Extra question for specific students on test/quiz While this may seem unfair intuitively, I want to know whether if it is fair for a professor to have an extra question for specific students in the class.

A little background: In a calculus class, 3 out of a 16 ish students have taken calculus before at their high school, but the university requires them to take a similar class as per the university's rules. The professor knew that they had calculus, and so, during a quiz, he assigned them an extra question, and everyone else didn't have that question on their paper.

Now, it wasn't an extra credit problem, yet, it was graded as a normal problem.

So my question is, can the professor exclude those specific group of students and assign them an extra problem on a test or a quiz?

The goal of any kind of assessment in teaching is to check if each student has met the learning objectives of the teaching activity, and the test should therefore have essentially the same questions of the same level of difficulty for all students. Otherwise, we would ask more of certain students in order for them to have met the learning objectives.


Does "required reviews completed" mean good news or bad? I submitted by math paper to an Elsevier journal around 6 months ago. Today I logged into EES and saw that the status changed to "Required Reviews Completed" about 10 days ago. Is this good news or bad news ? Does it mean my paper is rejected and the Editor is basically preparing the rejection letter :( ?

It doesn't even necessarily mean that all reviews are completed. Sometimes editors invite more reviewers than is required. This message only means that the configured lower bound has been reached.


Accepting 2 postgraduate university offers I have received a conditional offer from the University of Birmingham and an unconditional offer from the University of Leeds for a masters degree in marketing, both programs are great but I have a deadline to accept Birmingham's offer so I was wondering if I could accept both offers and then decline one of them.

If the programs you are interested in have a limitation regarding how many new students they take in each term, you should probably not accept both offers. It could mean that someone else interested in a slot would potentially not be accepted into a program. There might be the possibility of extending the deadline, and it won't hurt to ask them.
I understand it's hard to decide on a program, but you should save others' time and effort by first deciding, then accepting. There is no hard requirement that I know of, however, that explicitely prohibits you from doing otherwise.

Make sure to make an informed decision, e.g. check the curriculum for both programs.


Advisor accused of personal misconduct -- what should I do? My advisor was recently accused of personal misconduct. He says he is innocent.

I am posting here to ask what I should do. I am heavily reliant on his letter of recommendation. I will always be grateful for his support. However my fellow colleagues said that I should distance myself, as continuing to be associated with him will harm me professionally.

The university has already found him responsible for the misconduct.

There are a few considerations, at least.

First, is that if you feel personally at risk from the alleged behavior, keep your distance just for your own safety. That is distinct from academic considerations.

Next, the behavior is alleged, not proved. While it is appropriate to be wary, don't try to judge it yourself unless you have additional information.

Next, in many cases, I would say most, it is appropriate to distinguish between personal behavior (possibly very bad) and scientific/academic quality of the work. Let me focus on this aspect.

In the history of academic discourse and advancement, many fine results have been obtained by terrible people. This is true in many fields and over a long period of time. The work done by these people doesn't disappear just because they wound up chastised by their peers, or even arrested and jailed. They get referenced. Historically, you won't find all of the cases as they are often covered up, but some you will and they can be pretty bad.

My advice, even if the person is guilty, is to separate the person from the work. If the work has merit, then cite it as usual. Focus on the work.

The question of continuing to work closely with the person is a different one, however, as is the question of the value of letters of recommendation. Some separation of the person from the work is possible here also, but perhaps not as completely. For example, it is probably a mistake to become a defender of the person if it can be interpreted as a defense of the alleged actions.

Letters of recommendation may be necessary and may be fine as long as the letter focuses on your work and doesn't imply anything more. But you may have to explain, in interviews and such, that you distance yourself from any bad behavior, even if not proved. Here the distinction is between the bad behavior (distance) and the person (neutrality - more or less). However, don't depend solely on letters from someone who has been severely sanctioned either legally or academically.


I have found a mistake on someone's code published online: what is the protocol? I have been using an econometrics toolbox for around 2 years and it is great, very useful. It is available from someone's personal website.

I have found a mistake in one piece of code which has set me back for a considerable amount of time. It is a small change but with vast consequences. Instead of questioning the code, I did my idea.

Now that I have found the problem, what is the protocol for highlighting this? Is emailing the author necessary?

Now that I have found the problem what is the protocol for highlighting this, is emailing the author necessary?

It isn't necessary, but it is the right thing to do, if you don't, you're responsible for causing others set backs that will waste them a considerable amount of time.


Why do professors take on service duties? Why do professors take on service duties, such as reviewing papers for a journal, or sitting on university committees?

What benefit does this have to their careers?  I can't imagine they enjoy reviewing papers, at least not more than all the other things they need to fit into their busy schedule.

Most professors are required by their departments to do some sort of service to the university and department. It's a duty of their job, often assigned by their department chair, and may be required as part of their tenure case. Someone who is actually a professor may be able to say more.

Paper reviewing, and the peer review system as a whole, is a cooperative system. Profs need peer-reviewed publications to get tenure, so someone has to do the reviewing. Nobody gets explicit points or credit for  reviewing, but if everyone tried to free-ride, then no papers would get reviewed, and the system would collapse. As a non-professor, I don't do as much reviewing (dozens of papers a year) as my professorial colleagues (hundreds per year, often, depending on field), but every time I submit an article to a journal, I'm asked to do a review by the editor, which helps keep me involved in reviewing. I suspect that people also don't want to develop reputations as free riders, so when asked to review, within reason, they do it.

In addition, sitting on a program committee for a conference involves a lot of reviewing, and it can be a great way to meet and network more closely with more senior or more junior researchers depending on your own level, both of which have their advantages. Doing both kinds of reviewing and doing it well can help one build a reputation as someone who supports the system. Besides the general benefits of a good reputation, it may lead to program committee chair positions, other conference organizing positions, and journal editorships.

In the end, having a bad reputation for not reviewing and not doing other kinds of service could seriously affect one's tenure case or future job prospects.


Two body problem in academia in the US My question in about the general situation in the US universities related to the two body problem.
My impression from what I have heard is that most of American universities are located in small university towns where there are very few other job places. So for spouses of university employees there are not many options to find a job.
My question is whether my understanding is correct. Is it typical that spouses cannot find jobs?
At the moment I cannot ask a more specific question about concrete place.  By it is important for me to know what is going on in general.
ADDED. My spouse works in chemistry.  But in industry rather than academia.

Your perception of the situation seems to me fairly accurate, but there are some critical details:
Yes, in a small college town, if your partner is not an academic (ok, there's a significant separate issue of "spousal hires"... addressed in a moment...), and does not want to be involved with pizza, there are limited opportunities. Obviously. And your department, and the university, cannot really do much to change this.
Happily, in recent years, the "issue" of academics being partnered with academics (unlike the "simpler" days of yore when wives just followed their academic husbands ... wherever...), is being much better acknowledged and addressed, at least intermittently, by some universities. It is my perception that there is still a tendency to stigmatize "spousal hires", but, also, given the realities (!?), this attitude is less and less acceptable.
Yes, I do think any sort of equity for partners (among many other equity issues) will involve major changes in pretensions... The pandemic has jarred things loose in some ways, which may be good, but it has also diminished resources, which tends to make people pull back and be stingy ... I don't know what will happen.
But it does not quite make sense to plan our lives on the most cynical premises, since then the optimum might be just to exit as soon as possible. In contrast, I think some gambles, even though definitely not "sure things", are worth making.


What kind of PhD proposals should I read? I am finishing up my master's in mathematical finance and am hoping to pursue a PhD in stochastic analysis.

I was given a sample PhD proposal from an education office that helps people apply for universities in the UK and some other countries (some of those countries require specifically a PhD proposal so you can tell that the US is not one of them). I was told I should look at PhD proposals outside of my field and thus was given something in Chemistry.

Relevant links at this point:

No. 5 here: With a background in mathematical finance and desire to apply for a mathematics PhD in another field, do I need a second master's?
How do mathematicians conduct research?

As mathematicians do not really collect data or conduct experiments for their research, I think I should countersuggest something in theoretical physics, theoretical computer science or something of the sort. Do you think that's okay? What would you suggest?

Ask them the purpose of not providing a mathematics proposal. A hard science looking at a similar science might get tunnel vision, but I doubt a mathematics PhD would face the same problem seeing as they're less experimental method than other fields.

PhD proposals, unlike theses, also seem to be much more readily accessible online. A quick search for theoretical physics phd proposal on Google, even without Scholar, yields a decent amount of samples that provide a significant amount of differing examples in sufficiently different subjects from math that the content can be differentiated from the style.


How to choose a good grading curve for yes/no exams? I teach a certain course where I think the best way to test knowledge is using yes/no questions. However, with a simple yes/no exam, a student can just answer randomly to  all questions and get, in expectation, a score of 50%, which is not very fair. I thought of several solutions, but each of them has a disadvantage:

Give a negative score to a wrong answer, such that the expected value of a student who answers randomly is 0. However, this rule made some students highly anxious, and I realized that this anxiety could unjustly harm their performance .
Ask the students to explain each answer. Award points only to correct answers with correct explanations. The problem is that it takes much more time to write and to grade, negating one of the main advantages of a multi-choice exam.
Give a grade of 0 to any student with less than 50% correct answers, and give twice the points for each answer above 50% (e.g, a student with 90% correct answers will receive 2·(90−50) = 80% score). However, I fear this might not be accepted by the university, which encourages additive scoring. E.g, students with 60% correct answers will complain that it is unfair to give them only 20% grade.

What is a good way to write an exam based on yes/no questions?

For this situation, I provide three answer options:

Yes.
No.
I don't know.

The grading rubric is:

Correct answer: +1
Incorrect answer: 0
I don't know: +0.5

That way, if the student really doesn't know, they are guaranteed the expectation of a random guess and you get feedback on holes in student knowledge, which can be used to take remedial action. If your aim is more effective student learning, this can be a good strategy.
I've tried to avoid negative marks for a couple of reasons:

Imagine two candidates who achieve the same final score in a negatively marked exam. One candidate answers only part of the paper, losing a few marks for wrong answers. The other answers almost all of the paper, getting far more correct but also getting several wrong and having marks deducted. Which one knows more?
The second problem is that the use of negative marking extends the theoretical range of marks for the exam. For example, if one mark is awarded for every correct answer and one deducted for each wrong answer, the theoretical range of the exam is - 100 to +100 per cent.

—
From the comments moved to chat: someone asked about a slightly different value for the “I don’t know” option. This is my response:
I tend not to use Yes/No questions, but multiple choice for some assessment. In those cases, I make the "I don't know" option worth 1/(N-1) where N is the number of other options. That way, if there are 3 other options, a random guess would expect to get 1/3 but the I don't know option gains 1/2 --- the expected value if the student can knock out one of the three options..


Should I agree to referee a paper when I don't feel I can judge its importance? Background: I am a first-year PhD student in pure mathematics studying subject X. With my supervisors, I recently published on arXiv a paper on a particular example A that explores how X works when applied to A. My contribution to this paper was partial (a couple of proofs and calculations) but I did read and check the whole paper before submission.

I have recently been asked to referee a paper for a reputable journal also on the application of subject X but to a different example B. The two examples are distinct but are of roughly the same flavour overall.

Initially I thought that I was too junior to agree to referee this paper. I am only a first year PhD after all and my only paper so far hasn't been peer-reviewed yet. But having looked through the paper, I do believe that I am qualified to judge its veracity.

My main concern however is that I do not feel able to judge whether this paper is substantial enough or the results are new enough to merit publication in this journal. My opinion having read the introduction is that the paper is an interesting application of X and is worthy for publication. However, I have not read many papers from the journal, and the total number of papers I have read is small so I do not necessarily feel qualified to judge whether this paper is suitable for publication in this particular journal.

Despite this, I still think I could provide a useful review in the sense that I could do one half of the referees job: that of verifying the results in the paper. So my question is this:

Question: Should I agree to referee this paper even if I do not feel I can judge whether the paper is worthy of publication on the grounds of importance and interest? Should I talk to the editor about this before accepting?

I also started reviewing just recently (pure Math; mainly Algebra/Combinatorics) and when writing my first review with some assistance from my advisor, she taught me that it is not the reviewers job to judge if a paper fits well into a journal or not, that is the editors job.
Apart from checking the paper for correctness, giving helpful comments to make it nicer, etc. you can and should of course also judge it. However, I would not say "this is a good fit for journal XY because ..." but rather something like "this paper is really well written and generalizes the prominent result by A. and al." Or, if it is not well written, then you might also say that, e.g. "while the paper seems technically correct (up to minor points listed below), the page long calculations make it hard to follow and the authors fail to give an abstract overview of what they are doing."
The editor will then decide if the paper should be published in the journal or not, taking into account all reviews, maybe also how many papers were sent for this issue, etc.

Of course, as user2768 pointed out, you can let the editor know that while you will happily judge the correctness and readability of the paper, you are still to junior to properly give a statement on its expected impact.
That is totally ok and editors are aware that there isn't an infinite amount of perfect reviewers, who can comment on every aspect (in finite time...).
I would suggest that you also discuss this topic with your PhD-advisor; if he/she is willing to, you might even let him read over it before you send it.


For a professor in the US, How important is one's relationship with the dean? Through a colleague, I have entertained the idea of switching my current workplace.  The program itself is relatively new, at a US research university, while the dean has been there for 20+ years.  I get along with everyone, including the director.  However, I am a bit cautious of the current deans' expectations and direction for the program compared to what they would like to invest (monetary) in it.

The faculty have said it should not be much of a concern as interactions with the dean are rare, and other administration are more involved with actual implementation.  They also say the dean may leave in the next 5 years.  I have a feeling this is somewhat being said to appease the concerns.

As a general question, how important is the relationship or shared vision with the dean on a faculty member in terms of being able to implement change (for the better, in ones own opinion) in the day to day business, considering this vision is shared by other current faculty who are also slightly in disagreement with the current dean.

The question, although reasonable, seems hard to answer in general terms.  Programmatic change is generally not done by individual faculty members in a department, but by groups and/or committees of them, in confluence with the department Chair/Head.

Many programmatic changes do not "go through" the Dean -- in particular "day to day" business usually does not -- but those involving nontrivial financial changes usually do.  For all but the smallest colleges it is rare for individual faculty members other than the Head to have substantive conversations with the Dean about such things: again, it would be better if they went through the department as a whole and/or the Head.  When it comes to financial outlays that must be approved by the Dean: I've seen plenty of instances where the Dean approves but "just doesn't have the money," so I would have to think that even mild disapproval of the initiative would sink it pretty thoroughly.

Perhaps the most useful thing I can say is: look at where the program is now and look at where it was in the recent past.  If you are really unhappy with the current position or the perceived trajectory of the department, then you should not count on being happy with it in the future (no matter who the Dean is).  Conversely, if those look reasonably good to you, talk with the faculty and see how they feel about the future.  If there's some important change coming around the bend, I hope they will let you know.  But it is more likely that being in the department for the next ten years or so will be roughly like having been in the department for the last ten years or so.  The Dean does not reside in the department, so unless s/he is actively at war with the members and interests of the department, some disagreement in the overall vision need not affect the actual working life of a professor in the department unduly.

By the way, the bit about the Dean "may leave in the next 5 years" sounds way too vague to take seriously.  Maybe s/he will and maybe s/he won't.  If s/he does, maybe the next Dean will be better or maybe worse.  It is very hard to plan for the future with regard to this kind of thing: honestly, I probably wouldn't even try.


With regards to PhD theses, what level of knowledge should one assume the reader to have? And, if needed, where should basic information be placed? With regards to PhD thesis that spans several disciplines, at what point does one assume that an article doesn't require explanation and it is  standard knowledge?

I have had this discussion with several academics and there doesn't appear to be consensus. One suggested a middle ground that I quite liked: Anything considered standard knowledge, should be placed into an appendix so as to not disturb the flow of the thesis but still somewhere handy enough for the reader to bush up on or explore.

Is this a common technique? I've read so many theses that contain waffle and filler explaining (what I consider to be) the basic requirements of the field, however my option of "basic" is just that; An option. People have different degrees, life experiences, interests and so their options will no doubt differ regarding what is considered standard knowledge.

So at what point is something consider "standard knowledge"? If a technique/paper/method is widely written about in master/Bachelor's course texts, journal papers and has a wiki page - does that qualify? For example; consider the most basis statistical techniques, such as chi squared test etc - does one really need to explain, in detail, what it is? Would a reference suffice or would a thesis begin to look ridiculously short? Perhaps placing it into an appendix?

Is there a general accepted rule of thumb that I am unaware of? Or is it truly a black art? I don't want to look lazy by not including material, but at the same time I don't want to waffle on.

Generally, the target audience of your doctoral dissertation is your doctoral dissertation committee. Write to their level.

In disciplines where your dissertation gets turned into a book (or series of articles), then you may consider writing at a lower level or with explanation for people outside of your specific subfield. You can certainly do this if you have the time or luxury to do so, but if you are short on time or funds, then it is perfectly acceptable to do what is noted in paragraph #1.


How to quote passage with literal error that changes the meaning? I have the following problem:

I want to write an indirect citation of a passage in a specific book. The problem is that there is a literal error. Normally this would not be much of a problem (if I would quote it directly I could also write [sic!] to tag it as an error).

But the thing is that the literal error changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

To provide an example of what I mean (obtained from [1, p. 497]):

  Nonpolynomial approaches, like dispatching, may not work well.

The thing is that dispatching is a polynomial and not a nonpolynomial approach.
Two pages before it is even described as a polynomial approach (obtained from [1, p. 495]):

  For comparison, we now consider problems that do not grow
  exponentially. These are called polynomial problems because [...]. As
  a specific example, consider the job dispatching problem [...].

What would be the proper way to handle this?

Edit:

Because some made the valid supposition, that this is just a bad wording: As it was ascertained in the comments below this question, it is indeed a literal error.
The error was not documented in the Errata of the 2nd edition (can be found here). But in the subsequent edition (the 3rd edition) on page 525 the sentence was changed to:

  Polynomial approaches, like dispatching, may not work well.

So the example above is indeed a literal error.

[1] Wallace J. Hopp and Mark L. Spearman. Factory physics; foundations of manufacturing management. 2. ed. McGraw-Hill international editions: Management & organization series. Boston, Mass. [et al.]: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 2001. ISBN: 0-256-24795-1.

If the purpose of quoting the text is to discuss the error, then quote the error. However, in this case, it seems that your purpose is to discuss the real situation. Quoting the error just makes things confusing.  Instead, I suggest something like:

  Wallace et al. [1, p.497] say that polynomial approaches, such as dispatching, "do not work well."1

  1 [1, p.497] erroneously described dispatching as nonpolynomial; compare [1,p.495].

The footnote explains that the literal quote from the source is incorrect but attempts to downplay this. The point of the footnote is only to stop the reader being confused if they look up the quote, not to criticize the authors for the mistake. You might be able to phrase the footnote better than I have, to make this point more effectively.

But be sure that it really is an error. The phrasing "Nonpolynomial approaches, like dispatching, may not work well" is ambiguous and could mean any of the following things:

"Nonpolynomial approaches, such as dispatching, may not work well."  (That is, nonpolynomial approaches may not work well; dispatching is an example of a nonpolynomial approach. This is the interpretation that you've used.)
"Nonpolynomial approaches that resemble dispatching may not work well" (That is, among the nonpolynomial approaches, those that resemble dispatching may not work well; other nonpoly approaches might be fine.)
"Nonpolynomial approaches, which resemble dispatching, may not work well." (That is, nonpoly approaches resemble dispatching; nonpoly approaches may not work well.)
"Like dispatching, nonpolynomial approaches may not work well." (That is, dispatching may not work well. Nonpoly approaches have the following commonality with dispatching: they also may not work well."

Also, as dan1111 points out in his answer, you need to be sure that your correction (changing "nonpolynomial" to "polynomial") fixes the error.


My advisor said he has to mention my mental health condition in recommendation letters. How much can he say? During my PhD I suffered from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, that was officially diagnosed. I had to stay away from the University for a year, however this issue didn't affect at all my productivity and I carried on my research with several publications.

When asking for recommendation letters, my supervisor told me he is forced to mention my problem, underlining my health issues.
I would like to know how much he can write about my mental health, also considering that the academic work didn't suffer at all from this.

I would like to know how much he can write about my mental health, also considering that the academic work didn't suffer at all from this.

According to some of organizations: "The Americans with Disabilities Act recognizes that employers may sometimes have to disclose medical information about applicants or employees. " But also they claim: "The basic legal principle that employers should follow is not to reveal medical information about you unless there is a legitimate business reason to do so. But because that standard is fairly vague, there are laws which more specifically protect the privacy of your medical records, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the law which makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of an employee's disability."

For UK you may find more information on NHS website and Equality Act 2010 Guidance for employees.

If you ask me I would say that it is not actually ethical to write about your mental health if your job didn't suffer from that. For some careers there are some health restrictions (e.g. pilots, surgeons, etc.) but I've never seen that for academic work. More to say, I know people who have GAD, OCD, etc. and they have never had significant issues in academic life. But I also have to say that people usually don't take year off because of mental health issue, especially not for GAD. From your post I can't see if the GAD is a main reason of one year off. If it isn't the main reason then I don't understand why your supervisor has a need to write it in recommendation letter. But, if GAD is your main reason why you needed to stay away from University than I don't understand how your mental health didn't affect your productivity when it is even though you continued to work. Whatever the case is, I wouldn't like that my supervisor writes "a mental issue" because for me it sounds serious and Generalized Anxiety Disorder actually doesn't sound due to prevalence "GAD affects 6.8 million adults, or 3.1% of the U.S. population"

Shortly, I don't think he should write about your mental health when you obviously continued to work. It is your private information, there are some laws about it and I am worried that you will be discriminate because of that.

My advice: Talk with your supervisor, find out why he thinks that he is forced to write it in recommendation letter (that is really strange) and please look more into the laws and send them to him if it is needed.


Is recycling your own phrasing with a citation but without explicit quotation self-plagiarism? I have a research proposal for which I spent a lot of effort writing the introduction and background so that it was as informative and elegant as possible.  I would like to re-use this material simply because, to me, it's the best way of expressing these ideas.  To rephrase would be obviously redundant effort and I believe only detract from the quality of the writing.

Of course, I will cite my original proposal, but I am wondering whether I need to add awkward quotations of myself for almost every paragraph in my introduction or literature review sections.  This would significantly reduce the readability of those sections, which is of course the whole point of recycling the previous content.

I don't believe that self-plagiarism even applies to research proposals, so in this case, there wouldn't be an issue at all.

For papers, I will still consider quoting oneself as quite odd. If there is substantial overlap, a reference would be in order, but nothing more.


None of 25 students at question session before exam has a question. What should lecturer do? In a comment on another question Josef shared an anecdote.

  And just another anecdote: A few weeks ago, there was a question hour at the last lecture timeslot before the exam. About ~25 of more than 120 people taking the course where there. Nobody actually had a question. All just wanted to hear the other questions...

I have seen this many times. Sometimes the lecturer can push students and someone will ask "what will be in the exam?" which is obviously useless and just makes the lecturer restate what (usually) is already told multiple times about content and procedure of the exam.

What should the lecturer do in such a case?

Technically it seems correct to just say "if you have no more questions, the session is over" and go home.

Yet there are times when the lecturer had to commute to this specific lecture and it seems travel-time spent in vain if nothing is actually done.

Students have also come in hopes that the session will help them prepare for exam. And usually the average question-session student is above the average from all the courses students, and lecturers don't like to let down the more interested and responsible students who assumed they don't want to miss this event. And usually this is what happens - the lecturer tries to improvise and talk on some subjects that seems more tricky/useful for the lecturer.

What are the best strategies so the lecturer could actually make the "question" session worth the attendees time?

I know it isn't good to broaden the question intentionally, but solid plans how to prepare and avoid the no-question situation at all are also welcome here.

Some specific suggestions:

You likely know what material the students have been having issues with, based on questions from lecture, office hours, previous homework sets, or whatever. Mention those topics and review them.
Instead of asking for broad-based questions, go over the syllabus lecture by lecture, calling out specific topics by name and asking whether there was any issues with each of those. It'll help prime their memory.
Ask the TAs to attend. If that's not possible, ask them to send you common questions ahead of time. They also know what the students are finding difficult.


Extended scientific abstract: should it include full results? I'm writing an extended abstract for a conference prize. There are few instructions and it's the first time ever that I write one so I'm a little woried about it. The only restriction regards the length, but other than that no instructions are given.

My question is: am I expected to give my full results? I'd rather not give my analytical results of my analysis since I still have to publish them.

If the organisers required an extended abstract to assign a prize, try to make their job easier. :)

I would include a specific section called Results or Preliminary Results in which you gently introduce some of the most significant results you obtained so far: objective/numerical evidences that your work is reliable, has reached a mature stage to deserve a prize.


What should I do if an admissions office asks me for a bachelor's thesis, when my program didn't require it? I recently applied to a university for a PhD program.They asked me to submit all of my documents.When I submitted my documents they asked for my Bachelors thesis. There is no Bachelors thesis or undergraduate research in our university.You can do it but its not a requirement and nobody does it given the time constraint of 6 months for Bachelors Final project. I have my Masters thesis but there was no bachelors thesis. There was a final project in bachelors but it was not research based. The hr said that "in case the thesis is not available,you can send an extended abstract". How do I properly address this situation ?

As suggested in the comments above, I would send both the final project writeup and your masters thesis with a letter explaining the situation (no bachelors thesis required at your university), and contact the department and ask them how they wish you to proceed. At the end of the day, it's their requirement, so it's their call.


Reporting negative results/failure of experiments in thesis/papers During the various sub-projects of my PhD (physics) we encountered several difficulties (as it is common, I assume) both in technical and in physical nature which we had to solve. Moreover, some experiments resulted in bad results or no results at all. Nevertheless, we identified the issues and noted how to avoid those problems (or how to fix them) in the future.
After we spent considerable time investigating and fixing those problems I would like to mention those issues (and the solutions) if not in papers, but at least in my thesis to avoid future readers the same problems, but my supervisor is completely against reporting any negative results. His stance is that any negative result or technical issue would paint me in a bad light (even though we could solve them), and therefore I only should report good results without mentioning problems.
This confused me (why would anyone view me in a negative way if I report problems in my thesis, and how we could circumvent or fix them), and my local colleagues could not give a conclusive answer either. Therefore, are such stances common, and if yes, why?

I agree  with you but suggest that you follow your advisor's advice about your dissertation. To a fairly large extent you are limited by the standards of your advisor until you finish your degree. Even when their advice isn't optimal.
Research is a search for truth, not for results. Negative results can be just as important as positive ones in the search for truth and should, in principle, be reported so that, just as you say, others don't follow blind alleys.
But too many people, I think have the opposite view that a negative result is a failure in some sense, even when it contributes to knowledge. Your advisor may be one of these.
But the purpose of the dissertation is to get it approved and get the degree. After that, the standards you follow can be (more or less) your own. So, a tactical retreat here may lead to a strategic victory. Your dissertation won't be your last, nor, hopefully, your best work.


How future-proof is the arXiv license? The arXiv license is the "default" license under which most preprints are being submitted to the arXiv at least in my subject. Out of dark curiosity, I am wondering how safe it is at doing what it is meant to do, namely ensure that these preprints are widely and freely available through the reasonable future. Let me quote the license in full:

The URI http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ is used to record the fact that the submitter granted the following license to arXiv.org on submission of an article:
I grant arXiv.org a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distribute this article.
I certify that I have the right to grant this license.
I understand that submissions cannot be completely removed once accepted.
I understand that arXiv.org reserves the right to reclassify or reject any submission.

I am wondering what this entails in any of the following hypothetical scenarios:

Cornell University decides to sell arXiv.org off for whatever reasons (which may be far lesser reasons than bankruptcy -- e.g., someone might catch wind of the fact that a great many PDF files are not ADA-compliant; or publishers might unleash a barrage of lawsuits on Cornell for hosting what they believe are not quite preprints; or it is simply decided that continued hosting of the arXiv is too much of a cost center), and the new proprietors don't see public access as a priority. Someone with a full dump uploads it on a server in the Ukraine.
(Comparable cases: SSRN bought by Elsevier, although the full-dump analogy is broken here -- I don't know if anyone ended up re-hosting the papers taken down.)

The HTTP protocol and the WWW are superseded by something new and shiny, and the ".org" domain and the notion of a "server" lose their meaning; arXiv involves into a service which may have a hard time arguing that it is the same arXiv.org ("a highly-automated electronic archive and distribution server") that the license was granted to. (Comparable cases: The precursor of arXiv.org was a mailing list; it is far from obvious that mailing out a preprint on an ephemeral medium like a mailing list grants any rights for future perpetual hosting on the internet. Now imagine the next step after the mailing list and the internet, whatever that may be; ignore the current social media hype, which is not a relevant development for hosting documents.)

Various countries block the official arXiv domains (or force arXiv to geo-fence them out), causing the creation of multiple not-quite-official mirrors, some even on the dark web (.onion) or otherwise hidden-from-view. How can these mirrors argue that the arXiv license was granted to them?

The arXiv team splits along a political fault-line, resulting in two different groups/servers/teams with claims to the arXiv name. Are they both allowed to host the papers?

The TeX and PDF formats lose their universal support, and new formats come up (or new versions, breaking backwards compatibility); the arXiv team can no longer keep up writing compatibility scripts, and volunteers end up fixing the papers and posting them on github. (The compatibility nightmare is already happening to some extent -- the arXiv has its share of broken PDFs, and I recall even seeing a TeX that did not compile until I made a tweak. So far, most of the damage has been repaired, probably with a lot of manual drudgery, but the arXiv is getting more and more papers, and the next generation of formats to be deprecated will have a much higher amount of papers posted in it.)

What these scenarios all have in common is that, in a sense, the arXiv does not disappear -- it just evolves, changes its skin, reincarnates, as times change. My question is: Does the license follow it, or will the "new arXiv" be in troubles trying to prove that it still has a right to host preprints uploaded under the (standard) arXiv license back in the early 2000s?

My answer is more to the question How future proof is the arXiv?.
How future proof is anything in this day and age?
The license itself is built on the idea that the system will continue roughly as it currently does, but substantial unforeseen changes both technological and of society (doesn't have to be a war) can easily derail it, as you have outlined in the various scenarios.
However, I don't think there is any reason to worry (your scenarios are too pessimistic), since the arXiv serves a very good purpose to all involved parties:

authors can quickly disseminate their results to all interested,
the scientific community (in fact the world community) get open access to (preprint versions) of many published articles (most in certain fields), and
the journals get a free preprint publication service which boosts their visibility and hence impact (since citations will be to the journal version, not the arXiv version - I know of no journal that disallows publication at arXiv). If a journal reverts this policy (in order to earn on copyrights), most authors of good articles will turn away from it.

Because of these points, funding at Cornell should be possible into foreseeable future.


Changing my supervisor before starting I am an undergraduate student in Computer Science. I asked a supervisor for thesis and he must still send me the first materials for starting. The actual supervisor hasn't yet even told me exactly what I must do and is waiting for me to return from my Erasmus to start. In the meanwhile I discovered that another supervisor is doing something that interests me more. The research area is what I would like to study also in my graduate studies. Is it a problem if I change my supervisor at this point?

Thank you in advance for your answers

The relationship between a research supervisor and student is a relationship between consenting adults. While local cultures may differ somewhat between institutions, the general rule in academia is that you may change supervisors if doing so will advance your own training and professional objectives.

Indeed, changing early --- before the research relationship has even properly begun --- is the best time for everyone concerned. A supervisor/mentor could legitimately be annoyed, or worse, if you leave after s/he has invested substantially in you, and still has little to show for it.

There are at least two important questions to consider, however: whether you should change supervisors, and how you go about it.

On whether: the best source for information about supervisors is the community of other students, especially those further along in the program, including especially those who are current or former supervisees of your prospective mentor. If it is possible to do so, try first to contact some of these students and ask, "What is Dr. X like to work for? Any problems?" Do your research first, before switching.

On how: Mentors are human beings, too, and may not enjoy a perceived rejection. So: first make absolutely sure you have the new mentor's approval to join their group. Then, let the old mentor know. If possible, have this conversation in person, not via email. Emphasize the new mentor's research interests and how they match yours; even if part of the reason for the switch is the old mentor's shortcomings, you need not emphasize those unless pressed.

Good luck.


What are some good practices when asking people to share their PowerPoint presentations from a conference/talk? In many cases, they (understandably) don't reply (or they are uncomfortable with sharing them, as they often contain unpublished material). Also, I do this often, and don't want to be known as "the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides".

At the same time though, it's simply far easier to remember the content of a presentation/talk when you actually have access to the stuff inside (and I do discover that I learn faster from talks than from any other source). Most of the time, I request the slides as a reference for learning the material (since I'm still new to the area, and they are quite helpful for that).

(though I do wonder - what are the underlying circumstances when most people ask for them?)

There is no magic when it comes to asking for presentations. And there is nothing wrong with being the person who asks people for their powerpoint slides (at least you show that are interested and it may result in them being cited; and it shows that they got their job done - though a presentation they interested others in their idea).

If they don't reply (or don't sent it), it is usually of one of the following reasons:

They are busy and missed your mail,
It would take their time to find the presentation and send it (it may be big so it is not just sending an e-mail),
They would prefer not to make it public as:

It is not polished enough for anything but a presentation,
It may contain things that they would prefer not to share publicly (e.g. plots form other papers, preliminary data which may later proven to be wrong or incomplete, pictures or video they don't have right to share further, etc).

If they don't want to share it - they have right to it. However, usually they have nothing against (and actually are happy to do so) as long as you make it quick and easy for them.

So it is a good idea to ask for slides just after their talk - they may have it on their computer (so you can copy it to your stick) or on a stick (o you can copy it to your computer) or send it right away.

Also:

Send your e-mail at most a week after the presentation,
Be short and concise (what exactly you want, what do you want with do with it),
If there is no response try writing the same e-mail a week later.


how to develop a new course as a new Assistant Professor I am writing to inquire some experiences/advices on developing a new course on my first semester (this fall) as an assistant professor in computer science.

At this moment I am aware of the course assigned for me is for senior undergraduate students, principles of XXX (a subfield in computer science). According to previous years' feedback, this is roughly a 80 students course with 2 TA.

I have been reaching out to the instructors who were teaching this course last year but unfortunately he refused to share his materials (is it common?). So before diving into the details and building the courses from scratch, I am writing to inquire some general experiences or lessons that could smooth the process a bit. So here are some questions and concerns:

What should I hash out before the new semester starts? This course is not "connected" to any other course, but maybe at least figure out something like typical expectations (and background) of the students?
I took a similar course as a Ph.D. student but in my opinion that course simply goes too far. Perhaps it is a common (and wise) practice to start from there and develop my materials, say slides and projects?
What is the common practice of reusing materials from other institutes? I often see some notes like "this slide is borrowed from XXX", but not sure about the best practice of doing (or avoid doing) so.
My major concern is about the time constraint, in my first semester. It would be great if I don't need to spend too much time at the very beginning and gradually refine the course after several semesters. So in that sense, what are some good strategies/tactics I can consider? For instance, considering to put more grades on the exam instead of homework?

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated very much. And I will be keeping an eye on this post for refinement, because clearly this current form is a bit too general. Thanks.

If you believe, as I do, that students learn from practice and feedback, not from seeing or hearing something once or twice, course design focuses on student tasks first.

First decide what they will do to master the material of the course. Whether that is projects or exercises or exam prep (ugh) or whatever. Lay that out. All key concepts should have reinforcement activities (and feedback from you and the TAs).

Knowing the student activities you can select learning materials that will be helpful to them in those activities - books, web sites, handouts, whatever.

Now you have a pretty good idea what your lectures must cover. Note that not everything that you lecture on needs to be covered by exams and projects, but the core of it should be reinforced. If presentation of the core doesn't take up all the time, you can fill it in as you like.


Can I put details of evaluations results in the Appendix? I'm about to send a paper about performance optimization in the field of Cloud computing. My target conference has a limit of 10-pages for the main section with unlimited pages for appendixes/references. My question is whether it's a good idea to move small details of my evaluation results to the Appendixes (to save some pages for other stuff) or it's better to somehow fit them in the main section?
My current plan is to keep key important evaluation results in the main section (maybe only 1 or 2 graphs) and move every other messy stuff to the appendix, including comparison graphs, evaluation parameters, extracted latency/throughput data, and the most importantly, details of scenarios that I considered for the evaluation.
Is this a good idea?
P.S: M̶y̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶e̶r̶v̶i̶s̶o̶r̶ A senior researcher who hasn't read my paper is against this idea. He says: "you should only put things into Appendixes that if a reader misses them, he/she can still exactly understand what you did in your paper (e.g., proofs of theorems). Evaluation results are not in this category, and they need to be put in the main section." ... Of course, I agree with what he says, but my question is specifically about whether small details of evaluation experiments is fitting in this category or not.

I think your advisor gives good advice.
But if you are sole author, you can probably write it as you like and wait for the response of reviewers of the conference papers. But if you are too far off the "standard" you risk a quick reject rather than a suggestion to change it.
If you are only a co-author you need to negotiate it, of cours.e


Discovered a serious error in a reviewed paper after submitting the review, what to do? I have been reviewing a paper where the authors apply a computational method from an earlier paper they published to a specific system of general relevance. The paper seemed ok, and I recommended major revision in the review.

After submitting the review, I've been working with this computational method myself and discovered that the way the authors applied the method is seriously flawed, so that it makes in general no sense to interpret the result in any way without further tests. If I had noted this problem earlier, I would probably have recommended rejection in my review.

What's the recommended course of action in this situation? Should I notify the editor of this additional discovery, so that the authors can directly take care of it in their (presumably ongoing) revision, or is it better to just wait for a request to review the revised version?

I haven't heard any decision from the journal so far, but I don't think that the paper will be accepted without revisions.

What's the recommended course of action in this situation? Should I notify the editor of this additional discovery, so that the authors can directly take care of it in their (presumably ongoing) revision,

Yes, I think so.  This seems to be in the best interest of all involved: you, the authors and the journal.  It may be tempting to feel "embarrassed" about this or feel loathe to hold up the stately train of the editorial process, but you should resist these temptations: part of being a professional academic is being completely willing to change and adjust to new information and/or new insight you've acquired.

  or is it better to just wait for a request to review the revised version?

No, I don't think so.  Put yourself in the authors' shoes: wouldn't you like to have this information as soon as possible?  Revising a paper without knowing about a serious -- potentially fatal -- error sounds like it could be a waste of their valuable time.  Moreover, the longer they think that the paper will be accepted with revisions, the more disappointed they will be when they learn about the true situation.

I would write up carefully your description of the error as though it were part of the original referee report.  In effect this does become a new referee report, but you don't necessarily need to edit this into the old referee report: having already submitted that, the matter of it is to convey the new information.  Of course, the final decision about in what manner to inform the authors lies with the editor.


Is it polite to ask for acknowledgement of transcript received at university I have been offered admission in one of the top Canadian University. After admission I have sent them my transcripts from India. This transcripts were supposed to reach by 23 May but I have no acknowledgement from their side. Should I ask for the acknowledgement from them?

Another important issue, although, in Letter of Acceptance they have specifically mentioned "Accepted" but they have also added the condition of receiving transcripts. Will this be an issue for obtaining study permit?

Since you are already accepted and they are asking you for materials, it is perfectly acceptable to correspond with them quite regularly to follow up and ensure everything goes smoothly. In fact, I would very strongly encourage you to do so, because paperwork is easily lost, misplaced, or delayed until it creates quite the inconvenience for you!

A script such as this would be quite fine:

email them that you have sent the transcripts and they are supposed to arrive by X date (you are past this point, but it is good to know for the future)
email them 1-3 days latter (depending on the urgency of any deadlines), and tell them you were told the transcripts would arrive by X date, and would you kindly confirm if you have received them?

If 3-5 days pass without confirmation or other reply, feel free to politely follow up and ping them again. Something of the general form "don't want to be a bother, but I know how bad international mail can be [you are giving them a polite 'out' so it isn't them being slow, it's probably someone else's fault], but have my required transcripts been received?"

If another 3-5 days pass and you still haven't heard anything - or sooner if you are running against any kind of important deadlines that you are aware of - feel free to escalate the issue with a call to the office, contacting someone else in the hierarchy (director of the grad program, for instance), etc.

None of this is impolite - it's just how things work. You are ultimately responsible for not falling through the cracks, because you are the one who pays the greatest cost of things get lost in the shuffle. You can be polite in your phrasing (but at least in the US no need to be excessively deferential - just clear, to the point, but with a touch of politeness and please and thank you), but following up and making sure things are received and acceptable with reasonable time to process inbetween is both fine and highly suggested!


How do I approach my group about dividing up the work? I am an International Civil Engineering student. I was assigned with a project that consists of three stages for my steel design class. Although we are a group of five people, it seems that no one wants to take the lead and divide the tasks. I don’t mind doing that but at the same time I don’t know how to approach the situation. I thought it might be a good idea to email them about this. Please see what I have written below and let me know whether I need to approach it differently. Also, feel free to fix the grammar.  Thank you.

  Hello everyone,

  I think it’s a good idea to plan ahead our steel project. Do you want to divide the phases between us so that each one or two people would work on one phase together? Or would you prefer that each person contributes to each phase? Let’s vote on your guys’s preference, so that we can start dividing up the work.

  Looking forward to your responses!

Your approach is fine, even though I would propose a face-to-face meeting in which the assignments are made.

Tipp: Try to make the work packages independent of other peoples result, especially make sure that noone is idle in the beginning because they have to wait for a result of another one.


PhD funding for only 4 years I'm currently pursuing a master's degree (math) in the US, and I have been accepted to a different PhD program (applied math). I've been offered funding for only four years, though, because I am already pursuing my master's degree. Is this something of a big concern? I'll essentially have to start over at the new program by trying to pass their preliminary examinations, and all other universities seem to provide funding for 5 years, even if students come in with a master's degree because in the US, the PhD process seems to take some time to complete.

Any ideas and suggestions as to whether this is something of a big concern, and whether students can get funded for an additional year even if they're coming in with a master's degree?

Edit:

Here are some details about the two programs. The program that has offered me 4 year of funding has 2 qualifying exams. I will have to take classes for one of those qualifying exam. In principle, I think I can take the second qualifying exam soon, but I would still need to enroll in one one semester class to cover the last 20-30% of the material. This second exam, however, would require me to take at least some substantial time hitting 3-4 books, and practicing a lot to ensure I can actually solve the exam itself on the day of the exam.The program that has offered 5 years of funding has 3 exams, but I can fulfill the requirement for two of them by taking a sequence of graduate level course. One exam has to be written. The exams at both schools are of comparable difficulty, I suppose, with minor differences, of course.

I have been offered TA support by both schools, but I suppose this takes up a lot of time when it actually comes to getting down to doing research. I also don't know how the research experience, of course, is going to pan out.

I don't think getting 4 years of funding is necessarily a red flag all on its own - the amount of funding you get offered will vary widely both between schools and between fields.  I think there are three things for you to consider:

Non-financial issues.  How good is the school, where is it located, and most importantly, how good of a fit is it for you?
If all else were equal, offering more years of funding is (obviously) better than offering less, since it gives you more time to work.  Even if you don't think you need it now, it's still a benefit in the form of lower pressure, and padding in case something disrupts your work (illness, research setbacks, etc).
Offering you better funding is potentially an indicator of how much the program wants you there.  That is, the program offering you 5 years of funding (with a possibility of 6 even), is signaling their interest in you quite strongly, while the program offering only 4 less so.

The problem is how to compare number 1 to numbers 2 and 3.  What are the merits of the program offering you 4 years of funding?  If there's a strong non-financial argument in their favor, maybe ask the department to put you in touch with some of their current PhDs and recent graduates.  Ask what the program is like, ask if they offer 4 years of funding to everyone, and ask how practical they find that deadline to be.  At least in my field, this was a fairly common occurrence for prospective students.


Getting to assist in the course of your choice during TAship I am an incoming Graduate Student on a TAship.

I have completed the course in my undergraduation and am currently working on a project in the same area.
I wish to know what else can be done to improving my chances of securing TAship in the preferred course.

Is it advisable to express one's enthusiasm in the subject with the professor?

It's certainly reasonable to politely express an interest in TA'ing for a particular course or with a particular professor.  You should express that interest as soon as possible to both the professor teaching the course (or the course supervisor in the case of a multi-section course) as well as to whoever has overall responsibility for assigning teaching assistants (typically this is coordinated by some faculty member or an administrative assistant.)

Realize that the needs of the department and the preferences of the faculty will be prioritized over the desires of graduate students in making these assignments and that you may well be competing with other graduate students for a desirable assignment.  Don't count on anything...


Supervisor gave my PhD project to another student I am a PhD student in life sciences. My PhD project's goal is to analyze specific data and to check a totally new idea in the field I am working in. This project is risky, however, very promising. With my supervisor, we planned all the studies and experiments before the start of the PhD, and he did promise that this would be my project. However, just as I started the PhD, he asked me to finish other experiments as I am the only one in the department who knows methodology and that work was crucial for the lab funding.

At the same time, he gave my project to another student claiming that he wants to know results and to publish this as early as possible. This student started the experiments and to analyze data. Moreover, my supervisor presented him to our collaborator (well known and influential scientist in the field) as the main researcher.

At this point I am desperate. Yes, I am jealous, but just don't know what to do in this situation. I came to this lab only for this project. I tried to mention this to my supervisor, but he just said: "Well, these findings are very important to us and I want to know the results as soon as possible".

It's only 4 months into experiments and I hope that someone could suggest how can I change this situation.

If this was really the way you were treated - by which I mean that you have to be sure not to misinterpret statements or promises of your supervisor - then you should run.

A PhD requires trust between the supervisor and the student. After such a breach of trust, you need to find a new supervisor.


Should we trust a journal article that does not cite any previous work? My area of interest is not so well-researched in the US, but it attracts more interest in some developing countries where the topic is more relevant, but also where academic standards tend to be different, and I must proceed with much more caution.

In EBSCO, recently my searches have turned up a number of articles published in journals abroad that either: (1) contain no in-text citations, but present entries in the reference list related to material discussed earlier in the paper or (2) contain no citations at all and no reference list at the end.

Is the lack of citations in an article sufficient criteria for casting aside a paper, even if I think some of the ideas relate to a paper I am writing?

I think it depends what you mean by "trust".

A modern academic paper which references no other paper is unusual and possibly fishy, but at least in my field (mathematics) there is nothing inherently faulty about the practice: perhaps you really are answering a question that you thought up yourself and for which the answer does not require you to use or cause you to refer to any published result.  (There must be some examples of this: anyone?)

If you're being asked to evaluate a paper then, sure, read it much more carefully if there are no citations.  That's not a good sign.  If you know the field well enough to know specific papers that the paper you're reading should have cited, then you should evaluate the paper negatively for not citing them.  If the paper has been published in a reputable journal you might consider writing to the editors to suggest missed citations.

On the other hand, a lack of references (or in-line citations) does not cause a paper to cease to exist.  If you want to cite the paper then you still can, and if you do use the material in the paper then you must cite it, as usual.


Plagiarism: quotation from videos course or conference You know that there is large of youtube videos that talking about science (you can find conference videos, researchers recording research Methodology in a videotape, etc).

Let say that I am preparing to write an article for an international journal, and I take some of the phrases from what they saying, I used plagiarism software to check these phrases and I get  Excellent, your content is 100% unique. is this can be classified as plagiarism?

According to your question, you're "tak[ing] some of the phrases" from the videos. If you do not cite them, then you are guilty of plagiarism, since you are presenting the ideas and words of others as your own, which is essentially the definition of plagiarism. It doesn't matter that the text isn't written out. Stealing someone's oral statements is just as bad.


Code in a conference paper: should I put license terms there? I am currently writing a conference paper (an IEEE conf, if that matters) in which I include a piece of code. Pertaining to the license of the code, should I, at the beginning of the code, write something like
-- Author: Ton Ami, 2021.
-- License: MIT License. ------> this
--  Below is code to help you make a better world
...

Or should I just put the code without any license terms?
In any case, what would the license of the code be?
Related questions:
License of code accompanying a published article
Is there a default license for code libraries that accompany scientific research papers
Include code snippet which is licensed under the MIT License in a paper

If you publish something and don't give an explicit license (US, anyway), the default is "all rights reserved". You can provide the license elsewhere if you like, as long as you still hold copyright. But if you transfer copyright to someone else, and it doesn't already have an explicit license, then they own copyright and you can no longer provide a license.
If you do provide a license before copyright transfer then, for most such licenses, the license is "sticky" and can't be withdrawn, even by the new copyright holder. If you do that without informing the new copyright owner then you can be in some trouble, since you can no longer transfer "all rights", but only the limited rights you still hold.
Some publishers, including conferences, will be fine with this. Others not and you could wind up having a paper rejected/withdrawn. I suspect IEEE might be lenient here, but they need to be informed of any prior license to anything they publish. Putting it in the paper itself makes it obvious, of course.
However, it isn't where you provide the license terms (in the paper or elsewhere), but when you detail the license terms, assuming that you can, at all.


Registering for a math conference with no publication record in this field I’m pretty sure that I’ve solved a certain open problem in mathematics. My solution is currently in its third week of peer-review at some journal that is known for rejecting cranky papers within five days of submission.

I’m currently searching for the next relevant conferences where I can present my paper. The thing is I’m not yet a famous person in the math community, hence it might not be easy to convince the conference organisers. Can someone kindly advice me on how I can go about it?

I’ll assume the open problem you solved is in pure mathematics. What you should know is that in most areas of pure mathematics, conferences do not have a formal paper submission mechanism, nor do they publish a proceedings volume as they typically do in other areas. One does not go to a conference to “present a paper” but rather one will get invited to “give a talk”, whose contents may be somewhat correlated with the contents of one’s most recent paper, but could also be about a less recent paper or about a still unfinished work, or some combination of such things; that’s entirely up to the speaker.

My suggestion is that you try to find a conference in an area of math related to the open problem.  Once you find one, you’ll have the option to register to attend (not to give a talk, which is by invitation only). Except for very large events, there is usually no registration fee, and although they may ask about your affiliation, it’s likely that most conferences will not use that as a basis for deciding whether to let you register, so don’t worry too much if you don’t work at a university.

Now, as I said in order to give a talk you’ll need to be invited to speak by the organizers. They usually select speakers with a proven record of publishing interesting results in the field of the conference. But one thing you could do is email them in parallel with registering, tell them about your paper with the solution of the open problem and ask if you could give a talk about it. I don’t think your chances are too high, but it’s worth a try. Your chances will be higher if your paper is available to download online from a place like arXiv, and if it’s written in a professional way that makes it clear it comes from a mathematician with a good level of experience and formal training. If you don’t want to make your paper publicly available just yet, you can send it to the organizers directly, but it will likely be viewed with suspicion and lower your chances of being invited to speak. (And if you don’t make the paper viewable at all, no one will take you seriously and the chances are essentially zero.)

Even if you are not invited to give a talk at the conference you found, it may still be a good idea to attend it, since there you will have a chance to talk to experts informally, tell them about your solution and get some valuable feedback about your approach.

Good luck!


Panic Attacks during an exam - Can the student be re-tested? I am a student who is currently undergoing therapy for mental health issues and I seem to be making good progress towards normalcy according to my therapist. Recently, I took an exam for a co-ordinated course and I completely panicked on the exam. I made a brave attempt to remain calm and answer the question to the best of my abilities and could only manage to earn 5 points overall.

Based on my predicament, can I approach my professor and department chairperson with a request to re-take the exam? I can of course ask my therapist to provide documentation detailing my case. Do universities make allowances for students who can demonstrate a genuine case for  a panic attack?

EDIT:
I do realize that I should contact the counselling center beforehand to make arrangements to take the test there but unfortunately, I was doing quite well and my therapist did not see a need to supply me with a note documenting my need. I completely blacked out when I saw the questions as they were quite long and bore no semblance to the practice exams or the homework questions.

If you are in the US, your school is required by law (the Americans with Disabilities Act, often abbreviated ADA) to make reasonable academic accommodations for students with disabilities. This includes mental illness.

In the US, schools have a formal ADA policy that describes the procedure for requesting accommodations. This includes a description of who to contact to make these arrangements. This person is trained in dealing with these issues.

Your next step should be to contact this person, find out what can be done about this exam, and find out what accommodations they can offer for future exams. (For example, they may help you arrange to take future exams in a separate room with no other students and/or with extended time, which may help you stay calm.)


What options does an international PhD student in UK have to fund his PhD? I am in the final year of my PhD and have some dues to clear. Unfortunately, I don't have enough funds to pay my fees. What options do I have, being an international student, to obtain financial assistance to finish my degree?

Do TA. The easiest way is to do TA for the courses that your advisor or professors in your group teach. I was paid £12.XX per hour at my school in London. As long as it is less than personal allowance (£7000 per year), you don't have to pay tax or anything, and it can be added on top of your scholarship, so it's good.
Find an internship. My scholarship prohibited me from taking internship so I was kind of happy when it expired.
If you major is CS, there is some programs like Google Summer of Code (open in February), which you can earn > $5000 for 3 months with no tax.


Is it common to do a MS in Germany and then a PhD in USA? Would love to hear stories if anyone has followed this path!

Admission to a "really good" PhD program in the US depends much more on what you do than on where you do it. If you do well and can show aptitude for research, you will have a good chance at many excellent universities.

Admission, however, is very competitive and there will be many people applying to top programs who have nearly perfect academic records. That will be the biggest issue, not the institution at which you study. Make sure that you can get excellent letters of recommendation by the time you wish to move on.

As for "common", however, I don't really know, but suspect it is about as common as applying from good institutions (like Dresden) from any other country.


How are years of experience counted for determining level on salary scale for a Netherlands postdoc? I am going to start a postdoc at a Dutch university. This is my second postdoc, and my contract says I am on salary scale 10, level 8. I am assuming that they counted 5 years of PhD and 3 years of my first postdoc to arrive at the level 8.

However, I took more than 5 years (actually closer a decade) to finish my PhD. Also, I had a couple of short-term bridging postdocs over a year, before starting my first postdoc. Do these years not figure in the determination of level on the salary scale?

If there is anyone familiar with Dutch universities' salary scale, I would appreciate any feedback. I wanted to ask here before contacting the university, so as to not sound demanding to them.

I'm post-doc'ing at CWI now; it's not a university but I'm sure it's the same pay scale - I'm also on scale 10. What I can tell you is:

Your slot/rank on the scale is, AFAICT and as @Niko suggests, equal to SOME_CONSTANT + calculated years of experience after the conclusion of your PhD. It doesn't matter what happened before you concluded your PhD. However, I got started on level 9, having only 3 years of calculated experience. So I can't verify that SOME_CONSTANT = 5. Or maybe it's an NWO-vs-universities thing.
The calculation of the number of years of experience is to some extent negotiable. In my case, I got my 3 years in industry after my PhD counted as 3 years of experience; and it was not clear from the get-go that this would indeed be the case.

Finally, I've not actually read it, but perhaps the collective employment agreement for Dutch universities has the official wording on this matter. (I've linked to the 2015-2016 version but I don't think this point has changed.)


Are Master's becoming required for USA PhD programs? In the USA, many universities enroll PhD students with BSc degree. I think this is the classical scheme, which remained in the US universities. In many countries, it is almost impossible to enroll in a PhD program without MSc degree.

I am curious how is the trend for MSc programs?

At least in the USA, do more universities allow PhD enrollment with BSc degree or those allowing are shifting to MSc requirement?

At least in my field (mathematics), every US PhD program I know of accepts students with a bachelor's degree.  I see no sign of this changing.


Is a software-simulated experiment enough? My ideal experiment to test my hypothesis would involve launching a large apparatus into deep space - and would cost millions of dollars, which I dont have.

Instead, if I develop a software model/simulation to test my hypothesis, is this an acceptable alternative? (in order for my ideas to be published and accepted by the scientific community).

This is impossible to answer without reading the actual paper, but I will do my best to give you an indication.

If the hypothesis is exciting and the simulation is well-executed and also gives the expected results: probably publishable. Otherwise, probably not.

Given that you need to ask this question here, it looks more like a "no", but don't let me (or any other random person on the internet) stop you: if you think it is publishable you should definitely try it. In the worst case it does not get published and you have learned something.

Also, you should ask this question to your supervisor (if you have one), or try to find someone to work with who has experience publishing papers: support from someone with experience publishing will probably be very helpful (read: necessary) to get your paper into a journal or conference.


My internship mentor would not write a recommendation for me, should I include the internship in my statement of purpose? I'm finishing up my MS and getting ready to send out PhD applications, and I am not sure about a particular item that should be included / or should not be included.

I spent a semester at a high profile government office (I was strong-armed into a position I did not apply for) doing something that was related to my area of interest.

It was ultimately "unsuccessful" since the person who was "mentoring" me was adverse to writing me a recommendation. But my MS-supervising professor who wrote me a recommendation for the position seemed surprised when I suggested he not include it in his own letter of reference. I'm hesitant to mention it, but am a little concerned about a gap in my transcript that just reads "Professional Practicum".

It is actually quite common that internships are not the source of reference letters to graduate school. The ideal letter writer knows about you and your work in an academic research setting, with longer periods of time being better - and also ideally has worked with lots of other students, and thus can meaningfully compare you to the "typical" student.

Internships relatively rarely will meet all of these guidelines, and students are generally advised to stick with professors or other similar professional researchers - so to not see a letter from your internship mentor would not be at all unusual. It would perhaps only catch someone's attention if the mentor would otherwise have been an ideal candidate for a letter (a prominent professional researcher in the field and former professor, for instance) - but even then, if your letters are otherwise good from well-chosen people I can't imagine this really being a problem.

My main concern is how you speak of the position. If you or your letter writers mention it - or if only your letter writer mentions it and you didn't include it in any of your materials - that could cause an issue, as it would look a bit odd. If your PhD admission process includes pre-admission interviews at all, I could see that being something you are asked about. If you are asked, how will you respond? Saying your mentor refused to write a letter for you and that it was a position you didn't really want in the first place would raise a number of red flags.

It's something you did that's relevant and took up a significant block of your time, so list it honestly and focus on the positive - the opportunity, whaty ou did, what you learned, the experience you gained. If you feel like you have something to hide - or you are actually trying to hide something - that's extremely likely to come out in other ways and negatively effect how you approach the application process as a whole.


Is it normal for professors to not have families or not spend time with their families over the holidays, due to pressure of work? My sister is a professor.  I was visiting her over Thanksgiving break and my father (who is also a professor) told me not to hang out with her because she had a grant proposal due.  Is this normal for professors or is it just my family?

This happens almost every time we have a family reunion, and my father never wants me to talk to my sister because she always has some sort of deadline.  It gives me serious doubts about going into academia.

The extent to which academics lead deadline-driven lives varies tremendously.  It differs between fields (even otherwise similar fields; for example, theoretical computer science tends to have far more paper submission deadlines than pure mathematics does), between types of institutions (such as research universities vs. liberal arts colleges), between career paths (such as running a research group that requires substantial ongoing funding vs. doing individual research on a theoretical topic), etc.  There's also a large factor of personal taste: some people thrive on deadlines, while others try hard to avoid them.

It's also worth noting that deadlines often repeat in cycles.  For example, yearly conferences typically have submission deadlines at the same time of year, as do certain funding opportunities.  Which conferences or funding opportunities are most important/relevant vary between people, so two professors could have completely different schedules of deadlines throughout the year.  It's possible that your visits with your sister happen to line up with a pattern of deadlines that matter to her.  That would be unfortunate, but not necessarily representative of the rest of her time.  In my experience deadlines are not particularly likely to coincide with holidays.

If you are curious you could always ask your sister (or, for that matter, your father).  For example, "I noticed that you often have deadlines around Thanksgiving.  That sounds pretty stressful - is this typical for how you spend your time?  What's your job like on a day to day basis?"


Can an acknowledgement section of a thesis contain names of music bands? Can I add some music bands in the acknowledgement section of my bachelor thesis? I used to listen these bands during all my 3-year long studies and during all the writing of my thesis, so I think they helped me quite a lot.

The only two unwritten rules of thesis acknowledgment sections are as follows:

Thank your advisor. (Preferably first. Yes, even before God if you're religious.)
Don't say anything outright offensive.

Other than that, go nuts!


Can a college or university withhold your degree for non payment and change your degree? Just to explain my question a little bit. I know that if you owe the school money they are allowed to withhold your diploma and  transcripts. My real question is if this is the situation and the college happens to change requirements for the degree before you fulfill your debt can they revoke the degree to make you take the classes needed?

Yes, as you say, it is common that a university will refuse to issue a diploma or transcripts until you have paid them what you owe.

However, I've never heard of them making you take more classes if requirements change in the meantime.  Most universities have a policy that what you have to fulfill are the requirements as they were listed in the catalog of the year that you first entered the university / degree program.  The university can't change them retroactively.

But you'd better read your university's policies to be sure.  This should be explained in the course catalog.


What designation should be assigned to a teacher's trainer who is also teaching in the same school? I  joined as a teacher's trainer in school for a short cntractual period. But gradually I started getting involved in the following:

1- Helping teachers in developing lesson plans

2- Providing feedback to teachers ( I sit in the classroom when they teach)

3- Motivating teachers ( and principal)  and students

4- Assist in developing teaching aids

5- Teaching science  ( class 6 and 7 students)

6- Guiding students on Science, Robotics, and AI projects, helping them innovate and think creatively. ( I am an engineer by qualification and a teacher by passion)

7- Assist in Curriculum and syllabus development along with textbooks selection

8- Help in the Assessment of kids.

9- Advice the higher management including the chairman regarding the development and improvement of the school.

10- Career counseling

11- I am trying to improve teaching and learning experience and taking many creative and innovative steps in the school. Fortunately, I have the authority to introduce new methods and processes.

My contract has been revised and it seems I will stay here for another 2-3 years.

I report only to the director and chairman. We have to define a designation for this job. What could be the most appropriate designation title for someone who is working on the above 11 fronts?

I am basically responsible for overall school development as per the vision of the school including academic improvement (especially better levels in Science and maths).

You seem to have multiple roles. For teaching responsibilities with respect to students you are "instructor" or whatever other designation your institution uses for that.

But part of your duties are "Instructional Designer" or maybe "Curriculum Designer".

And the third role is "mentor" to the instructional staff or another term with the same intent. In my world, the word "shepherd" would apply, but some would find it odd, perhaps. "Supervisor" only applies if you have some power other than giving advice and counsel.

But an overall term might just be "Curriculum Consultant" or similar.


Meaning of undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate in US Trying to figure out the difference between these. I've lost completely as different source/answers interpret it differently. Does anyone have clear understanding about what does undergraduate/graduate/post-graduate student mean in USA?

I've seen this nice timeline in other question however answers are still controversial.

As well, trying to figure out who the hell am I - I have a Bachelor in Computer Science, Master in Computer Science and another Master in Business Information Systems. Is that graduate or post-graduate? Also, I'm not a student anymore.

Part of the confusion may be that these adjectives are used in (at least) two different contexts: to describe degrees and to describe students.

An undergraduate degree generally means a bachelor's degree (B.S., B.A., etc): a degree requiring about four years of university-level study beyond high school.
A graduate degree or post-graduate degree is any higher degree that has a bachelor's degree as a prerequisite, such as a masters or doctoral degree (M.S., M.A., M.F.A., M.B.A,. Ph.D., etc.)  Depending on context, this term may also include professional degrees (J.D. for law, M.D. for medicine, D.D.S. for dentistry, D.V.M. for veterinary medicine, etc).
An undergraduate student (or simply an undergraduate, or colloquially, an undergrad) is a student who does not yet have an undergraduate degree, but is studying to earn one.
A graduate student or post-graduate student (or colloquially, a grad student) is a student who already has an undergraduate degree and is studying to earn a graduate degree.

So in general, the adjectives graduate and post-graduate are synonyms.  This may seem contradictory (since you might expect post-graduate to refer to something after graduate) but that is how it's used.  I understand this as coming from the fact that a post-graduate degree is something that you work toward following your graduation (i.e. the moment when you earn your undergraduate degree).

My impression is that people within academia generally prefer the term graduate to post-graduate in both contexts; the word post-graduate is used more often by non-academics, to whom the word graduate is more likely to seem ambigiuous.

So you could say you have an undergraduate degree and two graduate degrees.  You could also describe your degrees as post-graduate degrees for further clarification, which would normally be needed only when speaking to someone not intimately familiar with academia.


Is just 'being interested in the topic' a bad reason to do a PhD? I've got an offer to do a PhD at a great uni in the UK, in a scientific topic I find really interesting because of some courses I've taken at Master's level.

My dissertation advisor seems to think that being interested in a topic isn't strong enough as a motivation, and that I should be passionate about the topic and have a clear idea of why I want to study it and what it will lead me into.

I wouldn't say I'm passionate about this topic, but I wouldn't say I've studied anything in enough detail to be passionate about anything in particular yet. All I know is that I found this topic interesting and stimulating. People usually get passionate about things when they start doing them at a really high level, which I haven't had a chance to do yet.

Regarding what it would lead me into - I don't know exactly what I want to do in life yet, but research really appeals to me, and so does academia.

Is this reason enough to accept the offer, or should I reject it and wait until I become passionate about a particular area and know exactly what I want to do in life?

To be a bit snarky towards your professor, I don't think that we can truly answer this question until we have some sort of passion-ometer that can distinguish degrees of caring.  How much interest is "enough" is just not quantifiable.

That said, there really does seem to be a qualitative difference in how people do in a Ph.D. based on their degree of motivation to be in the program.  There are lots of good things to do with one's life that are much more short-term rewarding than doing a Ph.D.  Thus, people who enter a Ph.D. program just because it seems like a reasonable next thing to do with their lives are likely to run into difficulty and end up exiting to one of those other nice alternatives.  People who are having trouble but do not have alternatives and feel trapped in their program (e.g., due to visa issues) are at a strong risk for harm to themselves or others, up to and including suicide or violence.

But passion for a particular topic isn't a make or break.  I think the key is whether a person finds the ongoing struggle of research rewarding.  If you find that you have a taste for that, a Ph.D. is a good idea; if you don't, it's probably a bad idea.

And it's difficult to really know until you've really engaged with some big research or engineering projects.  If you have, you probably know if you've enjoyed them enough to make a life out of it, whether you stick with a particular topic or end up shifting over time (as most active researchers do eventually, as their original topics either succeed or hit dead ends).  If you haven't ever really engaged with research before, I would recommend getting involved in some research first before making the longer commitment to a Ph.D.---although a 3-year UK Ph.D. is short and focused enough that such a preface might not be necessary.


Why do so many researchers in CS fail to clarify their symbols and notations in research papers? I am exploring some new research fields in CS from my unrelated field in math.

Many papers I have stumped upon during research seem to completely ignore the fact that notation and symbols have meanings. Coming from math, this is a bit unsettling to me.

I hate to provide example, but here is one. In equation 1, some magical capital letters are used as functions, but never defined. No references are provided either. Here is another one. Virtually all the symbols which are supposed to mean something in math are not provided with any definition.

I've encountered a whole string (dozens) of these papers in a row.

Is this a common practice in CS? Or perhaps due to page limit? Can anyone explain what I am seeing?

In the case of the first paper, the meaning of these equations are well-known within the subfield of reinforcement learning. (See Barto and Sutton's book for background.)

For instance, V is usually a value function which is the expected reward from following a policy π to termination. (The Q function - the value of taking an action from a state is also often used without full definition as well.)

I can't speak about CS as a whole, but in subfields like reinforcement learning, this is somewhat common. Personally, I find myself getting more and more formal the older I get. But, CS doesn't demand the same rigor as might be found in mathematics, so people get used to not providing it - and don't demand it of their graduate students.


How do I become a journal reviewer? Possible Duplicate:
  How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers?

Assume that I have just finished my postdoc and am now starting a professorship/scientist position (I am not). How do I start joining the ranks of peer reviewers? More importantly, how do I become a peer reviewer of a particularly prestigious journal rather than some junk journal? Does the journal contact me or do I start to publish in those journals, the editors recognize my "expertise" and then they solicit me? Even though everything is "blind" does my reputation of doing quality reviews get shared with other editors?

The best way to do it, in my experience, is to write. Every single journal I've been asked to review things for (with the exception of one done as a favor) was born of a request by an editor to review a paper in an area where I might be considered an "expert" - because I had a publication, and a decently received one, in that topic area.

Once you get an invitation or two, accept them and as importantly make your reviews useful and timely. Establishing yourself in an editor's mind as someone who gets their reviews back, and gets them back on time (or communicates when they aren't able to do that) can't do anything but help in ensuring that you'll get similar requests in the future.


Have you used such grading policy in your teaching? I have seen a grading policy for a course with two midterms. Under this policy, if a student scores better in the second midterm than in the first one, the first test will be "forgiven" and the weight shifts to the second one. For example, if midterm 1 and are 15% each and a student got 60 for midterm 1 and 80 for midterm 2, then the weigh of the two exams become 0% and 30%. I can see the good side of the policy is to encourage students making progress. But I worry that this will cause students complain about unfairness, particularly those who can't take advantage of this policy.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

The version we use in my calculus class says that we drop the lowest score out of homeworks and midterms. There are 4 midterms, worth 15% each, and the homeworks are worth a total of 15%. The rest is decided by the final. When calculating the final grade, we drop the lowest score out of the midterms and homeworks, and calculate the grade as if each is worth 75/4 % instead.

Some students (the ones who read the syllabus) that have good scores on the first three tests and the homeworks elect to not take the fourth test. Other (less wise) students put all their faith in tests and don't do any homeworks. Most students still do all the homeworks and take all tests.

We think of it as a way to allow the students to have one bad day, without destroying their grade in the course.


Drawing Lines when Giving Ideas to Undergraduate Students I teach quite a few 'unprepared' students and I find they struggle with finding source material on which to base their reports. Basically, they need to read a lot and apply theories to different companies.

Where should I draw the line when giving them advice? I certainly do not do any searching or reading/filtering for them but if they choose a company and need to report on it, is it acceptable to give them some ideas about famous events at that company which might have happened a decade ago (or more but would still be acceptable for the purposes of the report)? Or, should I require them to do search, even for old events, and if they can't, then they can't and fail?

The purpose of teaching, which includes both your lectures, later guidance on their projects and also includes evaluation, is for them to learn new skills. So, the question you should ask yourself is: what skills do I want them to learn, and how do I achieve that best?

Typically, it seems to me that (if you have enough time for it), it is very important to teach them not only to read, filter and digest information, but also to search for it (Information Age and all). So, you might want to make “searching for relevant information” a required skill. But that doesn't mean you should help them acquire it. In fact, you probably should:

advertise it as an important part of what they are expected to learn
help them learn it, i.e. show them how it's done
evaluate them based on their performance

However… even if you do all that, it still doesn't mean you can't help them if they miss something. After all, if you are teaching them how to best look for information, they might realize it's a good idea to come to the expert they know in that particular field… you, their teacher. So, maybe they will come asking

  here are the relevant events I found about X in the archives… do you think I missed something?

or even:

  I see a spike in the data around the fall of 1974, and I have searched but couldn't find any event possibly related to that company, do you know of anything that might explain it?

in which cases you might want to answer them, if it seems they did their due diligence.