Thinking about leaving a master's program

You don't find the field you're in all that interesting. That may be because it's not the right field for you. However, depression can make everything seem uninteresting, even activities you used to love. Maybe you just need a break. Your therapist is probably the person to help you figure out what's best for you at this time.

If you decide to take a break, I'm sure your university has some sort of student ombudsman or student services office that can guide you through the process of getting a leave of absence. Look on your university's website, or ask the registrar's office, student health, or the student union.

The setbacks you've experienced in your research don't sound that bad. A few false starts in research are quite normal. One year into my own master's, nothing was working and I was sure I wouldn't have any useful results. My advisor helped to calm me down, and all turned out well. It sounds like you and your advisor just don't "gel".


How should I address a possible mistake to co-authors in a submitted paper

If you believe there is an issue with a paper you are a co-author of, then you absolutely should discuss it with your co-authors. In most (all?) fields, having read and approved the final manuscript is a necessary condition for authorship of a publication. I assume that you cannot really approve of a manuscript that you suspect has methodological flaws, so you should speak up now. Whether that is best done by emailing everyone or just contacting the lead author depends on a lot of external and contextual factors, so I cannot offer advice there.

Waiting for reviewers to spot the mistake seems like a very bad strategy. After all, what will happen if they don't spot the mistake? Either you bring up the issue after receiving the reviews (which is surely not better than bringing it up now) or you remain silent and become co-author to a paper that may have serious methodological problems.

In the end, if you bring up the issue now, there are three possible outcomes (presumably after some arguments and back-and-forth):

You convince your co-authors that there is an error. Since the paper is already submitted, all authors will have to discuss how they want to handle the issue in that case. This may range from updating the paper with the necessary corrections after receiving the reviews (regardless of whether or not the reviewers found the same issue) to retracting the paper.
Your co-authors convince you that the issue is in fact not important or not an issue at all, which may also help to improve the paper (clarify why x is not an issue in this particular context).
Neither you nor your co-authors are convinced by the others. In that case, you may have to withdraw as an author, painful as that may be.

I would argue that each of these results (even the last one) is preferable to just hoping for peer review to catch the issue you already know is there.

Edit: I missed that the manuscript was already submitted. However, I don't thnk this fundamentally changes things.


How do new tax rules apply to a Ph.D. student receiving a fellowship?

Unfortunately (as you know) tax laws in the US are pretty complex, and you're in a relatively unique situation as an international student with a fellowship.  Many universities have a page on their website that discussed tax issues, and I noticed that NYU has one as well.

You'll notice near the bottom of the page that your taxes also depend on the tax treaty that the US has with your home country, and there also might be technicalities related to whether the school classifies your pay as a fellowship or assistantship for tax purposes.  For example, according to my university, my funding is through a "research fellowship," but because I'm expected to work a certain number of hours per week in my advisor's lab, the tax forms classify it as an assistantship.

It is a good idea to reach out to someone at your university to ask this question.  They may not be able to help you, but the worst that will happen is they'll ignore your email or say "Sorry, I can't help."  I would start with people in the payroll department or (if there is one) the office for international student admissions or support.  Sometimes students (or potential students) are shy about asking for help, but they shouldn't be.  People like to help other people, and the people you'd be reaching out to are literally employed to help people in your situation (among other things).

When I ask people in the business office, finance office, etc. for help, I usually explain what my question is and then end the email with something like "I wasn't entirely sure who to ask for help, but thought you would be a good person to start with--can you help me figure this out, or recommend someone else for me to reach out to? Thanks so much for your help!"  That way, even if I'm "bothering" them with something that's outside their responsibilities, they usually point me in the right direction for who to ask next.


The EF-SET English certificate is a test you take online without any supervision. From the EF-SET FAQ:

If the test is available to the public online, how is it secured from cheating?
Because it is intended as a learning tool, using the EF SET to its fullest advantage is the learner’s own responsibility. [...]. As an adaptive English test that covers multiple CEFR levels from beginner to advanced, the EF SET is designed to be useful to an individual as a measure of growth in proficiency over time and as a proxy to other expensive, high-stakes English tests like TOEFL, TOEIC or IELTS. To take advantage of this design, we advise that the test taker follow the timing guidelines and not try to cheat the test.

The homepage of EF-SET has three "buttons":

Check your students
Evaluate your employees
Check your English

So the EF-SET test is intended either as a self-assessment tool, or as a tool that can be used by universities or companies to evaluate their students/employees, in which case the company or university will take care of the supervision.
If you come with an EF-SET certificate that you got by yourself, the institution has no way of knowing that it was really you who took the test. Therefore, it does not make much sense to accept this as proof of English knowledge. I have never seen this accepted at a university.


What is the gender distribution of those who perform potentially hazardous scientific experiments?

While I'm not aware of any research on employees exposed to safety risks in the academic workplace, there are statistics on actual workplace injuries in a variety of occupations, including scientific occupations.  If the incidence of injury is uniform across gender among those exposed to safety risks (I don't know if it is), then you can take this as a proxy for the gender distribution of those exposed to risk in the scientific workplace.

In particular, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics collects information on workplace injuries, which you can query at will.

According to their statistics, here are the numbers of nonfatal occupational injuries involving days away from work among employees whose occupation is classified as "Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations":

I was also interested in the ratio of the number of injuries to the number of thousands of people of each gender employed, again in "Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations":

Please visit the BLS website to learn more about how they collect these statistics and what they mean.

You can query their dataset yourself if you're interested in getting numbers specific to one area of science or another.


Is the new ACM 2012 taxonomy usable/in use?

If you're using sig-alternate.cls, this sample TeX file seems to have been silently updated in May 2015 to give an example of how to do this. Here's a precis:

Download sig-alternate-05-2015.cls into your local TeX tree (or temporarily into the same directory as your project)
Edit the first line of your LaTeX source to use it:

\documentclass{sig-alternate-05-2015}

Further down your LaTeX source, within the document enviroment (usually after your abstract), paste in the code that the 2012 ACM Computing Classification System gives you once you have chosen your categories, for example:

\begin{CCSXML}
<ccs2012>
...
</ccs2012>
\end{CCSXML}

\ccsdesc{Computer systems organization~Robotics}
\ccsdesc[100]{Networks~Network reliability}

Follow this with the line to print out your classification section:

\printccsdesc

And finally, add your own keywords:

\keywords{ACM proceedings; \LaTeX; text tagging}

I say this was added 'silently', because internally, the sample.tex file still says it was last updated April 2013, and it says This file should be compiled with V2.5 of "sig-alternate.cls" May 2012, whereas it actually compiles with "sig-alternate-05-2015.cls", which claims internally to have last been updated in Aug 2013, despite the date in its filename! No wonder everyone is confused.

Thanks to ayman's answer above, which has become broken, but pointed me in the right direction. (Could someone edit the broken link in ayman's answer to the sig-alternative.cls file from December 2014? --- I'm a newbie caught in the reputation catch-22 where I can't comment answers).


Studying recreational math professionally?

There are a lot of folks who do this, I think. I also think that a lot of them are members of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). That isn't their main focus, of course, but it would be a good source of contacts and information.

The Wikipedia Article points to some other resources and maybe ways to contact people.

Whether you can make a career out of it depends on some things. At an R1 university, probably not, but maybe at a liberal arts college in the US. But it can be fun as a break from more serious(???) pursuits. And some aspects of it are certainly valid research topics. Game Theory, for example.


Applying for tenure-track research position and lecturer position at the same university?

In my department, tenure-track hiring and lecturer hiring are done by different committees. When I was associate chair (until a couple of years ago), I was on both committees, but, as far as I can remember, I was the only common member. So if someone applied for both sorts of positions, that fact might not get much (or any) attention.  Also, you shouldn't worry about the tenure track committee thinking you have a low opinion of yourself. We generally don't care very much about your opinion of yourself (some people are naturally modest); we care about other people's (especially experts') opinion of you.


Asking for a site visit as a master's applicant

This is totally appropriate and a great idea.

Simply send an email to the contact person (who may have a title like "graduate coordinator" or "graduate chair").

  My name is Edna Farblefester and I'm a junior at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople.  I am interested in applying to your program next year.  I will be in Amsterdam next week and was wondering if I might be able to meet with you or some of your colleagues to learn more about the program and some of the faculty's research.

They should certainly say yes unless there are some extenuating circumstances.  Graduate programs are always eager to recruit students, especially in a case like this where it costs them nothing.  They probably do these sort of meetings all the time, so it should not be much of an inconvenience for them, even on short notice.

They may also offer to set up a campus tour, arrange a meeting with one or more current grad students (very useful), and provide some information about living in Amsterdam.

If there are one or two professors whose research particularly interests you, you could send similar emails to them directly.  (Mention that you are already getting in touch with the contact person, otherwise they will probably suggest that you do so.)

One final note: your phrasing "asking for a site visit" suggested at first that you were going to ask them to pay for the costs of your trip, which would be sort of an unreasonable request (it would be for them to offer if they wanted).  Of course, that isn't what you meant, but you might just want to check your phrasing when you write your email.


Possible causes of confusion and mistakes in technical terminology in bilingual settings

Actually, I think one of the biggest issues that we have to deal with as scientists is the use of writing conventions. For instance:

The "decimal point" in Europe is normally written as a comma. So a German would see that "a mile is 1,760 yards" might not know if a mile should be 5280 feet or 5.28 feet! (This can cause confusion when translating back and forth.)
Similarly, I have to be very careful with my handwriting, lest my audience think my "7" is a "1."

A lot of what you're talking about, though, I think falls either under the header of "false cognates" (or faux amis, as they're known in French), or of words with multiple definitions. As examples of the latter, for instance, Benzin in German can mean both "benzene" as well as "gasoline," while Neigung can mean both "slope" and "gradient."


How to quote in the title of a thesis in APA style?

I'm not sure that you would need to provide a full citation for a quote that's used that way.

It's not uncommon to use a small quote at the beginning of an article to provide some "flavor text," as in the picture below. In cases like this, some attribution is given, but the quote source isn't included in the APA Reference list.

I would think that if you provided the full Game of Thrones passage as a "flavor text" quote at the very beginning of the article (including an informal attribution), that would be enough to get the job done. It's not too different from articles that use a quote from an interview in a title and then to provide the full context of that quote later in the article (e.g., http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2010.495091).


Would I be able to do a PHD without having a bachelor or master degree

You would have to have something in your background and resume that appeals to someone like me, a tenured professor of CS (now retired, though). I have to say that, from what you say, I would be very skeptical. You would need to find some way to convince (people like) me that you actually have the skills, not just "certificates".

The problem is that when you take a standard course of study from a university, people understand what that means. We have a basic trust of colleagues elsewhere that if they say you are ready then (a) they have personally evaluated you in some way and (b) you meet their own standards of excellence, which are probably similar to my own. With online courses it is very difficult to be able to say the same thing. What, in particular, does it mean that you have such a certificate. It could be worthless and mean nothing more than that you paid for a course, whether you gained anything from it or not. It is hard for people to evaluate how much actual expertise you gained through practice and how much feedback you got on your work. How high was the quality of whatever work you did?

That isn't to say that you don't have the required expertise, but certificates alone, from commercial businesses especially, aren't proof that you do.

So, to be successful, you will need some way to convince people of the quality of something that is different from what traditional students are able to do. If you can do that, then you will have a chance. But many of us will be very skeptical.

And one problem is that if you have a slot in a doctoral program, then someone else doesn't. It isn't an unlimited resources. Your road isn't impossible, but it is definitely uphill.

However, if you can establish a personal/professional relationship to a faculty member at a doctoral institution and convince them of your expertise, the road might (might) get easier.


How can I enter into the mathematics field at the graduate level when I only took a few math courses as an undergrad?

It sounds like your best bet would be to contact the graduate officers at the economics and finance programs you're interested in attending, and ask them what their minimum entrance requirements are. It's a much more efficient route than just deciding to take more math courses, and spending significant time, energy, and money on a quixotic goal.


Can my master thesis be a part of doctoral dissertation of the Ph.D student I worked with?

For both a masters' thesis and a PhD dissertation, there needs to be a core piece of work that is primarily the student's work.  Collaboration can certainly be fine, but there needs to be a core idea that is "yours" in order to get a degree out of it.

It's at least conceivable that you and the PhD student were collaborating on something that had only one degree-worthy idea in it, and therefore a tough decision had to be made.

It's also possible that this is being used as an excuse for something unethical like cheating you out of your masters' project.

Whether this was legitimate, or not, we can't really tell from the information given.

It does sound that the situation was, at least, not handled very well.  The supervisor has oversight of both your projects and should have prevented your projects from overlapping too much, before you wasted lots of work on something. Also, if you contributed significantly to the eventual PhD project, at a minimum you should still get credit for this (e.g. with paper authorship).


How can I structure my undergraduate thesis to include two slightly different projects?

Your thesis can be outlined 4 chapters as follows:

Chapter 1: General introduction and review of literature~ you can divide or combine in background, approach and hypothesis,statement of the problem, justification of the research, and objectives of the research. but both projects only have the same problem statement. so you can separate 2 big parts in this chapter and each part has various sections.

Chapter 2: Your first project~ Exposing what you did in a logical way. This chapter is concise as you mentioned.

Chapter 3:Your second project~
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Materials and methods
3.3 Results and discussion
3.4 Conclusion

Chapter 4: General conclusions and recommendations for both projects conducted~ general conclusion, key innovation, recommendation and future prospects.

The best way to make sure that it had better get consultancy from your supervisor or a mentor who is an assistant of your supervisor.


For German undergraduate and graduate math classes, does the professor or assistant write the exercise sheets?

At my university in every class I had and heard of the assistant wrote the exercise sheets(and often the exam too). Many times the professor did not even fully know which tasks are on the current sheet. Of course this varies a bit, in later more advanced classes the professor is typically more involved in the exercises.


How to find / understand research in other languages when you don't know that language?

I would ask a colleague which does speak Thai, and ask him if there are any relevant Thai publications you need to be aware of. Ofcourse this colleague needs to be in the same field you are interested in. If he or she does not know of any relevant literature, this might indicate that you are not missing any relevant research.

In addition, when you are looking for papers yourself, I would Google translate the titles of the papers, and if they seem interesting I would ask a native speaking colleague to translate the abstract. If it still is interesting then you ask your colleague to read the paper together with you.


Does poor grammar on a shared message board for school annoy teachers?

Teachers could very well be annoyed by 3 and 4, but would probably answer nonetheless.  They might also reach out to the poor writers and offer tips.  Posting writing rules for the messaging board in advance might help also.


Change-of-interest among mathematicians is more common than many would have imagined. Reasons vary, some decided to do something more applied, some decided to work in the industry for the better pay, some decided to work in a more dynamic environment than the academia...

I can assure you that the time you spent on mathematics is time well spent for your intellectual development and that your advanced math training will be a valuable asset wherever you go. Even though you may not be solving abstract algebra or real analysis problems for your future career, it's the analytical skills that you're equipped with that will make a difference between you and other candidates. Mathematicians, if well trained, develop unique insights to problems and are often highly detail-oriented.

If you want to switch to computer science, there are a number of Masters Programs in computer science that will accept non-CS majors. In fact, if you have taken sufficiently many advanced courses in computer science, you may apply to grad school in computer science right away without going through the (often exorbitantly costly) masters program. Many of my classmates have done that and successfully transitioned into computer science.

Last but not least, speak to your academic advisor and discuss your situation.

Good luck!


What is the best way to see if my students understood?

‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’ is a useful tool for classroom educators. Benjamin Bloom creates the taxonomy, which was later revised by Lorin Anderson.

His taxonomy helps educators develop critical thinking and higher order cognitive abilities in students. It provides a framework, or organisation, for classifying classroom lesson objectives.

Bloom’s Taxonomy states that, from the lowest level of cognitive rigour to the highest, a student is required to:

Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyse
Evaluate
and, Create

Changes to the Model:
The term ‘Remember’ was previously known as ‘Knowledge’; ‘Understand’ also replaced ‘Comprehension’; and, lastly, the order of ‘Create’ and ‘Evaluate’ was switched.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is actually a hierarchy, where students must first master the lower levels before mastering the higher levels. The levels represent a shift from simple and concrete thinking to more abstract and complex modes of thinking.

Tables of descriptive verbs have been made available to help educators plan lessons. These tables have been aligned to Bloom’s levels of Taxonomy.

‘Remember’ can be described as to: Arrange, Describe, Order, Name or Memorise terms.
‘Understand’: Explain, Summarise, Paraphrase, Discuss
‘Apply’: Choose, Modify, Discover, Diagram, Show
‘Analyse’: Break down, Calculate, Model, Subdivide, Infer
‘Evaluate’: Critique, Judge
‘Create’: Generate, Plan, Produce

If students are able to apply their understanding and analyse, evaluate or synthesise something from it, this is evidence that they have understood what they have been taught.

Whereas, if they were only to memorise something, this would not show understanding.


How to phrase an email in response to an unreasonable action by a superior?

I think it is too soon to make any demands of the supervisor to answer by a certain date or anything like that, nor is there a need to ask him to explain whether you heard him correctly, or to confirm or deny anything. All you need to do at this point is to lay out your understanding of events - if the supervisor wants to contest that understanding, he/she is at liberty to try to do so. A key principle for this sort of email is that you should be very clear and factual and maintain a neutral and polite tone. Something like the following:

  Dear [name of supervisor],

  I am writing in connection with our recent meeting on [insert date] to discuss my status and funding in the program. As you know, my acceptance letter to the program, dated [insert date of acceptance letter (you have a copy right? maybe attach it to the email)], states that I am entitled to six years of funding. No conditions were attached to this promise other than my maintaining my status as a PhD student in good standing in the program, which has been and remains the case. [obviously, only write all of that if those are true statements...]

  During the meeting, you stated however that I am not entitled to a sixth year of funding, based on your assertion that "We spoke previously. I asked whether you needed funding this year and you shook your head." [Note: if you put their words in quotes, make sure it is an accurate quote.] I would like to clarify that I never indicated that I did not need funding for a sixth year, either by a shake of the head or in any other way. I do in fact need and want funding, and was and still am expecting to receive it based on the department's promise, signed by [insert title: Graduate Program Chair/Department Chair, etc] [insert name of signatory to the letter] in the acceptance letter I mentioned above.

  I would appreciate if you reply to this email at your earliest convenience to acknowledge that you received it. Thank you for your continued support and for your assistance in correcting any misunderstanding that may have occurred.

  Yours etc,

  [your name]

Once the supervisor replies, if they explicitly confirm that you will get the funding, great; if they do not explicitly confirm that but don't contest your understanding, you have now put yourself in a good position to go to the department head; and if they try to contest your description (like claiming that you did shake your head), I think they will appear rather foolish for relying on such signals rather than statements documented in writing or even a verbal statement, so again you are in a good position to go argue your case with the department head.

Note also that I added a polite request for an acknowledgement and nothing more. The supervisor is free to ignore that, but again doing that will make them look bad, and in any case if you don't get a reply within a few days, you can and should proceed to the next stage of the plan.

One other option I can think is to copy the department head on the email. That is a bit of a "nuclear option" and is likely to be interpreted as an aggressive and antagonistic move (nobody likes to be made to look bad in front of their supervisor), so probably it's too soon for that level of response. But it's something to consider in the event that you want to dial up the level of forcefulness of your response.

Hope this helps, and good luck!


How to respond to potential power abuse from project supervisor?

Let me make two suggestions, though I can only really recommend the first.

You could just go along and get along, but mostly as a strategic move that helps you get away without damage to your future. For a single course a nice grade would be good and you will have learned a lot from the project no matter what the write-up looks like. If it is to be published, especially as a joint publication, then you need to take care that what you say is actually valid, of course. I recommend this course since the professor has power over you and has threatened to use it against you. Strategic retreat is often the best course of action.

The second, burn the bridges strategy, is to send the entire correspondence stream to the department head and ask for advice. This may be what you really want to do, and it might have some positive outcome for others in the future, but it is also the one most likely to damage you and your career. If you embark on this course, copy the head on all correspondence.

There are options in between but most of them might have the flavor of one or the other of these. I recommend something closer to the first option.

For doctoral research, however, the situation is a lot more dire and might require drastic (escape) action such as changing supervisors or even institutions. But your undergraduate program will ultimately be judged on a lot of things, not just this project.


Personal log of peer review conducted at Elsevier journals

Sounds like Elsevier's Reviewer Recognition site/platform. According to a description here this platform lets reviewers track their reviews, claim book discounts, etc. [It also mentions a service for public reviewer pages (hmm, where have I heard about that before?), but the provided link is broken so I'm not sure if that's still available or not.]


If my professors didn't respond to my emails about recommendation

My mother used to say (this was in the days before the internet) that the moment the letter she'd written got picked up by the mailman, she was ready for an answer to arrive.

Three days is too soon to worry.

Normally one should wait two weeks before starting to worry.  Try to wait two weeks.

If you really can't sleep, though, I suppose you could write again, briefly and politely, after one week.  You might also visit them in their office hours to ask in person.


Where does the US Department of Education report university graduation rates?

I can't find a particular report that contains your exact quote, but the statistic could easily be derived from data that is present in the "Digest of Educational Statistics" published by the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics:

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/

In particular, see table 326.40 in the "current" edition which gives this percentage separately for students who started in 2 year and 4 year institutions and for students from families in various income ranges.  To get the 40% statistic quoted, you'd have to combine the rates for students in two income ranges and the statistics for students starting at 2 year and 4 year colleges.  These range from 17.6% (for students from families with income between $45,000 and $69,999 who started at 2 year colleges) to 66.7% (for students from families with income between $70,000 and $99,999 who started at 4 year colleges.)

The statistic shouldn't be surprising. Keep in mind that not everyone who enters "college" is seeking a bachelor's degree- many will want only an associates degree or certificate of some sort.  If you limit your attention to students who enter four year colleges (and presumably want a bachelor's degree) and who come from higher income families ($100,000 per year and up) you get a much higher rate of 77.5%.  Both family income and starting at a 4 year college are important factors.


How do I turn down an internship offer by a professor because I have a better offer in a corporate research lab?

Just send her/him a polite e-mail saying that although you were/are very much looking forward to working with her/him, you are taking another offer right now, but wish to stay in touch:

Dear Prof. X, I am very much looking forward to working with you.  However, at this time I have also received a placement offer at company Y, and I will go there.  I hope we can work together in the future.
Best regards,
Firstname  Lastname.

Or something similar.  If you are polite and honest, you should be fine.


How to handle plagiarism on method that does not affect outcome results when reviewing a paper?

There is no such thing as unimportant plagiarism.  And three to four stolen paragraphs is not small.

You did the right thing to report it to the editor.  But I also would have rejected the paper.  There is no place in academia for academic misconduct.  It certainly shouldn't be published.


Does a UK degree have the same classification in the US?

The honors degree classifications that exist in the UK (described in this question and its answers) don't exist in the US. In the US, instead of earning a degree of a certain "class," students (usually) earn a GPA on a scale of up to 4.0 points, and that number is used to indicate their performance.

"Honors" like  summa cum laude and magna cum laude exist, but not at all universities, and don't have a standard meaning across universities (or even across departments in the same university). They aren't used in the same way that UK degree classifications are. For example, you won't find an application for graduate studies that specifies that applicants should have graduated magna cum laude  - instead, they may specify a minimum undergraduate GPA.


Should I mention my undocumented status in faculty applications?

From my experience with faculty searches, departments at first care only about whether a candidate is actually good. That is the key basis to form a short list, and only after that do they care about the practicalities of hiring someone. These practicalities includes salary, spousal accommodations, visa status, etc.
As a consequence, I think that your immigration status is not going to be much in terms of an obstacle for getting onto a short list and, potentially, getting an offer. Your problems will of course start after that: is a university willing to actually hire you given the not entirely settled legal status of DACA. I'm not an expert on this part, so if you say that you're eligible for employment, then I will assume that universities see it the same way and that your major obstacle then must be to get onto the short list and getting an offer -- for which the only criterion really is that you are better than the competition.
Implied in your question is whether you should mention your status in the diversity essay. That would strike me as odd: The fact that you are in this category makes you no better qualified than someone who is in the US on a visa or, since you have spent the majority of your life in the US, anyone else who has grown up here. As a consequence, I think that there is nothing to be gained from mentioning your DACA status -- thought it is conceivable that it raises questions on the minds of faculty similar to the ones you mention in your question.
In summary: My suggestion would be to just not bring up the DACA status at all in application documents, and only mention this once you have a conversation with the department head about actually getting hired. That is the point where the prospective employer needs to know about it, but no earlier than that.


In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US?

I haven't seen any statistics on how many tenure professors have been fired, but most articles on the topic treat tenure as though it's a lifetime position (e.g., this Science article, "Tenure and the Future of the University"). Anecdotally, you will likely never meet someone who knows someone else who was fired from a tenure position; it simply doesn't happen.

Note, however, that the number of tenure track positions made available over the past decade been trending downward fairly significantly (see the same article, and simply do a google search on the topic to see more).


Who gets accepted to top universities to do a PhD (STEM fields)?

This probably varies by field.  I went into an Engr/CS department.  I will say that grad school apps are a bit of a crap-shoot at top schools.  There are certainly "talent picks" (e.g., people so amazing many schools would grab them without knowing where they'd fit), but in my experience top programs often have labs that have particular needs and "draft" PhD candidates who might fill them.  If you expect to be funded with a stipend through grad school (and in my opinion, in STEM, you should be), somebody in the faculty needs to step up and allocate their limited grant funding on a candidate within the first year.

Since your tuition is going to be paid by one of the profs on the faculty, there's obviously going to be some level of preference toward students whose interests and skills match their needs.  Hence, part of your likelihood of being accepted (and most of your probability of being funded) depends on who will have slots for PhD students and how those slots match up with your interests/skills.  Or, in other words, you need to convince somebody that you are worth at least $70k over 4-6 years (in reality, more than that, as professors invest their time in training you to be useful).

In that light, you're really not applying for a "top grad school."  You are actually applying to one or two labs in a grad school... with no idea if they can even take you on board.  In my opinion, your statement in your application should directly reflect a lab (or two) that you would want to do work with.  The whole remainder of your materials help  support the claim that you would be an asset to those labs.  This also means that you generally need to apply to quite a few grad schools if you want to get into a top one.  Unless you know a program closely already, there is no way to know who has funding coming in, who is on sabbatical, or a hundred other things that could sink an otherwise solid application.

Obviously, good grades, good GRE scores in relevant areas, and prior research experience are all your first foot in the door.  But none of them are enough, on their own.  You need to write well (e.g., have a good statement), have great independent work ethic (e.g., leading teams, not just working on them), and your letters of reference need to be excellent.  You'll also need three letters of reference at almost any top school.  I don't think I applied to a single place that took less than that (though that was some years ago, so it could even be up to 4 in some programs!).  If you can't find three profs who will speak highly of you, you're in trouble.  If having a personal reference vouch for you even crosses your mind, don't even bother applying to a top program.

Finally, if you're applying to MIT or a few other places, you had better keep track of all the texts that you have ever used.  They ask you to list them.  Which is a huge pain to try to rustle up 3 years later, for the record.


How is a research direction determined between a graduate student and their advisor?

Any of the scenarios you describe can happen, in practice. (I am in the United States; this may differ in other countries.) It depends on the student's interests and abilities, the advisor's interests and advising style, how broad advisor's interests are, whether the advisor has funding for a particular project and needs a student to work on that problem, and many other factors.

All three have happened within my own research group. (Another possibility that happened in my research group that you haven't mentioned: student initiates a collaboration with another researcher, who proposes a topic, and involves the advisor in the project as well.)

Actually, the scenarios you describe are not discrete scenarios, but a spectrum from "most student-driven" to "most advisor-driven." Some points on the spectrum include:

Student enters grad school with a topic in mind that's judged acceptable by advisor, and proceeds with that topic.
Student enters grad school with a topic in mind, that evolves and changes following advice from advisor.
Student enters grad school with a general idea and, together with guidance from advisor and extensive reading of literature, shapes it into a topic.
Student enters grad school without idea, advisor suggests general direction, and upon extensive reading and with guidance from advisor, student shapes it into a topic.
Advisor hands student idea, and student proceeds to execute idea. Of course, this is a PhD, so as student works on the topic, the student's mastery of the specific research will most probably come to exceed the advisor's, even though advisor originally proposed the idea.

Other scenarios include: student enters grad school with idea in mind and then changes directions completely in middle, student enters grad school with idea and changes advisors in middle but keeps idea, and many more..


There is a reason why many countries ban explicit characteristics in job ads, and that is exactly to avoid discrimination. But you should check some examples of CV's for the country you wish to apply to.

Also, applying as a foreigner is different than as a local. Check the universities site on that and you'll see the requirements, which might include proof of nationality besides the CV, which is where you give the details of age and nationality.


PhD project ownership conflict after changing university

For what it's worth, I don't think either university can own the project directly. Anybody can work on anything, pretty much, but there are many caveats. If code or data were produced, that may be owned by UniA. If there was funding, it's definitely going to stay at UniA. So you may have to find some alternative source of funding to work on the project, but if the supervisor at UniB wants to pay you to work in the same area, you almost certainly can. Now, if you can't come to agreement with the supervisor at UniA, you may also have some trouble publishing when it comes to things they wrote. It would be best to get the two supervisors to come to an amicable agreement to work together on it with you at UniB.


How to structure a CV when applying for a Computer Science PhD?

I most often see CS CVs with education, then work experience, in reverse chronological order; followed by projects and publications. But the order is not really important, because in committee we jump around in the document anyway.

What is important for a PhD application, is to have a good presentation of projects the applicant has worked on, including bachelors and masters theses, and internships, because these are the unique bits that make the difference between two candidates with equivalent diplomas.

It is also very important to not mix accepted publications with submitted manuscripts. I have seen otherwise excellent applications excluded without debate because of this, without asking whether it was dishonesty or a simple mistake.

Beyond that, the European
Europass europa.eu website has CV templates and guidelines as well as online tools for building application-related documents. The CV template contains

Personal information
Position applied for
Work experience
Education and training
Personal Skills
Additional information

Publications, communications
Awards
Projects
Certifications, Memberships, References, etc


Correcting a mistake in my journal article after it's been published

The official way of dealing with this (minor errors which don't substantially impact the conclusions of the paper) is with the errata/corrections section in the journal you published in. So you did the correct thing in contacting the editor about issuing a correction/erratum in a future issue of the journal.

Your problem at this point is the fact that the journal doesn't have a formal errata policy. There's two ways to proceed:

The first is to attempt to convince the journal to establish an errata policy, for which you'll be the first example. This is ideal, but the editors might not be willing to do it, as it may involve substantially reworking how their journal is structured. Keep in mind that even if they accept the erratum, they might not actually change the published version of the article (even on their website), instead just adding the correction as a separate "erratum" notice/page.

The second is to simply post the erratum on your professional website, preferably on an official(ish) "errata" page. If the journal doesn't have an official errata policy, then this is probably the best option. It's used extensively by people who publish books (including textbooks). Having it on your own website may limit the visibility of the correction, but it will indicate to people who care that you're being proactive about correcting your mistakes to the best of your ability.


If you have a 30-45 minute slot (which is typical for such things), you have to make some decisions:

Are you a 'buyer' or a seller' ? Are you evaluating the candidate, or also trying to convince them that your institution is a good place to work ? In general, you want to do both, but which you're thinking of emphasizing more will affect how you conduct the interview.
Is the meeting before or after the candidate's talk ? If after, you can do some probing based on the talk. If before, you might choose to ask them about material not in their talk, but in their CV.
Is there concern about their area and how it fits with what you're looking for ?
Have you heard anything from your colleagues during other interviews that might prompt you to take a particular line of questioning ?

In general, since you can't really get a big read on a candidate in a short session, your best bet is to focus one one aspect (such as one of the above), and explore that in detail. One thing I've also found useful is to ask questions "out of left field" that test the assumptions the candidate's work rests on: if done right, this allows you to explore the candidate's larger views about their field and the direction of the research.


Take advantage of coursework based masters program

If I understand correctly, you are yet to be admitted to a graduate school and wish to know how to absorb the course in its maximum if you get admitted.

When you are attending the course and not feeling that you are getting enough, which you mentioned as your earlier experience, the way forward is to contact the instructor personally for higher order questions with evidence that you are indeed interested and capable of solving them. I am sure that if the instructor has had research experience in the particular subject or at least a closely related subject, which is almost the case in universities, he/she would be able to help you in this regard.

Now, how to approach the instructor is a different question. You must do an initial search on your own about the core problems in the topic, find a problem  and try to come up with a solution of your own. Success or not, you may then submit with explanation your analysis and ask them for their comments. Chances are that you will be rewarded for your work, at the very least you may get a contact recommendation to another faculty who is working in the field.

All of this are referenced to a future period of time, I think this case is valid since you have clear plans to join a graduate program from the spirit of your question.


How to deal with student putting their (home)work on github

Give students assignments where their work must address one of their personal interests.  For example, instead of having every student program pizza maker, have each student program a machine to make their favorite food.  This will make copy-and-paste cheating more difficult.  It will also make students more interested and make your grading more interesting.


Should a dismissal from PhD in graduate application be listed as academic misconduct?

"Academic misconduct" is not the same as "Lack of academic performance."  "Academic misconduct" is things like claiming undue credit, fabrication of research or sources, outright plagiarism, etc.  Simply not making the grades might reflect on your academic aptitude, but (unlike academic misconduct) does not necessarily reflect upon your character.


What is a better word for 'code' when taking about programming code?

It depends what you want to refer to. For instance, if you were to implement an array sort in Java, you could refer to:

the sorting algorithm, as Paul mentioned, which could be described in pseudocode, and is independent from the language you used (note that it could be more readable to include within your thesis only the pseudocode of your algorithms, and then attach the actual code at the end, or provide it in a different file).
the program, which is the binary executable that takes an array as input and returns the sorted array.
the implementation, which refers to the way you defined the sorting algorithm in Java.
the data structures you manipulate, such as the array.
the source code, as Anonymous Mathematician mentions, which is the textual representation of your implementation (note that if you include the file at the end, then you can also refer to it with "the Java file", or "the file sort.java"; in this case, you can even include line numbers, which can be helpful to point to a specific part of your source code).


At least in the social sciences and sciences, a photograph by itself would not warrant its own citation. You would refer to them the same as other diagrams, figures, and photographs:

Figure 1.1, 2.9, 3.7
Photograph 3.0, etc.
Diagram 4.5

Most people use some form Chapter.Number series enumerating, which makes it simpler when you add additional material in an earlier chapter. Most document editors will renumber your figures for you appropriately.

Then when the photograph comes up, you would caption it appropriately.

Photograph 5.1: Crazy house on Hayarkon Street, Tel Aviv. Photograph taken by Sambach on xxxx.xx.xx. Released to Wikimedia Commons.

(If you are the photographer/author, you could simply state Photograph by Author, taken on xxxx.xx.xx).

In text, you would refer to Photograph 5.1 in the text, just like that. If you needed to, you could add an explanatory note for example to:

  Photograph 5.1 ("Crazy House / Tel Aviv") is a prime  example of what architects would call a maison folle. .... .... I would like to direct your attention to faux turret on the top  corner of Photograph 5.1 ... blah blah blah...

tl;dr: As with all things, do what your advisor suggests. However, the style I give here is more appropriate in the journals and publications that I'm familiar with.

Fine Print: If you are a fine artist and you list each piece of work (or series) in your cv as part of your intellectual/artistic output, then you could refer to your works using author (date) or other similar styles. But doing so in the sciences and social sciences (and most humanities) will just earn you a bit of scorn. I would only do so if you had solo shows, gallery representation, or some other form of appropriate peer-review recognition of your work within the artistic community. I'm guessing that is not the case since we get so few fine artists in a.se but I'm happy to expand on this if you were.
Fine Print 2: If you are an architect and you designed the building, then you are also free to cite your buildings as separate works.


There are several options for Alice:

Ask Bob if he is willing to give up his authorship. Then, if he says
it is OK, publish without his name (but make clear in which part he was involved).
Remove Bob's contribution from the paper and then publish. (Which might not be possible.)
Find some common ground (maybe with the help of someone else) with Bob and then publish. (The best way, but
may not be possible.)
Do not publish the paper at all.

  Can Alice treat Bob as refusing authorship of the paper, and publish
  the manuscript without his name?

No.


How do I write a cover letter for a journal that has a double blind review process when I need to reference my previous conference paper?

The editor is not subject to the double-blindness and is usually the only one to see the cover letter. They have to know who the authors are so that they can reconnect with you once reviews are in, not try to use any of the authors as reviewers, etc. I'd submit a normal cover letter and make sure that the paper itself is properly blinded. You must cite the prior conference article you are extending, but you have to do it in the third person (e.g., "...in Rosh, et al. they show that..., in this article, we extend their work to show that ...", etc.).

If you are still confused about this issue, contact an editor at the journal and ask for clarification.


Using Industry experience to recover from bad undergrad record

Getting experience on a work project using statistics & machine learning is a great first step towards remedying a poor undergrad GPA.

Your next steps should be:

mastering your work project (reading books, picking your colleague's brain),
finding CS programs & faculty that specialize in machine learning,
reading their popular/latest articles (list your questions),
discussing these articles and questions with coworkers,
attending the weekly colloquium/seminar of a CS department, and
talking to the speaker and other interested faculty afterwards.

Once you're comfortable enough to talk faculty about their research, make friends and say, "I am considering applying to grad school, is there a place for me in your group? Would you consider putting a good word for me with the admissions committee?"


Should sections of a chapter have introductions and conclusions?

Everything that you write should be justified by the goals of the document. Introductions, conclusions and "linking" material between sections are written in order to support your overall argument (for example, by summarizing higher-level ideas) or to assist the reader (for example, by letting them know something about what they are about to read). So you need to think about the needs of each part of your document, and how the whole thing fits together, to discover where introductions and conclusions ought to be placed.

Introductory material does not need to be very long, and it does not need to occupy its own section. Within a chapter, it's perfectly fine to have a short introductory passage before the first numbered section. For smaller divisions of your document, it's likely that you don't need to say very much in the way of introduction. When you find yourself writing an introductory sentence that doesn't add anything to the section heading, you are better off just omitting that sentence.

Readers can be served by short "hints" at the beginning or end of a section, that explain how the topics are linked together. This sort of thing lets you move more smoothly from one topic to another, and makes your overall argument more coherent. Without using many words, you can let readers know whether the new topic is:

A later counterargument to the material in the previous section.
A supporting argument from a different perspective.
An additional example of the same thing we have just seen.
Superficially different, but actually the same underneath.
etc.

This is much better than having a template introductory sentence that just says "This section is about ..." without giving any indication how the section fits in to the overall structure.

Conclusions are the same: for a short section, there's no need to sum up what's just been said. That doesn't add anything. In particular, for a literature review chapter, you are likely to be better off having a general conclusion to the chapter (if there is a conclusion at all), rather than a separate conclusion in each section.


Is it normal for a PhD advisor not to read a student's thesis?

"All of the papers in the thesis have already been written, so he knows what's in the main body, and I've just been sending him parts of the introduction/literature review."

If this is the case, then indeed it is reasonable (and possibly normal) not to read evolving drafts of the "thesis". Since the thesis is basically done, and now you simply wrap the papers up to have a "thesis".

I don't think it is essential for scholars to read carefully introductory parts of their students' dissertations, assuming they already read the papers on which the thesis is based. The papers are much more important than a "thesis", which is mostly an internal document nowadays (this is subject specific though, and I'm sure some commenters here would find my answer blasphemous. But I stand behind my position: a thesis is not something important once the papers were written and published or checked).


Publish few papers on good or many papers in worse conferences - reputation-wise?

I'll suggest that trying to game this out in advance is a mistake. You will miss opportunities and focus on the wrong thing. Do the research. Write the papers and only then decide on an appropriate venue. If you think that a bit of extra effort on a certain paper might help it be accepted in a better conference, then do that. But otherwise send it to an appropriate conference. If you wait a year, trying to improve it, you will get scooped in a hot field.

You don't want to be the person that only ever did one significant thing and was otherwise unknown in academia.

First the research, then the papers, then decisions. That is different from not  having a goal, of course.

But being present in lots of conferences also lets you build your circle of collaborators.


How many first-author papers should I publish during postdoc to get a tenure-track faculty position?

I think quality of the work is more important than number or papers.  Even more important than first-author status.

Of course non-first-author papers count; for exapmle, get the actual first author to write one of your recommendation letters, to describe your contribution to the research.


How do I use/add first name (or forename) in citation?

It's a little tricky trying to expand someone's name, since you might inadvertently arrive at a form they never use (for example, some people have never been called by their first names, but have always used their middle names instead, and may prefer to be cited as "F. Middle Last" rather than "First Last", "First M. Last", or "First Middle Last").  Some people also prefer to use initials when publishing, for example out of fear of prejudice or bias.

So if the published paper uses initials, then it is safest to retain them when citing it, unless you are really confident that your expanded version of the name won't confuse readers or offend the author.

On the other hand, if the published paper gives a first name, then you have your answer.  Other databases may also give first names (for example, MathSciNet or the Mathematics Genealogy Project), but which databases are relevant depends on the field.


Getting a W on your transcript for grad school applications

It is, of course, impossible to say how someone will look at it, but I doubt that very many people would think it odd or unusual. It is pretty easy for students to get in too deep with studies and the other things during undergraduate years. If you drop now and do well later few would think less of you, I predict.

But if you make a habit of it, then things might be different.

Since it is difficult to predict the time requirements for research, you have a ready-made explanation for getting in over your head for a term.

However, a poor grade, such as a D in a major course would be cause for concern. Not necessarily disqualifying but it needs explanation.


Answer 1: Go to the paper submission web site and click on "submit abstract"; you will be redirected to a web form where you can enter title, authors, and abstract. It will tell you the preferred format for each of these.

Answer 2:
Conference organizers split the abstract submission and paper submission deadlines so that program committee members can already select the papers they want to review while the authors may still be working on the paper itself. Typically, the PC members see the titles and abstracts in some conference organization system such as EasyChair where they can bid on the submissions. The most convenient format for this purpose is typically plain text. In fact, I don't remember any conference that asked for something else. Some very restricted form of HTML might also be possible, but PDF is extremely unlikely.


Is it socially acceptable to consider myself a chemist, if I have a degree in chemistry but no research or professional experience?

If it makes you feel better, if you become a pharmacist and go to the UK you might be best known as a chemist:

1 British - A shop where medicinal drugs are dispensed and sold, and in
which toiletries and other medical goods can be purchased:
‘antihistamine tablets are freely available in chemists’
1.1 A person authorized to dispense medicinal drugs.
2 A person engaged in chemical research or experiments: ‘chemists have
developed catalysts that can turn low-grade fuels into petrol’

As it is, I'd be a bit concerned that simply saying you are a chemist would be misrepresenting yourself, in that being part of a profession generally means you are employed (or have been employed and continue to keep up your affiliation). It is more an in-context, implied matter of what is assumed in natural conversation, rather than a hard and fast rule.
One problem is that in a natural environment if you say you are a chemist, a person would commonly ask something like "where do you work" or "how long have you been a chemist" - to which you would need to back-peddle and explain that your undergraduate degree is in chemistry, but you are not and have not been employed as a chemist.
Such a situation would make it look like you are mostly "blowing smoke" and trying to make yourself to be something you are not. If you simply said, "my undergraduate degree is in chemistry", and optionally, "and I'm studying to be a pharmacist", that makes the situation clear and there can be no mistake about it.
As a comparison, if someone said they were a philosopher and it turns out they just have an undergrad degree in philosophy, I'd squint disapprovingly at them for being full of it. In some professions this would be much worse - for example, I will have a degree in psychology, but in very few situations would it ever be permissible to say that I'm a psychologist, as that happens to be a special title reserved for licensed clinicians.
It's all about clarity - and honesty - in your communication. Saying something that is technically true, but gives a false impression, should be left to slimeball-salesman types and politicians.


Should I cite a book that I read to prepare for a talk but did not directly use it?

What is the purpose of your talk?

If you are reporting progress of your work, focus on your work. In that case it is typically not relevant which general resources you used to brush up your understanding of the topic.
If the purpose is at least partially teaching, I'd put them into a "Recommended Reading" slide / part of a slide at the end of the presentation.


Taking credit for supervising a PhD student while I am a postdoc

If you are not yet a professor, you will most likely not yet be the sole one supervising, so there should be a professor who is officially assigned to supervise this student. It might be that you do all the work and the professor is only there on paper, however, he is still the one responsible.
Thus, I would suggest to state in the CV that you assisted professor X in supervising PhD students. Most people will be well aware that this means that you did most of the supervising work, however doing it this way you do not claim something that you (officially) shouldn't be doing.
If you want, ask the professor to write a letter of recommendation emphasizing the fact that you did most of the work.


How to justify capability for securing research funds in a faculty job application?

Selection committees know that there are different standards in different countries. What is important is that you give them a list of the grants you have obtained, along with a perspective on what that means in your country. In other words, document things such as the typical size of grants, the success rate of proposals, or maybe the typical amount of grant funding a professor at one of the better universities in your country has. All of this puts your achievements in context, and allows the selection committee to already get an idea how competitive you have been in securing grant funding and how that might translate to your competitiveness in the US.

If you make that hurdle, and the selection committee is still interested in your case, then there are sufficiently many international faculty in the United States that a committee can always call up someone who knows the system in your country and ask them what they thought of your track record regard research funding.


Is there a quick way to search for a given researcher's past collaborators/co-authors?

For researchers in computer science, another approach is to use DBLP, which is free. For example, this is the coauthor list for me on my DBLP page. It is reached by going to the researcher page at DBLP, and then clicking the little 'people' icon on the right hand side.


Is it ethical to accept small gifts from students? And how small is small?

In the general case, professors/lecturers/TAs should not accept gifts from students, as these things can lend themselves very easily to accusations of conflict of interest. This falls in the same general category as dating one of your students, or grading your kid's exam.

That said, I can think of three situation where gifts are acceptable.

(1) a graduating student gets you something nice after graduation (e.g., in the department where I did my PhD, it is normal for students and advisors to exchange gifts after a successful doctoral defense).

(2) a current student makes a "collective gift", e.g., a student brings a cake to class to celebrate his/her birthday and offers you a slice.

(3) you go through some major life event and students pitch in to get you something, e.g., when I came back to work after having to get major surgery, the grad students in my department got me a nice coffee machine to celebrate that I hadn't died.


How should I display scientific and non-scientific functions at the university on my email signature?

Normally, someone from administration will have guidelines on the writing and layout of official university stationary, which normally includes business cards. You should check with your departmental clerical staff about these rules and procedures; you may not have freedom in this area, and end up with a print order that must be destroyed. There are often policies on email signature on official addresses also. You need to appreciate the magnitude of the bureaucracy that steers the leviathan of a UK university.

That said, you are confusing your hired position with your titles. They are different. A professor, of any kind (Emeritus, Full, etc) normally just uses the title of Professor. The nature of your appointment Associate Professor for a research group is not part of your nominal titles. It also depends on whether your name is used in a context where full academic attributions are also used. Pre-nominal titles do not compound in the UK as they do in the Germanic style, (except in certain circumstances), however we do tend to list all qualifications, not just postgraduate ones.

Simple style:

  Prof. T. Koznin
  Associate Professor of Hard Maths
  University of Blogshire

Fully Qualified:

  Prof. T. Koznin, BSc, MSc, PhD
  Associate Professor of Hard Maths
  University of Blogshire

An example of extreme compounding titles:

  Eur Ing Prof Sir J Cholmondley-Warner BSc PhD MRCP MRSE CBE
  Emeritus Professor of Fine Whining
  Faculty of Laggards
  University of Midshires

I just gave the last one to illustrate how complicated the rules of formal correct academic titling can be here (and I did not choose an academic Peer - that was even too complicated for me).

Footnote for UK academics: Some institutions have taken to using the title Associate Professor for Grade 9 posts which at other institutions are graded as Senior Lecturer or Reader. They feel it enhances their ability to attract research staff from abroad who do not understand our grading system in order improve their REF. Its a way of attracting contributors without paying the Grade 10 professorial scale.


When to give up seeking justice after you've been plagiarized?

As you know, there are two separate issues with plagiarism:

Claiming ideas as one's own
Claiming words as one's own

You have a legitimate concern about the second -- if this student is going to directly use your words, he needs to use quotes. Attempts to get around this by making one or two insignificant changes are not appropriate.

That said, I can understand why the president of the university didn't want to get involved -- as academic crimes go, this one is quite minor. I agree that the "lack of intent to deceive" ruling was erroneous, which is unfortunate; getting the student to re-write the content, with no other penalty, would have been a far more appropriate outcome.

  At what point should I give up seeking justice?

I think it would be appropriate to reach out to the student (I would have started here, personally), their advisor, and the university's ombudsperson (in that order), just asking them to rewrite those sections and to not do it again. If they refuse, it would probably take a lawyer to get them to listen -- but you don't have any damages (not even to your reputation), so that seems a bit excessive in this case.


Instructor listening in secretly in simulated intake assignment -- allowed? Ethical?

I have to side with your professor here. You did not have a private phone conversation. You had a simulated conversation with a person you knew to be a fake client with the purpose of evaluating your skill. If the professor listens in to the conversation that means he will evaluate you himself instead of relying on the person he got to play the potential client. This is good for you.

I honestly don't see what the problem is, you did something that you knew to be a test, so your professor gets to see/hear it to evaluate you. If instead of doing this over the phone this would have been a live interview, would you feel different about your professor listining in?


Should I send unsolicited applications for postdoc positions?

Absolutely you should, many positions aren't advertised and it could be your skills are just what the other group needed. Make sure you go for a quality over quantity approach, and really tailor each application to the group you are applying to. A well thought out cover letter (checked for spelling and grammar) and a well formatted and targeted CV puts you in a favourable position. A good approach is to send an application by post as well as by email; you will really stand out doing this. Talk about what you what you like in the group, your current situation, and how you think you would contribute to the group's research. In terms of funding, if you have some already great, if not, research what you would be eligible for and open the possibility of the pair of you developing an application together.


It's not that uncommon. Authors pay this charge mostly because they think having a cover image increases their reputation and/or impact. I don't know any study proving this assumption. Please let me know, if there are any.

Nevertheless, if an author wants to have a cover image, I always suggest to negotiate because this significantly decreases the amount of money the author has to pay, see e.g.

  Similar story: Journal (a respected one) offered to use one of our images for their cover page. They wanted $1800. I said I don't have the money. They offered to do it for $900. I said no. In the end they put it on the cover for "free".

Source: Tweet be @rauscherMRI


Which is more important when applying to grad school (particularly top grad schools): Research or Letters?

Short answer: In practice, letters are more important.

Long answer: Doing great research is great, but if I'm on an admissions committee, how do I know your research is great? I can read your paper, but unless it's close to my area of expertise, it can be hard or at least time-consuming to determine its quality. I probably have too many applicants who wrote a paper to read everyone's paper in detail (depending on how common undergraduate authorship is in my field). And even if I'm convinced the paper is great, how do I know what your contribution to the paper was? (In the fields I'm familiar with, it's very rare for undergrads to author solo papers.) On the other hand, if I have a letter from a faculty member whose word I trust saying that this paper is great and you did most of the hard work (or even that he/she is very impressed with your potential), that's much more useful.


I have just checked that changing authors when replacing a paper is technically enabled. I am pretty sure I have seen this happen: those with more searching savvy than I will surely turn up with actual examples.  And yes, the arxiv maintains all previous postings and their authorship.

I don't see any ethical problems with what you propose.  But I'm not sure I understand the message that you're seeking to convey: are you saying that you attach some meaning to an initial posting by your student only followed by a replacement jointly authored with you?  To me that does not have a clear meaning (and by the way, some people will look at the first posting and many won't).  If anything, that would look to me like you realized that what your student uploaded was not satisfactory, so you stepped in to salvage the situation.  If that's not what you're going for, maybe don't do this.  Why not just upload a jointly authored posting the first time around?


How to quantify potential supervisor's reputation at a non-top university?

Assuming both of them are still research active, in the sense that they are publishing and going to conferences, you're looking at a lot of noise and very little signal.

Both advisors got a job at a university with a PhD program.  That already means they are pretty good and have significant research networks.  If you end up doing exceptionally good research for a PhD graduate from your department, they will both have the networks to recommend you for a postdoc.

For positions that are not research-focused, it really doesn't matter what their reputation is, because the people hiring for non-research positions are generally out of the network anyway (and even if they are not, they won't be hiring based on whether they know your advisor or not).

Work with the person you like working with better and whose projects interest you more.


Are there really disadvantages of community college and state Uni for undergrad compared to 4 years state Uni?

Typically no, Community College transfer credit doesn't detract from your CV or Resume.  The second part of your question is harder -- is a State University a disadvantage compared to a high performance private school?  And that answer really depends on your plans.

If you plan on entering the workforce right after graduation then going to a small not known school can be a disadvantage for a few reasons:

Job recruiters may skip your school.  But that doesn't mean you're out of luck because you're certainly able to apply to any job that has an opening.
Many times people who make the hiring decisions like to hire from either where they went to school or a school where they've tended to really get good workers from.  So a small school that is an unknown can be a hindrance here.

But there is one good reason to go to a small school (aside from not having crippling debt as you've already pointed out).  At a small school you have better access to faculty than a large R1 University.  At a large University you're mainly in contact with TAs.  At a small school you get to know faculty and you will end up getting better letters from those faculty than some TA.

These letters from faculty who know you are a great asset because they can help you get into a good graduate school, where letters of recommendation are probably the most important part of your application.  Once you get into a good grad school you're set because then you're likely to be at an institution where the hiring manager went, or where they've gotten good applicants.

In general where you went becomes more and more important as you approach a terminal degree.  So definitely don't worry about going to Community College.


What to do when a recommender for an already-submitted PhD admissions application suddenly goes AWOL?

Although I have not served on an admissions committee, I have been in your situation. There are two things you need to do, both right away. Find a new reference letter writer. When you write to them, apologize for the late notice, but explain that another letter writer is going to be unable to submit the letter(s) they agreed to. In this request, be calm, grateful, and respectful to both the recipient and the original letter writer. Also, contact the admissions office and tell them you would like to change a recommendation writer. I do not think there is need for any detail here. As long as they have letters before the deadline, the administrator responsible for compiling files will add the appropriate letter to your file. The people on the admissions committee may not even know anything changed. Even if they do, I do not think they will care much. They will pay attention to the actual substance of the submitted letters.

Hopefully my story is helpful. A former supervisor submitted about 80% of the letters I had requested from him for my graduate school applications. At first he was simply AWOL. Then I asked a former co-worker to knock on the supervisor's door. The supervisor shouted, "I've had enough with these damn reference letters!" He never emailed me to tell me he had decided to stop writing! I followed the procedure I describe above. The admissions administrators were helpful. I do not believe it had any adverse effect on my consideration in the admission process.


Journal papers starting with a famous quotation

Starting with 'big words' from a quotation of a famous person (or a movie or a song or whatever) is ambivalent. Some might think you show off ('oh I read -- and understood -- Wittgenstein! Look at me!). Others simply skip initial quotations. I myself use them only when they fit to the specific thesis or argument I am trying to make -- and always refer to the quote in the introduction of the article. Only then an initial quote is justified. If it stands there alone with no reference in the text it should be deleted (and from my experiences journal referees do suggest deletion).

So: Quotations are ok. But make sure they fit and add to your point you want to make. And: Write the author's name and the quotation correctly. The mistakes in name and text of the quote you linked to are embarassing.


How common are academic positions in theoretical physics offered to master graduates?

Masters graduates in physics are often offered paid positions as PhD students.  Otherwise it is very rare to obtain a full-time teaching or research job without holding a PhD.  Part time jobs, like adjunct instructor, may be possible.

Formerly it was possible to get a job at a less competitive institution like a community college or a university in a developing country.  However, while such jobs may still only require a Master's, in practice it is now easy enough to find a PhD holder to fill them.

You may be able to get funding which is intended for PhD students without completing a PhD.  But it is not clear why you would want to.


No, you don't have to use your passport name, use the name you want to publish under. If you search this site, you'll find guidance on selecting a suitable name.


The big difficulty with devising formal ranking systems based on numerical measures is that, outside of a handful of areas like sports, anything we can measure is at best a proxy for what we really care about.  It may start off as a pretty accurate reflection, but anyone judged on this basis will quickly discover how to manipulate it.

For example, universities in the US are often judged partially by the fraction of students they accept.  Of course, ambitious universities have adapted by advertising to encourage more applications, with no intention of accepting these applicants, but just to lower the acceptance rate by increasing the denominator.

Similarly, universities are also judged based on "yield," the fraction of admitted students who attend.  That sounds at first like a pretty good measure of popularity, but it creates an incentive to game the system by rejecting students you think are likely to choose another university in the end, and universities do just that.

Time taken to graduation can be gamed by kicking out students who are taking too long.  Employment rates can be gamed by offering ten-week temporary jobs to unemployed students, timed to coincide with the measurement of employment rate (really!).  All sorts of things can be gamed.

And this is not just a theoretical problem.  It occurs all the time in practice (if you are in the US, then your school is very likely doing some of these things), and some people are extremely upset about it.

You might think scholarly measures based on citation counts would be less subject to this, but they are not.  There are plenty of corrupt journals where editors put pressure on people to cite papers, or even use totally fraudulent methods like publishing review articles that carefully cite every paper they have recently published.  People have been caught seriously distorting their journals' impact factors by doing this, and I'm sure there are other, more clever editors who are getting away with it.  If professional success depends on influencing a number, then people will discover ways to influence it.

In summary, there's an awful tension between transparency and resistance to fraud: if you explain how your ratings work, then people will manipulate them.  Nobody has any idea how to avoid this, and the net effect is that serious scholars do not waste time trying to compile numerical rankings.  For the most part, the only people who do are those who are naive, trying to make money in unscrupulous ways, or trying to promote a cause through carefully chosen rating methods.  The rankings they produce are not worth paying attention to.

P.S.  Polls of expert opinion are generally much better than rankings based on numerical measures, but even they have their problems.  For example, the U.S. News college rankings are based partly on asking college presidents to rank other schools.  Clemson University manipulated the rankings by rating all competing schools as below average, no matter how good they were.  I suspect they weren't the only ones to do this - the amazing thing isn't that it happened, but rather that we ever found out.


Time short on thesis defense preperation

Call together your graduate school friends, and set aside a two hour block of time.
Give them the presentation in its current form.
Receive (possibly scathing) feedback and take good notes.
Go fix the presentation.
If your friends are up for it, repeat the process, but not more than once.
Practice at least two more times before tomorrow.
Give the defense tomorrow, and pass.

Good luck!

(8. Buy lots of beer for your buddies who gave you help to pull this thing together.)


How do I know if a PhD is the right choice?

If your goal is to actually do research in economics, having only an MA will be severely limiting.

It's possible to get research assistant/associate positions at important institutions without a PhD, particularly if you're willing to work in the non-profit sector (think tanks, foundations) or in related areas like banking.  However, having been at two very prominent ones myself (Brookings and Urban), there is definitely a glass ceiling that even skilled researchers with a track record of successful research struggle to get past without PhDs.

However, it sounds like you're more interested in larger policy groups, like the IMF, World Bank, BIS, or central banks.  It will be even more difficult to get in the door there without at least being a PhD candidate.  These places generally have more full PhD applicants than they can handle, so they face little incentive to consider non-PhDs for anything beyond supporting roles.

In short, if you're willing to compromise where you work and potentially face a glass ceiling eventually, you can definitely do economic research with an MA.  Otherwise, a PhD is entirely necessary.


Presenting a talk on two parallel sessions of the AMS meetings

The American Mathematical Society may or may not have a rule against it, but even if they don't I think this is a prohibitively bad idea.

At a conference, especially a big one like an AMS or AMS/MAA conference, time is the most valuable commodity: there are so many people there who would like to interact with each other and hear about each other's work, but so little time that many of the events take place on top of each other and the time given to each is very little.  Notice that the standard length of the talks is 20 minutes.  Virtually everyone who gives a 20 minute talk would rather give a longer talk (in particular, has much more to say).  Most of the talks are kept
that short so as to involve the largest number of people in the very limited time available.

With this in mind, taking up two slots for the same talk may be viewed as remarkably selfish behavior.  Many if not most people at these conferences are interested in more of the talks than they are able to attend: sometimes tough choices have to be made to see one talk versus another (some of us who attend these meetings remember "who we went up against" and marvel that anyone made it to our talk).  To give the same talk twice really looks unfair and ungracious to the other participants.  It would be hard for any session organizer to justify a "repeat performance" as a better intellectual outcome than a new talk.

I should say that at the JMM sometimes people give multiple talks.  At a meeting a few years ago, I noticed that a certain hot job market candidate was giving three talks (of different kinds; maybe not more than one in a special session).  If you're planning to give more than one talk in a special session I would definitely mention this to both session organizers: to have someone turned away while someone else speaks twice looks harsh and should be avoided most of the time, I think.  This is a different thing though than giving the same talk twice: in fact, since giving two different talks is not unheard of in these meetings, giving the same talk twice looks perhaps even weirder: in particular, it may look like you very much want to talk but don't have very much to say.

Added: My colleague Brian Boe is the Associate Secretary for the Southeastern Section of the AMS.  I consulted him, and he replied with the following information:

An individual may not give two talks on the same paper. (At JMM, this implies: not even in an AMS special session and an MAA invited paper session, for example).
An individual may not give more than one (10-minute) contributed paper talk.
An individual is allowed to speak in multiple special sessions (and up to one contributed paper session), as long as the talks are on different topics.


How to deal with students who lose their digital work?

You should deal with them in the same way that you deal with students who claim to have lost non-digital work.  Here are two reasons:

This is not really any different from when students complained that "the dog ate my homework."  Both paper and digital formats are susceptible to being damaged, lost, or destroyed.

They will not get any special exceptions from their boss when they lose important digital documents in a real job.

My students do most of their work in digital formats and I've never made special exceptions.  I suppose I would do so in some unusual circumstances (say, a university server where they were told to store their work had been hacked).
If you want to help them develop better digital work habits, introduce them to backups, Dropbox and/or version control.  But I don't think that is your job.


Rationale behind lack of transparency regarding thesis defence committee

In some cases, there is an external bureaucratic entity within the university that imposes such rules on departments, along the way insinuating that an "outside examiner" (even if there is none qualified) is necessary to "maintain standards", because (supposedly) otherwise departments might grant crappy PhD's... But, at my university, such secrecy is not required, in fact, nor is prior communication of student with committee prohibited. After all, wouldn't such communication help everything?

Similarly, some faculty suspect or even explicitly accuse other faculty of having low standards, etc.

Oddly, my university gives PhD students exactly one attempt at a "final oral exam" (=thesis defense): if they "fail", they are terminated. That is, there cannot be any "message" to go back and do more work... which seems to me bizarre.

In my opinion, the scenario in which a student presents a thesis as a fait accommpli with a short time-table to do trivial revisions (as opposed to altering the scope, or, heaven forbid, really learning more things to do a better thing...) is a bad thing. That is, interacting with the committee only at the end of a multi-year project strikes me as bizarre and not useful. All the worse if the committee's composition itself is a last-minute surprise, so that nothing positive could have been done.

But, yes, some of my colleagues apparently believe that there are universal absolutes, so that the notion of discussion and negotiation is what is incomprehensible or corrupt. Indeed, as with some coursework, it seems that a large part of the "test" is to figure out what the "test" might be about. I suppose there is a watershed of opinion about whether such a meta-test isn't at a seriously more-expert level than the literal material. Certainly at the PhD level, the meta-questions can easily become so serious that experts don't agree, so it seems unreasonable to me to require novices figure this out on their own.


Let me pretend I'm the professor. Things I will want to know:

What drives you? What is important in your professional life?
What is it about cancer research that appeals to you? The raw science? Helping humanity? Glory?
How big is your curiosity?
Why do you want to do this degree at this university?
Can you work hard? Where is the evidence?
What have you done in your previous situation that will help/hinder  you in this one?
Can you write? Evidence?
Do you follow the evidence wherever it leads?
Do you work well with others? How comfortable am I making you part of my group? Note that you may get to meet some of the others as part of this.
Have you any experience with this sort of research? If not, how fast can I predict you will catch on?
Do you have ideas for research for a dissertation? (Not a deal breaker if no, but possibly useful if you do.)
What sort of questions did you ask me in the interview? What do they say about you?
Other things I can't think of now but that may come up in the interview.

Take a pen and notebook so you can take quick notes if needed. Nothing elaborate or electronic. I suggest a pencil and a few index cards actually.

Note that some of these are hard to express and hard to evaluate. Some are impossible to just ask and answer. It is even counterproductive to try to directly express some of them. Showing is better than telling. Some are more important than others, but the next person has a different ranking.

I may have read your CV before the interview, but I'm pretty busy. I may want to talk to a former professor afterwards (unlikely).

But more important than all of that is to be yourself and just be comfortable with it. Don't try to force it.

Contrary to stereotypes, "Do you like beer?" probably won't be a consideration. Tea is acceptable.


In performing a comparison, how can I get authors to actually respond to a request for source code?

I'm doing my PhD in computer science
  This will definitely take way too long and in my opinion waste a lot
  of time

Well, that is what a PHD in CS in experimental algorithms and areas is all about. You must prepare your algorithm, implement it, implement previous works and compare your work with them. So, how much time it will take you it is of no interest to anyone else but you and your supervisor. So, this line of argument is naive.

  One solution would be to email the authors and ask politely for their
  source code

Yes, but it not the only one. You could ask for their datasets and run your algorithm on their datasets, instead of making yet another dataset. Moreover, experimental algorithm communities have well-known benchmark instances and all related papers work on them for easy comparison of results. Why do you need to build yet another dataset? It is OK to use this extra dataset AFTER you tested your algorithm on those community benchmark instances. You could also send your datasets to your "competitors" and ask them to run their experiments on your datasets and just give you their results. Prepare you experiments relatively to older papers, notify them of your PC specs (and provide alternatives PC configuration  - you probably have different  PCs on your lab) and tell them to repeat all your suggested experiments on an PC close to your suggested specs.

If you like so much to share code, you can also send them the source code of yours, provide explanation how to compile it and use it and then let them run experiments on their PCs and give you the relative results to their work. I know that this thought probably never crossed your mind. Why? "They might steal my work, how do I know they will give me correct results, it is too much work to do so, I don't trust them with my src code". And now you know why people do not want to share their code.

But you also probably forgot the most easy way out of your problem. Let your supervisor contact the first author AND the rest of the authors. Unless you are an exceptional PHD student with many amazing papers you are practically Mr Nobody and people will easily brush off your requests. It is harder to do so to your supervisor (unless he is Mr Nobody as well). Usually people do not want to say NO to future reviewers, collaborators and respected members of the community. Also it is important to CC all paper authors. The first author (PHD student) might be protective of his code and hide your request from his supervisor. If you CC the supervisor,  he might be forced to share his code or at least reply.

Last but not least: Be nice when asking.


Is it possible to ask the professor to check assignment before submitting?

Most instructors will refuse to check your homework for you before you turn it in.  You get it graded once and only once.  There are no do-overs where you get to turn it in the first time, they point out your mistakes, then you get to turn it in again after you've corrected it.

If you're confused, you can ask clarifying questions about what the homework asks (e.g., desired behavior in corner cases, output formatting, error handling, other constraints and anything else that seems ambiguous) and about the underlying material (e.g., an algorithm discussed in lecture that you need to apply) but not about the correct answer or whether your answer is okay.  Some instructors (e.g., me) will help a student with debug, but usually only to help you learn the skills involved.  They usually will not debug your program for you.


Is it inappropriate for a PI to hire the most suitable available researcher as an RA, just because s/he is his/her family member?

Is it inappropriate for a PI to hire the most suitable available researcher as an RA, just because s/he is his/her family members?

Finding the most suitable candidate is a very hard problem, so lets be a bit more precise:

  Is it inappropriate for a PI to hire the researcher (s)he feels is most suitable as an RA, just because s/he is his/her family members?

Now the problem becomes clear: Can the PI be unbiased when determining which one is the most suitable candidate if one of them is a family member? My suspicion is that for most people the answer is no.

There are lots of other, more practical, reasons why it is a really really really bad idea to hire a family member, but those are discussed in the question you linked to.

One of these that you should consider is to protect the reputation of the RA/family member who would be hired. Scientific communities are like villages: people gossip a lot. If you are hired by a family member there will always be the suspicion that you were hired because you were a family member, i.e. you weren't good enough to make it on your own. Once you got that stigma, it is very hard to get rid of it.


How to protect against the theft of a paper?

This seems like a reasonable request by the instructor. Without understanding why you are feeling vulnerable, it is not possible to provide an answer. It is worth talking to someone (possibly the instructor or maybe your advisor or a therapist) about why you are feeling vulnerable.

As for protecting yourself, emailing the document to/from your university email account is probably sufficient as documentation. The next level up would be to email the student the document with the instructor cc'd. This way you are proving you shared your paper (and gaining documentation). Anything more and you will likely be revealing your insecurities, which might lead to more insecurities.


Conference sponsored by a top conference?

I'm not sure what it means for one conference to sponsor another. In the particular case you mention, "SIGCOMM" is both the name of a conference and the name of a group within the ACM that sponsors that conference. So it's likely that SIGCOMM (the group) is sponsoring CONEXT, rather than SIGCOMM (the conference).


Effect of project coordination task on academic profile

In the comments above, I asked whether OP had any experience performing project coordination tasks similar to that of the position under consideration. OP's reply:

  Yes, I have five years of experience from industry, not directly as a
  project manager, but as a product manager. So it would be within my
  current skillset.

You have obtained one answer here which emphasizes the benefits of gaining this sort of experience. However, it doesn't sound like that answer is applicable to you (though, you would probably know better than us whether this experience would truly be worth it, or if you would just end up doing stuff you already know how to do).

Let's review where you are, at this critical stage in your career:

You are just now wrapping up your PhD.
You are getting ready to start a transitional postdoc.
You seem to be interested in pursuing an academic career.
You have already gained project management/coordination experience from working in industry.

To my mind, all of the above points to one conclusion:

You telling your PI/institute director "no, thanks."

Instead of taking on the coordination tasks, I recommend that you use all of your time in "postdoc mode" working on the things that will strengthen your research profile: producing high-quality research output, finishing up manuscripts, defining your research agenda, growing your network of collaborators, etc.

When you begin to apply for academic jobs at the next level, or for other postdoc positions after the transitional one ends, you will already be able to play up your ability to coordinate complex projects. So, I don't really see the benefits of playing the project coordinator role right now. The downside of taking that coordinator role on, however, is the main concern: I think it would interfere too much with all of the other important things you should be focusing on at this critical stage of your career.

(And, let's face it, spending 25% of your time on project coordination tasks for a large project, with lots of moving parts, is probably a very conservative estimate.)