Is it acceptable to author a paper just because you established collaboration with university that developed a product involved in the paper?

A first-pass interpretation of the question might be that the professor is either (1) trying to get credit for a collaboration for which he made introductions but to which he did not contribute, or (2) is disappointed that a student at his university would write a paper with his collaborators without consulting him on the topic. I gather from the question/comments that the O.P. seems to believe that situation 1 is the correct interpretation. If that's the case, then there is probably no need to include the professor on the paper, but the matter is probably best referred to your academic advisor or committee chair. As a grad student, it is usually a bad idea to have these kinds of arguments with other professors without your advisor's guidance---partly because keeping your advisor in the loop protects you and gives you ammo, but also because you don't want to risk burning bridges that may affect your advisor as well.

That said, I find scenario (2) plausible---that the professor is upset not about being excluded from this paper specifically, but is more generally disappointed that a student in his own department would do a project on [x] without consulting the department's own resident expert (him) on [x]. The O.P. claims that it is the collaborators who are the experts on the software in question, but it seems fairly unlikely that the professor is not a researcher in the general topic area related to the software considering that he started the collaboration. The professor may not be as much of an expert as the other authors, but it is still unusual and rather cut-throat to publish a paper on a topic that is central to the research agenda of another professor in your department using software that he had some hand in producing and to not even consult that professor about it. Were a student to do this to me using software I had helped write/inspire, I would be rather hurt by the exclusion for personal reasons and might ask to have a conversation with them about that.

Finally, I have to add that some of the wording in the original post makes me uncomfortable. The OP states that the professor "established a collaboration with another university" and "does not own the product, but is one of the collaborators with the university." This seems to deliberately suggest that the professor is broadly connected to the university while avoiding the question of whether the professor is not involved in the project whatsoever. Yet professors do not, in my experience, have collaborations with universities but with labs or researchers. I feel that the question obfuscates the professor's actual role in the software (also note that the OP has not answered a comment asking to clarify it as of weeks before this answer was written). Obviously this all depends on facts I do not currently have, but I find it ethically hazardous (if not outright immoral) to collaborate on a paper with some of the authors of a piece of software while excluding one author who is also in your own department/school. If this is the scenario, then I would suggest that the OP apologize and strongly consider whether the software used was important enough to the project and conclusions to merit a position on the paper's author list.

Consider: academic software is often very difficult to produce, yet simultaneously the rewards of such software often go to those who use the software and not those who write/produce it. Academic journals, for various reasons, don't tend to want to publish software-related articles, even when the software is useful or even critical to academics. Those journals that do publish software articles are rarely considered top-tier. Scientists will often say, "Fred made some really amazing contributions to science (using Wanda's software)!" but rarely "Wanda's software is a really amazing contribution to science!" I have been on both sides of this in my career and can easily name a dozen pieces of software in my field that are absolutely critical for standard operations and experiments but that rarely get cited. I've watched many professors and graduate students leave academia for industry data-science positions after years slaving over critical software only to be forgotten on a colleague's paper that could not have been written without their contribution.

In short: I can't, without more information, say what the ethical path forward is, but I can strongly advise that the OP and anyone who uses academic software carefully consider whether they are being unfairly biased against recognizing those scientists who write the software on which they rely. In my experience, spreading credit around generously rarely has any significant cost in science, and hoarding credit on the grounds that someone was only involved in writing the software you used bears a high moral hazard.


Professor sleeps in class and makes cheating easy

The first thing I want to say is that you should be careful with the information you provide on the internet.  In ten minutes of routine searching I was able to determine the identity of your instructor and other information about him: e.g. he is 84 years old, that his highest degree is a master's degree, and that he is (as mentioned) not tenure-track at your institution.  Thus you have publicly enough claimed that someone is senile.  That opinion is yours to express...but it is not very nice.  If you have not already had at least one conversation about the instructor himself about what you find unsatisfactory about his teaching, then complaining about him to everyone is not an honorable thing to do.  I think it would be better to remove identifying details from your profile.

Now moving on to your question: I think you have at least two issues here.  The first is that you claim that rampant cheating will put you at a disadvantage in your classes with this instructor.  The second is that you think the instructor is unfit to teach at your institution.  These are pretty different: one of them is localized to a particular situation and is primarily about you.  The other is a general problem and is primarily the concern of the institution.  I would recommend decoupling these concerns at least in your own mind and thinking about how to pursue them separately.

As for the first concern: is the cheating you're describing taking place in a class you are now taking? Your question suggests that but doesn't quite say it, and in my internet research I couldn't find any courses that the instructor in question is teaching this semester.  If yes, this is a pressing issue, and of course you should bring it up first with the instructor himself.  Does he know that students are cheating by looking at their phones in class?  What is his response to that?  If he hasn't been informed of the cheating, it is not very reasonable of you to blame him for it.  If his response is "I don't hold truck with those devilish pocket phones" then that's inadequate and merits escalation.  It sounds however that you're trying to bring forth action on a more generalized "everyone knows this is happening" cheating situation that may not even be taking place this semester.  That's going to be hard to do.  You lament that many students complain about this but are unwilling to do anything formal about it.  You're right to lament, because that probably will kill the matter right there.  I am a university professor and I've had the experience of students who complained to me about cheating but were unwilling to take it any further.  That was very unpleasant for me, because there was nothing I could do about it....other than make sure that the circumstances that allowed the cheating did not present themselves in the future.

In terms of your second concern: whether this man is fit to be an instructor at your regional campus of a state institution is primarily the concern of that institution.  I am not trying to say that this is none of your business.  What I'm saying is that it's more their problem than yours, and you should take the attitude that you are helping them out by informing them about it.  Do you see what I'm saying?  If you come to an administrator saying that a certain instructor is not fit to teach...and you are not asking for any personal reparations for that in your own coursework, then it puts a different spin on things that may make the administrator take it more seriously.  (That's why I would consider separating out discussion of this with the cheating issue: if you discuss them at the same time, then it can look like you have a conflict of interest, because something good could happen to your course grade if the instructor's incompetence is recognized.)

In terms of informing administrators that the instructor is unfit to teach: you have to realize that this is a long game.  It is extremely unlikely that someone is going to get pulled from teaching in the middle of a semester for reasons of "senility".  Firing a faculty member -- even a temporary or untenured one, and especially someone who has been working there for many years -- is not something to be done lightly.  You can't really know that the administration is not looking into this or will not look into this in the future.  Maybe they are.  However, in the absence of any positive evidence, yes, maybe they're not.  In that regard Dan Romik's advice is on point: bring this up repeatedly.  If other students feel the same way, get them involved.  (If really no one other than you wants to get involved...what's up with that?  It's worth thinking about.)

Another thing that students don't necessarily appreciate is that universities have limited resources, and the in current economic climate many academic programs are being held together with string and chewing gum.  Every once in a while I get an evaluation from a calculus student saying something like "Dr. Clark knows his math, but I'm not sure if he's ready to teach UGA students." Which makes me smile a little bit: I was a tenure-track (now tenured) faculty member.  Do the students think that teaching freshman calculus is a privilege only earned by the very best, and that some time in the penalty box would make me rethink the error of my ways?  That's just not the way things work.  At my university faculty members get tenured for excellent research and unproblematic teaching.  Freshman calculus students are going to be stuck with my teaching -- which, according to student feedback, is below the departmental average -- for the foreseeable future.

At your institution I noticed that there are a lot of non-tenure track faculty, often without PhDs, teaching courses for majors.  Your administration would certainly prefer if such courses were taught by people with PhDs: it would add considerably to its academic prestige.  The fact that they have courses taught by non-PhD faculty probably means that they have limited resources and/or haven't had the chance to do enough hiring to correct the problem.  To put it more starkly: if your octogenarian instructor gets released, who will replace him?  If they don't have such a person, then they are probably working towards getting one and thinking that in the meantime he is a lot better than nothing.

I will end by saying: you are right to be concerned about this, and if what you say is true than in my opinion you are helping out your university by doing so.  Good on you, and I hope you follow through with it.  Definitely do not do anything like publicly shaming your university by uploading incriminating videos: that is not a step towards a solution of the problem.

Added: Based on information provided by the OP, I have changed my mind about who the faculty member is.  I now believe he is 79 years old.  Anyway, the point is that when you reveal your institution and department any complaint about faculty members is certainly not anonymous.  Any slightly interested party can make a guess.  Maybe they will guess wrong...which is not so great either.


Should I cite a paper for its literature review?

There is more controversy on this topic than I expected, so I've done some further digging. The results of this surprised me!
Institution, Program, and Journal requirements
The rules of your neighborhood may differ, so you'll want to follow whatever more specific rules are given to you in your program. For example, Columbia College demands secondary source citation:

Indebtedness
You must cite any text you read that helped you think about your paper
even if you do not reference it directly in the text of your paper.

However, the OWL APA style reference gives differing advice:

Work Discussed in a Secondary Source
NOTE: Give the secondary source in the references list; in the text,
name the original work, and give a citation for the secondary source.
For example, if Seidenberg and McClelland's work is cited in Coltheart
et al. and you did not read the original work [emphasis mine], list the Coltheart
et al. reference in the References. In the text, use the following
citation...

So if you merely were directed to the original work, but then attained the original work and read it, there is not necessarily any need to cite the secondary source - but the guide doesn't prohibit it.
However, the IEEE has a stance as strong as Columbia, but in the opposite direction! As noted by York University in their IEEE style guide (page 5 of the pdf):

Should I use secondary references?
A secondary reference is given when
you are referring to a source which you have not read yourself, but
have read about in another source, for example referring to Jones’
work that you have read about in Smith. You should avoid using
secondary references and locate the original source and reference
that.

Murdoch University has an even stronger interpretation:

• IEEE style does not allow for the use of  secondary source.
• Locate the original source of information which is cited in a work
which you have read.
• If an original source cannot be located, it should not be cited.

Jeeze, no wonder there are so many different answers!
So it would seem there cannot be a one-size fits all answer - it depends. What is required in one field and style is forbidden in another, and optional in a third (and apparently even then people differ).


What should I expect from a non-academic interview for a PhD position?

It is quite acceptable to ask who you will be interviewing with, and what the interview will be about. You can even ask whether you should prepare an overview of your academic work for non-academic interviewers (to which the answer is likely to be "no", but it'll probably be "No, the interview will involve X Y and Z"). You can ask whether it's an interview with their administrative personnel, or with higher-level managers; you can ask whether you should bring anything (you're visiting Saudi Arabia, right?); and so on. You could even straight-out say "I'm not sure I understand what a non-academic interview means, as after I'm interviewing for an academic position and KAUST is a university."

Don't ask a zillion questions, though, just pick one or two depending on the context.

Also, if you know someone who's not in charge of the hiring process (PhD candidates, post-docs, faculty) you can ask them in parallel about the process.

Finally - I could speculate about what "non-academic" actually means: Maybe it's an HR-style interview? Talk with group members to see whether they like you? Negotiations of employment conditions? Political screening like @Ben suggests? ... but they will probably just tell you (except for that last option I guess).


Should I apologize to my professor for not attending a lecture?

When you see her next, say something like

  I apologize for not showing up for lecture last week. I had a
  doctor's appointment/seminar talk/committee meeting/friend's PhD
  defense I had to attend.

Nothing more is needed than just to convey the message that you had a good reason to not attend class. Professors are busy people, they know that missing meetings is a fact of life. It only becomes awkward if you stayed away from class because you wanted to watch the last episode of Walking Dead/went out drinking with your friends/etc.


Are PhDs in Engineering worth it for working in the labour market?

This heavily depends on your local circumstances. Nobody can answer this for you - you must find out for yourself.

Go to your local jobs portal (Google for one if you don't know what they are) and search for jobs requiring a degree in engineering. Then repeat the search for jobs requiring a Masters in engineering, and jobs requiring a PhD in engineering. Which jobs do you find the most attractive? How much is their estimated pay? How much would that premium be worth over the course of your estimated working life? How much time & money would have to put to acquire that premium?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can move on to the big one: is it worth it?


Papers in progress, but am leaving academia

You can complete the papers and should if your co-authors would be disadvantaged by your quitting, assuming that it is possible.
But, a fair amount of work gets abandoned, or put on the back shelf for various reasons. If you really don't have the time to continue work on the paper(s) come to an agreement with your co-authors that permits them to continue without you. The agreement should include something about authorship, but definitely should include your permission to publish.
If you all agree to abandon the work, put it in a notebook that you might want to return to later after things settle down. You can't predict the future and should keep flexible and ready for changes.
Your statements in comments seem to imply that you are angry with the department. That is natural, but don't take actions that primarily disadvantage yourself or the colleagues you work with. "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" is an old adage.


The terms of use page of the site in your link says "All images on our site are for Non-Commercial Use," which should include academic use.  If you include any of their figures, give appropriate credit.  For material from other sites, read their terms of service and give the required credit.

In any case, be sparing in using clip-art in a thesis.


Can I delay a while signing an official postdoc offer letter

Sitting on an offer (e.g. ignoring emails from HR, taking forever to answer or other delay tactics) is generally not appropriate in my opinion. I would suggest honesty and transparency.

Let your prospective postdoc advisor that you'd like a bit of time to consider your options (they will likely get the hint that you're considering other positions, no need to be too blunt). In addition, talk to your alternative option ASAP and let them know the situation. It is absolutely acceptable to tell them that you have another offer who's waiting for your reply, and you'd appreciate an answer from them soon.

Whether either party would agree really depends on them. I would be careful of losing both options: if you wait for too long then your potential host might get annoyed and just rescind the offer. They could be holding off on other good applicants thinking that you are about to sign, and you waffling might result in them going ahead with other applicants.

Your other option might not be getting back to you because they actually don't have an open position right now, or they themselves are waiting for some other applicant's final answer (if they say yes, you're out).

These are all considerations that you should weigh out for yourself, and I cannot offer any concrete advice on. Just to reiterate - lying/misrepresenting your status/using delay tactics is probably a bad idea.


How to get a decent recommendation letter?

I do not interpret what he wrote as necessarily discouraging.  He may just want to get to know you better so he can write a better letter.

Just talk about yourself and your academic interests.  What has been your favorite course so far?  What did you like about it?  What would you like to do in the future?  Etc.


How to start research in a field with high standards?

For simplicity sake assume that there is a dichotomy of research topics: those where a lot of active research happens and those where that is not the case.

In areas where a lot of research is happening most (all) the "low hanging fruits" will have been taken and you will have a hard time making really big contributions. On the other hand there is an active comunity of researchers that cares about this topic, and also cares about your (smaller) contributions.

In areas where not a lot of research happens, you are more likely to find low hanging fruits, and you are more likely to make big contributions. However, there is a reason why not a lot of research is happening in that area: few people care about what is going on.

Real research areas are much more complex than this, e.g. some areas where not a lot of research is happening now were very active in the past, and there is not a lot of low hanging fruits left. Moreover, it is not so much a dichotomy but a gradient. But you get the idea of the trade-off between making small contributions that many researchers care about (and are thus easier to get published) and making big contributions that fewer researchers care about. You can also see that both are viable strategies.


Relational Reference Management Software?

As far as I know, there is nothing pre-canned for point (3). If you want to do it yourself, you'll need:

a way to retrieve automatically the references cited in each paper of your collection -- see here for some solutions. Note that an important part of this is giving each paper a unique identifier, something that is dealt with in literature databases.
a graph visualization/analysis tool. See for instance here.
Writing code -- sorry, there is no way around this. :(

EDIT: just noticed that this answer suggests a program called Google Scholar Citation Visualisation Tool -- give it a try!


Is it fine to ask who are the search committee?

In general, I would recommend against asking who the search committee is. It might give the impression that you are trying to "game the system" rather than simply put your best foot forward for everyone. That said, I don't think this is a serious faux pas.

Some departments, including my own, post a list of committee assignments on their department homepages -- mostly out of convenience for their own faculty. So you might be able to answer your question without asking.


What affiliation is appropriate to list for journal publication?

The main purpose of listing your affiliation is to give some context for the work:

Speaking very generally, intellectual property is shared between the author (who understands and can reproduce the work) and the affiliation (which paid for it), so it's important to list both.
Being affiliated with a well-known research group will lend credibility to your work; the quality of the paper will also reflect on the group.
Universities, hospitals, private companies, and the military have different priorities; listing the affiliation can clarify any biases.

As for knowing who to list, the main question is who is paying you? Who is paying for the research equipment, and your mentorship?

If it is the university or hospital, you should list them. You may need to list them both if they are both paying for you in some capacity. Note that if you are receiving salary, all your work may belong to the university, even work which you do on your own initiative and separately from your normal responsibilities.
If you are doing this for a class at the university, you should probably list the university (Whether you have an obligation to do this is a more interesting question). You may also want to add the instructor of the class as a co-author of the paper.
If you are using your personal equipment and are not receiving any salary for this work (not even a graduate student stipend), and are not receiving mentorship, then you have no obligation to list anyone, though you may want to list the university just to get more credibility.

The other thing to consider is that you are presumably using the hospital's data and transitioning to their system.

If someone from the hospital is a co-author, then great.
If not, you should probably acknowledge the hospital, or add them as an affiliation for yourself.


It depends highly on your university and national system. The Doctor of Science title has already been cited by Dan C, and several European countries have a higher diploma called habilitation.


Difference between slides and poster presentation

In the biology-related fields I'm familiar with, poster presentations are generally to one or a few people who are expected to interact with you, while slide shows are for larger numbers who are expected to be relatively passive.  That means the biggest difference between a poster and slide presentation is that the former should be customized to the person you're talking to.  Some people may be new to the field, and for them you may just explain what the question you're asking is, and the overall big-picture answer you found.  The next person may be the person who defined the field, and for her you may simply point out that you used this particular variation of her technique rather than the original one she published in 1972.

The point being that it's typically a conversation, not a one-way speech.  You have to feel out what the person does and doesn't understand, and try to focus on those, while not wasting time on the parts they know.

You might open with "Would you like me to explain, or did you want to read the poster yourself?". Often that leads to something (a detailed technical question, or a general question about the topic) that will tell you what kind of level to begin with.  The key is to treat it like a dialog and to make sure you're responsive to the audience, even if it's body language rather than specific questions.


Is it possible to pass a PHD without full understanding of ones own thesis?

Of course, it would be good if someone around you can help you see what needs to be done to legitimize your use of "the other 5 equations". If you post to MathStackExchange, someone might be able to help, for example, if no one physically nearby can.

In any case, honesty and at least a nominal "dispassion" about things is the best approach, I think. Say what you assume, say what you can verify, say what previous sources say, etc. It's ok, I think, if your results are "relative" (=relative to assuming that certain sources are ok, plus assuming that certain extensions, which you've tried but failed (so far) to validate yourself first-hand, are ok...), as long as you are very clear on what your results are relative to.

Don't bluff... :)


Where to submit an incomplete work just for the sake of record

So is there any way that I can submit my incomplete work online, so that it gets recorded?

Congrats on your research idea! As I see it, you have two options:

Publish a blog post or put something up on a website.
Spend more time on polishing your work: ideally, by getting feedback from a professor or trusted expert. Within a few more months, put together the best write-up you can at this time. Then put the paper online, e.g. on arXiv.

Based on the information you provided, my preferred option in your situation would be (1). This is because:

You describe your idea as incomplete. If that is true, you don't want to present this as a finished paper to the community (attached to your name) when it is more of an idle curiosity that is not yet fleshed out.
It is very uncommon for undergraduates to be able to produce a publication-worthy paper without mentorship. So, what you need at this stage is a good professor, mentor, and advisor. Without that, statistically speaking you probably don't have the skills or knowledge yet to pursue this idea in the most effective direction.
If your brother is right that the idea is bad (I don't know your brother, so I can't say if he is just being mean :) ) then announcing it in a public venue like arXiv could be embarrassing later down the road. It doesn't really matter now (lots of crappy papers get published to arXiv), only later.

In contrast, writing a blog post has several advantages: for instance, it's not really embarrassing later (no one expects you to sound like an expert in a blog post).

Overall, I don't mean to discourage you -- the fact that you had a new idea and are excited about thinking about it is a sign that you would make a good researcher. Establishing a relationship with a professor is the natural next step, and they could also give better advice about whether this particular idea is worthwhile.


How to review papers for conferences without comparing/contrasting each other?

The goal is to score the papers on their own merits, not to rank them. There are some conferences where there are ranking systems, usually among the scored papers and done by the committee, but just like journal papers, it's possible to evaluate a paper on its own merits.

For example, if there was a paper that was technically the "Best of a bad lot", but still contained massive numbers of errors, poor writing, unintelligible graphics, etc., knowing the context isn't necessarily helpful, they're all bad papers.

Looking at their scoring metric, each one of these can be described in manner consistent with not knowing other papers:

reject: This abstract isn't suitable for the venue, is just outright poor quality, etc. and is beyond salvaging.
weak reject: This abstract isn't pathologically flawed, but would need a considerable amount of work to be appropriate for the venue.
neutral: The "I suppose" category. Filler abstracts that could use a bit of polish, or ones that failed to rouse much of a strong feeling either way.
weak accept: Promising submissions that are appropriate for the venue. While not inherently flawed, there's probably improvements they could make to.
accept: "I would like to see this accepted"

It's possible for you to get two outstanding papers and simply both think they should be accepted. Or two papers that should be rejected flat out. And things in between. Trying to rank every submission to a conference would be a massive effort, and is still somewhat arbitrary, as your ranking scheme is not inherently an objective one. Nor are you necessarily guaranteed to be qualified to rank each and every submission.

You should take into account the nature of the conference itself - for example, there are some conferences where I am considerably more lenient than I am for others, the same way there are journals where I use somewhat stricter criteria. And yes, a strict reviewer could torpedo otherwise worthwhile papers, but that's why many groups use more than one reviewer, and the probability of any one reviewer being a sufficiently strict reviewer as to meaningfully start harming the overall peer review process is pretty small.


How to grab the attention of a new area's big names to read my work?

It's generally acceptable to e-mail senior scientists a copy of your paper. Say who you are and who your advisor is, describe your paper very briefly, and tell them that if they have any comments you'd be grateful to hear them.

Most will ignore you, don't take it personally -- it's not something that will "count against you", unless you do it too often, or to people who's research has nothing to do with your paper. Usually this just means they're too busy or have nothing in particular to say. But you might get a couple of interesting and/or supportive replies. I did, when I was a grad student.


Should I recommend a student with a bad ideology?

As stated in the other answers, no-one can coerce you to provide a recommendation, you are free to not recommend a student for any reason you choose, or no reason at all - if you are not comfortable recommending this student, then don't.

However, from your description, I would suggest that it's not the ideology at issue, but the student's interpersonal skills. I guarantee you that I have opinions that you would find absolutely abhorrent, and you have opinions that I would likewise. The point is that in a professional context we usually have the good sense to keep these things to ourselves.

It's not clear what your opinion of the student, and their suitability for the role, actually is. If you think that the way he expresses his ideology interferes with his ability do the job well, or his ideological standing is in some way relevant to the job at hand, then there is no conflict here. (For example, a raving misogynist would be completely inappropriate in a supervisory position.)

If you think that he nevertheless really would be an asset to the company, then you can either (i) informally suggest to your contact: "Here is a brilliant student who will produce technically excellent work, but be careful; he has a bit of a problem with appropriate boundaries at work." and/or (ii) write a letter that expresses his technical skills and omits any mention of personality or social skills. The omission will be  loud and clear. In the end, it is up to the company to decide if the tradeoff is worth it.


Switching fields in a postdoc after PhD, is that possible in psychology?

I'm not going to answer your question. Rather, I want to note that this is one of three questions you posed -- the two others being found here and here, all posted within the space of a few hours -- that paint quite a picture of dissatisfaction with your current situation. It's this overall state on which I want to comment.

It's common for PhD students in the early stages of their candidature to have doubts about many number of things. The questions you pose are among those issues -- satisfaction with their project, supervisory concerns, unclear targets, future prospects following graduation, waning interest in the original topic. You're not the first to experience these uncertainties and you won't be the last. To be honest, though, I'm not sure that a group of anonymous, well-intentioned individuals on a forum such as this can do anything more than say one of two things: (1) buck up and get on with it, or (2) quit while you're ahead. Importantly, I'm not sure what you want to achieve here.

The only way to resolve these issues is to discuss these with people who can help you reach a decision. My first response would be for you to discuss these issues with your supervisor, but it seems that you have some issues you need to resolve in that arena. I suggest that you seek support from your university's graduate school, your department's academic adviser, more senior post-docs or PhD students or your peers. Your partner, your friends, your parents and siblings can also offer valuable advice tailored to you.

Once you have received their counsel, then all that remains is to act.

Your greatest enemy here is time.

I wish you the best of luck, but more than that, I wish that you attain the degree of clarity you need to act.


How many people apply for a math postdoc in the US?

Sounds like a Fermi problem!

Here's my estimate.

How many new math PHDs are granted in the US per year?

Number of major US institutions (~1000)
Fraction of major US institutions offering a PHD math program (1 in 4, or 0.25)
Average number of doctorates conferred by each PHD math program per year (6)

This gives roughly (1000 x 0.25 x 6) = 1500 new math PHDs per year.

How many postdoc positions are in the US?

Number of US institutions offering postdoc positions (300?)
Number of postdoc positions per offering institution (3?)
Fraction of postdoc positions opening per year (1 in 2, or 0.5) (assuming two-year positions)

That gives (300 x 3 x 0.5) ~ 450 postdoc positions opening per year

How many people apply to a given position?

Number of new math PHDs per year (1500, see above)
Fraction of new PHDs applying for postdoc positions (1 in 2, or 0.5)
Average number of postdoc applications each new PHD fills out (30?)
Number of open postdoc positions per year (450, or almost 500, see above)

This gives (1500 x 0.5 x 30 / 500) ~ 60 applications per postdoc position.

This approach misses something, however.

Not everyone applying for these positions has just received their PHD: competition is increasing. There are fewer tenure-track positions open, causing postdocs to apply to a second (or even third!) postdoc position. Furthermore, not all applicants earned their PHD in the US.

To account for all the other applicants (current postdocs, PHDs from other disciplines, etc.), let's multiply that figure by a factor of 1.5, so there's (60 x 1.5) = 90 applicants per postdoc position.

Thus my final estimate:

I estimate that each postdoc position receives an average of 90 applicants per postdoc position.

Accuracy

This PDF has some great figures (2013-2014) for comparison, though I checked this after my estimate:

1926 math PHDs conferred.
38% (626) are reported to be in postdoc positions in the US (another 200 or so are abroad)

Lastly, the "800 applicants for 2 positions" figure (comment from @Sana) is for an R1 institution, and is therefore likely to be much higher than it would be for an average institution.


Query regarding permission for Indian to work as postdoc in UK

The EEA is the EU plus a number of other European countries (eg Norway) whose citizens have employment rights in the UK. Assuming you're not a dual citizen, option 1 won't apply to you.

If you do not have any reason to assume you are eligible to work in the UK (eg you don't already have a UK work visa) then you should tick opiton 2 - "I am not currently eligible". It is very unlikely that you would have eligibility without already knowing the reasons for it (eg "I already have a work visa").

Then (as @scaaahu says) read this answer to find out how the system works after this point. The important thing to remember is that the university is potentially able to sponsor you to get a visa, so ticking "no" won't stop the application. If they decide to take you, they will be able to take care of the visa issues.

Good luck with the application.


What is considered appropriate men's attire for a PhD interview at a Max Planck institute?

(Physicist here, experience with PhD admissions at British and German universities, including one Max Planck institute). In my field, I have never come across an actual dress code for PhD interviews. Nonetheless, if you dress too casually, especially older faculty members might get the impression that you are not taking it seriously enough. On the other hand, with suit & tie some people might perceive you as overdressed and maybe a bit stuffy. So being somewhere in the middle, e.g. jeans, shirt & jacket as you suggest, is a good approach.

I strongly assume that it is similar for other STEM fields (which account for most of the Max Planck institutes), but it can be completely different in other fields that tend to value formal attire (e.g. law).


Introducing abbreviations in an abstract for a repeated term

It is almost certainly not "best" to introduce acronyms/abbreviate terms like "artificial neural network" in the abstract. I can think of two reasons to use acronyms/abbreviations in a manuscript. The first is to save words/space and the second is to improve readability. While using abbreviations is a quick way to save a few words, generally you will be better off spending more time (assuming the deadline is not pressing) thinking about why you have hit the word limit. Cutting words is often better done by saying things more concisely or leaving out unneeded details.

In regards to readability, the abstract is different than the body of the manuscript. While in both you need to consider readability by both experts and non-experts, the percentage of non-experts reading the abstract is higher than the percentage reading the body. Therefore, the readability of the abstract should be geared towards a non-expert. What this means is that while acronyms like ANN may help the expert reader, they will not help the non-expert. On the other hand, acronyms like NASA are more readable to the non-expert than National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Abstract are tricky. For example, APA 5 style used to say that abstracts had to be self contained. That meant you had to introduce acronyms in the abstract and then again in the body. In APA 6, this has been dropped (cf. this blog post). I still go with introduce the acronym on first use in the abstract and then again on first use in the body. I also introduce acronyms on first use in figure captions (not sure that is APA style or Strongbad style).


How should I pursue my interest in AI and/or machine learning?

[I]s graduate school necessary if I want to go into an advanced field like AI? Are there any paths other than graduate school which I can use to get into the career?

"Go into AI" is pretty broad. What sort of job do you want to be doing? Theoretical research? Software development? Engineering? To get an idea of what jobs are out there you can look through the job postings at Google Research, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Amazon Research, and so on. All of these do ML and AI.

They have position all along the spectrum from things that only require undergraduate degrees to things that require PhD's. I have no experience with the non-PhD path, so I can't tell you much about that, but a lot of their internships are geared to ML/AI PhD students spending their summers there, and then those same people get their degrees and apply for research jobs at those companies.

  I am wondering what my college studies should look like in order to make my interest a reality.

I can tell you what is useful to know for ML and AI, besides programming: In computer science, you need to have a good grasp of the theory, taught in courses like Theory of Computation and Algorithms. Some schools also teach an undergraduate AI course. Machine learning can be viewed as the intersection between computer science and statistics, so basic statistics is important. A lot of AI and ML has to do with (mathematical) optimization, for that you need a good grasp of linear algebra and multivariate calculus. Some methods (like neural networks) require understanding differential equations and partial differential equations (but I would put those down as fairly optional, you'll learn the relevant material if you ever need to).

The reality is, if you are going to go to a graduate program in AI/ML, you'll learn all the AI/ML-specific things you need to learn there. What you need to know to get accepted into the program is very variable on a program-by-program basis, but the reality is that the coursework probably won't be the most important thing in the admission process. If you're going straight for a job out of college, employers probably won't care much about your coursework either. It will be all about how you do at the interview, which will be very variable on an employer-by-employer basis.

At the end of the day, my suggestion is to think about what job you want to end up doing and work backwards from there to figure out what you need to do to get it.


How to move forward to PhD with failures in masters?

Many people succeed after setbacks. But your current base from which to move forward isn't strong. Let me suggest two options.

The first is that you reevaluate your "need" to get a doctorate. What else do you enjoy doing for which your preparation is better and the path to success shorter. I don't suggest that is best for you, but worth thinking about.

But the other option is to take a long view. Figure out where you are weak - math, stats, and some core CS subjects. Figure out how to get the required knowledge in (most of) those and work on that, delaying but not abandoning a doctorate. Proving yourself there will help you move along, but it will also help you figure out if it is really right for you. If you wind up hating the study of the basics it will be hard to move to higher levels.

But a doctorate is about more than just those sorts of topics. It involves research and you don't indicate whether you have any experience there, so it is hard to guess whether your desire is realistic. That is, do you have a realistic picture of what a PhD graduate actually does to succeed. If you don't have a good picture of that, you need to get one before you spend a lot of time and effort trying to reach something you may not enjoy in the end.

(a) consider options, or (b) long path - long view.


RStudio is an IDE for R — essentially an editor and debugger packed together. Your work is made possible by statisticians who developed the language R and graphical packages for it. If you want to cite R in your publication, here is the explanation how to do it.


Undergraduate changing research field with a deadline

I wouldn't sweat the summer spent.  It was a mistake but better not to extend it.  If you want a rationalization, just go with "at least the 6 weeks taught me what I don't want to do".

All that said, if you enjoy the work, the group, etc. despite it being laser optics when your interest is NMR (or whatever) I would not feel that you need that this project determines your grad school subfield or project. People switch interests all the time when moving to Ph.D.

After all it is just a year, part time.  Doing anything is better than nothing.  And nobody will expect you to do a Ph.D. in whatever subfield you did a short undergrad project in (or "bachelor's thesis").  IOW, there is a natural breakpoint later.  Consider some people don't even have undergrad research.  So if you like the stuff and just wants to have something for the year, don't sweat it and stick with the known quantity.

Conversely, if you hate it...bail. In terms of how to find an advisor...go beat the bushes, talk to people, look at websites, etc.  Stat.  And I would just do this exploration now, before ditching the other opportunity (so if you can't find an upgrade, you can stick with the summer topic).

[This seems like common sense, so if there is more to the situation, you need to give us those particulars.]


How to prevent cheating on take-home exams

One way to do it: if the assignment has many small questions, you can make it more difficult taking a random draw from a bigger pool for each student, so they are all slightly different. So, any pair of students would have just a portion of them in common. This can appear unfair, but it should even out if you do it many times.

But, if this were a fight, you would be on the losing side; for any strategy you can come up with, someone else would find the way to hack it. You should instead focus on making people not want to cheat.

Make the problems interesting challenges, not mechanical tasks. If it involves some creative thinking it is less likely that two students arrive independently to the same solution (and even less to arrive to the same solutions in each exercise).
But make them approachable. If they look impossible, it is more tempting to cheat. In a course I took recently, we had to solve an easier version of a problem, and apply it to a more difficult one. We only had to hand in the difficult version, but handing in only the easy part gave also points.

For what I have seen from a student perspective, the more advanced the course, the less likely cheating is, and the more frowned upon by the other students is.


How can a freelance writer supply recommendation letters?

Freelance workers can get reference letters from clients who are repeat customers over many years.  Business partners could also write letters.  If you are participant in any industry organizations, colleagues in those organizations could write letters.
If you do not have any of those relationships, you probably cannot get a letter without forming new relationships.


What is the difference between MBA and Masters in a business subject, and which is better for a future researcher?

An MBA is a professional degree designed for students who will go to work in industry and not pursue further graduate study or research.  Students in MBA programs typically all take the same courses in lock step with very few electives or options.  It generally isn't possible to specialize in a particular area in an MBA program.  In that sense, an MBA program is very much like medical school or law school and totally unlike graduate study in engineering and the arts and sciences.   Students in MBA programs usually have several years of full time experience working in low level corporate jobs after completing a bachelors degree.  Because they have had some exposure to the corporate/business world, the courses that they take draw on that experience.

In comparison, the Master's in Management is a professionally oriented degree program aimed primarily at students who have just completed a bachelor's degree.  These programs tend to be more theoretical simply because students have less practical experience to draw on.  Many business schools also offer professionally oriented masters degrees in more specialized technical areas (e.g. a Master's degree in mathematical finance or operations research or analytics.)

PhD programs in business schools are typically very separate from MBA programs and the students in the PhD program will typically take very few if any courses with the MBA students.  PhD students take more theoretical course work, take advanced courses in an area of specialization (e.g. accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) take course work in research methods, and then conduct research and write a dissertation.

If you're just completing a bachelor's degree and want to get a masters and go to work in industry, than a Masters in Management is the typical path.  If you're just completing a bachelor's degree and want to become a business school professor then a PhD program would be appropriate.  If you've had several years of experience in business and want to move up in management, then an MBA would be the typical path for you.


How safe is it to provide my credit card information to an admissions office?

I wouldn't send any personal information like that through an email, even if I were sure the email was sent from a secure and trusted location. Whether this be for an admissions office or anywhere else.

My advice would be, if you wanted it, to call the admissions office directly and provide the information over the phone to get the express service. There is an added fail-safe of you looking up the number and calling it yourself to ensure it is legitimate.

Otherwise, just take the free postage if you are that concerned about having your details stolen.


Is there a potential for bias when a researcher chooses a topic they personally find interesting?

The short answer is, well, yes. But what alternative would you propose? Forcing researchers to work on topics they aren’t passionate about seems like a bad idea. Academia has few financial incentives as compared to industry. The only reason many stay is because of the freedom it affords them. Take away that, and there’s not much keeping people in it.
Keeping researchers’ biases in check is what peer review is for. Even if you happen to work on a topic you aren’t super passionate about (say, you got moderately involved in a project due to a very specific skill you bring in), you still have an incentive to publish the results, which should be kept in check regardless of personal interest.


Can I publish a paper that doesn't have a specific question to answer?

I would suggest that you investigate those interesting properties further and then have a paper along the lines of "this structure has this useful property, more-so (or less-so) than these other structures." That is justify why someone would actually use this structure.

Think about it from the editors' point of view. Why should this paper be published? If you can't provide an answer with a straight face then maybe you should wait until there is a purpose for it.


Should all recommendation letters be research- or teaching-related?

I see relatively little value in having additional letters that all speak to the same topics. If you think that the existing letter writers already cover your research in positive enough light that your research credentials are unquestioned, then having additional letters cover other areas is certainly a plus as it shows you breadth as a professional.

It would probably help if the other letters could at least very briefly mention the topic of research so as to not look like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel in coming up with more letters. This could be done by these letters containing statements of a form like this:

  I have known Dr. Psychonaut for several years and have in particular observed her greatly grow in her research since I first met her. I have also seen her give a number of marvelously executed talks on her research. That said, I know that several of my colleagues are already writing letters that address her research credentials in great detail; I will therefore rather focus on a separate area in which I have collaborated with Dr. Psychonaut -- namely, knowledge transfer -- and for which I know that my opinion is unique.

What I'm trying to say is that the letter should be written in a way to make clear that the letter writer could be talking about your research, but consciously chooses not to because they have this other thing they know and only they can talk about. This avoids the impression that there are only three people who can comment on your research and teaching, and that you needed to go out of your way to find a fourth and fifth letter writer.


Why is personal information (DOB, marital status) listed on CVs in Europe and can it be omitted?

Marital status is completely irrelevant: leave it out. Discrimination based on "Oh, I think you're about to have kids and take a bunch of maternity leave" is illegal.

In practice, date of birth can be inferred from the dates at which you got your degrees and what jobs you've had.  OK, you might be a prodigy who got their BA at 14 and their PhD at 17, but the overwhelming majority of people aren't. Or you might be a total bum who was unemployed until the age of 40 and then got a BA at 43 and a PhD at 48 but, again, the overwhelming majority of people aren't that, either. So including your date of birth doesn't really say anything that the recruiter couldn't guess.

Age discrimination is illegal in the UK, and I'd assumed it would be EU-wide. The usual form would be to require somebody to be within so many years of their PhD, though even that's not-really-so-indirect age discrimination.


Discussing one's working ideas and possible research projects in PHD application

will it be a safer bet to reveal my research ideas for the next couple of years with them, which I believe are capable of publishing in academic conferences or journals?

This is the entire point of doing a PhD - you are supposed to share your ideas with your collaborators! If you deeply distrust your potential research group to the extent that you worry that they'll steal your ideas without crediting you, you should probably not join them.

  Obviously there would be some layer of abstraction with which I will be pitching my research vision in my Statement of Purpose, but should I be too much careful regarding it?

The scenario you are concerned with is highly unlikely. Professors would probably not steal your ideas from your applications, but rather actively fight to get you into the program so that they can start working with you (if indeed you have a very good idea).

If you truly have good, novel, ideas that you feel are worth publishing, and are worried about them being stolen, how about working them out into a two-page note which you can then put up online/on ArXiv, and then reference? This leaves no doubt as to the ownership of the idea, and gives professors a chance to assess your work and your capacity to convey it in writing. However, if that is really the case, you should probably contact professors individually (via email) with your manuscript and have them evaluate it. That way your emails act as evidence that the idea is yours.


Is it possible to get accepted in a PhD program without reference/recommendation letters?

Most admissions committees I know people on will not consider incomplete applications.

If there is an application deadline that applies for an entire incoming class, and letters aren't received, then it's probable that the application will be rejected.

If there is no admissions deadline and If the rest of the application looks good, though, they may contact the applicant to remind them to send in letters so that the application can be considered.

The reason for asking for the letters is a form of quality control: admissions committees want candidates who will become productive researchers. Getting letters of recommendation that can testify to their promise as researchers is an integral part of the admissions process.


Is an undergraduate thesis a requirement to get into grad school?

No, it's not necessary.

Of course, all other things being equal, writing a (good) undergraduate thesis can only help. It demonstrates research capability and independence, and you'll probably get a more detailed letter of recommendation than you would from a professor who you saw only in class. But a similar argument can be made for many extracurricular activities, and you don't have time to do everything.

If you choose to write a thesis, do so because you are interested in the challenge and the topic, not because you are afraid not writing one will prevent you from getting into graduate school.


International postdoc struggling with PI demands. Should I quit?

Brief answers, then suggestions.

  Is it ok to feel intimidated as a postdoc?

It is ok to feel intimidated when someone with power over you is doing intimidating things. Also, it is rarely "not ok" to feel what you're feeling; it's more of a question of what to do in order to improve how you feel.

  Is it a sign that it may be a postdoc position is not suitable for me?

It's not suited for anyone to be in a position where your living is dependent essentially on this one person who can throw you out almost on a whim, post-doc or no.

Also, you can't judge your performance or capabilities as a researcher until you've had some time to actually do some research, and the opportunity to strike up collaborations etc.

  Should I give myself some more time and see how my research work progresses before I make the decision of moving away from the lab?

Wrong question. You should do something now in order to improve your predicament; and your options are not just "quit" and "toughen up, take it and stay".

  Am I just over-reacting for not being able to answer a few questions and not taking it as a positive sign to improve myself?

Personally I would be super-ashamed if that were to happen to me and would be preoccupied with it for days, if not weeks. What can you do, it is embarrassing - and it's not helping that your PI is berating you for it.  But the point is why it happened. I mean, if you froze up that means the issue is more the state you were in before rather than this event itself.

Now for some suggestions:

First and foremost is caring for your emotional well-being. It's not only first in the answer, it's first on the list of concerns, because if you don't do something about that your life is going to be continue being "poisoned" by anxiety and self-doubts.

Even though, of course, what you're feeling is a result of what happens to you professionally, that's not the exclusive cause. I mean, someone else in your place might tell him/herself "He's such an asshole, but I know I'm make a decent effort and by my self-evaluation I'm fine"; and other people are on that spectrum. This is not just fate you have to resign yourself to.

So, my first suggestion is to consider seeing a a psychotherapist. Don't be put off by the stigma some people assign to that; you're having an emotional problem that you have not been able to resolve yourself, so ask for more personalized help than you can get on this site.

I would have suggested to first have deep talks with co-workers you feel you trust, but I'm guessing you don't have those since you haven't mentioned them. If you do have them, consider confiding in one or two of them - even if that seems even more embarrassing. That embarrassment will go away once you talk to them.
Try to explicitly negotiate expectations and workplans with your PI. Meet with him in a one-on-one, acknowledge your feelings, his and your behavior (Without going into emotional details or being to combative), and try to focus the conversation on how you two can work together with aligned mutual expectations. Discuss things like timelines, targets, deliverables etc. A framework of mutual expectations might help in making him feel you're not doing poorly since it's what you agreed on.
Your academic advancement should not by wholly determined by your relationship with a PI. As soon as you can, if you have at least some research involving people out of the group - not only will that improve your standing with the PI (I think) but it will also improve how you feel and will be a sort of a partial crutch in case you're somehow threatened with termination.
I would not advise you to switch workplaces at this point since on the one hand you've been investing in setting things up, and it's a shame if that went to waste considering how you see research potential there, and on the other hand you've not been there for long enough to say with clarity that it's a hopeless work environment.
Try to find some kind of activity which you believe would be a confidence-booster for you - at work - and would not be disparaged by the PI. For example - giving a talk or a workshop on something you know very well and others at the lab know little about.
Try to find some kind of activity which you believe would be a confidence-booster, or that is otherwise satisfying, outside of work. I know this is kind of vague, but it really helps if you have an emotional anchor that is not depend on your academic success and your appeasement of the PI / employer / the system.


Methodology Question: How to deal with others having written about similar topic?

There are a number of issues here, including the purpose of your writing and who you see as the audience.

Don't however, lose sight of the fact that copyright applies to words (etc.) but not to ideas and concepts. History is full of examples of people coming to the same (or quite different) conclusions independently based on the same evidence - especially when that evidence is common knowledge.

If you are writing for (potential) scholars it is probably better to give a lot of citations so that others can follow up and expand their knowledge of the field. I would prefer end-notes to foot-notes, however, as they are less disruptive of the page flow.

If you are writing for popular consumption (a la Carl Sagan) you don't need to reference everything and your description of an introduction seems about right. You could, when writing, also have an appendix in which you point to the work of others who have discussed similar themes whether they come to similar conclusions or not.

However, if you have to err, it is probably better to err (a bit or a lot) on the side of referencing related work that you know about. The fact that you know about it means that it may have had an effect on your own thinking and you should honor that in general.

I think that when you are coming to different conclusions than others it might be especially useful to you to cite the work of others. Again, this is more important in scientific/professional writing than in the popular press. If nothing else this gives you the aura of fairness and leaves no one with a misconception that you were trying to mislead them.

So, what is required to say and what is useful to say may not be quite the same.


Should I report a 48th percentile math GRE subject exam score for programs where it's optional?

Since the admissions office receive applications in large numbers they would prefer to work the application that corresponds to the "required list", otherwise it would delay the process. Sending in documents, in your case a low subject score, could have an adverse effect on your application. If the application does not require a subject score, do not send a weak subject score as it will not make your application stronger.

There is a GRE general test and subject test. As far as i know, the general test is mandatory for most programs, but the subject test is optional.

General rule: do not send anything that is optional and does not strengthen your application.


Because the PhD is a research degree, admissions committees want to see from your application that you'll be able to be successful in research. This is easily demonstrated through prior research experience, which many students get while completing a Master's thesis. There are other ways to get research experience for people with a Bachelor's degree.

If your motivation for doing a Co-op degree is financial, you might consider looking into other methods to get research experience. Perhaps you can work as a research assistant while taking courses, or, if your University permits, do your Co-ops in a research lab in the industry. You might even spend some time after the Master's degree as a research assistant in the industry or at a national research lab. A Co-op degree certainly won't preclude you from getting your PhD in the future.

But if your motivation for doing a Master's degree is just to position yourself for a PhD program, I would recommend putting research experience as your first priority, and evaluating the various programs you're interested in based on how likely you are to graduate having done interesting research. In addition to gaining the skills necessary to do research, research experience will help you determine what sorts of projects grab and hold your interest, which will make it much easier for you to find a place that you'll enjoy doing your PhD at.

So, to summarize, research experience is very helpful for getting into a PhD program, and a Master's thesis will certainly provide that opportunity, but a Co-op program won't preclude the opportunity for research experience, although it might make the path more difficult.


Will I get in trouble if I miscapitalize on the works cited page?

There is no need to worry.

People have a hard enough time agreeing about what should be capitalized at all.  No people who is concerned with the content of your work will care in the least about capitalization that is consistent and at least vaguely plausible.  Many people will not even notice.

Rather, what you should expect is:

If there are review stages and you will have a chance to revise, it will make no difference to the decision you receive, and you can fix it in the next revision.
If there is no further review/revision stage pending, then:

If the venue you submitted it will send it through a proof-reader before publication (e.g., some journals), then it will get corrected to their preferred standards in the final proofing before publication.
Otherwise, you can expect to see the errors in print, entirely unremarked upon.


How to write an email to your Masters advisor asking for PhD position?

I've recently been in the position where my MSc thesis supervisor informed me about a possible PhD topic and suggested to apply. From this experience I would say that having an open discussion is best - of course depending on your relationship with the supervisor. You should present your case for wanting to pursue further study (this also helps to decide for yourself) possibly first by e-mail, however nothing beats a discussion in person. Academics are generally quite busy, so writing a long, serious e-mail is not the best approach. Adding a familiar face to your conversation will work better!

First bases:
Are you aware of PhD opportunities at the university/with your supervisor? Can you address a specific project of his/of the department that you are interested in?

The great deciders:
Ultimately, a PhD is dependent on available funding. If your potential supervisor or you can secure funding for the proposed project (or best case - funding is already available), then you can apply for the position without a doubt. Of course, when a position has been funded usually the department will advertise to the world at large at which point other candidates will also be considered.

In any case - good luck!


How can I refer to multiple equations with "Eq. (i)" style?

In my old copy of the AIP style guides (American Institute of Physics) they use (Section IV Mathematical Expressions, C. Displayed Equations, 2. Equation numbers) the format of

  Eqs. (3)-(5)

in their text.

But, as noted, check the author guidelines or style sheet of your particular journal (or just look in the articles for an example).


Two misconceptions here:

I need to "copyright" my intellectual property to protect it. - No. Unless you explicitly indicate otherwise, you already automatically get exclusive copyright to your notes. There is no "copyrighting" process like applying for a patent. The common "Copyright 2018" notice serves as a reminder of this, as well as suggesting a relevant entity to contact about getting permission and to pre-empt any arguments in court that "well it didn't say it was copyrighted". The last point is superfluous, since court would not require the copyright notice either way.
Holding exclusive copyright physically prevents people from copying my intellectual property. - No. While unauthorized copying is illegal, the copyright is not a magic incantation. You still have to find unauthorized copiers, ask them to stop, then sue if they refuse.

So your copyright is only as good as the steps you're willing to take to enforce it. Will you spend your free time trying to track down people who copy your notes? Will you pay a lawyer to send letters to everyone who copies the notes without permission? Will you shell out hundreds or thousands in legal fees to sue when they refuse?

I'm guessing you're just hoping a scary sounding warning will discourage people. In this day and age, I doubt many would be discouraged. At best you could contact their institution (if they have one) and put pressure on them that way. But ultimately, what are you trying to protect here? A few students passing around copied notes? So what?

If you're thinking somebody will take the notes and use them to write a textbook and sell it for money, forget it. If they're planning to do that they can easily change your notes slightly and even if you had a case, you would have to waste horrendous amounts of time and money in court. If your notes are so great that they have non-trivial financial value on their own, just publish them yourself. Otherwise, stop worrying and move on with your life.


Should I choose the same editor for two papers?

I've have multiple papers under review at the same time in the same journal for various reasons (e.g., special issues, highly preferred venue, standard community venue).

When the papers were linked, we made sure to request the same editor---otherwise, you're just making life more difficult for the editors because the editors of the two papers will have to coordinate in any case.
When the papers were not linked (and I've had utterly unrelated papers simultaneously under review, since they came from different collaborations), we selected an appropriate editor to request independently, which might or might not turn out to be the same.

The key principle here is to remember that your selection of an editor is only your personal recommendation to the journal.  Just like a statement preferred reviewers, the journal has no particular compulsion to abide by your selection. If they think a different editorial distribution makes sense, they will assign it that way instead.

Thus: don't handicap a paper unnecessarily by recommending a suboptimal choice of editor.


Changing majors for masters degree specifically in Europe

I will put a bit of a damper on cleverrainbow's and deloz's enthusiasm.

First, there are two kinds of masterks programs in Germany: consecutive and non-consecutive. Non-consecutive programs are open to anyone who meets the general admissions criteria, while consecutive master’s programs require that a student have a degree in the same discipline as the original degree, and enough overlap between the curricula at whatever school the student did their bachelor’s at compared to the bachelor’s at the school with the master’s program. If the difference is too large (more than about one semester’s worth), you can be refused admission.

Secondly, if you are coming from outside the EU, the university must recognize your undergraduate degree as being at a school comparable to the one to which you are applying.

Finally, in the event you are admitted, you may find that you need to get approval from the study advisor of the major you wish to pursue, and possibly have to obtain credit for each individual course you want to transfer from each individual instructor responsible for the respective courses at the new university. Moreover, if you are missing too many credits, your application for transfer will likely be declined, as there are generally minimum limits for how many credits can be transferred from the bachelor's degree.


Yes, in mathematics you can absolutely upload both submitted and accepted papers.  I am not aware of a single reputable mathematics journal that would take issue with this.  (If it helps, within the last few months I uploaded a paper to the arxiv after I submitted it but before acceptance.)  What I do not recommend is to upload to the arxiv papers which have been formatted in the journal's style file or which incorporate copyediting done after acceptance by the staff of the journal.

If a journal is published by a big academic publisher and you are the kind of person to worry about this at all (honestly I didn't, for many years), you should be able to find online a relevant policy for uploading preprints.  In all of my experience, even big publishers like Elsevier are quite reasonable about this...because they have to be in order to do business with mathematicians.  The Proceedings of the AMS is published of course by the American Mathematical Society.  The current managing editor of this journal posts his preprints to the arxiv. The linked-to preprint was submitted to the arxiv and for publication on the same day; a modified version was uploaded to the arxiv after the paper was accepted and before the paper was published.  So I think you have nothing to worry about here.


In writing, do I need to define an abbreviation when it is already an industry standard term?

Let us assume that your publisher / journal / conference / style manual has no restrictive guideline regarding abbreviations (otherwise, follow that guideline obviously in first place).

You do have to define every abbreviation. (As an example, I was confused yesterday by finding out that CRT is not only a cathode ray tube, but also the Chinese Remainder Theorem). Consider, e.g., the huge list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADC . But you can do it in a clever, space-conserving way by

providing a list in an appendix,
defining them in footnotes on their first usage,
defining all of them in small size in a "preliminaries section" or in endnotes,
giving a reference to a standard Web site with the abbreviations you need,
giving a reference to your own Web page with the abbreviations you need,
citing some electrical-engineering dictionary which defines them unambiguously the way you need,
…

Of course, pay attention that your paper reads well in first place; there may be no general advice on which of the above list items applies best to your paper.


Respond to the interview invitation late

I can't imagine you would be knocked out of the running because of your delayed response.  However, since this will create something of a headache for the scheduler, I hope you can offer them a lot of flexibility in the scheduling.  For example, if you have any non-urgent doctor's appointments coming up (during working hours in the target time zone) in the next two weeks -- if possible, reschedule them.

Make sure you outline very clearly any remaining constraints on your interview availability.


To avoid reinstating the fact that the author is the one who made these statements, I would develop something in your first sentence that establishes that and makes it clear early on. For example, you could say that John (2010, p. 10) made a series of statements about marketing. That would set the platform to then elaborate on his ideas about marketing, rather than repeating in every sentence that he coined those ideas.
Instead of saying "the same author," I would suggest saying "the author" or "he". The reader should be able to pick up on the fact that unless you are mentioning a new author, you're talking about the same one.
You could also write it out raw, then go back and edit to make connections and develop a 'flow'....example "The same author claims that marketing is really about value..." you could maybe shorten this into "He mentions that it should be about value, leading him to coin the term..." See how this develops a 'flow'? It goes from describing what the author thinks marketing should NOT be, to what he thinks it SHOULD, and then into a term that he developed to explain that. Think of it as a conversation you had with the author. If you had to turn around and explain that to someone who's never heard of any of this news, how would you best explain it?
Paraphrasing, in my thoughts, should sound less like a listed bullet-note, and more of a concise explanation that would make sense to the reader in your own words. I hope this helps!!


Why do citation styles for webpages include accessed date?

A URL does not refer to content, it is only an address.  Since you are making a claim about what was written at that address, you must associate a date with it, or it is meaningless.

If you do such a thing, you should also save the content, in case it is not recoverable and you want to refer to it again or support it further.


Is there an available network analysis of all academic papers and/or a 3D representation?

I would google something like "PageRank for Research Papers", since PageRank is Google's algorithm for ranking webpages based on network analysis. Google scholar is handy for finding how many citations a paper has and which papers it has been cited by.


What should you do if you don't hear anything back from editor after a whole year from first submission?

If the editor isn't responding, it's time to escalate. The journal's web page should give contact info for an editor-in-chief and/or a managing editor. Contact one or both of them and let them know that you would like an update on the status of your paper, but cannot get a response from the handling editor (include dates of submission, dates you sent emails, etc). They should    take care of the situation.


As a compromise, given you are staying with the existing slides, consider saying things like "For purposes of this course, the definition of X is [what the slides say] but many people use [more conventional definition]". That way, the students know what they should assume during the exam, but have been warned that they will see different definitions in the future.

In thinking about contributing to updating the slides, you would be doing it to help future students, not to help the instructor who wrote them.


How does your institution credit a department's support of, and participation in, interdisciplinary programs?

Though this is not a full answer I did find one case documented in this paper[1] that may be of interest and that (I think) is worth quoting at length. It discusses the implementation of a 'Medical Biology' major at the University of South Dakota, which seems to essentially be a pre-Med degree. From what I gather, both the biology department as well as the medical school are actively involved in the major.

With regard to funding, the authors write:

  One other concern expressed regarding enrollments was that under the new RCM funding model adopted by the University, budget income from offered courses is distributed mainly to the college or school whose faculty members are teaching the course (100% if the major is in the same college or school), with a lesser amount (20%) being distributed to the college or school in which the major is housed, if that is different than the college or school offering the course. In the case of the Medical Biology major, which is housed in the Department of Biology, an increase in the number of required and elective courses offered by Medical School faculty members relative to a typical Biology major means that the College of Arts and Sciences receives less income from a Medical Biology major than from a typical Biology major. This concern was ameliorated somewhat by projections that the Medical Biology major would increase the overall number of majors in the Department of Biology, which it has, in fact, accomplished (see above), although administrative discussions about the most equitable distribution of funds from these courses is ongoing. (73)

The RCM model referenced is one in "which individual schools and colleges receive income based on student enrollments in their courses and must pay for other services provided by the university (mostly traditional administrative support centers)" (67).

So, in short, it does not seem that USD has found an extraordinarily innovative way to simultaneously support the two majors. However, the already-high demand for biology lessens the severity of this problem.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any other papers that documented other cases of interdisciplinary major development.

[1] Goodman, Koster, Swanson. "The development and implementation of a new medical biology major including physiology," Advances in Physiology Education 39 (2015).


Are my responsibilities as a lecturer the same as a teacher at school?

Teaching and studying at a university is different, and I sympathise with your frustrations. However, learning how to effectively study in a university needs to be learned as well. We cannot expect students just out of school to know how to study. So if the stats lecture takes place early in the program, as is the case with the stats lecture I teach, then you cannot expect them to behave like proper students yet. Part of the learning goals of that lecture must be to teach them how to study. Just assuming that they know how to study and how a lecture at a university works, is just going to lead to endless frustration on your part and on the students part. This means you will have to spent a substantial part of your teaching time on the learning how to study part, rather than statistics. We  do not have to pamper students, but we cannot expect miracles from them either.


What motivates researchers in industry to publish their results?

First of all, it's important to understand that the boundary between "industry" and "academia" is a lot blurrier than may be obvious.  It is certainly this way in the United States, and what I hear from colleagues in Europe leads me to believe it is similar over there as well (though the specific mechanisms may differ from country to country). As somebody who straddles that boundary myself, I see a lot of different people in industry publishing for a lot of different reasons.  At the end of the day, however, it mostly all boils down to the same core reason as in academia: credibility.

Despite all of its flaws, scientific peer review is still the best established means that our society has come up with for judging the credibility of factual claims (side note: legal and political systems are primarily concerned with justice, rather than facts, which has subtle but significant differences).  When a scientist working in industry wants to establish the credibility of their work, peer review is an excellent choice for doing so. The reasons for wanting to do this in industry are very similar to those in academia:

Scientific credibility from publications improves a researcher's ability to secure funding.  This is true both for external funding (e.g., from government agencies), and in competition over priorities for the allocation of internal funding.
Establishing credibility increases the likelihood that others outside of an organization will choose adopt the ideas or products that you are advocating.  For example, published scientific studies are critical to establishing claims of safety and efficacy in the process of drug development.
Publications also establish a researcher (and their organization as a whole) as a contributing member of the community: as they are sharing information and working openly, so will others be more likely to share information with them and work together in return.
No company exists in a vacuum: participating in the scientific discourse can help resolve the problems that a company is facing in its own work.  This is particularly true regarding standards and instrumentation, but extends more broadly.  No matter what organization you work for, most of the smartest people work somewhere else, and demonstrating the scientific value of your problems by means of publication can attract the interest of others to work on those problems for their own reasons.
Scientific credibility also can improve one's standing in an organization, leading to promotions in your personal position.  Some companies even provide a tenure-like status (and I believe in some European countries you can actually get tenure in a company).
Personal pride plays an important role too: industrial researchers are no more immune to ego and vanity than academics.  If you've got a point to make about an idea (or lots of ideas), the scientific literature is one good place to advocate for your view and obtain satisfaction when others respond to it.

Finally, industry/academia collaboration is very common, and even if the industrial partner might not have published on their own, the academic side of the collaboration will want to publish, and the industrial partner will rightfully be included in the author list.

As these apply in general, so to do they apply to machine learning, natural language processing, and data-mining.  Certainly this is a good description of why the researchers in these areas in the company I work at publish quite strongly, and fits what I see from others in the area as well.


Logistics of co-authorship for assisting business

This may vary by field, though common sense suggests some general applicability. I'm in CS and will offer my personal experience.

You raise a couple of independent points.

Does their affiliation/experience matter? Not in the least IMHO. I saw a paper at a strong conference with a high school student as coauthor!

Do they merit coauthorship?
I'd say if they simply provided data, likely not, but you've already asserted they go beyond a simple acknowledgement. And you can certainly involve them enough going forward for there to be no question.

Seems to me you've answered your own question. But if you specify a field and someone in that field says no, you can't possibly publish if you aren't somehow credentialed, it's another story.

Good luck!


How much do research papers in arXiv count (for graduate applications)?

Having a paper that was not peer reviewed but is available from arXiv will help you just as much, and in exactly the same way, as having a paper that was not peer reviewed and is available from any other easily accessed online source. The main things that are important are that:

You have written a paper (according to some definition of "paper").
The paper can easily be accessed and looked at by anyone wishing to evaluate your strength as a grad school applicant.

Note that the value of such a paper to your admission prospects can actually be negative if it is clearly of very poor quality, shows delusional tendencies (e.g., a paper with the title "A simple proof of the Riemann Hypothesis"), or comes across as a dishonest attempt to create a false impression that you have done something important when clearly you haven't. Setting aside such obvious exceptions, an arXiv paper will probably have a positive, but in most cases not very large, value for your applications.


Do graduate schools increase assistantship stipends if the student is accompanied by a spouse or dependent?

No, the stipends are set according to uniform rules for the department.  You will not get extra if you have to support a family, although there are probably other, non-financial, supports that the university will offer your dependents (such as married student housing).  Moreover, TA pay is not typically subject to merit-based raises either.  You will not get a raise by asking for one; your stipend may go up slightly when you reach a major milestone (such as qualifying for the Ph.D. program), but mostly it will rise at the same rate as all the other TA's.


Change from one PhD-Program to a much more prestigious (and better paid) new program at my institution

Just talk to your advisor. Since he participates in the program, he will know if you are qualified to apply and stand a chance of getting the position. He will probably also be able to tell you if the two of you will be able to continue working together – after all, it's far from unheard of that a PhD student has a nominal advisor for administrative reasons but a "real" co-advisor who is responsible for the day-to-day research.

In any case, it seems completely unlikely that you would get the position without support from your current advisor. If anything, it's probably that you will need letters of recommendations, and an application without a good letter from your current advisor is an application that is headed for the trashcan.

Just go see him in person – I would avoid email – and start a conversation with "I heard about this new PhD program with much better conditions than the one I have, do you think I could get into it and still continue working with you?". Then see where it takes you. Maybe your advisor knows a reason that would prevent you from applying altogether and you are fretting over nothing. Or on the contrary you are the perfect applicant and you will start earning twice your current salary in a few months. Until you talk with him, you don't know.


What should go in a CV for first teaching position at a community college?

I taught at a community college when I was a graduate student.  In my case, I expect I was the only applicant because the pay was very low.  I have a few points of advice.  Most likely, you have to have at least a master's degree to get the job.  So be sure to let them know that you have one.

Do not list totally irrelevant qualifications to the material you are teaching.  For example, programming languages are not relevant.  Do mention any informal teaching experience you have (Most likely you have at least explained things to other people before.).  Do explain what you achieved when you were a TA.  Do mention experience with course management systems.  Also, let them know why you want to teach at the community college.

It probably would not hurt to send a teaching philosophy, if you can write one, though it was not requested.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/tips-faculty-job-seekers-community-colleges


No reimbursement from grad school for canceled open house flight expense

The starting point is probably to respond politely but firmly to the academic in charge of the admissions process, pointing out that you cannot eat a flight credit, and that the grad school's actions have led to a substantial and unexpected hole in your budget. Frame it as a 'moral' obligation rather than a 'legal' one. If you've had significant interactions with any of the professors as part of the applications process, you should cc them on the email.

If you do not get a satisfactory response, you might then escalate matters by emailing the Head of Department/Dean/University President's office. Again, being polite and non-antagonistic but persistent is probably your best option.

If none of this gets you anywhere, your options are probably to involve a lawyer and/or a journalist.


Requesting feedback from a postdoctoral application

Asking for feedback on your application from someone who has turned you down is generally unlikely to yield useful information, and it may annoy them by making them choose between saying something unsatisfying or not replying.  Here are some of the issues that have run through my mind when I've been asked for feedback (which is not common but happens every once in a while):

I wonder whether I'm dealing with someone argumentative or difficult, who will try to dispute my explanation or change my mind, use the feedback as evidence in an accusation of misbehavior or dishonesty, or misquote me to others.  Even a perfectly reasonable applicant might feel upset if they re-apply next year and get rejected again after having felt they addressed all the issues I raised.
In most cases there's nothing objectively wrong with an application.  All I can say is "your application was good but we liked someone else's better", which is not informative.
Comparisons with other applications are crucial, particularly with the successful application, but all the details of other applications are confidential.  It's difficult to explain why we liked someone else's application better without revealing anything that isn't already public knowledge.  There won't be a simple quantitative explanation ("you should have published two more papers in high-prestige journals"), but rather a subtle qualitative comparison that is difficult to summarize in the abstract.
Furthermore, letters of recommendation are one of the most important parts of an application, and their contents should not be revealed to the applicant.  It's tough to give useful feedback without touching on the letter contents, especially because most concerns I might mention would at least make it clear that the letters didn't resolve these concerns.
In some cases, I can identify a problem with an application that is not based on letters of recommendation or direct comparisons with other applicants.  However, these problems are often not easily fixable (e.g., "we just didn't find your paper topics interesting").  Pointing them out feels like adding insult to injury.  It might be useful for the applicant to hear that they never had a chance at this job, but I don't want to be the one to say so.  The best case scenario is that the applicant always remembers me as the person who delivered this insulting news, and the worst case scenario is that I make the committee look foolish if we misjudged the applicant.

It's only in rare cases that I have genuinely useful feedback, something fixable that I can ethically reveal to the applicant and that might make a real difference in the future.  (This usually indicates that either the applicant's advisor is negligent or the applicant is not listening to advice.)  I've never had someone ask for feedback in this situation, although it might happen someday.  In a few cases I've tried to communicate this information through a backchannel, such as one of the applicant's letter writers.

In your case, there's almost certainly nothing seriously wrong with your application on paper, or you wouldn't have been interviewed.  Assuming you didn't do anything dreadful during the interview, you presumably fall into the second case above (your application was good but another was even better), and I doubt anyone will be able to give you satisfying or useful feedback.

If you decide to ask for feedback, I'd recommend indicating that you are aware there might be little or nothing to say.  For example, you could send a thank you e-mail and include something along the lines of "I realize that you may have no constructive feedback to offer beyond that another candidate was an even better fit for the position.  However, should you happen to have any advice for how I can strengthen future applications, I would greatly appreciate it."  This relieves the pressure by giving them an easy way to decline to say anything substantive, while bringing up the topic just in case.  I don't think there's any need to do this, or that it is likely to result in useful feedback, but it can't hurt.


Professor being mistaken for a grad student

I would take it as a compliment to be mistaken for being younger. And, even if you don't actually feel complimented, that's a good way to respond. For example, you could laugh and say "Thanks. I wish I was still a young and carefree student, but, unfortunately, I'm a professor."

If you make it appear like you take it as a compliment, people won't feel like they have offended you and it is less awkward. The other party may also intentionally be erring on the side of underestimating your age, because it's seen as less of a faux pas that way.

(I often get people commenting on my height. I always act as if I take it as a compliment and that seems to work well. However, in reality, I'm pretty bored of discussing my disinterest in basketball.)

At conferences, you always have the option of putting "Prof." on your nametag. There is a small risk that this looks pretentious relative to the norms of your community, so it's a tradeoff.

Finally, there is one sure-fire way to appear older.


Mathematics journal publishing colour diagrams for free

I would recommend you to publish on arXiv.org (http://arxiv.org). It's a very solid online publication outlet, free, open access and especially popular in mathematics and other hard science disciplines. Liberal guidelines with no mentioning of restrictions in terms of color.