes, there do exist people in the world who think 'this person is overweight/stick-thin/different race than me/unattractive/the opposite gender/something else and therefore I do not value them', and those people can go f* themselves. There are enough of the rest of us too though.

  I wouldn't be taken as seriously when it came time to apply
  for jobs, and people would think I was stupid or at least not any
  better than someone with a bachelor's degree.

That's kind of a judgmental statement about people with bachelor's degrees. Anyway, all of this depends on what kinds of jobs you're applying for. There are some jobs where having a PhD would actually hinder you (see here).

  At least now I can apply
  for internships and get interviews. And because I am a PhD student at
  a top school, people assume I'm smart,

This is also a worrying statement. It's possible that I'm misinterpreting your statement, but in case I'm not, please look up imposter syndrome, it's distressingly common in academia; in short, this is a phenomenon where despite much evidence to the contrary, someone is convinced that they do not deserve the success that they have achieved (also see this question).

  which also helps me find dates,
  even though I'm obese, wear glasses, and dress poorly.

If you think that wearing glasses is hurting your ability to date, you could wear contacts. Similarly you could try to dress better (I recommend the show 'What Not to Wear'), or try to lose weight.

  It puts me in a
  different "league" and if I quit I'd have to go back to dating losers
  who only want me because they can't find any other girlfriends.

The people I know that are single do not all look alike, or dress alike, or all have poor vision. There isn't much that's common to them than the fact that they are single. You seem to be saying that if there were two individuals who were identical in every way except that one is in a PhD program that the grad student version would get more dates – I simply do not buy this. I might be willing to accept that this would be a true of a man, but I absolutely do not buy it for women.

If you think someone is dating you just because they can't find another girlfriend, please dump them. Similarly, if you think someone is dating you just because you are a PhD student, please dump them just as fast.

  Also if I quit my PhD, I would never be able to come back,

I know this guy who was a PhD student in my department (mathematics) in the 60s, didn't finish, left with his master's and was teaching in community college. He kept doing math on his own time though, and he came up with something cool, enough that a faculty member he had been in touch with got him back into our program and he eventually got his PhD in 2011. He is an inspiration. (See here for more such stories). So, yeah, I disagree with this statement.

  and what if
  my new job ended up sucking, or I couldn't even get a job?

Yeah, it's possible. But it's possible that you couldn't get a job with a PhD. Or that the earth is destroyed tomorrow to make way for an interstellar bypass. But worrying about this will not help us in any way.

  I do like
  my work, and I'm glad I get to do such interesting stuff, I just wish
  there was less of it.

You know, reading your question, it really seems to me that it's not that there's too much work, but more that there isn't as much fun non-work in your life right now. I would really suggest trying to build a social circle among your fellow graduate students, not only for having people to do fun things with, but also for people in similar situations to talk to. I know that for me it was really helpful to talk to my fellow students about my doubts and concerns, because we were all in the same boat. It sounds like you are very concerned about dating, so for what it's worth, lots of graduate students I know dated other graduate students.

While on the subject of dating, please consider whether you're giving too much thought to it. It is nice to have a partner that you can talk to, who will support you and care for you when needed, but finding such a person doesn't need to be take over your life. I strongly believe that successful relationships are composed of people that are also happy on their own and in their own skins. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to work on your own happiness for a while before seeking out a partner, particular since when having self-esteem concerns it is very easy to find oneself in abusive and/or unbalanced relationships.

I would also recommend that you give some serious thought to what you value most in your life and what you want to do with it. What are you looking for? What is your dream job? It will probably help to talk to someone directly about such things too. You said that you like your advisor, so they might be a good person to talk to. Most of us that have been through graduate school have dealt with these things to some extent.

Depending on this self-examination, you might decide that a PhD is not for you. This is fine. Or, you might decide to stick with it. This is fine too. With the caveat that you're doing it for the right reasons. Some of us hang on to PhD programs with this notion that 'quitting is bad'. That's a poor reason to stay in a PhD program. On the other hand, if you truly enjoy doing what you're doing, and you want to keep doing it for the rest of your life, that's a great reason to hang in there. If you want to stay in the program so that some hypothetical someone might deign to date you, that's a poor reason to stick around, and also such a person clearly isn't worth your time.

Getting a PhD can be hard work, probably harder work than your contemporaries are doing in industry (I speculate, I've never had a job in the real world). It is rewarding in its own way though, to some people. This isn't a value judgment. Math makes me feel like a complete idiot almost all the time. The remaining 0.01% of the time is pretty good though, and that's enough for me. Mostly this makes me a masochist I think, but that works for me. But it makes perfect sense for it to not work for everyone, and honestly these other folks are probably better adjusted anyway.

Lastly, your last paragraph makes me think that you're worried that you're making irreversible decisions. You're not. If you choose to leave your PhD program now, you can still come back to get a PhD (probably somewhere else). If you started your PhD with the goal of being in the academic world, but decide later that you want to be in industry, you can still do that. If you want to start back from scratch and work in sociology (say), you can still do that too. These things might require some work, but they are all still possible.

Best of luck in your decision-making! I'd like to reiterate, pretty much all of us wanted to quit at some point, and pretty much all of us wondered why we were doing it. You're not alone!


Simplest way to jointly write a manuscript? As with many papers in the sciences, there are multiple authors who aren't physically close to each other. I was curious about the most efficient and simplest way to technically share the writing. On the more complicated side would be LaTeX and subsequently using subversion to merge all of the changes. Then there is google docs. Finally, there is the traditional write out edits on word and email the document with comments back and forth.

What works?

If your collaborator is not technically inclined, then there are a few possibilities:

Google Docs
It is very simple, robust and real-time (no need of thinking 'which version is the most recent'). I created a lot of documents with it (though only 1 scientific article). A good idea is to use different colours so that it is clear who wrote what. One drawback is that it may be not as simple for equations and than you will need to copy things from there to LateX manually.
Annotating PDF files with Adobe Reader or sth equivalent
Also simple and robust. However, as it is not real-time you need to keep track of which version is current and it is not possible to make changes in the same time. Here you are the only person responsible for changes in LaTeX file.
Annotating or changing with OpenOffice, MS Word or another office package...
Another variant which allows you collaborator to make direct changes, at cost of some robustness.

As a practical remark for the two last: always keep track of the version, e.g. draft_20120424_prof.pdf, where you add both date of the last edit (not final5!) and name of the last editor. When exchanging things by e-mail it is easy to loose track which version is the most recent and in fact lost changes (often not knowing about that.)

Other possibilities, requiring some technical knowledge:

writeLaTeX or sth similar (ShareLaTeX, ScribTeX, LaTeX Lab - the one using GoogleDocs, ...)
Tools for editing  documents collaboratively (in real-time) and compile it within one's browser (so no need to install anything). Though some knowledge of LaTeX is required (at least to know how not to spoil a file).
ScribTeX(the only one I used) gives version control and you can see which lines were changed (as in version control system), so not need of guessing what might have been changed.
EDIT: ScribTeX is being replaced by ShareLaTeX.
writeLaTeX has live preview and may be the most suitable for beginners.
Git or another version-control system, e.g. at GitHub
However, it may require technical skills beyond edition of LaTeX. While it is not hard to use it, I never did I am using it for writing papers and I would never try to use it with someone with low computer literacy.

When it comes to Dropbox - it is a good stuff for sharing files for a project but NOT for making changes in files. First, you never know when the changes happen. Second, you don't know where the changes happen.

There is also an article on it: Research tips - Online collaborative writing.

See also a few questions:

Simultaneous collaborative editing of a LaTeX file - tex.SE
Tools for collaborative paper-writing - MathOverflow
Compiling documents online - tex.SE


In which sections of a paper can I find literature reviews? I would like to practice writing lit review from reading other papers and looking at the style of writing. Where usually are the review sections found in papers? Is it the "Introduction" Section, for example?

The portion of a paper where previous literature is summarized and elucidated upon is also known as (but not restricted to)

Literature Review
Background
Related Work
Previous Work etc.

In my brief life as a graduate student, I have heard of multiple strategies to write a literature review. I will describe one such path which I personally utilize (in part, because this is what my previous adviser always trained me to do)

  The Annotated Bibliography Approach

What is an annotated bibliography?

This is perhaps the best advice to start writing one. Note that I am also affiliated to Cornell University but this has nothing to do with my affiliation.

Example:

Assume that I am writing a paper for CHI 2014. My area is in privacy and surveillance. I want to look at the relationship between manual location sharing and privacy concerns.

I look at all the related papers I have read in the area and realize that their are four major categories that could evolve from this reading and still be relevant to the writing of this paper.

So, in a draft, I write down:

Literature Review

  Privacy Frameworks

  Location Based System Research

  Privacy Measurement Scales

  Privacy Aware Design

Then, under each category I start writing the references (in the style of your area ; in my area its in the ACM style) of the relevant papers and a couple of lines about each paper which explains the main contributino of the paper. For instance:

  Location Based Systems Usage

  Janne Lindqvist, Justin Cranshaw, Jason Wiese, Jason Hong, and John
  Zimmerman. 2011. I'm the mayor of my house: examining why people use
  foursquare - a social-driven location sharing application. In
  Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
  Systems (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2409-2418.
  DOI=10.1145/1978942.1979295 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1978942.1979295

This exploratory paper examines why people use foursquare, a manual location sharing application. It determines three major reasons why people do so - to gain points and compete with friends, to track their location as a form of a diary and to earn discounts and special offers from business venues that they visit. Emerging social norms and online identity management are also briefly alluded to in the discussion section of this paper.

Now, once you have all your relevant papers written up in this format, your annotated bibliography and by extension, your literature review is almost done. You copy the references to their rightful place at the end of the paper (References or Bibliography section)

Then, the final step is to simply integrate the few lines that you have written about each paper in to coherent paragraphs and voila, you have a very passable first draft of your literature review.

I hope this made a little sense of how you go about writing one. I can understand that writing a literature review for the first time can feel like a very daunting task.


Is it acceptable to extend deadlines for coursework delayed due to student activism? This article from the Brown University Daily Herald describes a number of student activists who claim to have suffered due to excess levels of student activism. Some excerpts from the article are included:

“There are people breaking down, dropping out of classes and failing classes because of the activism work they are taking on,” said David, an undergraduate whose name has been changed to preserve anonymity. Throughout the year, he has worked to confront issues of racism and diversity on campus.

[...]

Sampedro worked alongside the group that presented the demands for the diversity and inclusion action plan’s revision. It was a Thursday, she recalled, and she had a research presentation that needed to be completed that week. “I remember emailing the professor and begging her to put things off another week,” she said. The professor denied her request.
“I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t slept. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally,” she said. After hours of work to compile and present the demands, she forced herself to stay up to complete the project anyway.

[...] (emphasis mine)

Deans’ notes helped Gaines to complete academic work while staying involved in student activism.
In writing such notes, deans acknowledge the difficulties faced by a student on campus and demonstrate their support for the student’s requests, said Ashley Ferranti, assistant dean of student support services.
Though it is ultimately up to a faculty member to accept a dean’s note, Ferranti estimated that notes are accepted over 90 percent of the time. Students who take issue with the rejection of a note can discuss the incident with a dean, Ferranti added.

I was under the impression from my personal experience that extension of deadlines are generally only awarded for reasons such as personal illness or family issues such as divorce, death, or serious illness.
As professors, is it generally considered acceptable to provide deadline extensions or other accommodations to students who have fallen behind on their coursework due to their involvement with activism?

Much would depend on the concrete situation. But, by default, I would think that activism is part of student's life that the student needs to learn to manage themselves; if they do not have the resources or ability to manage their  activism effectively so as not to have them interfere with their studies, then, largely, I would consider this to be their responsibility. One would probably not see any concessions given for extracurricular sports/music activity, and the question is why political activism should be exempt.

Some may argue that political activism is important as a part of society and therefore of a higher rank than, say, sports or music, but how this is evaluated would probably depend on whose side of the activism one sees oneself.

That being said, times which are more tolerant of studies as an opportunity for character development would probably give more leeway to activism, while times (such as ours) where studies would be considered more a means to an end (development of employment skills) would probably be less tolerant. I would see the former as an ideal of times past, but the latter as the reality today.


Getting into grad school from an unknown undergrad university? Is it possible? Pretty much what the tittle says. I'm currently studying for my TOEFL exam and considering start a graduate school application process for the next year or so, in Europe or Canada probably. I recently culminated my undergrad studies in a non-top university from my country, my notes overall are decent and I'm proud I could obtain a good GPA after all.
However, I have this concern that coming from an unknown university could be an important factor during my admission and I've been thinking in applying into research internships to gain experience.
But, is it my concern relevant? I'd appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance

First, a lot of people wind up in graduate schools that are rated better/higher than their undergraduate institutions. It can have some impact, but is normally not determinative. Of course, it is harder to get in to "top" universities than others since the competition is much stronger, but it is still possible if your application materials clearly indicate that you are a good candidate for success.
Anything that can make success seem more likely is a help. Publications, certainly. Research, even if not completed is a positive. Good grades, good letters from your professors, all contribute to a larger picture.
If any of your professors studied in the places you are contemplating, you might ask them for advice. Sometimes the personal contacts between professors can have an effect, depending on the admissions system. At a minimum, a letter from someone trusted by the reader has more impact than it would if there was no such relationship.
Make sure your CV is complete and, very important, make sure that your SoP talks about your future career goals and how you intend to pursue them. Any ideas you have about research projects can help, though less detail is probably a good thing. If you aren't a native speaker of the language of the country you apply to, make sure your materials are checked by someone who is so that the language is correct and not misleading or awkward.
And, also very important, is to apply to a range of institutions, not all rated about the same. There are a lot of good universities out there that aren't rated near the top in their respective regions.


Difference between publishing textbooks and publishing research for acquiring tenure I've noticed that a few of my professors have written their own textbooks, but they only did so after they had already published many research articles and presumably become tenured at my university. For this reason, I'm wondering (in general), does writing textbooks contribute to acquiring tenure at a university, or are textbooks just considered the "icing on the cake" of the professor's published research?

I have spoken with a few people who have written textbooks. The universal advice they have given is never write a textbook until after you have received tenure.

In general, you get very little or no credit for writing a textbook, as it doesn't really help in any of the major "checkboxes" for tenure—research, teaching, and service. In addition, the time that you spend working on the textbook can generally be put to better use in writing grant proposals or working on peer-reviewed manuscripts.

I know from personal experience, when I was a graduate student, that there was an assistant professor in my department who spent all of his time working on a textbook. He let his research languish, and ended up with a textbook but no promotion to associate professor.


How can I show my potential in my mail to the professors? I am hoping to continue my masters in machine learning or data mining. So as a part of the process I am mailing to professors. I have a decent GPA and GRE score. I have research experience in these fields but no publication. I am not an extraordinary student but a motivated one. If any professor see my profile they may find it very ordinary. How can I ensure him that I will do my best. I know that knowing the research works of the professors will help you to get a professor's attention. Is it natural to grasp his research work completely? Though the track might be same, but the level of research is more deep than my previous experience. Is there any way to show him I am worthy?

I am not sure whether this type of question is appropriate for this forum. But hope that someone will enlighten me.

Another way to get the attention of the professor is a recommendation email or phone call from your bachelor advisor. This shows you're so worthy for your advisor that he takes time to recommend you.

Note: In case the professor does not already know you, it might be somewhat hard to get his/her attention just by mail as they receive a number of such mails every day.


Should computer science indexing sites be considered in rating research? I am currently working at a university of applied sciences, in the field of Computer Science. Recently there has been formed a section that is in charge of giving stipends related to research. This group has put as a rule that they will only fund research that is indexed in Scimago and in Scopus, but that this could change over time. They have in mind that this would help the institution for increase their visibility in terms of research.

My question is, for our field, should there be other criteria considered, such as if the publication has been indexed in ACM, IEEE Xplore, or DBLP? I mean, there are some conferences that are not considered in Scimago or in Scopus, but that have a good reputation. How to propose that change? What do you think about considering these indexing venues also?

Computer science is typically badly under-represented in the "traditional" citation indices, which do not consider conferences to be peer-reviewed publications.  As any computer scientist knows, that is a bad joke: many computer science conferences are much more stiffly reviewed and difficult to enter than most journals.

It is for this reason that DBLP was created, to actually index relevant and reputable computer science publications.  I believe that DBLP should cover everything in ACM DL and IEEE Xplore, so getting just that accepted by the university should be sufficient.

Unfortunately, what you are seeing is another instance of a long-running and frequently waged fight.  Take heart, however, that this fight has already been won at most top institutions, and can be won at yours as well.


Is it plagiarism to paraphrase multiple sections? I sit on my department's academic misconduct committee. Today we had one of those cases where it wasn't clear what the right answer was. The assignment was for the students to design an experiment based on a previous experiment of their choosing and to write it up like a research proposal. The student took large blocks of text from the article describing the original experiment and tweaked each sentence to fit with the new experiment. After every sentence the student fastidiously added a reference to the original article. Has the student committed an academic offence?

The committee decided that it was not an academic offence and that the work should not be penalized for plagiarism, but that it would likely receive a very low grade due to a complete lack of originality and a failure to show any understanding of the key concepts.

It is often remarkable to me just how much work a person will put in just to avoid doing a different piece of work.  In this case, it sounds to me like the committee made exactly the right call: it sounds like rubbish work deserving a terrible grade, but certainly not plagiarism.


Who decides the paper acceptance rate at a workshop organized as part of a conference: the workshop organizers or the conference organizers? Who decides the paper acceptance rate at a workshop organized as part of a conference: the workshop organizers or the conference organizers?

This can depend on the conference. My experience (CS, various ACM conferences) is that the workshop committee is responsible for its own papers and agenda.

But the workshop has a limited time frame, possibly determined by the conference committee (time * space = money). This can have an indirect affect on the rate of acceptance since it implies a limited number of papers that can be accepted.

So, it isn't a decision that, say, 10% of the papers submitted will (likely) be accepted, but that there is only room for 10 papers, no matter how many are submitted. Some others might get shunted elsewhere, such as to a poster session.

But I assume that isn't universal and can hypothesize about a number of different possible arrangements.


Note taking software: referencing text to searchable keywords I'm looking for software for macs geared towards organizing and referencing the text in notes. I'm currently studying pathology and would like to be able to "tag" a topic/heading within my notes (not the entire note itself) with a keyword that is searchable. For example, if I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, I'd like to be able to highlight it, and tag it with  multiple keywords or hashtags such as "hypersensitivity reaction type IV" or "#hypersensitivityrxntypeIV" and be able to search those keywords and have any of those topics I've tagged show up in the results. Anyone have any suggestions?

You may be interested in using MaxQDA, they are just now preparing to release a mac version. Although it is a software geared towards textual analysis and qualitative researchers, it can tag pieces of text pretty much like you say you want to do.