I discovered a mistake in my own published workshop paper, how do I handle errata?

Mistakes happen. I would say that since it's a conference proceedings, therefore often the presented work is short of proofs, it's work in progress and it's very quickly baked, mistakes happen.

It is probably impossible to post errata to the paper. I would suggest the following steps:

If you put it on arXiv, upload a new corrected version.
If you put it on your personal webpage, add the errata there.
Make sure that once you sumbit it for journal publication, the mistake is correted.


Sending minor correction to a journal before getting a copy for proofread

Include this change when you correct the proofs.  It'll be easier for the copy editor to make all the changes at once.


Is there any evidence that students are more likely to watch a video over reading homework?

It's been a while since I was a student, but I think it's still worth saying this:

I find it easier (as in less effort) to just sit through a video than read a book.

But: If I actually want to learn something or I have a specific task to solve, I find the linear format of videos extremely constraining, and I find them frustratingly slow.  Like most people, I read much faster than normal talking speed. I can also skim texts easily, and find the relevant part, or go back and check a formula again.  This is not possible with videos.  There's a reason for taking notes in class instead of just recording it: a recording is not going to be useful for preparing for the exam.

You mentioned that many of your students are not native speakers of English.  This is a big reason to avoid videos in favour of written material.  I am not a native speaker either, and even though for the past few years English was the language I used the most, I still prefer watching English-speaking films with English subtitles.  When watching videos there will always, always be at least a few words I can't catch or I can only comprehend with a few seconds' delay.  Listening is simply more work for my brain than reading, and makes it just a little bit harder to pay attention to the content.

My personal opinion on the matter (no more than an opinion!) is that some students are indeed more likely to watch videos than read texts.  But that's only because it feels like less effort to them.  In reality videos are going to be less efficient at communicating information.  They will require significantly more time commitment from you and they will require more time commitment from motivated students as well, who would be able to learn faster from written material.  But yes: I do think unmotivated students are more likely to watch a video than to read  a text.

Personally I find it very frustrating when the only material available is a video because it just slows me down and forces me to take notes I wouldn't need to take if I already had written material ...


Is a “professional journal” a “scholary journal”?

According to Lock Haven University:

A scholarly journal is also called an academic journal.  It is a
periodical written by academic experts in various subject areas.   A
"peer review" journal is a subset within scholarly journals in which
the articles submitted are reviewed by researchers in the same
discipline to determine if the article merits publication.  This
review process helps to ensure that only excellent and high-quality
research articles are published. All authors who publish in the
scholarly literature MUST cite sources they used in the writing of the
article, so you will find a section at the end named variously as
bibliography, sources cited, works cited, or footnotes.
A professional (sometimes called a trade) journal is a journal written
for people who work in a certain field.  Grocers, resturant owners,
doctors, librarians, teachers, nurses, and other professionals need
information to help them conduct their jobs and profession more
efficiently. Trade journals are half way between scholarly journals
and magazines: they require some background knowledge but the articles
are not scholarly in nature.  They address workplace issues, provide
tips on better work performance, and other work-related information.
The articles that are submitted are reviewed by professional editors.

So basically, a scholarly journal is most likely written by someone who works in academia and a professional journal is written by someone who works in industry. In your situation, you could argue that the library is at fault for mistakenly labeling the journal as "scholarly" or your professor didn't know it was a "scholarly" journal. It wouldn't hurt to bring it up to your professor and see what he/she says.


Can you list a "last-minute" invited talk on your CV?

Why not? Of all the possible people to give the (new) talk, you invited that person, and even trusted them to give a good talk on short notice!


An F grade (in a labor studies class) on the transcript will hurt my admission to mathematics grad school?

This could possibly hurt you.

In grad school, and even more so as a working academic, you will be asked to do various tasks that you might disagree with. For example you might be asked to teach precalculus or college algebra. Occasionally grad students don't like how they are asked to teach these courses and they either raise a big stink, or else simply don't follow instructions. In either case, this can cause huge headaches for the person supervising the TA -- even if the TA's complaints have some merit. Whether fairly or not, the prospect that you may be unwilling to follow instructions might give some admissions committees pause.

Doing tasks which you disagree with and that were assigned by people whom you may or may not respect (and doing them quickly, so that you can get on to the work you actually care about) is a vital survival skill in academia. I recommend that you learn this skill immediately and do what you can to pass the course.


What should I do with small research results in theoretical computer science?

In my opinion, nothing new is not publishable. Small results are not prestige-ly enough publishable, that's it.

So, if you want to publish this result, find a venue small enough for it and submit. Another issue, however, if your advisor tells you to wait, you should rather wait.

It might be, namely, that by combining this result with a minor further development, you might seriously bump up its "prestige", i.e. the possibility it gets accepted at a larger or more important venue. Advisors typically know this stuff better than PhD students.

To give you an example. I played once with PGP public keys and found a way to visualize them as a nice image. After a literature research I found that noone did it like this before. So, it was a new scientific result, but not very publishable, just as your issue. Then I thought a bit more, what properties does my visualization have. I found SHA1 collision data, applied my visualization, and saw that I can tell the two files with same hash apart with my approach. Now, this is quite big. (But little work for me.)

I further looked around where to publish it (Visualization or Security), it successfully landed at the Visual Computer.


Citing someone else's idea??? (but not published work)

I just want to cite their work and ideas properly as a majority of the basic content is not my own.

Given that the majority of the content is not yours, you may want to make the person a co-author (or co-editor, etc.). That would appropriately recognize the work the other individual has made in the work that you have adapted.

Alternatively, if you feel most of your work has been editorial rather than creative, you could state:

  by X (arr. by Y),

where X is your friend.


How much time to wait for answer after postdoc negotiations

It is not clear from your question what you are waiting for. Based on your description of the conversation, you should continue to look for post doc opportunities until you have a firm offer. Do not wait to hear anything more before sending out more applications. It is probably worth noting that 10 months prior to defending seems very early to be actively looking for a post doc.

If you are talking about how long you should wait before giving up hope, then you should wait as long as possible. Right now you do not have another offer, so there is no reason to move on.

If you are talking about how long you should wait until contacting the PI again, I would say generally 1 or 2 weeks between attempts. You might be better off making a phone call next time.


What does "upper division" mean in the context of undergraduate classes?

Exactly as you said. In the U.S., undergraduate courses are commonly sorted by level, or the year of study in which they are likely to be taken. See this pattern in the traditional course numbering scheme of 1-99 for remedial courses, 101-199 for first year courses, 201-299 for those of the second year, etc. In this context, "upper division" are those courses for upperclassmen, those past the midpoint of their studies: the ones numbered 301-499.


How should someone with a German PhD be addressed in the UK?

In the UK the holder of a PhD (or other professional doctorate) will generally use the title Dr as opposed to Mr/Mrs/Miss that would normally be used.

Unlike in Germany there is no addition to field of study.

Therefore the correct title would be Dr (First Name)(Last Name).


Create YouTube videos on exercises of a University level course

As an alternative to basing your videos on someone else's work, I suggest writing your own exercises. Each exercise should bring out the issues you want to cover in the corresponding video.

If you write your own exercises, on your own time, you own the copyright, and can do what you want with them, including creating videos about solving them.

That would be superior from a learning point of view, because your users will be able to watch your video, learn from it, and then check their understanding by completing the coursework.


Acceptence of cross-major master application in Germany

In such a case, I would not just apply, but talk to the faculty or institute before.
Find out (e.g. through the website) who is responsible for the Master program and contact them. Give an overview about what you have done in your undergrad studies and ask them if admission is possible. It may also be the case that you can get admission with additional requirements, like additional exams on undergrad courses.
Also check the language requirements. Even if the Master lectures are in English, undergrad lectures may not be in English and you might be required or at least advised to take some of them.


Answer "Justification for travel support" in conference registration form

Do you need assistance from the conference organizers to pay for your travel to the conference and/or accommodation? If so, give your reasons here. If not, ignore the box.


Don't last-year PhD students need supervision?

On the one hand the amount of support needed on how to do research should decrease as the PhD student progresses. On the other hand, at the end is "crunch time" and a lot of projects come to an end at the same time. Each project should require less support by the advisor, but now there are more projects to discuss... Moreover, there is the process of finishing the dissertation, ceremonies, etc. etc. So the amount of time I spent on a PhD student would follow more a U-shaped curve: a lot at the beginning, then decreasing, but increasing again at the end.


How do you know when your independent findings are paper-worthy?

This is a very hard question in general, and is defined by a combination of absolute standards and community opinions. It's very hard to answer your specific question ("can I publish these results") and I don't think this community is the right forum to even ask that question.

But your second question is a good one. There are some things to keep in mind:

make sure your ideas are indeed new. It's easy when working independently to be aware of the published literature, but not be aware of the large cloud of "folklore" knowledge that floats in the air of a community. You'll get a paper rejected because something is "well known", even though you can't find a specific reference and no one provides one. To figure this out, it would help to approach an expert in the field, or at least someone you trust.
What kind of research you pursue is a complex combination of external trends and your interests. If you go too much towards external trends you might not find much pleasure in it. If you go too much towards personal interests (unless you have impeccable taste) you might find yourself isolated. It's all about balance. Similarly, while looking at current areas of research will tell you what's likely to be publishable, that's not the same thing as what's interesting or useful. Again, having some contact with people in the community might help a bit.


How does copyright work on questionnaires with similar items?

Copyright law varies from place to place, so a valid answer might depend on where you are. But in general, it is a good idea to assume that copyright law applies to everything. Basically if you write something (or create in another medium) you own rights to it. Some places you may have to register the copyright as was true in the past in the US. Most places copyright is a matter of civil, not criminal, law. But I think there are exceptions.

There are some caveats, however. Copyright doesn't prevent you from using something, only from copying it or obtaining a copy illicitly. There are a few exceptions to the general prohibition against copying, but they are a bit subtle.

The first is fair use, but that is a subtle thing. While there are fair use exceptions for some uses, including research, they aren't unlimited exceptions and depend on a "proportional" standard that can only be adjudicated by agreement between parties or by a court in a lawsuit. (Note, this is a US view, things vary around the world).

So, since you are doing research, you can depend on fair use up to a point, but that point isn't very clear. A few items out of a hundred is probably not an issue. How few? No-one can say in general. If the copyright holder objects, then you have a problem that will be expensive to solve.

However, another caveat may be more important here. You can't really copyright things for which there is only one basic way to say or write. So lots of things in mathematics can't be copyrighted because the "expression" is more or less immutable. Copyright doesn't "protect" ideas, only the expression of ideas. So, if "The boss is kind and gentle" is the idea, then there are only a few ways that that can be said in a questionnaire, so it is unlikely anyone would have a basis for a copyright complaint.

Unless you copy a lot of those kinds of things from a single source. Then the source is more likely to start to question your intent and might want to raise it in a lawsuit. My guess is that is pretty unlikely, but don't discount it altogether. You can get a bad reputation as a researcher for things that don't break any legal rules.

But you also need to consider the question of plagiarism. If you copy a bit and don't cite the source then you have a different issue, though it, too, may be covered by the "one reasonable form of expression" idea.

A claim of copyright can always be made. Courts, however, won't be supportive of frivolous claims, where only a small part was copied or the reasonable ways to express an idea are very limited. Therefore it is unlikely that a claim is likely to be made if things happen "by chance". A valid claim would need to depend on fairly clear evidence, especially given the research (partial) exception as stated in the law.

See especially the section on the four considerations used to evaluate fair use claims in the link above. I think the third one is what you need to be most concerned with:

  the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;

But, of course, if you need to repeat a questionnaire in its entirety, say for reproducing the research, you can always ask the authors for permission.

Moreover, if you reuse a questionnaire that you find in a copyrighted work that you have valid access to, there should be no issue as long as you don't reproduce that questionnaire in your own work. You just refer to the published questionnaire in your methodology section.


How to find the right balance between details and the main ideas?

In mathematics, being able to read papers is a skill on its own, and learning how to do it properly is part of “mathematical maturity."  Most everyone runs into this sort of problem at first, and with practice, you get better at seeing the forest through the trees.

One concrete strategy is to skip the small steps and to assume the details in them are true.  You can verify those details after you understand the main ideas.  Of course, you still need the skill of telling apart the small details from the important ideas.  Same goes for research -- you can make a big plan of attack and assume the details will work out later, and then if the big plan succeeds, you can go back and do the detailed calculations carefully.  Here, what is needed is intuition about what "should be true if worked out."  But such intuitions take time and practice to develop.


How do I ask professors to give feedback on my online articles that are based on their work?

I will try to be honest. If I received an email from a random person with whom I had never interacted before, asking me to do work for free, without any recognizable institution/organization/group/... behind that person, then I would consider spam, no matter how well the email was formulated. Sorry.
Getting your name on a random website is not enough of a "reward". You have to convince people that investing time in your project is valuable to themselves and/or the community at large, not just that it "could improve [your] work". You also have to convince them that they are not going to sink time in a project that is eventually going to be wasted because it will never gain traction and it is managed by a one-person team that will eventually have other things on their mind.
Think about it this way: you are essentially asking people to conduct a kind of peer review. I would never accept to review papers for a journal run by a single person with no institutional support. This would simply be pointless: a paper published in such a journal has essentially no value, and my effort is almost certainly going to be wasted once the journal inevitably disappears.
I do not think you can "bootstrap" this kind of group project by contacting random unknown people. Start with your colleagues, your peers, your contacts, etc, insist on the importance of outreach once the project starts to take shape, and then let the network expand on its own. If it works then great, if it doesn't then you just had a nice idea but with no audience.


How to highlight my Master's thesis grade in CV

Great mark and well done! However, this is hard to mention without looking a little ostentatious as you say, so it's probably better to just include your overall degree result. Presumably if you got such a high mark for your thesis, you would have attained a distinction for your degree. If you did not do so and attained a pass or merit, and you include your thesis mark, this could raise questions as to why you ended up getting a lesser mark in your degree. If you did get a distinction overall - then congratulations - and that mark would speak for itself. If you really do want to include it, do so in the most minimalist way, such as Thesis - Thesis Title (9/10). Supervisor - Dr XX XXXX.


Is extra time on the GRE looked down upon?

ETS used to "flag" the scores of anyone who took the GRE under what they referred to as "non-standard test conditions". After an Americans With Disabilities Act lawsuit they settled and agreed to no longer flag scores, and according to their website:

  I heard that ETS is no longer flagging test scores that are reported to score recipients. Is this true?

  ETS has discontinued flagging almost all scores for tests that are
  taken with accommodations. For example, if a test taker receives
  additional time or extra breaks, the score will no longer be flagged
  in the report. In rare instances, ETS will flag the score report as a
  "nonstandard administration" only if the test is significantly
  altered.

This is true for other related tests, such as the GMAT. Note that this last line about "significantly altered" means some accommodation that requires a whole section to be removed, or the test to be heavily altered in some other way, and does not apply to just extra time or similarly regular adjustments.

A person seeking accommodations will still need to request them well in advance of the test from ETS, and will need to provide appropriate medical information in order for them to approve the request.


How can I start to write my final paper?

Getting started writing can be very hard—if it weren't, it wouldn't have a name: writer's block.

There are a lot of different strategies you could try:

Free writing. Just write anything that comes to your mind as you think about your topic. Don't worry about grammar or correctness or appropriateness or accuracy. Just put down something. (You can handwrite it or type it, as you see fit).
Mind map. Just put together a flow diagram showing how different things you want to write about are related.
Create an outline. Don't focus on writing the whole essay, or even whole paragraphs or sentences. Just try putting together a skeleton for what your essay should be like.

There are a lot of other ideas for how to cure writer's block, including walking or even spending time with people who make you feel comfortable.


Is it legal to audio or video tape professors while they are lecturing?

Requires permission.  In some locations, it is illegal to record anyone without their permission.  For what is legal in your location, consult a lawyer.


Is there any guide or organisation solution for increasing utilization of laboratory and lab equipment?

Unfortunately, the 37% capacity utilization number is essentially meaningless on its own, because it does not directly relate to the actual metric that one might wish to optimize.

When attempting to improve efficiency, it's important to have a precise understanding of what the ultimate metric is that it being maximized.  In a university research setting, the metric being maximized is not utilization of equipment, but rather something regarding research being accomplished and effective use of grant money.  To maximize such metrics, it's actually important that some equipment be idle some fraction of the time.

The problem is, research projects typically have highly uneven and unpredictable resource utilization profiles.  For example, my collaborators will often have 1-2 day bursts of flow cytometer use, in which they use a $200K machine for an hour or so every few hours, followed by a weeks-long gap while they prepare the next experiment.  It's very difficult to interleave usage during such bursts without distorting somebody's experimental plans, and an experiment may need to be started several days before the flow cytometer is first run.  Counterintuitively, this means that overall experimental efficiency demands that flow cytometers stand idle most of the time.

An even more extreme example is common tools like pipettes or screwdrivers: if anyone ever needs to spend more than a few seconds looking for such a tool, then operations are clearly inefficient.  As a professor of mine once told me: "If you can't just reach out and pick up the screwdriver you need, you don't have enough screwdrivers."  This means that such common tools must have exceedingly low capacity utilization in order to used efficiently as part of the larger workflow.

That same professor, on the other hand, now runs an operation in which an automated high-throughput mass spectrometer is carefully scheduled to run 24 hours a day, since it is the key high-value bottleneck of an entire pipeline.  In that case, efficiency means 100% utilization (but also that when they have grown enough, they will probably add another mass spectrometer).

Bottom line: if you want to improve efficiency, knowing the utilization of equipment is a useful starting point, but it can only be properly interpreted in terms of the larger workflow in which that equipment is used.


How can I create a sense of community in a research group?

Enthusiasm: Students in a lab should get the feeling that the professor is someone who shows as much interest and puts in as much hard work in the project as themselves. The professor may have a lot of credentials and experience, but his enthusiasm level must be the same as that of his students.
Emotional management: Sometime there could be students who lose their focus on research; at others, there could be slight rifts and differences in opinion between the professor and student because of their approach to the problem. There may also be problems within the students which could be distasteful. The professor must be mindful of these, try his best to ameliorate the situation and not let things go out of hand. Without getting smarmily personal, the professor must manage his lab as though it were his second family.
Ensuring good placement: Placement is not an indicator of research, but in reality, people use this record to gauge a lab's quality. The professor must build contacts and be willing to counsel and recommend their students to good places (each according to his ability, etc).
Good Results: The most important point. If students must feel a "sense of achievement from simply being part of the lab", then the output from the lab should be sensational. This involves a lot of man-management; knowing what each student is good at and how to get the best out of each one of them. Finally, though it may sound cliched, hard work is the key to good results.


Many universities now recognise that tertiary academic teaching can be taught as a scholarly subject. There is a growing body of research on the subject.

Similarly, tertiary institutions recognise that there has generally not been a requirement for academics (usually research-focused) to demonstrate any ability in teaching, nor are they exposed to any opportunities for training.

For this reason, many institutions (in the UK and Commonwealth, at least) offer a post-graduate diploma or certificate in Academic Practice. In such a course -- usually attended by research academics with a teaching component to their work -- students are exposed to current pedagogical theories.

My institution offers such a PGCert, and I am working my way through it now, with the support of my HoD. It's been pretty good, so far. See if your institution offers such a degree.

Bear in mind, I've seen this strategy -- institutions offering PGCerts in academic practice -- done very badly. Namely, staff are required to take the course, and pass. In the worst case, the quality of the teaching was poor.

I am pleased to say, that at my present institution, the teaching on the PGCert has been very good, the readings helpful, the exercises relevant. Your mileage may vary.

With respect to resources, I am generating an annotated bibliography of the readings (journal articles, books, etc) that we have been recommended for this course. If you are interested in this, I can share the link with you.


Should I write a paper on open-source software I've built?

I had faced this exact situations a few years ago. I had developed an open source project, which went pretty popular and started being used by many corporations across the globe. Since, I was looking for strengthening my presence in academia, I planned to write a paper on it and sent to a decent journal. The result was rejection with a plethora of useful comments and suggestions. It took me almost an year to publish that paper in a reputable conference.

So, the lessons learnt were (and possibly applicable to you as well)

The expectations of research tracks is not only that your thing just works, but you need to justify how and why it works
There should be results (mostly analytical), to demonstrate that your technique works and hence can be used by other people referring/reading it.
You need to answer why your work is important and what it contributes to the field
Moreover, most conferences have or accept papers from industrial or application tracks, where you can describe your work in an implementation centric way (possibly giving you some leverage from nuances of research papers as mentioned above)


Getting reference letter from professors whom I took their class-should I make any impression except my grade?

If you are still in contact with these professors, visit them now and let them know your plans and that you will ask them for letters in a year. This way they know what is happening and can also give you any advice they think relevant. A conversation would be best (not emails) as they get to ask you a few questions if necessary. So, the first option in your last paragraph is best, I think.
It is risky to rely on the memory of professors. We are a forgetful lot for many things.


Teaching visual tools for visually impaired students?

There are physical devices that permit the blind to feel three dimensional graphs. Do a search for something like "haptic graphing device for visually impaired" to see some of the possibilities. They aren't cheap, of course. One of the most interesting, I think, is one designed at Stanford University.
A simpler Braille printer might be adapted to make 2-D graphs, but may not work for 3-D.
Three Dimensional printers are a possibility provided that you have enough preparation time for creation of the models. They tend to be rather slow.
There are also haptic feedback gloves that might be adapted.


How do people who are not active in the academic community write papers? Is it possible?

It is possible.  After years away from graduate school, I am working on several papers, covering both old and new topics.  However, it is very hard to do it completely alone.

I have the benefit of some contacts acquired through one of the forums on StackExchange.  They are willing to spend a limited amount of time (say half an hour a month, to within two orders of magnitude) in email correspondence with me, to receive drafts from me (but not necessarily referee: just skim for a few minutes and find more egregious aspects which they kindly point out), and most importantly, endorse me for posting on ArXiv.  Before the endorsement, I spent some time convincing them I wouldn't be a drain, that I could help them out, and that I might hope for a favor regarding endorsement, literature search, and so on.  Realize that from their perspective, I could be a potential crank or downside on their career, as I have given them almost no verifiable information on what little credentials I have.  I consider their involvement as a gift, and treat it with care.

With their minimum involvement, I now can post results on the ArXiv, and use that as a stepping stone to loftier research goals.  Since your express purpose is to produce research for others to read, you need three things: the research, the others, and a means to get the research to the others.  Getting to know one or two of the "others" is key.  Getting them by being helpful on this and other fora is one of the easiest routes I know for this step, but there are other methods.  There may be other repositories besides the ArXiv which may help you more, but I don't know of them; ask the "others" for advice, and respect their time.  The research part, that's your problem, again with which "others" might be able to help.


Should we transition to making our conference online or postpone?

Great question; however, I don't think there is any consensus opinion as to how good online conferences are.

You might, however, read this blog post by Daniel Litt. He was an organizer of the Western Algebraic Geometry Online conference, held via Zoom this April. It was quite large, with around a thousand participants, and in my opinion very successful.

In his blog post he discusses what went well, what went less well, and what the organizers tried to achieve. In summary, the organizers weren't able to replicate everything good about an in-person conference, but overall they succeeded in creating a very valuable experience for the participants.


Asking for the second/third recommendation letter, should I tell the referee he is writing the third letter?

This answer basically echoes the comment of Andreas Blass.

I agree that calling it the "third letter" may offend the professor, so I wouldn't use that phrasing.  But the general idea of acknowledging that the scope of the letter will be limited, and that you have other letters as well, seems fine.

  Dear Professor A,

  I am applying to grad schools, and I wondered if you would be willing to write me a letter of recommendation.  I know that the only course I took with you was BASK 301, and so I understand that your letter would only really be able to discuss my work in that course.  But if you feel you would be able to write a strong letter on that basis, I would greatly appreciate it.

  I am also requesting letters from Professors B and C, who will be able to write about my [other coursework / research / internship / relevant skills / etc], so I feel that between the three of you, a committee will be able to get a broad sense of my record.

  If you are willing, the letters would be needed starting on [date].

  Many thanks!

  Sincerely, etc.

If the course involved particular elements that you think would be helpful to discuss in the letter (e.g. a project on which you thought you did noteworthy work), then you can mention those specifically.


I found out my master's thesis topic has already been done (exactly), and my advisor didn't mention this when suggesting it to me - how to proceed?

Note that there is no way anyone knows about your precise situation, except you and your advisor, so I am making some wild guesses on what actually happened.

Perhaps your advisor is hoping to have an efficient implementation of the ideas / algorithms already expressed on the past paper, with the notion that he (or you and him) may later build on your implementation to create something new. In order to create anything new, you have to compare with existing approaches and therefore you still have to implement previous methods. He has given you two options a) Try to expand the ideas of the past paper b) If you cannot do that, just creating a NEW implementation of the original paper is enough for him. This is a MSc thesis and not all MSc theses lead to publishable results. But it still seems like an important project and as such, it seems it could still turn out to be a good MSc thesis and you will have a lot to learn from it.

So, your main problem is that you think that you cannot expand the original paper to new directions. But if you want to do research this is exactly what you are going to have to do. You should find a topic that interests you ("my supervisor gave a research plan exactly about what i want to do"), study previous literature (which you should have done before choosing the topic) and then expand on previous ideas. Note that since you have worked in industry, you may as well be a better programmer than those 2 PHD students and therefore your implementation might be much more efficient than theirs. This is still a significant contribution which may eventually be published.

My advice:

Talk to your advisor and state your doubts and clarify the situation.
Implement the paper's ideas as fast and efficient as possible
Compare your implementation with the paper's results. You should at least aim for a more efficient implementation
Check related literature that cites this paper. Is this paper, still state-of-the-art? Is this paper cited by anyone? This will show if this project has been picked up by anyone. If it is not, it is reasonable that your advisor wants to build upon the previous paper to further expand it. If someone has extended it or applied it to other use-cases, your assumption that it cannot be improved is wrong and you should think what you can do to further expand it. Either way, you will have an answer about how to proceed.
Think of any other possible improvements, what else could be done better, in a more efficient way or how this idea could be used in other use-cases.

Also, you have learnt a valuable lesson. What you want to do in research should correlate with what is already been done. You should study previous research very carefully and exhaustively. If you believe that previous works have already done everything to perfection (which BTW is rarely the case) then you should choose a new topic. Otherwise you are the one that should think what can be improved. I think you pretty much expected that your advisor had a new research idea waiting just for you and all you needed to do was just to implement it. But this was really an unrealistic expectation on your part.


As a graduate student I had to grade exams for the courses my supervisor taught. We had a very intricate system of establishing what would be a passing grade:

Prepare a set of questions.
Let all the Teaching Assistants (TAs) solve the problems, keeping track of how long they took for each question.
Distribute an arbitrary number of points over the questions relative to how much time, on average, was spent on each question by the TAs.
Let the students take the exam.

Let me be very explicit that until this point, no grading scale has been established!

Mark the exams. This just consisted of going through the questions and assigning points for correct solutions, partially correct solutions, etc... Every question was marked by a different TA and this TA was free to distribute points as he/she saw best. Usually we would go through a pile of 10-20 exams, see how the problems were solved, e.g. what pitfalls were encountered or how far most people got, and then establish a scheme we would use for the rest of the exams.
Every TA hands in an exact description of how they marked their question, i.e. how points were assigned.
With this list, go through the questions one by one and decide what constituted the minimum requirement in each question. This decision was signed-off by my supervisor.
Using the marking schemes written by the TAs, calculate how many points the minimum requirements would have given if they had been handed in as an exam.
The number of points for the minimum requirements constitute a passing grade. Anything below that fails, anything above that passes.

In my university, grades were on a scale from 1 (fail), over 4 (pass), to 6 (perfect) in steps of 0.25 grade points. This gives us three grades to map zero, the minimum requirement, and the maximum number of points to respectively. This can be fitted to a function $G(p) = ap^2 + bp + c$ which maps points $p$ to a grade $G(p)$.

The advantage of this approach is that it is, in principle, independent of the TAs specific style of marking, as the marking is taken into account when computing the minimum requirement points. It is also completely non-competitive in that it's independent of the students' actual performance during the exam. To make sure our decisions were sound, my supervisor and I would go through the 10 exams just below and just above the passing grade and see if they were all clear pass/fails. They usually all were. When not, it was usually just a matter of tweaking the rounding.

There is an open question regarding the amount of time given to the students, e.g. is it possible for them to solve all the questions, and thus is the mapping of maximum points to maximum grade justified? Here we played it safe by choosing only a few questions to make sure nobody would run out of time. The point is that if you do or don't know how to solve a problem, time won't be an issue. We also had two-hour exams, which gave the students ample time to show what they could, and what they couldn't do.

This system also works if you're the only person marking all the exams.

I would be very interested if anybody could suggest improvements or detect amendable flaws in this scheme, as it is what I plan to use myself, now that I'm a lecturer.


What are you studying at university? Are you doing what you really want to be doing? Are you passionate about the subject?

There's no magic to becoming motivated. You personally have to want it. If you don't then you'll find the next 3-4 years of your life gruelling, potentially meaning you don't do as well in exams because you're not as bothered eventually coming out with a degree in a subject that you don't necessarily want to pursue.

If you aren't motivated then you need to consider why. Is university for you, is the subject for you? Its never too late to switch path and do something else if you realise that that is the case.


What is a delicate way of identifying key insiders?

Let me just emphasize one thing: there are very few objectively good advisors/mentors. It really depends on both the mentor and the student’s personality. Some prefer a more hands on approach while others like to be independent. Some are motivated by harsh criticism while others need a more gentle approach.

To conclude, I think what you’d want to ask is more “what is Professor A like?” rather than whether they’re good/bad mentors.


PhD Length: are shorter PhD degrees (from different countries) valued differently in other counter countries where PhD Is a longer process?

As far as I have ever seen, the length of your PhD program is irrelevant as far as considerations of future employers, etc. People (in academia) will mostly look at your publications, and possibly reference letters and reputation of your supervisor(s)/university. In particular, in all cases I know of seniority/age limits for grants count from date that your PhD was issued. (The only exception I have seen to this is the seniority limit for junior (W1) professors in Germany, which is some cases include your experience during your PhD, but this is state (Bundesland) dependent I believe.)

In some cases, your time as a PhD may (or may not) count as relevant work experience. In Germany, for example, this can factor into the determination of your salary scale, and the length of time that you can be employed under fixed term contracts.

Since one of the primary criteria by which freshly minted PhDs are judged for post-doc positions, is their publication output, as short PhD program can put you at a competitive disadvantage compared to PhDs coming from longer programs due to have less high quality publications out by the time you are applying (which also will have had less time to make an impact). A knowledgeable selection committee may account for this, but that is not guaranteed.


One week to go in the final PhD submission and I have lost the will to work on it. Help!

I agree  with lostsoul29, but I will add a couple of additional thoughts as that answer did not address all aspects of your question.

For your neck pain, I recommend using Tiger Balm (specifically, the patches rather than the goop which can be messy).  After writing much of my master's thesis on a laptop while sitting on a couch, I developed "military neck," or a loss of the natural curvature in my neck.  The pain made it so hard to sit at the computer b/c that's what aggravated it most. I get chiropractic care for that and have had success there, but for you, you need an immediate solution and, as I said, Tiger Balm.
Remove your TV.  Sounds like this is your crutch.  It's easy, it's there and when the volume is loud enough you can momentarily ignore the stress you're feeling.  Maybe you can simply unplug it to make turning it on a more conscious decision, but I would go so far as to ask a friend to store it at their apartment for the time being.  This may sound dramatic, but it's extremely effective.
Go for a run, or some sort of vigorous cardiac exercise. Take just 1/10th of the time you've been watching TV and exercise instead (that is, you clearly have the time so that is not an excuse).  Not only is this a great way to increase blood flow to your brain and help clear the fog, it will help with your neck pain as well.  That was the only other thing that helped mine (besides Tiger Balm and, eventually, getting treatment).
Be kind to yourself.  So you took a couple days off? Big deal.  Do not be mean or self degrading.  Move on.  Do not think about how much there is to get done, just do the next thing. And then after that, do the next thing. Rinse and repeat. When you start that negative inner dialogue try stopping it quickly. My mantra is something like, "that thought doesn't serve me well, let's move on." When I start thinking of the next 5 things I have to do, I think, "just do the next thing," repeatedly as a way of focusing me on the task at hand. These might seem cheesy, but I find them effective, and you may need them if you follow through on step 3 and no longer have your TV to drown out your inner dialogue.

This answer is based on my own experiences being in your position.  I am terrible procrastinator so, sadly, I have lots of experience in this department. Wishing you the best of luck!


Is it correct for a PhD holder to sign as "Dr. J. Doe, PhD"?

There are two important points to note about name markers that refer to academic titles:

You can have more than one of these markers in your name: Kay Doe, PhD, MD indicates a person who is both a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of medicine.
The marker Dr. can very often be used as a variant of the post-positioned markers. If both of them are equivalent markers in your country, you can choose either marker to refer to your academic title.

These two observations make the suggested name form Dr. Kay Doe, PhD rather ambiguous.

Does it refer to a person with two doctor titles because there are two markers? Or do both markers refer to just one doctor title? But if so, why is that doctor referred to twice in one name? This may even lead to suspicion: Does the name bearer use two markers which refer to the same  title with the intention to sound more impressive than their academic distinction actually warrants?

This ambiguity is avoided if you use only one title marker per title.


How much effort do researchers take to publish their source code?

This isn't a peer-reviewed article, but nonetheless it's worth linking to because it specifically addresses your question, albeit as an n=1 case:

Bruna, E. 2014 THE OPPORTUNITY COST OF MY #OPENSCIENCE WAS 36 HOURS + $690

In this blog post, a biologist Emilio Bruna states it took about 25 hours of his time to appropriately document his code (associated with a research paper) to make it good enough for open source release on github.


Applying deferment after offered admission for second time

If you have already been offered the position and it isn't contingent on the training, then just accept. You may miss "the training" for now, but that doesn't close you off from learning the material later.

There is no guarantee that the first university will ever get the job done and you have little influence and no control over that.

Note, I'm assuming here that you are the recipient of the training, not the trainer who is being depended on by others.


Is it customary to be reimbursed for travel to a PhD interview day?

If the invitation did not specify that you'll be reimbursed, then assume that you won't.


Modified picture based on three different sources - citations needed?

It depends on what kind of information you are adapting from original pictures.

If original picture has some very well accepted content in field which you are adapting, you can modify it and use it in your figure. In that case you don't need to give citations. For example, if you are using symbols used in original figures which are well accepted in field, you can use without citing original source.

In contrast, if picture has some new content or some unique concept which you are adapting then you should acknowledge it. For example, if original figure is showing some unique symbol which is output of their new research or imagination, then you should acknowledge it.

However it is always best practice to cite all images from which you have adapted content.


My professor uploaded an unsigned recommendation

I wouldn't worry too much about it.

We're currently in a transitional state between a world of paper documents and a world of electronic documents, and the conventions for digital signatures haven't really converged yet. As such, some people sign on paper and scan, some sign digitally, and some don't sign at all.  If you're dealing with a large institution, they've probably seen it all, and are unlikely to hold it against you.  After all, even if it was signed, what's the likelihood they would actually know what your professor's signature looks like?


I have a bachelors and masters in a non-STEM field and am currently in a CS PhD program. I had a similar constraint that I could not afford a CS masters degree and wanted to go directly into a research PhD. You seem like you're in a good enough position to just apply now, but given my non-STEM background, here's what I did:

I took online courses such as Algorithms, Automata, Databases, and Machine Learning. I did all the assignments and took detailed notes. I'd suggest you look into Deep Learning since neural machine translation is a hot area.
I put everything I coded on GitHub. I made sure my code was clean, organized, and well-commented. This was primarily for employers—I'm not sure if grad schools care—, but I had to pay the bills while teaching myself on nights and weekends.
I held a couple of programming-related jobs, starting as a software developer at a startup and ending as a research software developer in a bioinformatics lab. The first kind of job is good for getting your foot in the door and the second is good for publications—you might already be set on the latter.
Because of the above job, I curated my application for ML + computational biology tracks in CS departments. Cross-disciplinary labs are nice because no one knows everything and everyone brings something to the table. For reference, one professor at another school told me that he wanted to accept me but was worried about my background. This lab was extremely focused, and the school expected me to start research in that area on day one. I interviewed twice but didn't get in. I think where you apply is probably the most important variable, provided you have a solid application.
I applied to 8 schools and was only accepted by 1. Just FYI.

Good luck.


How to contact Researchers once you are accepted

Most major graduate institutions, including Cornell, have extensive written materials that lay out how some of these things are done in a specific program. For example, waiting 1 year to join a research group sounds like a long time for me, but apparently it is normal for your institution (maybe normal for physics in general).

For Cornell Physics, see their handbook at http://physics.cornell.edu/sites/physics/files/Yellow-Book-Revised-July-2013.pdf and the rest of their graduate website at http://physics.cornell.edu/graduate

Verbatim from the 'yellow book':

  As to research, students should, during the first year of graduate work, spur themselves (and be
  encouraged by the faculty) to find out about some of the Cornell research going on around them.
  By the summer following the first year they should associate themselves personally with the
  research of some professor or research group, even if this association is only temporary. The
  normal time for a reasonably firm commitment for a Ph.D. thesis area, and for such an
  understanding with a supervising professor, is at about the end of the second year.

You may certainly approach professors who you may want to work with during and after acceptance into the program. I am not sure what the funding norms are in physics in terms of how far in advance professors know they will be able to take on a student, but I see no reason why it would hurt to contact professors you are interested in working with as part of the application process and decision to accept admission if granted.

Cornell offers visits to prospective Ph.D students: http://physics.cornell.edu/prospective-graduate-students#plan-a-visit which includes meeting with professors, presumably who you would be interested in working with.

It doesn't seem like a visit is necessary just based on what I see on their website (and I would expect this sort of thing is normally done before acceptance, maybe you have even already done this), but you could certainly manage a more informal visit via email, particularly if travel is a hardship.


Is it possible to apply for a second masters degree in a different field of study? (different department)

It's always possible to apply, whether you will be accepted is a different matter. The best thing to do is to speak to the academic who is the programme director (or similar title), explain that you are interested in applying for the course and see what they say. They will know what the general rules are as well as being able to provide specific guidance. The fact that your current masters degree is in a related subject (different department, but probably the same faculty) means it should be considered relevant.

I applied for a MA in Classics & Ancient History after getting a BSc in Computer Science, and then went back to do an MPhil in Computer Science, so it is possible to move subjects.


What are the potential pitfalls of putting a PhD on hold to be employed by the university?

I don't know your field, so my answer might be wrong.

It seems to me that taking this opportunity runs the risk of a small lifetime earnings hit (since there's a good chance that it means you would spend an extra year at PD salary rather than TT or industry salary), but that beyond that it would only help you career-wise.  Especially since this year wouldn't count against your clock.  That is, compared to your peers graduating at the same time as you, you'll have more experience, more publications, and experience with more projects.


Coadvisor assigning seemingly superfluous tasks

These calculations are not particularly difficult

If this is true, make this calculation more efficient by, for instance, writing a program or software macro to handle them. When the supervisor asks again, give a due date that is longer than the time he actually needs to do that task. For instance, it takes 1 hour, and after automation it'd take 15 minutes. Tell her 1.5 to 2.0 hours. The earlier stage they are in, the more he can over-estimate the required time to get some breathing room for other tasks pertinent to his study.

He can also consider teaching other people of her lab or team to do the calculation. Make a brief instruction presentation and teach all of them to do it. She may be less likely to call on him again.

The way I dealt with mine may not be the ideal for him: I usually just do the tasks even it may mean some of my research time is reduced. For instance, I spent time writing proposal, making and checking others' presentations and abstracts, training graduate students, etc. just to help my supervisor. For i) if my supervisor is not stressed, our lives are easier, and ii) after looking at my supervisor's overall workload, I just couldn't help but wanted to help. I wanted to aspire to be a graduate student who can take care of own's stuff and with some leftover effort to help. And till now I am still glad that I did.


Can we include a class or mathematical representation of a class coded in Python on a research paper/case study in field of energy

The comment about pseudocode was correct.
Here's one example of how to pseudocode an iterative algorithm without going into a lot of implementation details.
Here's another example from a well known iterative algorithm
I've seen other styles that are just as good - whatever you're comfortable writing that someone who's never seen your algorithm can understand is fine.


This suggestion is totally "off the wall" and "outside the box", but the underlying idea is that you broaden your perspective. I'm assuming a few things. First, you are at a top institution. Next, you are a top student - you are obviously dedicated. Next, you aren't alone and there are at least a few of you in the same circumstance.

Consider forming your own "research group". Become its leader. Find a faculty member who will give you a problem to work on and maybe give you occasional ideas on your progress. The commitment of the faculty member can be minimal and your research discussions are mostly among group members. Find someone, maybe even a postdoc, who can give you some ideas about research process in your field.

But if four of you approach a professor it is a different sort of thing than going alone. A junior professor might be an especially good "target".

Try to have your group meet a couple of times a week to share ideas and what insights anyone has.

Produce a group report at the end of some period of time, even if it only discusses directions, not successes. You can even discuss failures, since it was learning that was important and it is just as good to know what doesn't work as what does in many cases. Offer the report to some faculty member and ask for comment.

This will have two benefits. One is that it should enable you to learn something about research process even if it comes with small progress. Knowing how to go about research is an important skill in many fields and it is good to get some practice at it. But having formed such a group is, itself, a big plus when it comes to talking about grad school application.


Should I list declined fellowships/grants on my CV?

This depends largely on (like what Buffy commented) the circumstances and the grant. In my opinion, the circumstances may include where you are in your career. I see graduate students state declined fellowships on their CV relatively often, but I rarely see it on the CVs of professors who usually have enough (and usually more impressive) things on their CV.

But in terms of the grants, consider this example of the two of the most prestigious general graduate fellowships: the NSF GRP and the Ford Fellowship.
Both offer honorable mentions. It's pretty common to see graduate students state on their CVs that they got an honorable mention. However, suppose that a student received both the NSF GRP and Ford Fellowship in the same year. Because the Ford Fellowship prohibits one from having additional fellowships simultaneously, the student decides to decline the Ford Fellowship and accept the NSF GRP and reap the benefits of a much higher annual stipend as well. Should this student not state on their CV that they were accepted for the Ford Fellowship? What about a student who got the NSF GRP but only an honorable mention for the Ford Fellowship? Should this student be able to list both awards on their CV? It doesn't make sense (in my opinion) that the prior student should not be able to list the declined Ford Fellowship while the latter student should be able to list an honorable mention for the Ford Fellowship when an acceptance is clearly better than an honorable mention (discounting all the minority statuses that Ford takes into consideration).

However, that example was for two very prestigious fellowships. For minor grants/awards like travel grants, listing declined grants can be seen as 'padding the CV' since many travel grants/awards can be based on lottery rather than merit.

To sum it up, if the fellowship or grant is very prestigious, I see no reason as to why you shouldn't have a declined offer on your CV. However, if the fellowship or grant is minor or small, and your CV is already riddled with other awards or grants, then consider how it may be padding your CV with relatively trivial things that distract the reader from the more important fellowships/awards/grants. It's similar to why graduate students should consider deleting their undergraduate research symposium poster presentations from their CV as they progress in their academic career...


Your mental health is the most important factor in this equation. PhD's are hard, and demotivating, and exhausting. But the best PhD is a completed PhD! It sounds like you've got everything you need to finish, you just need to full together the threads that make up a thesis.

Often people get most of the way through a PhD and have not taken a holiday in years. When was the last time you took a holiday or just some time off?

Make a plan of exactly what is needed to finish. What are your publication requirements? Structure out what the thesis will look like and define any loose ends that need to be finished. Make a list of these things and plan out - week-by-week when you want these completed by. If the end is in sight, you'll find that motivation will return - like a marathon running who has hit the wall but can see light at the end of a tunnel. These feelings are so natural - almost everyone I know who did a PhD experienced it!

And with regards to you thinking your thesis is mediocre at best. EVERYONE thinks that! I'm not going to tell you that it's better (because I don't know). But statistically, half of PhD graduates wrote a thesis that is average or worse than average. I know mine certainly was! Who cares? If you do enough to pass, then it really doesn't matter. And the saving grace is that very few people will ever read and understand the thesis enough to work that out!

You've got this! Remember to prioritise a good work-life balance as in the long run, it will serve you far more effectively than if you crammed for the next year!


Finding graduate programs supporting a specific research focus

Three easy suggestions:

Look for advisors, not programs.  It's unlikely that any department is going to have a separate program, or even a separate research group, with your particular focus.   Look for authors of papers that you've read about financial systems and machine learning.  (You have read such papers, haven't you?)  Then look at the authors they cite, and the authors that cite them.
Don't limit yourself to computer science departments.  If you do good research, nobody cares what department is listed on your diploma.  (And if you don't plan to do good research, you don't really want a PhD.)  Lots of faculty and students in non-CS departments do excellent computer science research.
Ask your faculty mentors.  After working at six universities, you've built a large professional academic network; exploit it!  Your faculty colleagues will be considerably more familiar with programs in their (and your) particular focus than Random Strangers on the Internet.


When the title of an article is printed differently in the front/back matter versus the first page, which should be used for citing the article?

Without sufficient reputation, I cannot post this as a comment; so here we go in an answer... I apologise!
'Beweis einer Baudetschen Vermutung' is orthographically incorrect, as 'Baudetschen' is an adjective and should therefore be written using a lowercase 'b' as 'baudetschen'. If this adjective, however, is derived from a name, it can be written as 'Baudet'schen' to emphasise it origin from the name 'Baudet'.
We can conclude that the title of the article itself is correct, whilst front and back matter are incorrect. The title of the book 'Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde' does not look German to me (the cover lists Amsterdam and Groningen, two cities in the Netherlands), and indicates that is was not necessarily compiled by editors sufficiently proficient in German.
So this problem is actually not comparable to the potentially related question mentioned by OP and in the comments, as this book has a misspelling solely in its table of content, but not the article itself. Therefore I suggest to just quote the article by its correct title 'Beweis einer Baudet'schen Vermutung' and not to copy the editors' mistake 'Beweis einer Baudetschen Vermutung'.


During the defense, how to prove the method I used in my master thesis is correct?

This is not something you should get to your defense with your advisor still doubting. You and he need to sit down ASAP, work through the material, and not stop until he is satisfied. I would would hope that he would be willing to take this very seriously. No advisor should let a thesis go to a public defense with this kind of question looming in their mind. No one should be forced to do a defense that their advisor thinks they're not ready for.


NSF proposal dwell time during COVID19 pandemic

I have heard from a colleague for an NSF DUE that it has been 8 months and they have not received any news yet.


How to express appreciation for an offer of science research funding

I received your offer for research funding. While I am honored and
  greatly appreciate your offer, I must regrettably decline as I have
  accepted another source of funding.

  Thank you for your kind consideration.

  [salutation, like Sincerely]

  [signed]

Keep it simple, short, polite, and professional. If you are in a country where overstatement is important, throw in a "very" and/or a "deeply" to conform to your norms.

You might want something more personal only if someone was literally offering to write you a personal check to pay for your research out of their own account. Otherwise accepting/declining an offer (and applying to multiple programs which all have the same deadlines) is the norm - so don't worry about it.

Simple, short, polite, and professional.


Is it possible to change PhD department, but keep supervisor if he has joint appointment in the other department?

Definitely talk to your advisor first. While I doubt that continuity of funding will be an issue, there could be other ones:

your advisor should be allowed to advise students in BME (sometimes 'joint appointments don't by default come with the ability to be the advisor for a student). You may need to get a co-advisor in BME (or not: it depends on the rules)
you may need to formally reapply. There might even be the possibility that you are rejected (but I'd be very surprised if that happened). It's usually never the case that you can just switch between departments. This also means that there will be deadlines, paperwork and possibly even some fees.
since you're in the first year in grad school, committee composition is not an issue, but for someone later on in the program that could be a problem as well.

Your advisor will/should know the answer to some of these questions and the BME administrative staff (graduate advisor or equivalent) will know the rest.


How to ask for recommendation letter from someone already knew me?

In my experiences, emails are a formal kind of communication, so it shouldn't hurt to compose and format formally.
Depending on how well you know each other, the "introduction" can be as long as an attached curriculum vitae or as short as a line of "I am Jon Doe".
If you've contacted that person in just a month and a half (which is quite short), you can go brief in this part and just say "I'm Jon Doe" and continue on describing your desires (tell them you want a reference letter). Try to correctly evaluate their familiarity with you - not every professor remembers their course students that well, in which case you may still want to include more details, up to a complete copy of your CV.
In addition, for these kinds of emails (requesting work or help from others), I prefer to err on the side of safety by being professional.
The last time I asked a professor for a recommendation letter around half a year ago, in a very similar situation to you. I attended courses from this professor and participated in contests and won good prizes (where all teammates were MSc students in his lab). I had not worked in research projects in his lab. I ended up writing my request email like this:

Dear Prof. Jon Doe,
I am iBug. I'm applying for a plumber at Super Mario Bro's Institution and I'm looking for a referral letter.
I attended your courses [course A] and [course B] and received grades of A+ and A, respectively. I also took part in [example competition] in a team and won the 1st prize. My full CV is attached in this email, too.
I'd be very glad if you can write a letter for me. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
iBug

Be sure to change specific wording / sentences according to your situations.


Is it possible for the international graduate student to take the exam of professional courses?

if you are in Japan, there are many people that go to Guam to take the CPA. Essentially anybody can do it, but if you graduate from an American University, there are some modules that you do not need to take, pretty much like the Japanese CPA.


I agree that this is generally a bad sign, especially your number 2, but I would add a "but" to this answer.

When the language used for teaching at the University is not English, situation number 1 can arise. Some department have a hard time recruiting and keeping researchers that are willing to learn a second language and teach in it.

Another way to evaluate the quality of the department would be to look at the collaboration they have with other institutions and the scientific literature they produce (among other things).


Can I say I'm undecided yet in my statement of purpose ? (PhD in math)

Generally in the US you don't need to choose an advisor when you start Doctoral study. Therefore, having a firm idea about a concentration, research focus, is less important than in some other places. But giving the admissions people some idea will give the a better way to think about how you might fit in.

What I would do, in your case, is to say you are undecided, but currently focused on X and Y, where X and Y are a couple of things you know a lot about. It narrows the focus a bit without limiting you in any way. But, having an MS means that you will want to get started on research pretty soon after arrival and so will need to choose an advisor, unless you want to risk having one chosen for you (a bad idea, generally).

However, taking a deep dive into some narrow subfield of math doesn't limit your choices for ever. You will need to focus until you earn the degree, but then the view can open again for you if you want.

It is probably ok to be a bit undecided as long as you aren't chaotic random.

Note that this is a US specific answer. It wouldn't be the same in some other places.


Professor stopped replying to my e-mails about lab positions

Many professors regularly receive 2-3 such email requests every day. The likeliest reason for the professor ignoring your email is that they thought your CV wasn’t impressive enough and decided to not follow up with the hope that you’ll get the hint.

That may not be the only reason though. Could be that they’re traveling (especially if it’s summer), could be that your subsequent emails went to spam, could be that other interns were selected, could be that they forgot.

If you want to get someone’s attention I suggest avoiding mass generic emails (they’re obvious and I ignore them). Try to show interest in the work. Perhaps send your thoughts about a specific project you’d like to be a part of. You’re competing for someone’s time: try to show why you’re worth it.


Theoretical paper without implementation and results

There is an academic field called theoretical computer science (TCS), which lies at the border of math and CS.  There are lots of venues for work in this area.  However the motto for TCS is certainly not "We couldn't do the implementation, so we decided to make it theoretical"!  I am by no means an expert in TCS (I know just a little more than absolute zero), but I don't think that computer networks is a key TCS topic: it sounds more applied than that.  (I just checked this wikipedia article, which seems to largely support my position.  Obviously an expert opinion would be better here.)

My advice to you is to find someone else to help you with the implementation / experimental part so that you can carry out your research along the lines you originally envisaged and not theoretically-as-a-consolation-prize.  How can you do this?  You could (try the things at the top of the list first):

Ask people in your department.  Even if they do not have the skills themselves, there are more of them than you so the chances they know someone who does will increase.
Ask about it on the internet, including various SE sites.
Attend relevant conferences and seek out people with this expertise.
Visit another department and/or a specific person whom you think can help.
Write up a preliminary version of your work which only does the theoretical part and makes clear that you are looking for someone to help with the implementation.  Post this work on your webpage / the arxiv / some (presumably not top tier) conference.


Let me encourage you to think more broadly and longer term. Contributing to math and science, even in the purest of pure fields, is a contribution to humanity. The effects may not be seen for a long time, but they will come.
If you think too narrowly then you may choose a problem that is intractable and you won't find a solution (though something may come of it later, after you've left the scene).
The obvious answer to your direct question would be to study applied math and/or something in, say, zero emissions power generation. Nuclear Fusion power would be a benefit, of course, at the moment.
But longer term, think of the contributions of Newton and Leibniz to the creation of the Calculus. It was pretty useless at the time, but enables much of engineering today. I worked in a field like that. It was so esoteric that I predicted at the time that no one would ever find a practical use for it. Well, guess what? About ten years later someone told me that my thesis work had been applied.
My advice is to choose something interesting and do a good job of extending knowledge in that area. If it is applied in some way, fine. If not, then eventually it will be. And pick something for which you will get good faculty support as you get started.
Another example is the Standard Model in physics. Hardly anything is more pure or theoretical than that. There are a few known holes in it, which if plugged will give a better idea of how "Life, the Universe, and Everything" actually works. Over time, that should lead to tremendous advances in, well, life, the universe, and everything.
To continue my advice, in working on what you love, provided you have the opportunity, as not many do, and you find some opportunity to do something practical and short term with what you and your colleagues know, then take it on as a project, or encourage others to do so.


Hostile interview process feedback-- what should I have done?

You said it was a joint appointment. Not because of the email but because of the lack of people at the Education department meeting-- I don't think you would have gotten the job no matter what you did.

In future, you could have waited it out, but I don't think you harmed anything by leaving the process early.  It sounds like half the hiring people wanted you, but the other half didn't. The email was probably just a mistake.

To sum up, you couldn't have done anything to change the people not showing up or the email mistake.  Sending nice emails to people you did meet with might improve your chances for a future appointment.


There are absolutely ways to do this.

First, if you feel like they genuinely helped in some way, the acknowledgements section is perfectly appropriate - this need not necessarily be serious. For example, I ended up thanking my mother-in-law for spending some time talking to me about how certain aspects of what she does work, along with Stack Overflow and the folks who make Dr. Pepper.

Many thesis documents also include a dedication, which is much more personal. For example, mine read:

  To my parents, for teaching me to ask questions, and to $WIFE for seeing this through with patience, love and understanding.


Ethics of soliciting letters for US permanent residency application?

For me, the key criterion is "do I know the person through shared endeavor" e.g. having studied or worked together for a reasonable period of time.

If there has been no previous contact i.e. a stranger, I would NOT respond at all to a request for a support letter.

As a possible comparison, a stranger asks you to guarantee a bank loan for them ...  most people can see where that one will lead...


How applicable are software engineering internships to computer science research and graduate school?

You are correct that research experience is extremely valuable for getting into graduate programs.  Internships are one way of gaining such experience, but far from the only way.  At a high-ranked university, however, there will also be lots of opportunities with professors, both during the term and in the summers, and those will be at least as applicable, if not more so, for getting into graduate school.  Industry experience as a full-time employee can be great for showing maturity and various skills not typically acquired during undergraduate, but frankly, you're not going to develop a significant and differentiating amount of such skills in a couple months as an intern either.

In short: no, you don't need industry experience to get into graduate school.


What fraction of STEM PhD graduates end up in jobs that require a PhD?

STEM is a big place.

For  physics, APS reports that 47% of new PhDs go into a Post-doc, 38% take a potentially-permanent position (usually in industry), and only 4% are unemployed. This suggests that at least 86% of physics PhDs are using their PhD. Some of these post-docs won't convert to academic positions, but they are unlikely to end up unemployed.

It's true that some of these industry jobs don't require a PhD, but they are generally preferred, plus they usually count as being worth 5-10 years of experience. So I think it's fair to count the industry jobs as "using" the PhD.

In other sciences, things are different. In chemistry, ACS reports that 14% of new PhDs are unemployed. On the other hand, 94% report that their job is related to their PhD (so, something does not add up).

In psychology, only 63% are "working full time" (it does not specify on what), but that does not count the 24% who are "working on post-doctorates" (?). Further, 54.4% of the employed PhDs claim that "doctorate in psychology [was] important" to finding their job, with another 24% saying it was helpful.

See also this  article.

My personal experience as a PhD in industry who is involved in hiring is that there is a huge shortage for US citizens with a STEM PhD and useful skills. By the way, "useful" skills might not mean what you think it means -- even abstract math, statistics, thermodynamics, game theory, etc. can be highly useful if you're willing to apply it to real-world technology.


Maximum number of recommendation letters for assistant professor position

When reading references committee members evaluate them based on different evaluation criteria. Some place a lot of weight on the worst opinion voiced. In that respect, having more references than needed is a risky prospect. Another point to note is that you’re never 100% sure that all your referees write the most enthusiastic letter possible. For example, they have a student on the job market at the same time.

In my experience, additional letters carry little benefit and potentially expose you to a lot of risk.

While this varies widely by discipline (and by department I’d imagine), reference letters (in math/CS at least, but again YMMV) carry more weight when they’re from big shots. In that respect, a letter from a junior collaborator is not going to have as much impact, especially since this is a close collaborator who will most likely say only good things about you.


Removing an author then adding him in a revised manuscript

Removing authors and changing the author order in a revision is suspicious. There can be perfectly valid reasons for that, but it could also indicate misconduct of the corresponding author. So, asking for explanation and for confirmation from all authors that this is indeed an agreed upon change is very reasonable behaviour of the editor.

If you can provide this, there shouldn't be a problem (provided the explanation makes sense).

If you react by reinstantiating the original author list, it will appear as if you got caught in the attempt to falsify the authorship. Whether or not this will lead to a rejection is something we cannot predict. Now if you indeed were caught trying to falsify the authorship, I neither can nor want to help you.


How should course content be shared between instructors?

In my opinion: Yes, you should certainly pass over all course material.

My colleague took over a course from another colleague who had left. My colleague know much less about the subject than the one who had left, so putting together a good course was a challenge for him. In theory, he had passed over all course material, but in practice, it was not very well organised, and my colleague ended up having to build it mostly from scratch.

As you have probably experienced, the first time you give a course is by far the most work, because you have to create everything from scratch. It helps enormously to have access to earlier course material. You lose very little by giving away course material. It's probably not publishable anyway — and if it is, passing it on to the next doesn't disqualify you from publishing it as a review or textbook, because passing it on is not a publication.

The only situation I can imagine where it would be problematic is if the person who you pass it on to claims it as their own and incorporates it in a review paper or textbook. But if you have any trust for the person, they won't do that, and it's much better to simply make all the course material available. Probably for the entire world.


Will a good GRE Computer Science subject test score overcome a "weak" academic record?

Regarding research, I don't have possibility of doing any research and it is not a top priority here, so we aren't provided opportunities for research.

For purposes of graduate school admissions, any self-directed intellectual activity counts as research.  Have you contributed to any open-source projects?  Have you written any Android or iPhone apps?  Did you solve all the double-starred problems in Hopcroft and Ullman?  Did you write a confluently persistent graph data structure library?  Did you participate in (or better yet, coach for) the International Olympiad in Informatics?  What about Google Summer of Code?  Do you contribute regularly to a StackExchange site?  Have you rebuilt a pinball machine?  These are all real examples.

Research opportunities are not something you're provided; they're something you hunt down and kill.


What should I do if funding announcements aren't made until after the acceptance deadline?

(Converting my comment to an answer, as suggested by @jakebeal.) Making admission offers without funding is a surprising, and not good, practice on their part, if it is as you describe, since people should make decisions based substantially on funding, not just admission.

If you have other plausible choices with funding, I'd take one of them. Don't go to math grad school without funding (and tuition remission).

(Unlike possible funding ambiguities, in mathematics, the funding is generally almost entirely by Teach Assitantships, and it should be possible to make (approximate) decisions about how many to fund well before the April 15 U.S. nation-wide decision date. That is, except for some (hopefully anomalous) budget crises, math depts themselves would not be "waiting" to find out funding for grad students.)

That is, this sort of "admission" is possibly a very low bar. Funding is the serious issue. In particular, don't get your hopes up, I'm afraid.


Is it ok to submit a paper to arXiv after copyright transfer?

The publisher allows uploading preprint versions (including revisions after reviewer comments)

If you're allowed to do it, you are allowed to do it. To be 100% sure, check the text of the copyright transfer agreement, where these policies are spelt out. Or, if you don't like reading legal text so much, it is summarized for many publishers in a nice color code at SHERPA/Romeo.


Meaning of 'not under active consideration' in APS peer review process

The APS system does not set a deadline for the authors to submit a revised manuscript.  However, after a certain length of time (I believe it is about one year), a paper is automatically moved from "with authors" to the "not under active consideration" category.  That is the same category used for papers that have been outright rejected, but categorical rejections from Physical Review journals are relatively rare.  The letter your received, inviting you to resubmit if you feel you can overcome the referees' criticisms, is boilerplate, sent out in the response to every letter that the reviewers offer mild rejection recommendations for.

So you can resubmit the paper, although processing will probably be a bit slower than it might be otherwise.  The editor will try to send the paper back the same referees, and they may not have have the clearest memories of your manuscript after all this time.  They may not want to review it again at all, which will delay the whole process.


What to consider when presenting without PowerPoint?

I think you are right to want to avoid PP or similar. Slides can help a presentation but can lead to horrors such as the presenter standing with back to the audience reading the words on the slides.

I have a number of thoughts based on my own experience over many years of public speaking with and without slides:

If you have no slides then the audience's attention is going to be on you. How confident are that you can hold their attention? What is your speaking voice like? Can you modulate it to vary the tone? Do you have any verbal tics that they will find irritating? You could practice in front of a trusted friend who must be honest with you about such things.

You must avoid reading aloud from notes. Notes that are just headlines are good. If you can manage without notes that would be great.

If you use the flipchart then avoid putting too many, or even any words on it: just visual images. If you circulate a paper in advance do you think they will read it before the presentation? If they don't then they will have their heads down reading when you want them looking at you and listening intently.

Good luck.


The general answer for all such questions is no, you aren't too old. Even if you were 60.

Actually, masters programs are meant for qualified candidates, not for some age group. The fact that most people continue through schooling without breaks explains the age distribution in graduate degrees, not some hidden rules and not market forces.

Your admissibility will depend on your past record and how well it fits entrance requirements. After that, your success depends on you.

Nor do I believe that you will suffer age discrimination entering the workforce for such a small difference in ages. Laws may govern this in some places. But, again, you will be viewed in the marketplace by your accomplishments, not your age.

There are exceptions, of course, since not everyone is reasonable or just, but enough people do the right thing that you should be fine.


Ask the head of the research group that you were part of.


How do professors see the German grades?

That differs a lot by discipline. If you are doing law, then that is a fine grade, if you are doing sociology, not so much.


Are books and professional society memberships allowable expenses under US federal grants?

The page you linked to in your question directly addresses memberships for NIH:

  Dues or Membership Fees

  Allowable as an F&A cost for organizational membership in business, professional, or technical organizations or societies.

  Payment of dues or membership fees for an individual’s membership in a professional or technical organization is allowable as a fringe benefit or an employee development cost, if paid according to an established organizational policy consistently applied regardless of the source of funds.

I agree with your conclusion about books for NSF grants, and their page oddly doesn't list information about memberships. I would imagine that it could arguably fall under the section related to conference fees, but that's conjecture.


Is there any risk in mentioning a new faculty as a potential advisor in you SoP?

I don't see any negative aspects to such a request. If nothing else it shows that you have a focus on a particular area of research. But in the US it isn't really necessary, almost everywhere, to specify a doctoral research advisor so early.

I assume that a "new, but with tenure" professor in a department is well respected everywhere. People are seldom hired "with tenure" otherwise. Most incoming professors have some, probably short, probationary period with at least a pro-forma grant of tenure.

As to the suitability of the person as an advisor, you should also look at their history of producing PhDs. I assume he is experienced at that, and if not, then you should probably keep your eyes open before you jump.


How to respond when rejected with encouragement to apply again, when hiring committee says position is always open?

This is indeed unusual.  For tenure-track positions at traditional universities in the US, a normal search proceeds on a specific timeline, from application deadline through interviews and leading up to the new hire's start date, usually the beginning of an academic year.  Once a position is filled, no further applications are accepted until there is a new opening and a sufficiently high administrator has given permission to begin a new search.

So in this normal situation, if you have been rejected, there is no point in reapplying until a new opening is posted, and typically that would be the next year at earliest.  (And there's no particular guarantee that the same department will have any openings at all the next year.)  So if you still want to apply to this employer, you have to wait a year; otherwise, consider it a loss and focus on other opportunities.

Given all this, the only way that this reply makes sense to me is if the university has a policy that applications will technically always be accepted.  That way if an extremely strong candidate decides to apply out of the blue, even if no opening currently exists, the university can consider creating a brand-new position just for them.  (For a major research university, "extremely strong" probably means something like "Nobel laureate".)  If you were such a candidate, you'd probably know.  But otherwise, this is of no practical value, and I suggest you continue to follow my previous advice and consider it a loss.  (And if you've already been rejected in one search, without even reaching the final round, then it seems clear they don't consider you "extremely strong", sorry to say.)

It's also possible that whoever replied to you is just confused.  In that case, too, I think you should fall back to the above and consider it a loss.

In either case there is not much point in responding to the message at all.

Also note that any phrase like "we encourage you to apply next time the position is open" should not be taken literally.  It's a mere courtesy which they surely write to everybody who is rejected.  It does not necessarily indicate that they really want to hire you.

Emory's suggestion of "apply once a week" is unwise, in my view.  This would be very annoying to the search committee, and make you look rather crazy.  It  would probably torpedo all hope of ever getting hired by that department.


Is being a good teacher a bad thing at a research intensive university?

No.

I work at a university that focuses almost exclusively on research (we have only graduate students, most of whom are Ph.D. students, and the number of postdocs, research staff, etc. is approximately equal to the number of students).  A few faculty members are well known as excellent teachers, and a few are commonly known to be poor teachers.  In general, I don't think the distinction has very much influence on the respect accorded to each within the university (and even less in the larger academic community).  But I think the good teachers are better liked, both by their peers and the administration.  I certainly appreciate it when I find that students are well prepared thanks to having taken a course with a "good" teacher.  And bad teachers are occasionally so bad that they cause administrative problems, which makes everyone unhappy.

Part of each faculty member's annual review is an evaluation of his/her teaching (by the dean).  A positive review is definitely a good thing.


Does it happen? Is what these women faculty describe true? For those
  of you who have served on faculty/post-doc selection committees, have
  you seen the evaluations of comparative candidates differ according to
  their gender?

Yes. This does happen. It is often hard to recognize - there's a degree of implicit bias at work all the time that's difficult to detect, because rare are applicants with genuinely comparative applications. It's easy to write off something one way or another - the prestige of the journals in question, the conclusions of the paper, etc. But I have, at times, seen it.

  Latino and Black applicants: There were no Latino or African-American
  faculty on these panels, but the reasons the women faculty gave for
  why women should go the extra mile in establishing independence seem
  to also apply to candidates from underrepresented groups. Have you
  seen evaluations differ according to whether candidates were from such
  groups?

While I encounter this less commonly because of the wide underrepresentation of these (and other) minoritized groups generally, I have seen it happen.

  How else might a candidate demonstrate sufficient independence from
  her PI? Recommendation letters can conceivably convey the quality and
  independence of a candidate, but are there things the candidate can do
  herself?

A couple things come to mind:

Being the PI on your own project. These may be small pilot grants or the like, no one expects you to land an R01 or the like. But it suggests some driving of your own research project.
Collaborations with not your PI. Your PI does not have to be on every paper you write, and it's possible to establish side projects etc. with other researchers. This occasionally has to be done with caution, due the the balancing of commitments, but it is possible.
If your job applications end up with a "Chalk Talk" where you outline your research agenda, nailing that. In my experience, this is where most candidates where I am, regardless of their gender, race or ethnicity, fail to establish their independence. You need to learn to tell the story of you the researcher, and how what you've done is, by and large, a logical arc into what you will do as an independent researcher.


Conflict of interests and the assignment of referee for a very narrow field

Even if the field is small, one can usually find referees in cognate fields with no conflicts: presumably papers by these groups have a bibliography that extends beyond these groups, else the interest is overly narrow and the paper can be rejected as such.

(Aside: the handling editor is not necessarily a “he”.)


Is it good reputation for a researcher to publish an article belonging to different research field?

Since the fields are so far apart, a publication in one might not help you in the other, specifically. However getting some research experience is both worth the effort and will be looked on positively. In addition to being relevant to some field, research involves a process requiring focus and discipline.

I'd only recommend against this if the time involved would take you away from your mainline trajectory.

The publication won't hurt you. The experience will help. But it takes time and effort.


Is applying existing methods to known problems a novel contribution?

In mathematics and similar fields, new solutions to previously solved problems may be extremely valuable.

The statements of theorems aren't really the most important thing in mathematics. They are markers that we use to simplify the proofs of yet more advanced theorems. It is the proof methodologies that are the truly stunning advances in mathematics. If you can provide a new way of looking at a problem, or, better, a class of problems, you have made an important advance and can/should publish it.

But make sure that your paper points out that the advance is in the methodology, not the theorem.

Some "hard sciences" may have the same characteristics. How you look at a problem can be as important as a solution.


Where do they keep record of graduated students?

Information on awarded degrees is considered publicly releasable directory information in the US. Dates of attendance, for those who did not complete a degree, as well as honors (which imply a certain class rank or GPA) can be released as well.

Most schools sell this information to an aggregator, the National Student Clearinghouse. For a fee you can verify a degree by providing the student's name, date of birth, and school.

Harvard, specifically their school of Arts and Sciences, directs third parties to this database.

Laws in Canada differ and require signed permission from the student. A similar aggregator, AuraData exists.

Otherwise, the student can have the school's registrar send a document, on security paper and sealed, listing awarded degrees to interested parties. This is called an official verification and is essentially a transcript that does not contain course or grade information.

Finally, if the person has a graduate degree that involved a thesis, one can  check the school's online library catalog to see if one is listed.


Can I quote books and articles I found online in my Master's thesis?

You want to reference reliable material - whether physical or virtual. If you read an article online in a refereed journal, or quote a standard book in your field that you read electronically, credit both the physical reference and the url in your bibliography.
References to, say, wikipedia or blog posts or unrefereed work you stumble across on someone's website may be problematic. To use them you have to make a case that they are correct and reliable.


In the context of a review of an academic paper, what does "technical accuracy" mean?

Technical accuracy is that the approach taken in the paper and the results presented correct and are precisely and correctly presented.

It is only indirectly related to language, in that if the language is poor then communicating technical content is difficult.

I don't know how you can review the authors' ability from a paper. You can only review what is in the paper.