What to do if I cannot complete my Masters dissertation tasks?

The unpleasant reality is that it is entirely possible that you may not pass your dissertation. In fact, given what you've written here, I would be surprised if you did as of right now.

Graduate level work is hard. I mean if research were easy everyone would be doing it right? And so some of the things Graduate students need to learn early in their career is time management, planning and asking for help as needed. In an ideal world your advisor would have caught your floundering much earlier in the process but academia, as life, isn't always ideal. A good rule of thumb is if, by the halfway point of your timeline(so 1 year into a 2 year Masters for example) you don't have a solid plan for accomplishing your goal that includes timelines, goalposts and a plan to catch up on additional material you need... then you have a problem.

By June, then, warning bells should have been going off in your head. I have some sympathy(everyone has to learn this stuff on their own at some point) but not too much. Part of graduate level Computer Science work, at least, means figuring out languages and implementations on your own. It sounds like you were looking for something a little more guided, more like undergraduate courses, but that's not how it works for Graduate level research. That you are a week out and just now casting about for a solution, that you, after running into the exact same problem when asking for help too late in June, just now found out that you could not implement improvements on a preexisting software suite... these are massively problematic. Ideally after the issues in June you should have chosen low hanging fruit for your last ditch effort of improving someone elses' suite. The first thing your lit review on that software suite should have contained is a list of potential pitfalls or limitations of the software and rough ideas on improvements.

Now that's all rather negative. I've written it because, from what you've written, you seem to not get what the fundamental problem has been for your research experience. All that being said there may still be solutions but it's going to be hard work.

It sounds like these implementations(different softwares) are focused on a particular field or topic. An option, a hard to do going to take overnights for the next week, option would be to do benchmarks and comparisons of currently available software. A study of the limitations and weaknesses(and strengths) of currently available software can be a viable topic. That it took you a month to set up the environment to run the software you were trying to improve means that this would potentially be very hard for you to do in a week. An option is to take the software you have now and run exhaustive benchmarks and analysis on that specific software.

I'm not suggesting this as a 'run out and do it now!' sort of thing. Honestly even the most on-the-ball student who has had no issues would be hard pressed to write a decent dissertation in a week. That's a student who has all of their data. But a passing dissertation is a possiblity. Your first step is to go talk to your advisor as soon as possible. Explain the current situation, explain a potential solution(exhaustive benchmarks on a particular software or comparative benchmarks between different software implementations) and, finally, explain what you are going to do to make sure that the day before the dissertation is due you won't have another emergency situation like you have right now.


How recent should the English language certificate be to apply for Master thesis?

Yes there is an expiration limit on these language tests.

I believe most tests are valid for 2 years. I know for instance that the TOEFL test has a 2 year expiration date. Unfortunately, I do not have any experience with the CPE test, but I have personally never heard of any standardized test being valid for more than 5 years.

I would suggest you retake the test. That being said, you should contact the program you are applying to directly to get the most information about what tests are/are not accepted and for how long they are valid after taking them.


How to reject a PhD Scholarship offer after accepting it?

You can't have it both. Even a professional supervisor will be angry after finding out that you dumped them months after getting your ok (especially as you say they secured funding for you; who knows how many hoops they had to jump through).

But it's your PhD and your life. If the other offer is really better, go for it.

You can be very polite about that, and the best thing you can hope for is that they will be momentarily displeased and forget about it with time. Don't bring it up again in future if you happen to meet them again.

A formulation that expresses how sorry you are to put them through all the trouble you had to reconsider the very generous offer and that you ended up not being able to take it would be a possible route of formulation.


Can I do my graduate studies in Computer Science with computational physcis bachelor degree?

The best advise I can give you is to check what the prerequisites for graduate studies in computer science are. Check the homepages of the programs of different universities in the USA or Europe.

Some might require a degree in computer science or a related field, other just a certain amount of points related to computer science.
To find out if a university considers computational physics as a related field you have to ask.

I am European, so I can't tell you if a GPA of 3.1 is good enough or how it affects your ability to get into a university in Europe.

You have to check and find out yourself.
After graduating you should be able to do that.


Impact of a C+ grade in a graduate course

One bad mark is unlikely to have much if any effect. Especially if it isn't the most recent. People are looking for indicators of success, so you have to provide plenty of that in your admissions package. Someone may ask you why you got a poor grade, but most will accept a reasonable answer. But your record is what it is and you can't change the past. Apply to the programs that interest you and make your best case.


If I interpreted your question correctly, you're asking if you can apply for graduate school one year, and, if rejected, re-apply the following year. Unless there are some field-specific norms that I am unaware of, the answer is almost definitely yes. Of course, for you to stand a chance of not being rejected a second time, your application should be significantly improved. In your case, that seems likely, as you'll have had an extra year of schooling, possibly stronger references, perhaps some research experience. Good luck in any case!


Is translation of certificates for professorship positions required?

Some US diplomas aren’t in English, either! So just upload what you have, or if you have particular concerns, you can contact whoever’s listed in the ad to answer.

Generally, such formal documentation is required at the time of the formal offer or at the hire, not for the initial application.


I use it a little, and one of my colleagues uses it a little, but I don't get the impression that it's widely used. The application I used it for was the following. I have written textbooks for use in some of my courses. They're available for free online. About 70 other people are using them. At a certain point, I decided I wanted to do a fairly major revision, which would completely break compatibility with the earlier versions of the book. (There's a different order of topics, for example.) I didn't want the old versions cluttering up my web site and creating confusion, but I also didn't want to force my users to switch immediately to the new version (or at all, if they liked the old version better). So I just put the old ones on scribd.

One of my colleague uses scribd for his course notes, for a somewhat different reason. He simply doesn't want the hassle of maintaining his own web site, paying for webhosting, etc.

For both me and my colleague, one of the considerations was that our school's computing resources are flaky, inadequate, and Windows-centric. People might also prefer not to use a school server for something like a textbook that they want to make clear is not the intellectual property of their employer.

One of the problems with using scribd for these purposes is that scribd has been searching for a business model that will allow them to make a profit, and therefore they keep changing their rules and the way they present themselves publicly. For example, I've heard complaints from people that (at least at one point in time) scribd seemed to be trying to force them to pay money or contribute materials in order to access files.

It is probably not realistic to think of scribd as a permanent place to store documents (cf. arxiv.org or archive.org, where there is some expectation of permanence).

Another educational purpose for which I use scribd is illegal according to the laws of some countries. There are a lot of classic papers in my field that are very important and useful educationally, but are still under copyright in many countries. Some of the old ones are not even available from the publisher in digital form if you're willing to pay; they haven't been digitized, and the only way to access them is by going to the basement at a big university where they keep very old journals. Sometimes when I go to the trouble of obtaining one of these papers, I scan it and post it on scribd.


Next steps in approaching an unresponsive academic

I had a similar experience with a professor while working off an Incomplete.  He did a lot of outside consulting on top of his academic obligations and was one of those people who is simply hard to contact.

In the event that your professor is simply hard to contact I would track down a phone number and try a direct call.  It is possible that your emails got lost in the shuffle or the spam filter.

Alternatively their situation may have changed since you were there: they could be on sabbatical, sick or they may have left the institution.  Do you have any friends still there you could check with? You could also check the course listings to see if they are currently teaching.

Without knowing the professor I think it is unlikely they are trying to duck your request.  If they didn't want to recommend you, there are other ways to handle that such as with a weak recommendation or simply telling you.

I would try to exhaust the other contact options before officially trying to contact them through the department.

Does your new potential school have a portal for recommendation letters?  I know several schools that request the recommendation directly from individuals you specify.


To teach English at the college level, is there an advantage to having a masters in English vs Education?

Assuming you are in the U.S., a master's degree in English may qualify you to teach at a community college (but there are enough unemployed Ph.D.s in English that the competition is tough for those with only a master's degree).  It would definitely not be enough for a regular faculty position at a four-year college, but it could be a step towards earning a Ph.D.

A master's degree in education could be a valuable credential in secondary education, depending on how your school system handles it, but it counts for nothing if you'd like to teach English at the college level.  (Furthermore, it doesn't qualify you to teach in a department of education, which would require a doctorate.)


Data collection methods without fieldwork

Depending on your topic, consider working with an existing dataset. I highly doubt that would be frowned upon in an M.A. situation - you only have so much time to get things done!

I see you're in Ed Tech, so you have a lot to choose from. Most MOOCs provide open data you could work with (for example, see Harvard and MIT's Dataverse). The LAK conference is also an excellent resource for learning analytics datasets. Finally, there are also some governments that are providing open data pertaining to education, such as Queensland in AU.

But even if you can't find an existing dataset that provides the information you're looking for, the strategies you mentioned can all be used highly successfully. My own MSc thesis in Learning & Technology is one example. I designed a study where I combined an online survey with sentiment analysis to understand the role of personality in a set of online courses provided by large university. Never had to leave my laptop :)


If there is a preprint version online, and you are certain that what you want is going to appear in the published version, cite the accepted version (to appear etc), but also include a mention of the preprint, where to get it, and where the specific thing you want appears in the preprint. If you know something because the author has shared with you a version of the accepted manuscript it might be worth noting their input, something like "the authors have kindly shared the accepted version of this paper, the relevant material can be found in the preprint version at [address] on page [blah]". It's not as snappy as author-year-page, but it will do what references are supposed to do: point a reader where to find information. Practices like removing titles from bibliographies, compressing not over-long author lists to "Aarons et al" and so on are hold-overs from days when publishing was only on paper, and typesetting was by mechanical means, and expensive. Pixels are cheap. If you have to "break" a rule of citation style to make the citation clear, then that is no crime.

If the publisher allows it, please consider asking the authors politely if they can post a version of the article in some repository at its closest-to-published state (is this in an arXiv-using subject? I can't tell if this is the case from your question). Most publishers have some threshold where they are happy for this to be done, even if only under an embargo. Remember: the literature is for posterity, so if next year someone wants to check their paper after reading yours, it can be available, even if it is not publicly accessible on the open web right now.

Also, there's not much wrong with citing page "n of m" where m is the total number of pages of their article, because people can count, and will infer where in the officially-numbered version you mean.


Will my results still be publishable if I used ethically objectionable techniques in my research

All research involving EEG on human subjects will require IRB, or equivalent ethical review board, approval in order to be published in a reputable journal. Studies involving pornography, violence, and death are not that uncommon and your IRB will have procedures in place to deal with these types of studies. They will likely require you to provide clear information about what the subjects will see during the experiment if it does not impact your hypothesis. They may require you to prescreen subjects for past experiences that may make the images more salient, again if it doesn't interfere with the hypothesis. Finally, if the images are disturbing, they will likely require you to have a support mechanism included in your debrief. Often, if the subjects are limited to students, understanding how to get emergency access to a psychologist is enough. In extreme cases they may require a psychologist to be on site.

NEVER do research without ethical approval. There is nothing in your proposal that sounds so shocking that it should cause a supervisor to think less of you. He/she may not want to go down that road on scientific or personal moral grounds, but you should still feel comfortable raising the idea with your supervisor.


How to prevent students from using modified calculators to cheat on exams?

I received my bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1970. I didn't own a calculator.

There were some adjustments that helped with no-calculator tests:

Many of my exams had ten points per question. 9 of the points were for clearly showing correct working. One point was for getting the right answer. A student who understood the material but was bad at arithmetic could get 90% without a single correct answer. A student who depended on a fancy calculator could miss more points for not showing all their work.
The exam booklet included, at the back, any trig and similar tables we were going to need. Answers only had to be to the rather low precision supported by those tables.
Questions were designed with easy numbers. For example, fractions would often simplify by just crossing out common factors.
Questions were structured to minimize difficult arithmetic. For example, ask for the variance rather than the standard deviation, but also ask what they would have done differently to get the standard deviation.

Given the problem of the modified calculators, you can go in one of two directions. The first is real world. Full Internet access, statistical calculators etc. The other is to go back to the 1960's, and design tests for no calculators.


Will an internship in biology benefit me when my major is not biology?

I completed undergraduate summer internships in biology although I ultimately wound up applying (and attending) graduate school in psychology. Although the internship did not directly align with my current career path, at the time it helped me narrow down my professional interests. In applying for jobs and graduate school, my internships, regardless of discipline, were seen as evidence that I was motivated, organized, and had some experience in professional settings.

At the undergraduate level many skills (including solid record keeping, attention to detail, and proper lab technique) are transferable across scientific disciplines. Further, completing one internship outside your discipline shouldn't significantly stunt your ability to prepare for graduate school in chemistry.

Having a letter of support from any professor should be acceptable, provided it is a strong letter. In all likelihood, your advisor will know you the best and be able to write the most supportive letter. However, if a life sciences professor knows you well, a second letter or co-written letter might be helpful.


What should I do if the professor I intended to work with has moved to a different school?

Yeah, this happens. :(

I would recommend applying to school Z during your first year at school X. This would be very natural under the circumstances, and nobody (in particular, not those at school X) will think less of you for it.

Further, I'd recommend:

E-mail and ask Prof. Y if he'd be willing to vouch for you with the graduate admissions committee at school Z.
Simultaneously apply to a couple of other programs that might be more suitable for you than school X. This goes especially if Z is substantially more selective than X, so you are far from sure that you'll get in.
Kick ass in your first year at X. This will keep you sharp, enable you to get a letter of support from someone at X, and better prepare you for the program at Z if you go.
Keep in mind that you might not get into Z, or you might find a research area you like at X and decide you prefer to stay. (Another reason to kick ass in your first year at X.)

Good luck to you!


What are best practices for designing publication-quality figures?

Someone general advice:

do a Google search. There are already plenty of articles talking about all different aspects of creating good figures, and they probably do a better job than my answer here.
experiment. Just create a figure and look at the font size, linewidth, color selection and arrangement, etc. If you have an average person's understanding of aesthetics, you should be able to spot issues in your figures. Print the paper out, and see if everything is legible.
imitate. Find papers in top journals and important dissertations, and see how other people create figures. I am not in mathematics, but if you look at Science, Nature or top journals in my field like Physics Review Letter, you should get a good sense of the elements in a graph, how to convey data and ideas effectively, and how to make a graph look great.
look up guidelines. Journals in my field often have a very specific style guide (like this), which can be a very useful reference. They can include things like "minimum linewidth is 0.5 pt" and "font size must be greater than 18 pt". They are generally good guidelines to follow.

Some specific things you can look into:

Don't be afraid to use large font size. They are probably not large enough.
using colors, and especially color maps, is tricky. There are many considerations that you may not be aware. You can easily find advice of how to use colors, and there are websites that help you select colors, so I will not repeat them here. Here are some discussions on colormap:

A Better Default Colormap for Matplotlib
Rainbow Color Map Critiques: An Overview and Annotated Bibliography
Color Map Advice for Scientific Visualization
A survey and task-based quality assessment of static 2D colormaps

make things simple. Don't overcrowd your figure.
use annotations where necessary. A figure with adequate annotations will often explain itself, even without captions.

Additional resources:

Look up a book named "Trees, maps, and theorems" in which there is a chapter about figures. (I have been to a great talk given by Jean-luc Doumont about how to give a good presentation.)
Figure Design (MIT EECS Communication Lab)
Choosing color palettes (Seaborn)


Use of Jargons in my Statement of Purpose

One of the most important rules of writing is know your audience.

When you're writing a statement of purpose, you are addressing an audience of experts in your general field. So, everyone in your field will know the basic terminology and jargon that is common to people throughout your field.

Therefore, if you are using a specific term that is not in standard usage throughout your community, you should not assume that everyone will know what it means. Therefore, for the first occurrence, you should write out the term in full. After that you can certainly list an abbreviation.

On the other hand, if the term is normally  or better known as its abbreviated name, then you don't necessarily need to expand it. In my field, for instance, there is something called the Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon hierarchy of equations. However, because it's such a mouthful, it's pretty much universally called the "BBGKY" hierarchy. In such a case, providing the full name isn't going to make much of a difference; if your audience doesn't know the abbreviation, giving the full name won't hurt. But this is such a narrow case of exceptions that in general it's a good idea to provide the full name at least once.


Is taking ideas from an art critic plagiarism?

Yes, it's plagiarism if she learned novel or interesting ideas from an art critic and then used them in her own paper without crediting the source.  It doesn't matter whether the ideas are facts or opinions.

For commonplace opinions with nothing novel or interesting about them, there's no need for a citation.  However, that's presumably not the case here, since one couldn't attribute such opinions to a specific critic.


Final check for dissertation; what are some common bugs?

This doesn't cover everything you want, by any means, but it is an attempt to automate similar things:

http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-words-duplicates/

You could probably accomplish some of what you want with similar scripts.  Some of the checks you wish to do are easily scripted as long as your thesis file(s) are plain text.  If you're using Word, automation will be more challenging.


Should I turn down PhD offer if I think I may not pass qualifying exam (risking immigration issues if I fail)?

Professors and admissions committees have a lot of experience in accepting students- they wouldn't offer you a position unless they were confident that you were capable of handling the program. It's just as bad a situation for your professor if you fail at the oral exam stage: they will be stuck in year 2 of a 5 year grant without an experienced student and no immediate replacement to carry on that work.

Two specific thoughts:

Find out who the Graduate Program Chair or the Graduate Admissions Committee Chair is for your department and ask them the same question you asked your professor. These are people with a lot of experience handling and admitting graduate students, and they can give you an impartial opinion.
See if this program has an alternative to the oral examination. My program allowed thesis-option MS students to waive the oral exam under some conditions.  In some labs it was very common for students (typically international students with weaker presentation skills) to fulfill the MS requirements and write a thesis rather than doing an oral presentation.


Is it possible to order individual academic journals?

Some journals are on-line only and some are both on-line and print, and a few still print only. Since journals generally want to keep costs down and the printing process takes quite a lot including postage the trend is for all journals to drop print. Left is the possibility of print-on-demand but I am not sure this will be a possibility. I have yet to see any on-line journals offer such printing.

So while that was the general picture, in your case, you need to contact the journal. If they print copies, they should be able to sell you one. But, such a request should best be made when you provide your final manuscript of proofs, not long after the fact, the reason being that no-one sits on stocks of printed journals, they minimize the number of prints produced.

So: contact the editor and ask is the simple answer.


Why do some professors have M.D. as well as/instead of a PhD?

There are two main tracks of medicine: clinical (the "standard" medical practice), and research. Typically, doctors who work in the latter tend to pursue combined MD-PhD programs, and consequently have degrees in both a traditional scientific research discipline as well as medicine.

It probably was easier in the past to make such a switch with "just" a medical degree; however, the increased specialization in the field makes it harder for a medical doctor to switch over to a research track without the increased training (unless he or she is working on the "clinical" side of therapeutic treatments designed in research programs).


What can I do, being on a Tenure-track position and noticing that the promised start-up package, course release and ... were just false promises?

My strong advice is that you take an offer from a better school and just do what is needed to get through the year as best you can. If the place is as bad as this then you, with little institutional power behind you, aren't going to make a difference. You will be stomped like a bug. I was once in a bad situation (perhaps not this bad) and went for the door by the shortest route possible, simply saying goodby to the insanity. It worked out fine. As in your case, I wasn't going to get anything from any other action.
In particular don't say things that might come back to negatively affect your own career. Suing them might be an option, but it requires a hard talk with a lawyer first and threatening it isn't going to get you a positive outcome.
I realize this is hard advice to take, but you have a good option and you don't want to do things that antagonize people and that will cause blow-back on yourself.
You are fortunate to have a good option. Take it. Others aren't so lucky.


Rather than arguing it with the prof, who seems disinclined to do so, let it go to the review board and argue it there. The student doesn't actually need to do the analysis them self before they have a review scheduled, but then, you can both insist that you have full information in which to defend yourself. Serve as the student's advocate if you are so inclined.

If the student uses well designed code as they were taught to do, there may be, in essence, only one way to properly express the solution if it is small and well defined. That won't be true for a large program, of course.

But also insist that the student should get the benefit of any doubt as the overall impact on the system is small, but that on the student is large.

I agree with the advice you have so far given in this, by the way.


Merge tables from different sources (APA citation)

If a student of mine asked me this I would say to write a brief introduction sentence (or paragraph) just before the table and indicate (verbally, as some say) as follows:

  The following table is based on work from Smith (2012) but does
  include additional rows. Those additional rows are marked with an asterisk (*).

Then I would simple mark the new rows with an asterisk.

The point is to make it very clear what originated with you and what originated with someone else. This does that clearly.


Are there ethical guidelines prohibiting penalties against potential research subjects who have not yet provided consent?

From the US Code of Federal Regulations (45 CFR 46), in the section on seeking consent:

  An investigator shall seek such consent only under circumstances that provide the prospective subject or the representative sufficient opportunity to consider whether or not to participate and that minimize the possibility of coercion or undue influence.

Note the use of the phrase "prospective subject" - this clause refers to the investigator's conduct towards potential subjects who have not yet given consent. Presumably a penalty or threat of a penalty would constitute "coercion or undue influence."

Specifically regarding research participation for credit, the APA Code of Conduct Section 8.04 (a different section of which was mentioned by Stephan Kolassa in his answer) says

  (a) When psychologists conduct research with clients/patients, students or subordinates as participants, psychologists take steps to protect the prospective participants from adverse consequences of declining or withdrawing from participation.

  (b) When research participation is a course requirement or an opportunity for extra credit, the prospective participant is given the choice of equitable alternative activities.


Are Masters degrees from German universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen) eligible for PhD?

The basic answer is "Yes, but. . . ."

A master's degree is usually the minimum prerequisite for admission to PhD programs in Germany. However, many faculties within various German universities have established "qualification" procedures for degrees they do not believe to be "equivalent" to their own. This usually includes some combination of coursework (with the associated exams), plus evaluation of the master's thesis to show equivalency to the expected degree.

These criteria are often applied not only to international students, but to students from German Fachhochschule as well. However, these policies vary widely between universities, and between different departments at the same universities, so you should contact the specific programs you're interested for more details.


I left college in the last semester (did not finish), but the college "transferred military experience to credits" and gave me a diploma. Normal?

I still have a hard time believing that I could graduate without knowing it.

Me too. I would request a transcript and perhaps investigate to see whether "transferring military experience to credits" is something that routinely happens. It would be nice to document your concerns and get a written response from the college saying that everything is on the up-and-up. When documenting everything, I suggest not going into detail about your issues with the teachers; that is a separate issue.

  I am curious if this is a normal thing? Am I worrying too much?

I can say that it is entirely abnormal for well-ranked, 4-year colleges in the US. However, community colleges are a different beast. While I can't say anything for sure, I can speculate:

They may have wanted to boost their graduation rates, and looked for "almost-done" students that they could convert to "done"
Perhaps your VA rep is just an awesome guy who helped you out.
Maybe there were legal issues with the harassment case.
Or, it's possible that something improper was done, and it will eventually cause problems for you.

Short answer: I suspect all is OK, but I would still try to document what happened and get the college to state in writing that your degree was not awarded in error.

Edit: I do agree with the other answers that you should proceed with your application to 4-year schools; don't let this slow you down. I just think it's worth protecting yourself...for example, the diploma-generation system could be different than the degree-verification system, and they might disagree about whether you finished...best to have the whole thing documented in case something comes up.


After received my PhD, can I publish a sole-author paper for some extended results?

You don't need to ask permission for your ongoing work. It is entirely appropriate to extend what you have done and publish it. You should be sure to cite the older work as needed to avoid questions of self-plagiarism, of course.

An acknowledgement of your advisor for their past help is a good and appropriate thing to do, but not necessarily required. I would do it unless there were some specific reason not to do so.

Asking them if they want to participate can also be good, but not at all necessary. It is good simply because having collaborative relationships is good. If you decide to do that, then co-authorship would be a consideration, of course.  But sole-authorship is also proper and is eventually the place (nearly) every researcher will wind up.


Leaving a short-term teaching position early

You need to talk with someone in the department about how to handle this (presumably the teaching coordinator, or chair, or whoever hired you).  In the sorts of departments/universities I'm familiar with, it would be difficult to arrange for someone else to take over a course partway through the semester.  Then your options might be teaching the whole course or leaving a semester early, and in the latter case they might need to know soon to line up a replacement.  On the other hand, it's possible that something very different could work out, depending on the local situation.

  But if I did that, would I piss the department off so much as to find myself in some way blacklisted in years to come?

Maybe, if you announce a decision without consulting with them and if that decision is extremely inconvenient.  However, it sounds like a reasonable thing to request, if you're flexible about trying to meet the department's needs as well (for example by quitting in between semesters rather than partway through the spring).


Is it acceptable to take photos of slides at a conferences for private use?

I have seen it done many times, sometimes I would see people recording entire sessions on video. My guess is these are people coming from institutions that cannot afford to send many researchers abroad and the one person sent will pass the material to their colleagues in their home country.

Some conferences explicitly forbid recording presented material. See for example the American Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO):

  ARO   does   not   permit   audio   or   photographic recording  of  any  research  data  presented  at  the meeting.

But that rule was not strictly enforced at the meetings I attended. So the answer is: it depends on the venue.


should he acknowledges me when he publish his paper?

Acknowledgments are discretionary, so they needn't acknowledge you.

  Will that affect my academic career positively or negatively?

Any impact will likely be minimal.

  And if he doesn't acknowledge me what can I do?

You needn't do anything.


University reputation vs department reputation for industry jobs

This is a tricky question, mainly because of the large degree of uncertainty of what you are going to do next. Basically, if you plan to stay within your physics field, then you should be looking for the institution with the best physics department, as ultimately your next job will depend on the quality of your work, and the reputation of the physics faculty you have been working with; while the reputation of your school will matter only if your supervisors won't push you too strongly, or if you want to move across fields.

However, you are mainly concerned with finding a job in industry. In that regard, unless you expect the people in the physics department of choice to directly point you to someone in industry they personally know, then it will be the reputation of your institution - not the department - to be "pushing" you forward. Industry do not and cannot have a fine view of the academic world. The world outside academia is vast, and you will meet someone connected with your home institution only in very rare instances. They will most likely NOT understand what you have done in physics, nor be able to judge the quality of your work; but they will recognize that you were accepted by a prestigious institution, and completed a degree with them.

Personally, I worked in either good or exceptional physics departments, in good institutions. At the end, finding a job in industry was relatively easy because I happened to work on projects that hit worldwide news. I call that luck :)
If that would not have been the case, my choices would have be far more limited. On the other hand, I had colleagues working on obscure research projects in the world most prestigious institutions; I'd say they have similar or easier times than myself finding jobs.


I suggest you reference the source and add a note that you did the translation for the figure you show in your thesis.


Correct practice for representing units in figure and text?

The publication likely has a style guide. Failing that, just flip through a few published papers until you find an example, then use that


I think best practice is to include the arxiv identifier for any paper you cite anyway, so the bibliography will include both the publication info and a link to the arxiv.  In that sense you don't have to choose just one.  If it's say in the introduction and you're writing "The stabilization hypothesis was introduced in [BD]" there's no need to specify which version you're referring to.  However, if you want to refer to a specific theorem number then you might want to clarify if the numbering disagrees in the two sources.  Similarly if you want to refer to something that's only in a later revision then you have to be clear.  So you could say "Theorem x from [BD] (which appears only in the arxiv version) says..."


Travel grant request letter, should I request maximum travel amount?

It's certainly fine to ask for the maximum, if your expenses are at least that much.  And you can combine multiple expense items, as long as they are all reasonable.  In case 2 you can certainly request $1000.

I would actually go further: list all your expenses and request the total amount, even if it exceeds the maximum reimbursement amount stated.  You can phrase it as something like "My total travel expenses are $2345.67; I understand the maximum grant offered is $1000.00."  Let them take care of capping your reimbursement at their maximum figure.

Part of the reason for this is that organizers sometimes find they have more money, or fewer participants seeking funding, than they expected, and so they can actually give more money to each participant than their originally stated maximum.  So if it turns out that they actually have $1200 per person, they know they can reimburse you for $1200 instead.  If you only mentioned $1000 in expenses originally, they might think that was actually your total expenditure, and you might miss out on the extra money.

A lesser reason is that it helps keep the organizers informed as to what it actually costs people to attend, and how much of a difference their travel grant is making.

Of course, if your total travel expenses are only $534.63, then you should only request that amount (and make it clear that this represents your total expenses).  The point of the grant is to cover your expenses, not to arbitrarily enrich you.


Where do I get advice and guidance from in my PhD if my supervisor is not an expert in the field I am working on?

From your question, I understand that you should be on good terms with your advisor. Then, I think you should be straightforward and ask him to connect you to some other experts in the field. Perhaps, you could even have one of them on your committee as your co-advisor.
You could probably ask the other professors at your current or even the previous department for some help. Personally, I'm always happy to help students previously in my classes.
If your university regulations permit, you could take a short sabbatical (usually 3-6 months) in another university under the supervision of a professor expert in your desired field. If you are in the early stages of your Ph.D. studies and the regulations require you to be a 3rd- or 4th-year student before taking such a leave, you could still talk to your possible choices and seek their help. Then when you officially take the sabbatical, you could work closely with them.
There are lots of online groups and websites dedicated to helping people having questions similar to yours. Being an active member of them would benefit you greatly in the long run.


Would doing machine learning during my PhD disqualify me from becoming a professor at a statistics department?

I will be publishing in some of the deep-learning journals and [at] computer-science conferences...My research involves...Python programming, and I see my research as more of data science than traditional statistics...

You seem to be leaning towards a career in computer science, rather than mathematics.

  If I keep on pursuing the current research road that I am on, would this eventually disqualify me from getting employed at statistics departments, since my research does not involve a heavy (traditional and math-intensive) statistical theory? Will I have a better chance, for example, to get hired at an engineering or computer-science department than a regular statistics department with this kind of research background? Would it be possible for data Scientist like myself to be hired at a statistics department?

You are surely making youreself more desirable for hire to computer science departments, rather than mathematics departments.

  The thought of not being able to get hired at a statistics department
  amazes me since statistics is the discipline that I studied throughout
  my entire academic career.

If you're satisfied with the path you're on, why not embrace a change?

Perhaps you can find a computer science department that's like a mathematics department, or vice-versa.


Viewing paper abstracts from Google Scholar

In Google Scholar's mobile version, clicking on the title of the search result reveals the abstract. In order to show the mobile version on a desktop computer, you have to resort to hacks, such as a mobile browser plugin for your browser or enabling mobile view in the developer tools of e.g. Chrome or Firefox.


Is talking about quitting to your supervisor a point of no return?

Talking about quitting with your supervisor (or someone else in your supervisory committee or department) is not a point of no return. In fact, it can be a turning point.

PhD students all go through ups and downs and part of the job of the supervisor, and others in the department and university (head of department, counsellors, etc) is to help you get through the rough patches.

If you do not talk about it and things get so bad that you actually quit, then it may be a point of no return.

Full disclosure: I quit my PhD. The first my supervisor heard of it was the day I quit. Luckily, someone else gave me another chance a few years later.


For minimum GPA, there isn't much utility in letting them know ahead of time.

They either have an absolute GPA cutoff or they have some flexibility. If there's an absolute cutoff, then there's not much you can do.

If there's flexibility, then you can try to argue mitigating variables at the point when you have to tell them your final grades. There's not much advantage in starting the argument before you present your grades, and in some ways this may hurt your chances because they might think you should be using your energies right now to try to improve your grades.

In all likelihood, you were accepted with awareness that your grades were weak. In that case, they may want you to go on academic probation or you might have to forgo some scholarships/funding until your grades improve. Not the end of the world.


Publish book chapters without giving away the rights

You could give the publisher of the article a non-exclusive license (meaning, you retain the right to grant more licenses to others).
Or, you could negotiate that you retain the right to publish the article later on in a book.
Note that if the book happens to be your thesis, many (but not) publishers have copyright transfer agreements that allows you this particular reuse. I guess they got tired of allowing PhD students to reuse the paper for cumulative (stapled) theses.
And you could check your local copyright law: in some jurisdictions you retain rights for secondary publication.
E.g. in Germany you retain the right to use your manuscript for secondary publication under certain conditions (1 year embargo period, non-commerical secondary publication, the paper was written mainly by public grants).
I'd guess if you approach the same publisher about the book who also published the papers, they may be more open to license the papers for reprinting in the book.


How often do publications get translated into other languages?

In my field, articles are rarely translated. At best, an articles abstract might be in 2 or even 3 languages depending on the journal. For whatever reason, English is the de facto language of the majority of research.

For books it's a little different. If the book was highly influential it will be translated into other languages. However, it takes often several decades for a book to reach the level of prominence that it is translated into other languages. Again this is because a lot of highly influential books are originally written in English.

The process of translation (for books as articles are rarely translated in my field) depends. Sometimes one person who is fluent in both languages will translate the book for scholarly output. At other times a team will work together to develop the translated edition.


How does a student's misconduct history carry across to other courses (if it does)? Is there a difference between minor and major offences?

My UK university centrally tracks all academic offences, both major and minor, and I think this is pretty common. We are not allowed to release information about academic offences to employers or other universities. If the new course is at a new university, it is up to the applicant to inform the university. There may be a question on the application and the applicant must answer it truthfully. If the new course is at the same university, it depends on how well they track things, in this case, how well they tracked things in the past.

Past occurrences of academic misconduct are only used in deciding penalties for current occurrences of academic misconduct. Hopefully, a student would not commit academic misconduct again. If they did, the board may have discretion to ignore some past events if a large amount of time has elapsed. This is going to be specific to each board. Even if the board is allowed, discretion, they may not exercise it.


IELTS - How is the exam handed to students?

The IELTS test format provides the necessary details. Each section of the exam is timed separately. Normally, all the materials of a previous section are collected before the next one is distributed.


Do editors need all reviewers to be unanimous in their decision before acceptance?

First of all, reviewers give a recommendation. It is the editor who makes the final decision.

It is possible to have an editor going against the reviewers opinion.
An example is this article.
It is open peer-review, so you can read the reviews and the answer of the editor. He says in his comment:

  I decided to continue the review process even though 2 of the 3 reviews recommend rejection.

So the answer is no, an editor does not need to receive unanimous recommendations from the reviewers to make a decision.


To eventually become a mathematics lecturer in the UK, does undergraduate degree have to be from a good university?

First, let me point out that a career as you describe it not entirely plannable: There are many more who want it than who get it, and even if you are talented and work hard, success is not guaranteed.

It probably won't matter where you did your undergrad once you've received your PhD, although going to different universities could be beneficial, as it would expose you to more different academic cultures etc.

Once you have received your PhD, you'll want to do a good postdoc. Going to some top university abroad, or becoming a Junior Research Fellow in Cambridge or Oxford could be good choices. Make sure that you develop contacts at your desired university.

After some postdoc experience you can apply for eg a Royal Society Research Fellowship or an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship, to be held at your desired university. During that time, try to convince the university to offer you a permament position after the fellowship ends.


Using grants to make donations to institutions for using their resources/products?

It is ethical to pay the price you are asked to pay; I'm not sure if it's ethical to get a funding agency to pay more than the advertised price, and your example could be understood as suggesting precisely that, even if the cause is good.  I've never heard of an agency allocating funds for donations (imagine the potential for corruption!)

I personally feel there is nothing unethical about using a free product.  Academics have many occasions to give back to the community without formal compensation: refereeing papers, editing a journal, reading theses, sitting on grant selection committee, organizing or participating in outreach activities etc. It's all part of the broader duties that come with job, and for those who care to keep score I found in the longer term that service roughly evens out: you contribute for free roughly the same you get back for free.


How long do you have to run on half stipend ? How much debt will this rack up ? Do the maths and work out whether its worth it or not .How much extra income will you be able to get in industry with the PHD ? If you are just going to get a job like most people do then you really must weigh this thing up .If you want to return to the fold so to speak and become a lecturer then the PHD must be finished come hell or high water.


At the university where I work, we have two types of internal fellowships for graduate students.

The first type are funded by donations to the university foundation with instruction that the funds are to be used to support graduate students studying in a specific department (and sometimes, studying a specific subfield, etc). These fellowships are typically small awards that are used to provide extra funds to outstanding students that are otherwise funded by research or teaching assistantships.

The second type are similar to the first in that they are again small awards used to provide extra funds to outstanding students. However, they are funded and administered at the university level. Each department can nominate some students annually for these awards, typically in proportion to the number of doctoral students working in the department. Award decisions are typically finalized by a university-wide director of graduate programs.

Other schools also sometimes have a third type, again funded and administered at the university level. Large donors can fund full fellowships for graduate students that cover all tuition and also provide a stipend; these fellowships replace a teaching or research assistantship entirely, and allow the student and advisor to conduct research on a topic of their choice. Typically very few such fellowships are available, but again individual departments nominate students.

In each of these cases, fellowships are typically awarded to applicants to doctoral programs at the time of admissions and are designed to attract the very best students to the university. Therefore, all dimensions of an outstanding graduate application are likely to help you win a fellowship when available!


Who issues the transcripts that applicants are asked to upload for a PhD application?

The basic problem is that different countries (and potentially different universities within a country) have different standards about what constitutes a program of study and what official documents they provide.

I did my studies in two different Australian universities - both provided a certificate at completion and a transcript. The transcript is essentially a list of all the subjects I studied and the marks. In Australia (at least for the programs I did), there is no overall grade on the certificate. That is, the certificate just says that I completed the course but doesn't say 'cum laude' or 'with distinction' or anything else that US universities might expect. The transcipt is used instead to provide information about the student's skills. One of the universities also supplied a third document, which provides a description of the program of study (eg number of years, what a major is) to help international universities understand what the qualification means.

I don't tend to need these when applying for anything within Australia because the universities have systems in place to communicate with each other. However, they are always required whenever I am applying for anything at any university outside of Australia.

Your university should be able to provide you with something official. The best area to ask is probably whichever administration group is responsible for providing the certificates when you complete. If you don't have anything official, you could provide your results notices and the contact details of whoever at the university is able to confirm they are correct.


Is it appropriate to call a research professor by phone or to email one of his postdoctoral assistants if he doesn't reply to emails?

3 of the labs I rotated in were not good fits and another had insufficient funding

Definitely be in contact with your department about this. They need to be aware you're having trouble finding a lab; doing 4 rotations without a home is a concerning circumstance, though I've known people in that same situation that found a lab and did quite well.

a week has passed

A week is almost nothing in academic time, especially for a busy professor and especially around this time of year when for many universities the semester has just ended and people are either finishing up with end-of-semester business (grades, graduations) or perhaps taking some time off after their semester responsibilities have ended.


Why do some universities not publish the list of persons who obtained a degree from their institution?

Scumbags like me could include that information when I  calculate a mortgage or credit card interest rate.

That's not a huge deal except I could implicitly include race in those calculations, because, for example, most people who go to a historically black college are black. And it'd be easy to hide behind a mathematical model by saying, "that's the model that reduces the sum of squared errors, not me breaking the law."

So universities shouldn't make that data easy for anyone to access.

(Disclosure: I wouldn't do this but I could easily see someone else doing it.)


I've no experience with DeepDyve specifically, but there are a few things that stand out as issues from a quick look -

a) Coverage. They seem fairly broad, but it would be worth double-checking they include, say, the top-fifty most used journals by your researchers. (It's a little fiddly to produce such a list, but quite an interesting thing to have available.)

b) Access rights. In my experience, people get quite frustrated by read-online-only access models with no print/save capability, and this seems to be the DeepDyve approach. Downloading is apparently an additional cost (the plan gives you "20% off" without saying how much the basic price is)

c) Accessibility/usability. Requiring users to go to a specific service to read the paper (rather than the websites they're used to) will cause friction and probably a bit of confusion.

None of these are insurmountable, but they're all things that are worth considering. On the plus side, their basic prices seem competitive to standard document-delivery services, assuming some kind of a bulk-purchase discount, and access seems to be immediate rather than delayed.


Is it possible for an F-1 graduate student in US to do internship in Europe?

U.S. Immigration Law: While doing a summer internship would be seen as compatible with still being a full-time student because of the extended American summer, if you did the 6-month internship you may have difficulty arguing that you are still a full-time, enrolled student. You need to ask your university foreign student's office for advice as to how you can retain your F-1 status.1

French Immigration Law: You need to clarify with the French company that you will have a valid visa status while in the EU.

University Policy: As with US immigration law, you need to make sure that your status in the program is not interrupted by the internship.

1. Note that CPT (Curricular Practical Training) does not apply as you are not applying to work within the USA. The main  concern is that your absence for 6-months is not seen as a disruption of your studies from the perspective of maintaining your F1 visa. Your international students office should be able to advise how to maintain your student status. The bonus is that you should be able to use your OPT year in its full since you did not take a CPT.


Supervisor wants my paper in another conference, but I have paid for travel for the current one

There is only one solution:

The paper has been accepted on first conference.
You paid for going there
You go there and present the paper.
Withdraw from second conference ASAP (like Monday morning after notifying your adrvisor).
Search for new advisor, because him a) advising double (or multiple) submission of the same paper and b) pay travel costs from your own pocket for first conference, shows he knows nothing about how academia works.


Recommendations from professors in unrelated fields

Since I plan to list this experience (is this even a good idea?) on my application, will it look bad if I don't list this professor as a reference/ask them for a letter of recommendation?

Yes, it's a good idea. And no, it wouldn't look bad.

  If so, is there anything I can do to mitigate this? (My main reason for not asking for a recommendation is to avoid having too many letters. Is this even a problem?)

It is not a problem to have many references. Certainly having many good references can only help.

Note: having more references than needed, while some references are not good should be avoided.


Am I allowed to duplicate results from my own arXiv paper in a journal publication?

Manuscripts in the arXiv are permanent and citable, but do not count as peer-reviewed publication.  Therefore, there is no inherent problem either with using your arXiv work as part (or all) of a manuscript submitted to peer review or with citing your arXiv work as background on a new work that builds upon it.

If you re-use your arXiv material in a manuscript, however, there are two additional steps that you must take:

You must make the source of the material clear, in both the cover letter and the document itself.  I personally like verbiage such as:

  "Note: portions of this manuscript have been adapted from [cite]"

You need to check the policies of the venue where you submit it.  In some fields, such as computer science, most journals do not consider non-peer-reviewed venues such as arXiv prior publication, and so including such material is fine.  In other fields, such as biology, most journals do consider them pre-publication, and will consider it self-plagiarism.  These policies vary journal-by-journal, however, so you do need to check the individual policy.


OK to ask a professor at my institution with whom I have no previous relationship some questions relating to hobby-project?

One of the perks of being a college or university student is access to the faculty for academic purposes.  Ph.D's become professors at community college particularly because they want to be engaged with students and their curiosity without the enormous overhead of excessive grant writing, etc. In short, they basically live to work with curious students like you.

  Ok to ask random professor questions relating to hobby-project?

Yes, and if you show half the courtesy and respect in your introduction to the professor that you did in this posting, you can rest assured that the response will be solely a function of his/her current availability.


If you do a bit of a search you will learn that the GRE has little predictive value for success in graduate study. Given that, I doubt that a difference of five points has any significance at all.

But how a GRE is interpreted by a specific admissions system is completely up to them, so, again, no prediction can be made here.

Focus your application on other things. In general, a lot of things are likely to be considered. They will be looking for predictors of success. Give them that.

Search: predictive value of GRE


Will declining a research award be problematic for me, or other people?

Don't give in to Imposter Syndrome!

Both your reasons are fundamentally not sound. Somebody nominated you for an award. The awards committee thinks you are deserving. You should not refuse the award simply because you think others may be more deserving. It's the task of the award committee to establish this, and their decision was you.

Rejecting the award will probably not "hurt" your colleagues, but it will probably hurt you. First, you won't have the award, and when you finally realize that your work was maybe in fact good enough to warrant decoration it will be too late to change your mind. Second, you will presumably not get nominated by the same colleagues again for something because they will assume you are not interested in awards. Third, people will look at this as strange behavior, and it is certainly possible that you get flak from your administration or senior professors for refusing what essentially amounts to free marketing for your department. Maybe you are tenured and senior enough that you don't care, but, truth be told, very few people are actually distinguished enough that they really don't need to care at all about what their university thinks about them.

  Minor point: I would also have the option of giving a talk, I'd rather not, but I do have some work to talk about. Wondering if declining the offer to give a talk is a problem too.

I think it's less of a problem to decline a talk than the award itself, but even that is prone to raise some eyebrows, mainly because giving talks is such an inherent part of being an academic that people will wonder why you do not wish to partake in it.


Ref. request : book or survey about conducting experimental studies

I would say that the classic in experimental social science methodology is Shadish & Cook's "Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference".

It covers various forms of experimental research design and also go into considerable detail in explaining the logic and practical steps of each.


How to obtain a percentile ranking for a journal? (i.e., top 30%; 30% to 50%)

Likely this is not the answer you want to hear, but I assume the administrative service you talked to is correct. If nobody really knows which journals fall under which of these (rather subjective) categories, it will not be feasible to in advance establish for sure way how much any paper you write will count in the end, when you are evaluated.

This is not nearly as strange as it sounds. Formal rules for promotion and the evaluation of research tend to live in the ugly grey area between bureaucrats who like things orderly, well-defined and, most importantly, written down, and the reality of science, where basically no two scientists will ever be able to agree on an absolutely consistent quality ranking of publication outlets. What usually happens is that some sort of nebulous rankings are defined without specifically ranking concrete venues,and then leave it to a commission of academics to decide ad hoc which publications fall into which category.

At my current university, we have similar nebulous requirements for PhD graduation. Essentially, it is required that students need at least one A-ranked publication. However, what is considered A-ranked varies considerably between different faculty, and is basically negotiated when graduation time is near. I assume requirements for tenure etc. are handled similarly.

Note that there are some initiatives that are trying to rank publication venues more formally, for instance CORE for computer science. However, these rankings are also far from perfect (or, for some fields, they are apparently downright terrible).


Such sites often have measures against crawlers. Sometimes normal users can trigger them. For example some university institutes which have a single IP address for everybody at the institute can even get blocked permanently until someone mails the site admin and explains the situation, which may get the IP whitelisted.

When it is triggered by you alone, probably the best choice is either to slow down and wait a bit between requesting stuff, reconnect your internet connection to get a new IP, or to accept the suggested solution and use a free account to prove them you're human and not a crawler.

Such blocks are most the time IP based. If cookies help you at all, you should NOT delete them, so the site can track you as individual user.

If deleting cookies would help, crawlers would just delete them (or not store them at all), so the site would have no benefit to allow access after you deleted the cookies. If changing the user agent would help, crawlers would just randomize the user agent string. So you can be pretty sure, that such things will not help you.


Is a co-advisor a good solution if my advisor is not very familiar with part of my research area?

It sounds like there are two related issues:

convincing your advisor about the directions you want to take
finding someone to talk to about your research directions.

For the first one, I'm not sure what you mean by "he's not interested". Does that mean that your advisor doesn't want you to pursue directions even though he's not familiar with them, or that he's not giving you rousing encouragement ? If you have a direction you think might bear fruit for your problem based on your literature scan, why not try it out and show him the results ? Since you imply that your advisor is an expert in the application domain (image analysis), you should be able to demonstrate the quality of the results even if he doesn't fully understand the methods being used. Or is it that he is requiring you to follow certain directions and does not want you to follow other directions ?

For the second, a co-advisor is one possible outcome, but even a colleague in the relevant area (another professor who could be on your committee, or even a fellow student you can brainstorm with) might suffice. You didn't indicate whether your advisor is aware of his shortcomings in the techniques area (ML): if he is, then he might even be able to introduce you to the right people, thus opening doors that might be difficult for you to open yourself.

as always, talking to the advisor would help. You can approach it as "I'm looking for some extra help in topic XYZ: do you know who I could talk with ?". Of course, how you approach this precisely depends hugely on the interactions you currently have with your advisor.


What's the difference between "academic staff" and "research staff"?

In the UK academic staff and research staff are typically used to circumvent funding regulations that limit many fellowships to individuals who do not have, nor have ever had, a permanent academic staff position. The fundamental distinction is that academic staff are on permanent contracts and research staff are on fixed-term contracts. Academic staff generally are on teaching and research contracts, but some can be on teaching only or research only contracts. I have never meet a member of research staff that wasn't on a research only contract.

Things get hazy because often research staff have two contracts. A fixed term research only contract and a permanent research and teaching contract dated the day the research only contract ends. If they then get a different fellowship, they tear up the research and teaching contract and get a new one with the new date. This allows them to continue to be research only and qualify for fellowships.

While there are obviously differences across institutions, looking at the provided pages for Cambridge, every member of academic staff I looked at had a academic rank (e.g., lecturer or professor) and non of the research staff did.

The tenure track is not really a thing in the UK anymore. Permanent contracts usually come with a 3 year probationary period. The requirements to pass the probationary period could be as little as do not screw up, but could also have publication and funding requirements. I am not particularly familiar with the publication requirements, but they are likely focused on the REF framework. Departments generally have a group For non-academic staff on fixed term contracts that have most of the same privileges as academic staff. Often this is the Research Staff group, but sometimes RAs and post docs get dumped into the research staff label. As I said above, these select non-academic staff people on fixed term contracts often have a permanent contract waiting for them if there is a lapse in their funding so for all intensive purposes they have tenure.


I got accepted into a math PhD program but I don't feel adequate enough to attend

First off, congratulations on being accepted to the PhD. That means the faculty have carefully evaluated your application materials and decided that you are a promising young mathematician. They are experts and they think you have what it takes to finish a PhD.

No one gets admitted just because of their gender and/or race. It would be a waste of the department's resources to admit unqualified students and it would be a disservice to those students -- setting them up to fail.

It sounds like you have Impostor Syndrome. The truth is that almost everyone, from time to time, feels like they don't belong. I have felt that way at many points.

No, you should not "just quit". You have a great opportunity in front of you. It sounds like you have other things that you want to consider doing. Perhaps you will decide that those other opportunities are better for you. But, if you do turn down the PhD, you should not think of it as quitting. You should think of it as taking a positive step in another direction.

That said, academia is hard. And I would not advise anyone to do a PhD unless they really enjoy research.

You should think seriously about what you want to do, as it sounds like you are uncertain about where your best option lies. Talk to people you know personally, as they can best advise you.

One thing to note is that a PhD should give you some flexibility to study other things or, better yet, to combine different research topics. My PhD program allowed — required, in fact — me to take graduate courses in totally different fields.


Consequences of taking classes for someone else

I would like to know what would happen to me if I report it to the university after I graduate or if there is anything else I can do about this situation without ruining my future.

Both your own actions and the actions of this other student would certainly amount to serious academic misconduct.  It may also amount to some species of criminal fraud, such that it could also be a criminal offence.  If you would like to get reliable information on this, I suggest you go and see a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
In terms of what would happen to you if this became known, I would think that you would be found to have committed academic misconduct, and some substantial penalty would be imposed.  It is impossible to say what penalty would be imposed, but it could entail rescinding your degree.  On the other hand, your adverse financial circumstances might count as a mitigating factor, and so it is possible that a lesser penalty would be applied.
Whether this would "ruin your future" depends largely on your ability to change your future behaviour and bounce back from adversity.  I don't believe that a finding of academic misconduct ---or even a criminal conviction or loss of a degree--- is necessarily ruinous to one's future, but others may have a different view.

It makes me incredibly angry that you can just buy your degree like this when you are rich.

There is no valid cause for your anger.  You have facilitated precisely this behaviour.  Without the actions of people like you, it would not be possible for the rich to buy a degree.  We can be angry about it, but for the time being, you have lost the right to be so.
Perhaps when your own conduct is more remote, and you have had some years to reconsider this episode and lament your own participation in it, you will once again have standing to feel anger over the short-cuts taken by the rich.  For now, perhaps you should reserve some of that anger for people like yourself who defraud our educational institutions for money.


Professor used the same exam as last year. Is it considered an unfair advantage?

If the class is graded on a fixed scale (e.g., 90% is an A, 80% is a B, ...) then I do not see how you have a complaint. Your grade is simply a reflection of what you know (or in this case didn't know). The behavior of the other students (studying the past exam solutions) means their grades are not necessarily a reflection of what they know, but that is not your concern.

If the class is graded on a curve, then your grade would be unfairly influenced by the students who had the exam ahead of time. I would be concerned if I graded on a curve. If everyone had access to the exam in advance, but not necessarily the solutions, I do not see this as manifestly unfair. That said, I would suggest mentioning your concerns to the teacher. If only some students had prior access to the exam (and possibly the solutions), than this is manifestly unfair. I would mention your concerns to the teacher and escalate from there.

As for possible outcomes, this is messy. If the teacher is unaware that only some students had access to the prior exams, they may attempt to fix the issue. What they can do depends on the department/university regulations and what the syllabus says (e.g., they might invalidate the exam, grade on a fixed scale, identify students who may have colluded). If the teacher is aware and does not care, going over their head, is likely not going to be productive, but should still be done. For example, if no rules were broken by the professor, the department chair would likely face major backlash from the faculty if they attempted to interfere with the teaching of another faculty member. More likely the chair might through out the exam or attempt to punish students for colluding. In reality, it would likely just go as a little unwritten black mark against the teacher.


How could one prepare for a telecon interview for a government lab?

10 minute job talks in the UK are pretty common. While it is not helpful. You really should have some canned talks, of various lengths between 2 minutes and 1 hour, that provide an overview of you research. For versions that are 5 minutes or less you should be able to deliver them with and without slides and the longer versions you should be able to deliver them with slides but also with a pen and napkin while sitting around a table with a few people. You never know when you will be asked to describe your research. In terms of preparation, I would focus on being able to describe your research at various levels of depth.

The best 10 minute job talks I have seen in the UK have demonstrated that the past research is important and has depth, but also has breadth in terms of fitting in with other people in the department. You do not need to be over the top in terms of saying how you fit in with the others, if you really fit in, they will see it.

I would say in terms of timing provide a 2 minute intro covering your MS, PhD and postdoc(s). That is a 30 second description of each. Ideally, the descriptions show how they fit together, and how one led to another. I would then spend another 2 minutes talking about breadth and impact; basically how your research fits I to the big picture. I would spend the remaining 6 minutes talking about a single research project. This is similar, although shorter than, a conference talk. In terms of ordering, this could come in the middle or the end.

In terms of questions. After the talk, you can expect typical research talk questions. At some point they will then switch into the formal interview. In the UK, these are scripted and they need to ask each candidate the identical questions. They have some leeway with follow up questions, but it is pretty narrow. There is often an "outsider" from HR or another department who makes sure the script is followed. The questions often focus in the essential and desirable qualities from the job description, so re-read that carefully. Brits are all about box ticking, so make sure you are able to clearly explain how you meet all the essential requirements and as many of the desirable requirements as possible.


Disadvantages to publishing outside field of projected study?

Although I cannot speak directly to the field of computer sciences, I can say that in social sciences any peer reviewed publications would be viewed positively on an applicant's CV. At this stage in your career this shows you're motivated, capable of contributing to academic work, and have some familiarity with the writing process. The fact is that many undergraduates may not have access to opportunities to publish in the field they hope to enter, but instead seek to gain research experience and publication opportunities with faculty who are willing to work with and train them. Many academic skills, such as writing articles, are transferable between disciplines, and working with these professors may provide you with strong reference letters when you do apply to graduate school. So long as this opportunity is not coming at the expense of something more directly related to your major, I think it could be a very valuable experience which could positively impact (or at least will not hurt) your future applications.

As a final note, be sure that you are able to explain the project and your role in the project in future application materials and interviews. If this is outside your field of study, don't be shy about asking the professors questions so that you have a solid grasp of the project's purpose. The only time I have seen undergraduate publications backfire is when the person is unable to explain the work, and it becomes clear they did nothing but data entry.


Should previous supervisors be mentioned in a personal statement for a PhD application?

Personal statements are usually about your motivation to work in this area or department or with this supervisor. Your previous internships could definitely be a part of this, such as e.g. "Internship 1 involved lots of analysis and data testing, which I enjoyed tremendously, especially..." or "Internship 2 with Prof. Kumar was great: her enthusiasm for ABC was infectious and I would like to learn more about...", but I think your personal statement should focus primarily on why you want to work in this area.

I don't think just mentioning your supervisors is going to help with your application without more information how your experience with you shaped your experience. However, you should definitely mention your internship experience in your CV and ask your internship supervisors for letters of recommendation!


If they want to act as high schoolers, you'll need to treat them like high schoolers.

I've taught in high school for a little time and while your semester already started, it is not too late to get a handle back on your class. The first few minutes after the class start is the most important moment to make it clear messing around will not be tolerated.

I would try at least once, at the beginning of a class, to say something like this :

  You guys are being hard to manage and I'm sure you're aware of it. You are being disrespectful towards me, the rest of the teaching staff and other students who are trying to work. I'd like to know what is wrong, is there anything you think might make your experience better?

This way, you make it clear you want to work with them to find a solution and that it is bothering many people. Give them a chance to work it out with you before going the "full authority" route. You might give some troublemakers to turn into "positive leaders".

Even if this works, you need to start making it clear who has authority in your class. When you start your class, state your rules and don't move away from them. You'll probably need to set an example a couple of times before your students understand. You need to systematically apply the rules you gave your students or else they'll start exploiting you.

Regarding what you said in your post :

  People asking literally the same questions over and over

Offer the student to come see you after class if they asked a question that was already asked, this way you do not slow down the pace of your class and if it's an attempt at "trolling" the student simply won't come to see you.

  Blatant plagiarism

Your school clearly has a policy against plagiarism, start using it without exception. These students lost their right to second chances. If you catch plagiarism, report it to the correct instance at your school and let the comity in place decide.

  Students pretty much insulting the lecturer and staff or laughing (sometimes at others asking questions)

Respect is the most important thing in a class. If a kid in high school (where, at this age, education is a right not a service) can get kicked out of a class for being not being respectful, so can an adult. If I paid 10k$ for a class, you can be damn sure I'd stop this after being kicked out once. If you want to make sure you won't have repercussions, go see the head of your department to make sure they have your back if something happens.

  Being noisy during lectures

To be fair, this can happen. If this is repeated, refer to the point above.

You said in a comment "That is a straightforward solution but the lead instructor in this case does not want to take authoritarian measures. So that's another challenge here". This is sad but University teachers aren't often good at managing this kind of class (because they don't have much experience with them). You should try talking to him/her about it, stating that it really messes up the flow of the class, the confidence of all the teaching staff and the overall credibility of the class.

As a last resort, when your class gets out of control, stop talking. More often than not, the students will deal with themselves and silence should come back to the class. If it doesn't well it is their loss.

To make this work, the best case scenario would be for the whole teaching staff to be on the same line and to make sure your boss has your back, but University students are customers of a service under certain conditions. If some students mess up with your class, they interfere with the students who are respecting the rules and this is not acceptable.

Edit

I've seen an OP's comment stating :

  "That's basically the case. No one academically that advanced afaik but we have bigwig corporate managers that can barely use computers alongside software engineers wanting to learn about data science and everything in between"

This is a very complex problem to address, because it is hard to pace your class for the large diversity of backgrounds, which means either some students won't understand or some will find the class too slow and since you're alone, it's hard to find a middle ground. What I might propose is to :

Either match students of different backgrounds together so that they can help each other (by whispering, of course) regarding their different expertise.
Show examples that can "talk to" your different kind of students. You have, maybe among others, managers and software engineering students, so try to give specific situations/examples where each of these students can bring their expertise. It is likely, I think, that your problematic students are the kind of people that like to hear themselves talk. By getting them to participate, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to have a better handle on your class.

In the case of a professional education class, I think it's important to let the students talk/participate in class. These are not people who are used to sitting hours in a class to listen to someone talk like University students are used to. By giving more opportunities to participate, you'll probably have a better experience.


Is it ethical to use a recommendation letter from a deceased professor?

If I cared enough about a person to write a letter of recommendation, I would be pleased to think that one day after I am gone that the person could use my letter for their benefit.

You will possibly benefit from this recommendation and possibly someone else will suffer if you are selected based upon the recommendation; however, competition is not generally considered unethical.

There are no legal questions raised that I can imagine.

It seems unconventional, but not extreme.

My feelings are that it would be ethical to use the letter.


On choosing a license for software in academia

The software developed by most academics has no commercial value. It is a research product, similar to a paper, and is usually shared with other researchers by hosting it on the researcher’s web page (as I do) or on GitHub or other repositories. There is usually no need for any sort of license, but some people will include a license to make clear what use by others of their code they see as acceptable.
There is also no need for the university to be involved in any of these decisions, just like the university doesn’t tell researchers what “license” to use for the papers they publish. I think your main source of confusion is related to thinking of research code as some kind of valuable property that needs to be protected. In 99% of cases that’s not the reality.


Does it amount to plagiarism by supervisor?

As far as I understand the situation, it seems to me that your advisors' behavior is borderline, even if likely on the wrong side of the border. Since it does not look like a very clear and frank misbehavior, even if you are perfectly right it would be tremendously difficult to prove it beyond doubt. In case of doubt, you could end up being seen more as the trouble maker than as the one who came up with that great idea; the surrounding people to whom you could complain (department head, etc.) would hesitate a lot to go against tenured faculty when the misbehavior is not crystal clear, etc.

With this in mind, I would strongly advise you not to confront to wildly with your advisors. You can (and should, as advised by Shion) discuss with them the fact that you are uncomfortable with the way they presented things, with the use without permission of your slides, and so on; but always let them a way to discuss it calmly. If they feel cornered, there will be little chance of the situation not degenerating into a conflict, and it would be very difficult for you to survive professionally a conflict with your advisors.

You could cite their perspective paper in a way that friendly makes explicit that the idea is yours. Your aim should be to get decent credit for your idea, even at the cost of letting your advisors benefit from it: think about what you have to gain or loose first, rather than about what they have to unduly gain or what you can cost them.

If everything goes smoothly, you can get into a good position to build on your idea, and be on track for your career.
Once you're a respected tenured faculty, you should remember this episode and be supportive of young researchers.


Someone else's PhD student is not getting proper advising on methods. Should I interfere? How?

I think that an important criteria in deciding what action to take is how severe the effect on the research quality actually is.  Practices that look horrifying to an expert in the practice may actually have only a minor effect on the actual validity of scientific experiments that do not depend closely on the details.

I would recommend selecting a response based on how severe the likely issues caused by the sloppiness of statistical analysis actual is:

If the analyses are actually actively fraudulent (e.g., taken with intent to deceive), then you've got a responsibility to blow the whistle (though you must take care in confirming and in how you go about it in order to avoid destroying your career).
If the analyses appear likely to cause a major qualitative change in the interpretation, such that retractions would be appropriate, then it is reasonable to warn both your student and your colleague of the issue and to point out exactly how and why such issues are likely to arise.  If they understand the issues and still choose to go in that direction, it is not your responsibility to save them from embarrassment and possible retraction.
If the analyses are incorrect and probably distorting results but the effects they are working with are strong enough that the distortions are unlikely to radically change the results, then you can point it out, but don't be surprised if they ignore you for the sake of expediency and "good enough" approximations---and indeed, they may be correct to do so!


I seriously doubt that it matters, but you might want to develop the story with your new colleagues at some point. The story is interesting, not terrible. It is a bit unusual, that is all.

In fact, it is in a lot of ways the most honest answer rather than the most bureaucratic answer.

Relax. Develop a nice story and become a legend.


Can college professors alter their grading scale to pass students? How often does this happen?

Teaching is hard, and writing exams is hard.  Anyone who thinks they can set the exact criteria in advance is probably being arrogant.  At Chicago (at least in the 1980s) every single course is graded on a curve so essentially every course had its criteria set by the performance of the students.  On the one hand this compensates for mistakes in teaching or in writing an exam, on the other hand your performance is partly determined by how good your classmates happen to be.

One of the professors at MIT I tutored under was very angry that students had demanded (so the Institute regulated) that the percentages given to the various midterms and exams were set out in advance, because before that "innovation" he'd been able to adjust the percentages if he'd written an exam not up to his own standards, something you can often only find out after you've given it.

In the UK, these sorts of practices are banned.  Every student is supposed to be marked to criteria set up when the course was approved.  To make this work, UK universities require the exam to be written very early in the term, checked by a colleague, and then checked again by an external examiner.  Then at the end of the year there is something called an exam board, where a panel decides if something went wrong in a course and moves all the marks for the whole course up or down in response.  This is better than marking on a curve because the students can help each other learn without hurting themselves, but in other ways it's worse in that the professors cannot innovate and it can be very difficult to update material.


Will it be a good idea to take 3 months off after PhD defense to improve my skillset and work on my mental wellbeing?

I took about 3 months off. I just did not very actively search for positions and when I found one ask for plenty of time to prepare (the start date was basically "whenever you can make it" from my employers point of view).
It was amazing. Yes, in that time I was in the process of interviewing (but I had not applied for more than this one job yet, that just was too good to not try) and then packed up my life and moved to another country. But I also met with friends, slept in, decluttered my stuff, data and brain, visited family and just took time to recover.

Everyone so far has reacted very positively to this fact. My family and friends admit that it made me a more happy, balanced person. My colleagues and supervisors (old and new) encouraged me to take the time off and stated multiple times that this was an appropriate and good thing to do. Even the lady at the office where I had to sign up as unemployed completely understood the situation and promised me not to bother me for at least three months, as long as I kept making progess with at least one application.


Is expanding the research of a group into machine learning as a PhD student risky?

I would ask about having a co-supervisor. Having access to esteemed DL researchers is great -- but they will have limited time/interest in helping you if you are not "formally" their student. If you manage to find someone in this role, I think your position is just about perfect.

If you don't manage to find someone in this role, I have three main concerns:

You will spend a ton of time re-inventing the wheel. For example, can you train a CNN on ImageNet from scratch? There are a lot of caveats needed to obtain state-of-the-art results (e.g., dataset augmentation, regularization loss, etc.), and you will likely rediscover them one-by-one (or, use a black-box model you don't really understand). A DL expert would likely already have working code and could explain it to you, allowing you to jump right to the research. (Yes, there are open source codes...but in my experience, they all require a lot of work to be both transparent and accurate.
Mathematical rigor. It's easy to just learn ML/DL at a "technician level" -- but as a PhD in it, you should really understand it a mathematical level if not a theorem/proof level. It can be difficult to do this on your own.
Problem selection. Your medical advisor will likely find it super novel to run existing techniques on medical images. There may even be a novel application here, on the medical side -- but on the ML side, this is not really interesting, it's just a straightforward application of one technique to a straightforward problem. This is maybe OK if your interest is entirely on the medical side -- but if you want to do something also interesting on the ML side, you would essentially be on your own to come up with something. That will be difficult to do (for the first time) without advisors on both sides.

Those are the main blind alleys I see. Of course, there is also a ton of upside -- this sounds like a very interesting, prestigious position that would position you well for an academic career. Only you can judge this tradeoff.


How do professors change research interests?

"All of the above"... but maybe not wanting a book that started from a primer on Linear Algebra. (Probably the latter remark in the question is a result of a misunderstanding of some sort.) In short, all possible sources are used. I have little interest in connections to textbooks (which typically feel an obligation to include busywork exercises, etc. and express reverence to the founders of the subject by recapitulating "troubles of the old times" (which have been solved, often).)

The operational point is that one skims all these resources, looking for key points, rather than reading ploddingly, slavishly. I look to be persuaded... or, equally interestingly, to be persuaded that the people doing the thing don't adequately understand it so as to be able to explain it simply. Quasi-ironically, the latter affords more possibilities for making genuine progress. :)


Are some typos permissible if submitting a manuscript for potential publication?

This stuff happens, and everyone knows it. If this is on a single page, then it looks unprofessional. If it's 5 or 6 throughout the entire manuscript, then this is reasonable and to be expected. Keep track of these and make the changes as part of your revision once the paper comes back from the reviewers. In your reply to the reviewers, just mention "During revision, I have also taken the liberty to fix a small number of typos and grammar errors that had unfortunately made their way into the original manuscript".