You need to understand that a University degree (assuming it is a degree course you are enrolled in) does not attempt to teach you all the skills you need in order to be successful in your chosen career. What it does do is give a good grounding in your chosen area, but more importantly, provide evidence of your ability to apply yourself and achieve a widely recognized level of accreditation. If you are after courses that provide more specific vocational skills, and there are plenty of these in the computer science industry, it may be that you should search for a better suited program. These types of courses are usually shorter and more intensive than a degree course.

Whether your university degree will be useful to you will depend very much on what you intend to do with your career.

If you plan to design and develop your own software systems or products, and then fight to have your products recognized on the global market, and build your reputation from scratch, then a degree may not be much use to you. There are some examples of success stories of people who dropped out of, or never went to, university, so nobody can tell you it can't be done. But I think you will need to be extremely good, and lucky, to be able to do that. You may also need to have a back-up plan in the meantime in order to put food on the table.

However, if you ever plan to work for somebody, or a company that does not know of your reputation and amazing ability, then you will need to somehow demonstrate that. A degree is the first step towards demonstrating to those who are likely to employ you that you have been able to apply yourself in a recognized mainstream course of learning and been able to reach recognized benchmark standards. Once in your job, you will then be expected to learn the specifics of that position, and what better way to show that you are able to learn and apply knowledge than to have a piece of paper from a university to show that you can. It will be a nationally (and in many cases, and importantly not all cases, internationally) recognized accreditation. Once you have embarked on your career, it will be the references from previous employers that will vouch for your ability, and the degree will matter less.

What I would be asking myself as a prospective employer is whether someone who claims to have passion and ability to access resources, but lacks the application and commitment to successfully complete their degree is the right person to employ in my team.


Rejected an offer and then became interested (a bad decision I made)

Yes, it is a good idea to ask. But explain that you now think you made a mistake in rejecting the offer. You might also want to mention your longer term goals, which I assume include further education. He can help you with that if he has a good sense of your needs. If your work for him is good enough, he might also have some incentive to help you along. One hopes for such an outcome, anyway.

But yes, ask. Silence gains you nothing, nor him, either.


Comeback advice: how to return a decade after dropping out, when job schedule makes formal study difficult?

Get connected with a support system.  Places to look: organizations with names like "women's opportunity center", campus women's organization, etc.  Community colleges are a great initial re-entry point, even if you are going to re-enter as a junior or senior.  Just take a class or two at a good community college to get your feet wet again, and because they are much better at integrating "returning students" like you than most 4-year schools.

If you have any specific questions please ask so I can give you more specific answers.

Note: my Calculus I teacher went back to school in middle age.  She was one of the best teachers I ever had.  And this was at a community college!


What time of year do STEM professors typically work on grant proposals?

Throughout the year. At least in the U.S., timings are driven in part by when funding agency deadlines are. For most NIH  grants, there are three submission windows per year. For NSF, there are one or two, but when these occur is different for different programs. Plus, in general, thinking about funding is a major task, and can't be confined to a brief span of time.


Should I mention that I have a Bipolar disorder in my statement of purpose?

I would not put it in the statement of purpose as it is a forward looking document (what do you want to study, what qualifications do you have, why study at X university, etc.).

If you must include it, then the diversity statement is a good place.

That being said, I would recommend that you do not include it. You can mention that you “struggled with some health/personal issues” in college but are now prepared for university, but you do not need to give details beyond that. This is your health privacy at stake. You should talk to your letter writers to make sure they know they should  not disclose your personal history without your permission.

Once you are accepted, you can inquire about student health services and reasonable accommodation for your needs.


Letter writer snapped at my reminder email. What can I do in the future to prevent this, and should I still accept his letter?

How can I prevent this from happening in the future?

Well, you can always go live on a desert island, or join an order of silent monks (and even living among monks would not guarantee that you will escape such foibles of human nature).

More seriously: you can’t prevent it, and you shouldn’t try either. You did absolutely nothing wrong by sending a reminder email. For every professor who responds irritably to your emails there are at least ten others who would appreciate your reminder email, and for some of them the reminder would even be needed to get them to upload their letter. Thus, you stand to lose much more than you will gain by changing your behavior because of the professor’s response. Just accept that working with other people necessitates occasionally having some strange and perhaps unpleasant interactions (trust me, you will have many more), and move on.

By the way, I also think it’s highly unlikely that the professor will modify his recommendation because of your email — that would be an extremely unprofessional and unethical thing to do, much more so than replying irritably to an email. Anyway, good luck with your applications.


How can publishers justify author fees for open access journals?

The short answer: some journals use author fees to offset the costs of running open access.

Over the past decade, two practices have become more common together in academic publishing: full open access journals and author fees. The STM Report, an overview of STEM publishing, says the practice is growing in their 2018 edition, "3.2.1 Gold APC and author fees":

  A growing number of journals make their entire contents freely available immediately on
  publication (full open access journals) using supply-side payments. Generally, these
  payments take the form of an article publication charge (APC) levied by journals at the point
  of publication, and it is up to authors (or frequently their research funder or institution) to
  make the payment.

In other words, traditional academic publishing has consumers (research libraries, universities, independent researchers, databases) paying for access to a journal. Open access means that the consumer side is effectively free. Instead, publishers recoup costs through  "supply-side payments" like author fees (known as a Gold APC [article publication charge] model) or institutional sponsorships (known as a Gold no APC model). Authors' fees have been around for decades in various forms, including "page charges," but this report and other commentators (like Kent Anderson) observe that these fees are on the rise again.

What is involved in that cost? The report also includes an answer, under "2.9.12 Overall costs of peer review," emphasis mine:

  The notional global cost of peer review is substantial, albeit largely an estimate of academic time  devoted  to  it  rather  than  actual  cash:  an  RIN  report  estimated  this  at  £1.9  billion annually,  equivalent  to  about  £1200  per  paper  (RIN  2008).  The  Houghton  report  used  a slightly  higher  figure,  at  £1400  per  paper  (Houghton  et  al.,  2009).  These  figures  are  full costings, including estimates for the time spent by the academics conducting the review. The publisher’s  average  cost  of  managing  peer  review  (salaries  and  fees  only,  excluding overheads,  infrastructure,  systems  etc.)  was  reported  by  the  PEER  study  at  $250  per submitted manuscript (Wallace 2012).

So Cambridge University Press may be using the author fees to offset staff salaries, fees, overheads, infrastructure, and systems. Some of their cost is related to peer review, and some would be entailed in running the journal itself. Even if the actual peer reviews from experts are unpaid, all of the surrounding work incurs a cost. Given the RIN report and the PEER study estimates, that cost is somewhere in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars, pounds, or euros.

How does that affect submission rates? As you might guess, some authors are turned away by fees. That said, these publications still tend to get submissions, perhaps because author organizations are able to pay the fees, because the pressures to publish outweigh the costs to the author, or because they are attracted to the open model for ideological reasons. In other words, the motivations vary from author to author.


Is it ethical for a student to edit the Wikipedia page of his advisor?

It is not ethical, and is, per Wikipedia guidelines, a conflict of interest.

  If you have a personal connection to a topic or person, you are advised to refrain from editing those articles directly, from adding related advertising links, links to personal websites and similar, and to provide full disclosure of the connection if you comment about the article on talk pages or in other discussions.

There is an exception. For example, let's say Dr. Potato is listed as a life-long sprout, when he is actually a tuber.

  An exception to editing an article about yourself or someone you know is made if the article contains defamation or a serious error that needs to be corrected quickly. If you do make such an edit, follow it up with an email to WP:OTRS, Wikipedia's volunteer response team, or ask for help on WP:BLPN, our noticeboard for articles about living persons.

Other examples of non-controversial edits would be like fixing spelling and grammar errors, or linking to an article on Wikipedia that may be missed.

It is also encouraged that, instead of providing edits and information, you provide:

  Those with a potential conflict of interest are encouraged to upload good-quality digital media files that are appropriately licensed for Wikipedia and that improve our coverage of a subject.

Images and media that are non-controversial can then be used by others to be cited, as they wouldn't express an opinion.

Examples of non-controversial stuff would be like a picture of the person, preferably doing nothing controversial.


The importance of credentials in pursuing an academic career in pure mathematics

First, the statement that your research is the most important factor only applies to research universities.  Other academic institutions have, for good reason, other important criteria.

Second, the first thing you should understand about academic hiring is that the hiring committee is unable to evaluate with a high degree of accuracy your research.  The error bars on the evaluation of your research are very large, and, particularly for more junior mathematicians, the noise can be almost as big as the signal.

Third, for junior mathematicians, a significant portion of the evaluation of your research comes from your letters of recommendation.  The quality and significance of your publications is much more important than the quantity, and we all know the journal reviewing system is very noisy, with a very large difference between the best and worst papers in a given journal.  Furthermore, your most significant work may not even have had the time to go through the peer review process.  You might think that the committee could try to directly evaluate your work, but in almost all cases, no one on the committee will have the expertise to do so, and in the remaining cases, only one person on the committee will, and they still have to convince everyone else.

Now to actually saying something about your question:

The fame of your recommenders is generally thought to be a noise reducing factor in evaluating your letters.  If a mediocre mathematician thinks you are good, who knows?  They aren't good themselves, so what do they know about being good or not?  If a well-known outstanding mathematician has worked with you and thinks you are good, then it seems more likely that you are actually good.  (In reality, I'm not sure how well ability in mathematics correlates with ability to judge mathematical ability in others, but I'm talking about how search committees tend to think.  There is at least some positive correlation, in that people who aren't mathematicians almost certainly don't have anything useful to say first hand.)

The places you do your PhD and postdoc(s) also likely put some floor on your ability, so they are also noise reducing factors.

Generally speaking, noise reduction on the bottom end helps your candidacy.  So going to a strong department and having a well known advisor doesn't just make you a stronger mathematician; it also makes you look like a stronger mathematician, or, at least, look less likely to be merely average or good.

On the other hand, search committees also recognize that people who went to less prestigious departments and had less capable advisors have had less opportunity, and more of their success can be attributed to them alone.  This might lead the committee to think the candidate is more likely to be successful in the future.  This means someone from a weaker program who can be a convincingly strong candidate might have an advantage.


What worked for me was to select a potential advisor and schedule a meeting to check her interest on my ideas. Then I wrote that more or less like a project for technical people (that could come from different backgrounds, but in my field) structuring the text in a way that guided the reader.

Now, thinking back, it could have been easier to do it if I have structured it similar to a position paper.


Are undergraduate reference letters adequate for PhD applications after a masters program?

A Ph.D. program is about research.  Have you done research?  If not, how do you know you want to study for a Ph.D.?

It is your responsibility to seek out opportunities for research.
Protestations that your professors were not open to communication are not likely to be viewed positively by an admissions committee.
If you've had some research experiences, have you considered asking those you worked with for a recommendation letter?  If you haven't had any research experience, that will make it significantly harder to be admitted into a Ph.D. program, no matter who writes your letters.

And if you haven't been inspired to seek out opportunities to get involved in research, that would make me wonder whether you will truly enjoy a Ph.D. program.  Going to a Ph.D. program "by default" or because "that's what everyone is doing" is a terrible idea; you should only join a Ph.D. program if you are passionate and excited about doing research, because that's what you are going to be spending most of your time doing in a Ph.D. program, and that is what Ph.D. programs are designed to prepare you for.  So, you might also want to do a little bit of soul-searching to figure out whether a Ph.D. program truly is the right direction for you.  If it's not, it's much better to find out now rather than after spending several years in a Ph.D. program.

It is acceptable to have letters of reference from a mixture of your undergraduate and your masters university.  People would probably ask questions if all of your letters were from your undergraduate university and none were from your masters university.  That might make the admissions committee wonder: What were you doing with your time at the M.S. program?  Why didn't you seek out opportunities to get involved in research and other activities beyond coursework?  Is there some hidden story?  (For instance, did you completely alienate all the professors in your M.S. program?  Or, do you have little self-drive to do research?  Or, maybe you have little experience with research, and thus no idea whether you are good at and enjoy research, and thus little basis to judge whether a Ph.D. program is a good fit for you.)

That said, the most important thing is to have letters from people who know you well, and who know well how to evaluate candidates for Ph.D. programs.  So, which professors (or other established researchers) know you well and can best comment on your research ability or research potential?


APA: How to cite chapter and edition in book

It is possible (I know at least of one journal, giving such recommendations in addition to the APA style).
But in this form, according to my experience, it's more common for the MLA style while rarely used with the APA. What you also might want to do is to include two references: one for the chapter (only pages in parentheses) and another for the edited book (only edition in parentheses).


How can I publish an academic paper independent of work while working at a company?

If my research paper is completely unrelated and independent of anything I do at work (nor am I even in a research type position), what - if any - obligations do I have to my work place? Do I need to seek their approval before publishing a research paper?

You would have to read whatever NDA you signed, as this is specific to your situation. IANAL, but I think the most likely answer is there is no problem with this. You aren't allowed to divulge company secrets, but this is something you worked on independently (somewhat of a hobby).

  Will an Academic Journal require me to submit evidence that there is no workplace-conflict as an Independent Researcher?

The short answer is no. The long answer is that many journals would require you to disclose if you have any conflicts of interest that would affect the validity of your results. For example, if your paper is about the effectiveness of a particular algorithm used at Uber for matching riders to drivers, and you work at Uber, you would need to disclose that as a conflict of interest. However, as you have already said that your research topic is unrelated to your work at your job, it probably would not constitute a possible conflict of interest.

Submitting evidence would be even less likely, I wouldn't worry about that unless asked.

However, note that you will have to choose an affiliation when you submit, which means you probably will want to think about how you want your name to be listed. This is just for informational purposes. Perhaps you can be listed as affiliated with your company, or maybe you can arrange to have no affiliation.


Lab journal best practices for pre-experiment research

Chemist by myself, but with interaction of physicists in material science, I would recommend to learn Emacs org-mode.  Beside Emacs being an editor you may tailor around your needs, org-mode will help you to get better organized (TODO lists).  Every thing you write in it will be plain ASCII -- hence easy to maintain, to backup, and to set up for version control; as shown here.  It will come with its own, spread-sheet calculator often found powerful enough, so launching a second software is no longer necessary.

You may export all, or sections of your single source file directly into a LaTeX document, or as *.html, or as *.odt to libre office writer, and it's markup often is easier to read (and type) than original LaTeX.  Export towards presentations (and even running a presentation) is possible too.  You may insert source code, and call for execution from this file, and use the results to be inserted again into your same document; for example pyhthon, or R.  Writing publications is eased a lot with org-ref, with a breath-taking demonstration here, yet ties well towards citation managers like zotero as shown for example here.

Hence it becomes much more easy to add, and later to retrieve every detail that would you or others allow to reproduce the experiments you did.  This includes the setup of your experiment, which devices were used and why these were chosen.  As an example, it is not this uncommon even to note the serial number of their amperemeter used, as some were regularly calibrated against reference standards.  Such in chemistry to note not only the chemical, but its purity, the quantity used, the vendor, and the lot of production.  In the end, it does not hurt to have much more information in the lab log (within reason), than needed to write the publication.


Finishing the physics graduate curriculum as undergrad

Research experience is almost always better than additional classes, even graduate classes. Either graduating early so that you can work/volunteer full time in a research lab or taking the minimum number of credits to maintain your status as a student and work/volunteer part time in a research lab is likely going to increase your chances of admissions to a top graduate school much more than taking a full load of classes.

If you go with taking classes, classes that fulfil general graduate requirements are going to be less valuable than classes that will help prepare you for your research.


What are the main reasons why academics leave academia? (Looking for references, not personal opinions)

I retired immediately after completing my Ph.D., but would have switched back to industry if I had continued working.

I am much, much happier and more effective doing technical work than teaching or managing. The computer industry has well-established technical tracks that allow career advancement without becoming a manager. The academic world, at least in the USA, seems to require teaching and administrative work from everyone, regardless of individual preferences and talents.


If "tracking them down on Google" means looking up their names, and finding a clearly posted contact address - perhaps on their personal website, or their new university's website - then absolutely go for it. Contact details like e-mail addresses unfortunately change every now and then when people move institutions, so this is just standard procedure. I wouldn't consider that creepy at all, and would be happy to learn about your paper. Now, if you go much further than that in your efforts, well, yeah you'll risk getting close to creepy territory. I wouldn't cross check their names and calling them on their work phone at their new industry job, for example, nor show up unannounced at their home...

Another way to get in touch that might work depending on the circumstances, is running into one of these authors at a conference.


PhD program application - CV (3+ pages) versus resume (1-2 pages) in the US

In the United States, when applying to a PhD program, you should upload a CV, not a resume.

Your CV should not include any descriptive sentences.  The current custom is for CVs to be a list of facts, with no qualitative information.  Put the descriptions in your personal statements.


How can I cite multiple geo-locational data used from Google maps?

There are two separate issues here:

How do you cite the website that was used to obtain this data?
How do you cite (or rather, include a reference to) the actual data that you used for analysis?

1. How do you cite the website that was used to obtain this data?

Here, you can just cite the website URL (maps.google.com). Don't bother trying to cite the extended URL including the search term you used, unless it is really necessary; it would be more natural to just describe how the data was obtained in words. You can use something like the following:

  To obtain the data, the Google Maps website [1] was visited on April 12, 2020 from [[approximate location]], and the search text [[search text]] was used to collect the geo-positional coordinates for 90 convenience stores in the area.

Then the citation [1] should look something like:

  Google, Inc. Google Maps. URL maps.google.com, retrieved April 12, 2020

The exact format is not so important as long as the source is clear to the reader. If you are looking for more detailed advice on how to format citations for website URLs, see this question (or alternatively, this question).

2. How do you cite (or rather, include a reference to) the actual data that you used for analysis?

It would be most helpful to put together a repository of the raw data that you obtained, for example on Github or Pastebin, though you can also include it in an "appendix" to the article if this is an option. Regardless, you can add in your paper a comment (or footnote) such as

  The raw data that we obtained in this way is available at [[URL or appendix]].


How to identify predatory publishers/journals

First, you should probably publish in the same venues that you read and cite.  Presumably those are reputable.

Now to describe low-quality vanity publishers.  Two essential characteristics are:

The publication of very low quality material.  This is usually immediately recognizable to any expert.  Sometimes it's obvious to anyone; for example, read this abstract.
A business model in which the author (rather than the reader) pays the publisher.  Of course, this by itself isn't necessarily indicative of a low-quality publisher (think PLoS).   But low-quality publishers can't make money off of subscriptions, since they provide no content of value.

Additional common characteristics of such publishers are:

Mass e-mails (spam) to academics, especially when the recipients include researchers in unrelated fields.  These e-mails may request submission of conference presentations, papers, or book manuscripts, or may contain invitations to journal editorial boards.
A high number of prominent typographical errors in text attributable to the publisher.  For instance, at the beginning of this article "abstract" is mistakenly spelled "abstarct".


What is this "can I hire you as a tutor" scam?

This is usually a version of a "babysitting scam", where some generous out-of-town person wants to pay you a royal ransom for some minor errand or babysitting someone you've never met. It goes a few different ways, but it's usually some version of asking for a quote of what it might cost, and then wanting to pay you in advance. They'll usually want to pay with some sketchy method like needing you to sign up for an account on some website (they'll try to steal personal/identity information or give you a virus to steal more info), or Western Union/Money Gram or PayPal.

They will then inevitably try some variety of overpaying you and asking for some bizarre method of returning them a portion of the over-payment, like "oh just send me a money order/check" or asking you to Western Union the money back to them (especially if they paid you by check or some other such method). The key is the money you return is non-refundable, but the method they paid you with can be stolen accounts/funding, or reclaimed/cancelled (bouncing a check or counterfeit check/money order). You end up with less than nothing, because the income is gone and your "refund" to them is gone too.

Sometimes they'll just ask for your banking information to "deposit the money with you", but they will need illegitimate info to do it like your bank account and login, or information that can be used to steal money from you (bank account and routing information that can be used for payments), etc. Sometimes there'll be some crazy reason.

They'll also often have variants where they are out of the country, have some weird imaginary legal issue they try to rope you into, claim they are in the military for similar reasons, etc. They could also try to deposit fake/stolen funds and then try to rope you into an accompanying scam where they try to shake you down as if you violated the law (they'll pretend to be investigators, police, or organized crime, depending on the situation/scammer).

Sometimes they want money, sometimes they just want to steal your personal information so they can steal from you or sell your identity to someone else.

I've seen the same base scam in business, where they instead want a quote for some large order, often with some urgency and willingness to pay a premium, or for hiring a consultant, etc. All the same base methods, just with a different 'hook' to get you in.

Just replying will only waste your time and ensure you get more emails as you'll likely get added to "known potential sucker" lists. The danger is getting drawn in to the web of lies they use to scam - some of which are stupidly obvious, and some of which are really quite clever and drawn out.


Comparative quality of articles in questionable journals

Maybe what I'm about to write was obvious to all.  But just in case:

As I understand it, a "predatory journal" is a journal that will accept anything that is submitted to it so as to financially profit from the authors (and the buyers of the journal, perhaps).  Moreover, they are not forthcoming about this practice because that would drastically lower their submissions (not to mention sales!).  I would guess that most predatory journals would not want to accept papers of the sort created by Nate Eldredge's wonderful mathgen package: although it did happen at least once, I'll bet that incident was embarrassing (or rather, recognized as working against the game they are trying to play) for the Advances in Pure Mathematics.  If that journal published a full issue of gibberish papers, then I think it would seriously jeopardize their profit line and possibly cause them to fold (and yes, get replaced by the next journal, but evidently people like Beall are paying attention not just to the journals themselves but the publishing companies behind them and even the people behind the publishing companies).

Sometimes predatory journals will still publish your paper if you tell them that at the end that you can't or won't pay.  I found this strange at first, but I think I understand it better now: these journals want some papers that are actually for real in order in order to acquire a penumbra of plausible legitimacy for all of their papers.  At the higher end you get journals most of whose papers are written by real researchers who need their work published somewhere and for various reasons they have chosen not to go through the time and effort of a selective journal.  (I don't mean to imply that this practice is not still shady: of course pretending there is contentful, critical peer review when in fact there isn't is highly, highly academically inappropriate.)

What's my point?  I don't think there is going to be any uniform sense in which papers submitted to predatory journals are worse than papers published in "real" journals.  Demonstrably, some of these papers are real papers.  However, if you agree that part of the definition of a predatory journal is that they accept virtually 100% of all submitted papers that are not too clearly gibberish (as well as some that are!), then it would be an amazingly strong indictment of the peer review process not to believe that the papers which have gone through a selection process and are among the X% of accepted papers for some number X bounded away from 100 are going to be, on average, better in every way than papers published by predatory journals.

Is there any evidence of this?  I sure think so.  Any kind of statistical study is either going to concentrate on a very limited range of journals which need not be of direct interest to any given reader or going to take a massive amount of work.  I would rather suggest: select a predatory journal in your field and a legitimate, though run-of-the-mill journal in your field.  Page through, say, the articles published by each one in 2010 (or some reasonable subset thereof).  First evaluate the articles yourself: can you see the difference?  Then look at official reviews of the article (in mathematics there are two internationally recognized services that write reviews of every single math article published -- except that certain journals they drop as not being worth their attention; I believe that similar things exist in many other academic fields).  Then track citation statistics of the articles.  Is there a difference?  Is the difference subtle enough to warrant statistical analysis, or does it just stare you right in the face?  I have done a little bit of this practice myself.  I am getting inspired to try it more systematically.


You should definitely follow up on unanswered emails before a whole month passes. Perhaps try calling her office directly to see if you can reach her. And if not, then contact the departmental admins to find out how you can. If your questions are related to substantive material and not the logistics of your module, then I'd suggest asking someone else in department who does work in your area.


Has the rate of papers uploaded to arXiv changed due to Covid-19?

I think it will be interesting to study this 5 years from now, but right now is way too soon.  At least in math, people don’t post papers at a steady, constant rate.  I personally post around 3 papers per year, and most of those represent work that is at least a year old (often much longer than that) by the time I get around to writing it up.  Given what I’ve got partially written right now, I suspect that I will post about the same number (or even a little more) this year, bit that’s just part of the ebb and flow of research.  What is harder to predict is the effect of all this chaos on the production of new math, which won’t be visible for several years.


It sounds to me like you're asking this question in the  hope that someone will come along and tell you to do the right thing. Well, here goes: you need to do the right thing and not break your promise.

Honestly, aside from the obvious moral and ethical argument (which by itself is already pretty compelling), even from a purely selfish and utilitarian point of view I don't see how anything good can come out of you surreptitiously solving the problem and then claiming your place as the sixth coauthor. Given that apparently this is not going to be a very major result or paper anyway, the only thing you will achieve is to make an already messy and acrimonious situation only more messy and acrimonious. Most likely the paper will never get written, and even if it does, everybody including you will come away with a bad taste and little to show for all their efforts and frustration other than a dubious coauthorship, whose value will be more than negated by the effects on the reputations of a few of the people involved, especially you for breaking an explicit promise.

With that said, I think there are two options that could potentially let you participate in the work and benefit from your idea without breaking any promises or acting dishonestly:

Tell A that you have an idea that may be used to attack the problem. Make it clear that you intend to honor your promise not to work on the problem, unless he gives you explicit permission to do so (until the 5-author paper is made public, at which time your promise becomes void anyway). At the same time, you are also under no obligation to tell him your idea, and may legitimately ask to be allowed to officially join the project (with the implied promise of coauthorship of the paper in the event that you end up making a meaningful contribution) as a condition of revealing your ideas to the group. They can then decide if that's something they're interested in or not - either way you are morally in the clear in my opinion.
In the event that you prefer not to discuss your idea with A and the rest of the group, or if you ask them to join the project and they refuse, you can simply wait until they make their results public, and then (as John Ma proposed in the comments) you will be free to use your methods to improve their results and publish your own paper, assuming your improvement is sufficiently interesting to make for a publishable result.

Finally, I should add that although six-author papers are relatively rare in pure math, there is nothing wrong or shameful about publishing such papers, and if each of the authors can indeed claim to have made a reasonably meaningful contribution, then the paper will still have positive value to everyone's careers. Furthermore, going from 5 to 6 coauthors does not involve such a major dilution of the credit (beyond the level to which it is already diluted), so if you have a genuinely new and useful idea to contribute that could make this a pretty attractive proposition for the existing coauthors.


Have never been at either side of the table in this kind of situations, but I can share some of my thoughts based on conflict resolution.

First, as I have stated in the comment, you need to let us know where you are at. Have you passed the qualifying exam? Have you submitted your PhD proposal? Was your proposal rejected? etc. All these can help the viewers here to give more concrete suggestions.

Think in your supervisor's shoes

First, you'll need to realize that mentor-mentee is a very delicate symbiotic relationship. The mentor guides the mentee by provide intellectual, physical and financial supports, while the mentee helps expand the research base of the mentor's, publish papers and solicit funding. Even you don't mind your progress being slow, you can significantly slow down your supervisor's career advancement, especially if he/she is struggling in a tenure track. So, the urge for you to get done is reasonable and you should understand that.

I am not entirely sure about your institution but in my institute, for a supervisor to keep a PhD student for two years (notice: not three, three is impossible) without producing any progress, a LOT of work has to be done (explaining to the promotion committee, to the dean, to the funding source, etc.) to keep the student safe. I suspect that your supervisor might have done a lot to protect you already, and finally gave in to the pressure and reality.

Ask for an evaluation guideline

If you really wish to stay and are confident that you can do that. First, ask for a set of criteria on what is meant by "immense progress within three months." Be it a draft of a proposal, a draft of a paper, a list of research aims, or whatever. Ask your supervisor for a list of deliveries and how they will be evaluated.

Then, go home and break them down into 2-week chunks of work. Turn the results into a monitoring chart. Every two weeks, you'll meet with your adviser and check off the items.

If anything slows you down, don't wait till the meeting, ask for help. If your supervisor is not giving you help, ask someone else or work it out yourself. Never attend the meeting without the promised delivery.

At the end of the third month, if both parties are happy, keep going and repeat the system. If for any reason it does not work, then bow out. At least you would get a Master in three years, and in that sense your resume wouldn't look too wrong. Getting a master after post-graduate is not rare, a lot of people get MBA or MPH after their doctoral studies. It's the nature of the Master degree and your work that matter.

Get professional help

You may also get some outside help (from someone who has no vested interest in your PhD). A career coach or an outside mentor would be a good choice. Frankly share with them your problem and let them give their diagnosis and suggestions. Be open and try them out.

In conclusion, get the requests in writing, and stick to it. Dive into the process for three months and see if both parties are happy. Leaving does not mean you lose. It may just mean this supervisor or this research topic is not a good fit. You may be amazed how much more you can actually get just by letting go.


Dealing with consulting agreements where NDA conflicts with research interests

You are dealing with a legal document, and you are asking questions about legal language. The only way to get answers to your questions is to consult a legal expert. Any advice you receive here will necessarily be inferior to that dispensed by the legal expert.

Having said that, you're asking good questions, and during the negotiation part of the discussion you can and should discuss your concerns with a legal expert and with the company representatives. Negotiations are a normal part of any contract discussion. The document you have was written by their lawyers to provide his client—the company—with maximum legal protection, in their best interests. The job of your lawyer is to provide yourself with the same protection, in your best interests.

If you are concerned about the cost of hiring a lawyer, do the math; the total amount you expect to receive from the consulting should be significantly more than the cost of the lawyer, and the potential cost to you of not hiring a lawyer may be pretty large.

Regarding finding one, speak with the faculty in your department; chances are at least one of them has consulted in the past and can provide you with both advice and hopefully the name of a qualified lawyer.


Okay to state very specific research interest in statement of purpose?

First, how about asking the opinion of the professor who has the common interest with yours?  S/he will hopefully be able to assess how much influence s/he might have with the admissions committee.

For the rest of my answer I will assume the professor advises you not to make your statement too narrow.

I suggest you start off rather broadly, for approximately one paragraph, talking about an area that includes at least one of your specific research questions.  At this point you are filming the city from a helicopter or drone.  In the next paragraph, you can bring your camera down to street level, and start describing one or more of your specific questions, as an example.

If you are really creative, you could write the broad paragraph in such a way that at least one other professor in the department could see some spark of commonality.


Leaving a postdoc after 3 months (for another)

If you believe you can handle the bureaucracy quickly, so as to get paid, do that. Depending on the local culture (Europe is not very homogenous), this might involve calling people and going past the official channels, or just doing everything you are required to do and waiting.
After having secured the payment, or immediately if you think it would take too much time to get the payment, talk to your supervisor about the situation. Your goal is to exit the situation so that your current PI understands and accepts it, so that they will be available for recommending you later. If this turns out to be too difficult, then your goal is to exit with as little damage to your reputation as possible.

If you judge your PI to be a reasonable person, just tell them that you are having difficulties with another postdoc, and try to give a fair and reasonable explanation. Also tell that you do not feel at home in the city. If they are a good person, they will understand, you can try to find the best possible solution in an unfortunate situation. The group dynamics in their research group are their problem and they can do something about it. The nature of the city cannot be helped.

If you have not tried talking to the other postdoc, you might also try that, if you have the courage. Something like "Thank you for helping, but I can do this by myself; could you, for example, do [other part of the project] so we would get results faster?". Or simply telling them that their behaviour is bothering you; check, for example, "nonviolent communication" with your favourite search engine, or maybe parenting books, for relevant advice. Tell factually what happens and how it makes you feel, and ask for concrete actions or how the other person thinks the interaction could be improved. Do not blame. Stick to facts, as much as possible. Do not attribute intention, attitude or sexism to the other party, as this will not help your cause, even if it is true.


Should I include independently derived but not novel results in my thesis?

There is usually no reason not to include something in a thesis.  Your thesis is a place for you to give a coherent account of all your work on a topic.  There are (usually) no page restrictions, and it should serve as a reference document for future readers.

Many theses include a lot of review material, beyond just what might be contained in a literature survey.  A thesis has to contain new material, of course, but it does not all need to be novel.  There can be a lot of merit in giving detailed explanations of known results, if the reader is not necessarily going to be familiar with them in detail.  A derivation that has not previously appeared in the literature (even if the final result is known) is clearly suitable for inclusion.


What makes an online course a valuable learning experience for a student?

If your course delivery platform has things like forums or collaborative writing spaces, you should make use of them to get students interacting with each other.  I don't know what discipline you're in, but you can ask students to comment on the readings online, write responses to each other, that kind of thing.

I was teaching a regular course but was ill for a week, and not wanting to miss that whole week of class, I scheduled a live chat during the time the class would ordinarily meet.  I think we had the best discussion of the semester that day -- students who wouldn't ordinarily speak up in class "spoke" during the online chat.

Also, set boundaries for yourself; otherwise you'll find yourself answering emails at midnight in your bunny slippers.  Tell students if they email you after a certain time, they will get a response the next day.  And think about how you feel about responding on the weekend.

What is your discipline?  We might have more tips, depending on what it is.


Is it OK to use abbreviations of the same university I am applying to?

The major issue with abbreviations is ambiguity. For example, OU could refer to Ohio University, University of Oklahoma, the Open University, and others. Other abbreviations like MIT are less ambiguous despite there being MITs in other countries. Similarly, longer abbreviations like UPenn are less ambiguous. Some universities, go by multiple names. For example University of Nottingham is often called Nottingham University, despite there being a Nottingham Trent University in the same city that goes by Trent.

When applying to a university, or for internal purposes, ambiguity is not an issue. If you are at, or applying to the Open University, in general everyone will assume OU means Open University and not Ohio University. In the rare cases where you are applying to the Open University from Ohio University, there could be ambiguity. Understanding the nuances of the name and abbreviation uses can be difficult. In general, you should probably steer away from abbreviations and just use the full name.


How can I convince my students to speak louder?

If students do not speak loudly when directly asked to speak loudly, it probably means they do not know how to speak loudly.  This is not intuitive because most people think everyone knows how to speak loudly naturally, but I suspect many people misunderstand the mechanics of speaking loudly.  In particular, people think they speak loudly by moving their ribs, when actually the need to move their abdominal muscles.  Show your students where those muscles are and have them practice moving them to make a loud sound.  This will help students control their volume.
You might also ask the music or theater department for advice.


A tenured position with less pay and less responsibilities than a professorship

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but at US R1 universities, a position like the one you imagine doesn’t exist. To have a job with tenure at any salary, you have to teach and do some administrative duties.

If you win a Nobel prize or move to France on the other hand, the possibility of you getting a tenured research-only position may become more realistic. See this question for more details.


How do I specify I do not want to perform a specific type of research on my CV?

Usually, in an academic CV, you can distinguish between "Research Activities", which consist of all the research you've done in the past, and "Research Interest", which consist of all the research you want to do in the future. So, someone who would include a topic that you don't list in your research activities without asking you first would be a bit rude.

However, in order to avoid this kind of cases, and not to be too explicit (that is, not saying "I don't to work on Computational Chemistry"), you can try, in your cover letter or your research interests to put a sentence like "Although I have a good background in Computational Chemistry, my research interests rather lie in ..." or "My background in Computational Chemistry taught me to [...], and I'm now interested in broadening/focusing my interest on [...]". That's a bit more subtle, but I guess the message should pass.


Should I tell my advisor I am academically overwhelmed?

Had this exact problem last year as a first-year direct-Ph.D. student -- and that was as a STEM undergrad going into a STEM field. I took 2 courses, not knowing at the time that both were considered some of the toughest courses in the department, and ended up failing at one of them so miserably that I had to withdraw from the course.

So backstory out of the way, here's my advice (in no particular order):

DO be honest with your academic adviser. Their job is to give you honest feedback and advice on what your options are (course-wise, at least). It may be possible for you to withdraw from a course without it affecting your GPA (though it may still show up on your transcript. That's how it worked for me -- but it was an acceptable trade in my opinion).
DO NOT expect your academic adviser to necessarily be "sympathetic". That's not to say that they're going to be a cold-hearted jerk, but they likely aren't going to be willing to comfort you (learned this the hard way unfortunately).
DO seek out counseling services if you're feeling overwhelmed and need that sympathetic ear. They can give you strategies for better managing your time and efforts, as well as reassuring you that you are not alone. Friends and family are great to lean on here as well.
DO NOT try to strike out on your own. Project? Make it a group project (if you can). Homework? Round up a few others in the class, find a whiteboard, and do it together. Exams? Order pizza and start studying (at least a week ahead of time, even if only for an hour a day).
DO take care of yourself. That means getting a good night's sleep -- even if you're not going to have everything done for your research tomorrow. And eat a good meal -- don't starve yourself to ink out an extra hour of work. I can't stress this one enough. Your mind (and body) is your greatest tool as a grad student. Take care of it.
DO NOT give up. It gets better. I promise.

None of that is particular to non-STEM students working in STEM fields (major kudos to you for that), so I hope someone who has been in that situation can get back to you too!


What are factors leading to rising tuition costs over time?

The Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit organization in Washington DC, issues reports each year with information about college spending. The highlights of the 2011 report, which I recommend browsing through, states that:

  For the majority of institutions, increases in tuition do not translate into increases in spending. In fact, at most public institutions, tuition increases attempt to compensate for lost revenues from state and local budget reductions, but actual tuition increases are less than half of the actual reduction in state and local appropriations.

Later in the report, other sources of tuition increases are listed, including increases in benefit spending for employees (primarily public institutions). Salary fluctuations are not significant factors; in fact, spending on salaries has gone down slightly over the past few years.

For those interested, I strongly recommend checking out the highlights listed above, as well as the full report, for more details.


How to deal with my fear of large audiences?

If you haven't tried one of the beta blockers prescribed for performance anxiety/stage fright, they're worth looking into.

For me, using propranolol before presentations has been much more helpful than I ever expected, and has even had carry over effects. (Basically I suck at talking to most people most of the time, but now I suck less!) Just having the experience of speaking without the physical effects of anxiety turned out to be powerful. Something about breaking the feedback loop, I guess -

The fact that you mention your voice shaking, especially, makes me think beta blockers might help you.


I have an "integrated masters" degree. How can I eventually gain a PhD?

In the UK, you will be expected to have some research experience before applying to a PhD programme in science: not necessarily publications (although that always helps!), but certainly having done an extended project and written a dissertation about it. In my field (physics) you can definitely apply straight out of an integrated masters degree, provided that your last year had a substantial research component.

If you don't have any research background at all (or just short summer projects or the equivalent), then this is the "extra work" you are looking for. Find a MSc by research in a field as close as possible to the one you want to do a PhD in. This also has the advantage that you get to decide whether a PhD is really for you while only taking a year, and to leave with a qualification at the end if it's not.

Of course, this is just general advice: as JeffE says, individual universities will be able to provide specific information on their admissions and funding criteria.


When journals falsely assume I already have my PhD, do I need to correct them?

Include your proper title and position in your email signature.
I'd say not to explicitly correct them in the email, but to include a signature to the email that says something like "Mr/Ms Sursula, PhD Candidate at Faculty of ABC, XYZ University". Ideally  you'd want to use your university's official email footer format to do so.
That way, you can inform them of how you're properly meant to be addressed, without openly chastising them for getting it wrong.


Ethics of/rules regarding submitting multiple presubmission inquiries

As an author I have done two presubmissions in the past. I do not know how they are handled by editors, but as an associate editor myself I gather they are informally skimmed by 1-2 editors within hours after submission. This means it is unlikely some "multiple presubmission" would be detected and I have never seen specific rules about priorities in presubmissions.

Thus I think one is safe from editorial action if "caught" in multiple presubmission enquiries. However I believe it will not be seen with good eyes by a handling editor, and might leave a bad impression.

Thus I would not recommend doing it. Particularly as an editorial answer usually comes in less than 48h.


Is it OK to get external help during your PhD if it is acknowledged?

In principle, as long as you give credit where credit is due, and as long as you do a thesis worth of work yourself, there need not be any problem.  A nice example: many large biosciences have lab-specific technicians or technicians in share core facilities who carry out routine work and protocols.  The student may not be paying them directly, but they are paid to do things for the benefit of the student's work (e.g., mouse colony maintenance, routine DNA preparation, sequencing, etc.) that may end up contributing to a thesis.

The specific examples of work that you want to outsource, however, are rather concerning.  If you are working on computer algorithms, then you should be comfortable with basic data analysis, plotting, and programming.  If you aren't, and need a tutor to help get your skills up to speed, that's fine.  If you're outsourcing simple but non-routine analyses that you should be doing yourself, however, it's likely to introduce serious problems because you will not be in a good position to debug the problems that will arise during analysis.  Furthermore, as a prospective future employer, it would also make me very concerned about your competence in your area of study.

In short: tutoring and outsourcing routine tasks if fine; outsourcing your core work is not.


What are some ways to address inaccessibility of to-be-learned material for research?

Sorry, but there isn't an easy path through the research jungle. You just have to hack away at the obstacles as you find them. It is actually much easier now, with internet resources and electronic publication than it was, say 50 years ago. But inaccessibility of resources and difficult of interpretation has faced every researcher.

Of course, some obstacles don't face every researcher. Doctoral students in the past normally needed a reading knowledge of at least three languages. That requirement made more papers available. My own dissertation advisor (mathematics) wrote, over the years, in five languages himself (Czech, Russian, Polish, French, and English). That language ability made some things easier.

Every student needs the experience of not understanding a paper and working back through the references until the get a feel for what is being said.

Your "blocks" may be different from my blocks, but neither of us is free of the need to just slog it out at times.

But an even bigger need is that a researcher needs to develop insight into the very fundamental nature of a field. The resources aren't enough to guarantee that you will get this, and without it, you won't be able to extend what you find in the existing record. As you hack away at the obstacles in the jungle you also need a vision of your direction and where it might lead you if you keep hacking.


Temporary position in Academic Institution vs. Postdoc research after PhD

If you want to obtain a long-term faculty position, at least in the United States, it is usually better to get a postdoc position rather than an adjunct lecturer position.

Perhaps it should not be this way, but the practical fact is that at present adjunct lecturers are often treated as interchangeable exploited labor.  Yes, you will build up teaching experience, but as you have found, it will be difficult to extend any of the other job qualifications that are needed for obtaining a good long-term faculty positions.  There can also be a stigma associated with these positions: it is unfair, but these positions (and by extension the people who fill them) are often viewed with such disrespect that they are paid poverty-level wages---about half of the average for postdocs.

A postdoctoral position, on the other hand, is unlikely to give you teaching experience, but will allow you to focus on building your reputation for intellectual excellence (e.g., via strong publications).  Rightly or wrongly, this is generally a much stronger factor in faculty hiring than evidence of teaching ability.


How to deal with post-high-school gap in CV?

Honestly, if I were you, I simply wouldn't list my high school dates on my CV.  Lots of applications don't, and I've never seen this be a problem or concern.  Given that you now are getting an undergraduate degree, the graduate schools won't care much about it.  I doubt anyone will pay much attention if you do write in your date of high school graduation and simply don't explain the gap, but why even bring up the topic?

EDIT: Just to clarify, I wasn't suggest you list your high school without dates, but that you just leave it off entirely.  I would say you definitely don't want to list it once you've entered grad school.  When applying to grad school as an undergrad, I think it's fine to leave it there, but don't expect anyone to think it's important.


Contacting promotor and assistant/supervisor in regards to master's thesis after weeks of radio silence

In my experience, this situation is pretty common, so even if the advisor/promoter aren't happy about it, they likely have dealt with this situation before. I think you can let your guilt go for now. The best course of action is simply to acknowledge the lateness without dwelling on it, and try and resume normal communications going forward. I think you know your mistake here, but it is always better to send an e-mail with an update when you hit a deadline, even if you don't have "enough" progress to show. Your advisor likely wants to help, but they might feel like they don't know where to start if they haven't heard from you.
A simple statement such as: "I apologize for the tardiness of this e-mail, I know we had originally discussed a deadline nearly a month ago. Due to the pandemic situation, I have not been able to make progress on my thesis as quickly as expected. Here is my current progress. [description]. My plan for the next few weeks is as follows...." If you have concrete suggestions for how they can help, I would put them in your e-mail. Otherwise, let them take the ball from there on how to support you going forward.
In the meantime, if your situation allows you to access mental health support services, I think they would be useful in helping you find more healthy coping strategies in the future.


Author: Ninja Cat

Title(s): Dr

Affiliation(s): None, unaffiliated, or https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=no+affiliation


Excluding a coauthor based on data misuse and misrepresentation?

If the misconduct in question tainted the data itself (and not just subsequent uses of that data), then the paper itself is fundamentally tainted and should be reworked with non-tainted data. If the data isn't tainted and it is a result of this person's work, then they deserve credit. Proper credit has to do with your intellectual honesty, and not the merits of the person receiving the credit. Having said this, I don't think that this necessitates including them as a coauthor -- but I don't see how you could avoid at least acknowledging them by name.


I got kicked out from graduate school in the past. How do I include this on my CV?

I would only mention it as part of your work experience. The Education header in a CV is usually where people put their finished and ongoing studies. Since you have not, and will not ever, actually graduate from your previous program it is essentially just a work experience now.


Should I get post-bacc in Mathematics or go straight to Computer Science Research?

Tough question, mostly because it seems it would have a lot to do with you and your overarching goals.  Is the goal to advance your career or is your goal to get the Master's degree and write that paper and publish?

It's tempting because you have the free course option right in front of you but you can take classes in machine learning from Coursera (for instance), for not much more. So if your goal is simply to move your career ahead school is likely not required at all.

But if you want to teach and publish and get that piece of paper then absolutely you'll need more school. Take undergraduate courses and get that GPA up and then apply to grad school.


How to suggest textbook improvement to author?

Is it considered inappropriate to email the author and suggest this as a possible improvement?

It is very appropriate and would probably be very welcome. As the author of a textbook myself, I am always happy to receive any sort of feedback about my book (if nothing else, it proves to me that someone is reading it ;-)), and have received several emails of the exact kind you describe, and other suggestions for improvement, several of which I ended up using. Just be mindful that the author may not think your contribution is as important or worthwhile as you find it, or may be too busy to think about it, so set your expectations low and be respectful of the author's ultimate authority about what to do with your suggestion, including possibly ignoring it.

More generally, I would say it is appropriate to contact anyone who makes their email publicly available, regarding any issue that has a reasonable chance of being of interest to the recipient and is not driven by spammy or nefarious intent. Your example very clearly falls within this range.

  The interpretation to that exercise is somewhat technically intensive and hard to explain in a few words. Should I try to make it brief or should I make it solid that undoubtedly my interpretation is correct?

A detailed and well-exposed technical description of your idea would be most helpful, but I would attach it as a PDF write-up and make the email itself short with only a general description of the idea and referring to the attachment for more details. This minimizes the burden and possibility of annoyance to the author. It would also be a good idea to offer to send the author the LaTeX source in case that might be helpful (but better not include it in the initial email), and may increase the chances that the author will incorporate your idea into the book.


When should we contact the editor to follow up on our submitted manuscript?

No, it's way too early for that. Calm down and be patient.
The quoted averages are just that, averages. There are necessarily some pretty wide distributions around them, given that it may take the editor a while to find suitable reviewers, and then the reviewers have a couple of weeks to do their job (and many of them are routinely late). I would give it at least a month more before reaching out to the editor.
Additionally, there is a couple of points to consider:

It's summer in most of the world, so everyone is on vacation (or "staycation") these days. That makes everything take a little longer than average.
Everyone around the world is still a little distracted by the pandemic and the related work disruption, so long-term averages no longer match the current situation.


Amount of pseudo code in the thesis body

Use block diagrams

Block diagrams are effective for conveying the functionality of the program and abstracting away complex and/or banal code. For my dissertation (novel implementation of controller for exhaust gas recirculation), I used block diagrams to cover the overall functionality of my code and subsequent sections to explain non-trivial implementations.

If you are not pressed for a page/word count and feel like the only way for the program to be understood is a full explanation: fully explain it. For the sake of the sanity of your reader, your second bullet point seems most prudent: Explain rather than disclose simple and obvious code in the main body and disclose it in the appendix. Novel code implementations should be disclosed and explained in the main body of the report.

For my undergraduate dissertation I opted for this method. For example, my code modelled the control system and a DC motor. The DC motor model was trivial and unoriginal (the governing differential equations can be derived or looked up easily) and so a simple mathematical explanation of the torque and armature current equations in the main body was sufficient.


What happens to consumables purchased with startup money?

Generally, this would be something you negotiate with your new department. Often the old department will sell things that it does not want to the new department based on some formula that calculates the depreciated value. Barring that sale, or in the odd case the gifting of the items, taking the items would be theft.


What is the right approach to research when goal is not to publish in top conferences?

I am guessing, but I think you haven't sufficiently specialized.
Most theoretical computer scientists are not specializing in something as broad as graph algorithms.  They are specializing in something extremely narrow, say specifically in list coloring algorithms, or specifically in adaptations of Lenstra's integer programming algorithm.  Your aim should be to specialize in something so narrow that you are the world expert in that very narrow area.
Don't try to understand anyone else's work completely; you only need to understand it well enough to see how it contributes to your work.  Because you have focused on your area well enough, you should be able to read (the relevant parts of) papers much faster.
The danger in doing this is that you end up producing work that no one else is interested in, but, as long as it remains legitimate research, it should be publishable in lower-tier conferences.


Should I choose industry internship or research assistant job at the lab?

The answer depends on the people involved. If I were your professor, I would appreciate it if you would explain the situation and ask for advice.

Of course, I would not give you any advice ;-), but I would ask you some questions which might help you finding a good decision - and maybe this is a hidden job interview.


Slides for conference talk with no affiliation

I will base my answer upon a statement from the OP's comments:

  In a conference though, mentioning an affiliation which is not current would be a quite serious mistake.

As I have expressed before in another answer, I do not see any reason why an "affiliation" needs to be something explicitly formalized, or why affiliations need to be mutually exclusive.
As such, I disagree with the above statement.

At least in fields where the conference paper is an actual publication, and the presentation is simply a part of paper publication via the conference, basically, the author details (including affiliation) in the conference presentation on a paper should be the same as those indicated on the paper.
Some information can be added, though:

The author who presents the paper in the conference may be highlighted.
If someone other than one of the authors presents the paper, their name may be listed on the presentation (in such a way that it is clear they are the presenter and none of the authors).
And, to address this question, if someone would like to update their contact or other details, they can indicate the changes during the presentation.

Lastly, for what it's worth, when you present a paper on a conference and that paper was created as a part of your work in your previous job, you are affiliated with that previous employer by the very act of presenting on behalf of your former position.

Therefore, I suggest the following course of action:
List your affiliation as it is stated on the paper.
Next to that, add something like "(now independent researcher)".


Should a research statement for a faculty job have references in it?

Yes. Definitely. This gives the reader an indication of how your work fits into the larger body of research in the  field.
Without references, it may appear that you are working in an area that is so obscure that nobody cares about it.


Self plagiarism of a post adapted from a public forum into a journal article

tl;dr: The rules vary, check your intended journal's policies

I'm going to interpret your question as asking about what's acceptable in publishing, what issues you have to consider when republishing work and what problems you might run into.

You have three considerations here (self-plagiarism (1), duplicate publication (2) and copyright (3)); the boundaries between these can become somewhat blurred. Typical conventions vary from field to field and specifics will vary from journal to journal and publisher to publisher. Let's look at each consideration in turn, from a practical perspective the section on journal rules is probably most important to you. This is because, although it's easy to obviate self-plagiarism with adequate referencing (see section 1), this doesn't guarantee compliance with journal duplicate publication policies (section 2).

1) Publishing/scholarly ethics

(For ethical background on duplicate publication, see: 1, 2, 3.)

You should always cite original sources, and be specific where you've lifted quotes/figures from them; just as if you were taking from someone else's work. This is enough to obviate the risk of valid accusations of self plagiarism, but you still need to consider issues like duplicate publication (see links above and the section 2) and copyright (section 3). If work has been made publicly available (either by you, or by someone else), you should consider (for the purposes of referencing) that it has been published, however (in)formal or (non-) academic the context.

The only exceptions I can think of for this are: preprints, where the preprint server will be updated with a link to the version of record instead; publishing work that was included in a PhD thesis (strikes me as odd that a reference/note isn't required in these cases, but typically one isn't); publishing work that was presented at a conference without publishing a proceedings paper (even if the presentation abstract is publicly available). Link 1 goes into a bit more detail on duplicate publication.

In your case, you should cite/reference the online posts. How/when you do this depends on exactly what form the work takes, but a line in the introduction along the lines of the following may well be suitable:

  This piece grew out of some posts the author(s) made on [forum][reference post(s)]; here, the author(s) have revised and expanded these posts into a reflective piece on the topic of...

In the case of any doubts about the acceptability of such a submission, mention it in your cover letter. This is probably a good CYA policy, even if you're sure what you're doing is allowed.

2) Journal-specific rules

Every journal will have its own specific rules on prior publication, blending the considerations under publishing ethics and copyright (discussed below) and considerations such as field-specific practices and editorial considerations. These dictate what is or isn't acceptably in a particular journal. You will have to look at your intended journal's policies yourself to find out what they are, if you're not sure how you fall under them, their editorial office will be able to guide you.

In general, putting a thesis online is almost always OK and use of preprint servers is becoming increasingly widespread. Other online publication, is not necessarily allowed. Let's look at some specific examples (emphasis added):

Nature:

  The Nature Research journals are happy to consider submissions containing material that has previously formed, and continues to form, part of an online scientific collaboration such as a wiki or blog, provided that the information has not been publicised outside the scientific community, and is not publicised until the publication date of the work in a Nature Research journal.

In this case, it would seem to depend on whether or not the forum could be considered an academic collaboration or not
Science:

  The Science Journals will not consider any original research paper or component of a research paper that has been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere. Distribution on the Internet may be considered prior publication and may compromise the originality of the paper as a submission to a Science Journal.

ACS ethical guidelines (note, I don't think these are their publishing policies, but good practice guidelines issued as a professional organisation)

  Scientists should,  however, be aware that disclosure of research results in the public press or in an electronic database or bulletin board might be considered by a journal editor as equivalent to a preliminary communication in the scientific literature

From Wiley's best practice guidelines

  Journals from different disciplines vary in their approach to pre-print servers. Many biomedical journals would consider posting an article to a pre-print server to render any subsequent journal publication redundant. Thus an
  article submitted for consideration after having been posted to a pre-print server would be rejected. However, many researchers working in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and
  statistics post their articles to arXiv before submitting an article successfully to a journal for peer review and publication. Journals should establish a policy about pre-print servers and declare this in their instructions for authors. Any previous publication should be disclosed in the paper.

  The following types of “prior publication” do not present cause for concerns about duplicate or redundant publication:

  ...

  Results in databases and clinical trials registries (data
  without interpretation, discussion, context or conclusions
  in the form of tables and text to describe data/
  information).
  Dissertations and theses in university archives.

I won't give any more examples, because without knowing what field you work in for someone to give specific advice (mention of a "reflective piece" suggests it not STEM?), I don't think it would add much to the above.

If you aren't sure whether your use falls under the rules for your journal, you can contact the editorial office. You should also mention in the cover letter when you submit, eg. a sentence paragraph along the lines of

  This work is an extension on materials previously posted to [forum] and, consequently, makes heavy reuse of this material. We believe this is acceptable under [journal]'s rules on prior publication.

3) Copyright

You will need to confirm that you have the rights to reuse your posts. Double check the small print of the forum in question to make sure you didn't transfer copyright when you posted them (hopefully unlikely!). If you did, you will need to obtain permission to reuse them from the from the forum operator and provide this to the journal during submission.


What are the standards/expectations from a teaching postdoc contract?

If you are going to a new country (assumed based on the German tag and the language being a challenge) or even only a new university, then first acting as a teaching assistant can be very good - you will learn how courses are organized, teaching handled, what you can expect of the students, possibly some of the bureaucracy and the online systems that are in use.

The alternative is to learn all of this while, at the same time, creating a course or mastering the contents of an existing one, and learning all the involved bureaucracy. This can be done, for sure, but it will be involved and consume much time.

This probably also depends on your teaching experience: If you have already lectured a course, or have extensive experience as a teaching assistant, then you should be more prepared to lecture a course and can ask for it.

Consider also your language skills. Giving a comprehensible lecture in a foreign language is significantly easier than a free conversation. There will be an accent, but if you write and speak everything, many students can cope. You will need to find a good resource for learning the vocabulary and how to pronounce mathematical expressions, though, if do not yet have such.

There might also be intermediate roles between a teaching assistant and the main lecturer - I had such a position in Norway (at NTNU) as an øvingslærer.


In some cases it might mean that the thesis could be published as a book. However, I'd generally interpret the phrase to mean that the thesis could readily be adapted and published as one or more journal articles.


Potential advisor does not seem willing to accept me into group. How do I approach others in the same field?

That is a tough situation. Any advice should depend on the specifics of your school. But I would advise to ask another professor to join their group, and when asked about going to the original professor simply say very briefly that she was not very interested in your idea (not in you personally, your idea) and so you wish to try with other professors. Don't give too much details.


How to know if my research problem is interesting or not?

These questions are best answered by a more experienced person than yourself, in particular your advisor. It is why you have an advisor in the first place. But let me be a bit more specific to your (many) questions.

First, you don't know what you will learn when starting research. That is why it is research and not just writing stuff down. A problem may turn out to be difficult or easy. It may turn out to have an interesting solution or just a run-of-the-mill grind-out-the-result solution. But you don't know until you do it. I think that is true in any field, but is so in mathematics, certainly.

For the second bullet, all problems are valuable to solve. Even if the solution is just to conclude the answer is trivial. You learn from solving them, and that is one of the main benefits of doing math in the first place.

Usually, if a problem is listed as unsolved in a recent paper it is probably worth pursuing. But such questions generate interest, so look, also, for more recent results. That doesn't mean that it isn't also valuable to solve the problems yourself, as suggested in the previous paragraph.

If a paper has been published in a reputable journal, it has been reviewed by other mathematicians. Presumably they agree that the problems stated at the end have at least some interest. But, solving them also increases your skill.

In general all mathematical questions, unless trivial, are interesting to at least some mathematicians. It can be a very small number, of course as some of the silos in math research are very narrow and deep. But if they are interesting to you, especially as a student, they are interesting by definition.

But get a doctoral advisor and explore some of these things with him or her.


How I do politely indicate that I am expecting my name to be added to the paper

If the situation is as you indicate and the original manuscript was submitted without the consent of all authors, then you have a case with the editor, although you should do your utmost to resolve this first with the thesis director.


what is the best strategy to deal with a situation where a student asks all of homework problems on an online forum

I am not sure what my opinion of this really is.

On one hand is asking on the internet really that different from asking a friend how to do a particular piece of homework, or even just looking up the method in a textbook.

Presumably you think that looking the answer up on the internet will not result in your students learning the material as well working out how to do it for themselves. The result of this is that the students will do worse in their final exams which are worth distinctly more than 10%.

You could give your students a gentle reminder of this at the start of the next lecture/course. Hopefully, they will listen to you and try and do the work on their own. If not, I wouldn't feel bad for them if they did poorly in their exams.

Some people may be concerned that not punishing this behavior is encouraging students to cheat and gain extra marks for their homework. I would say you are quite naive if you think students wouldn't ask each other how to do the homework anyway. It is very hard to police these sorts of things which is probably one of the reasons they have a relatively low weighting.

Personally, I would give homeworks zero weighting as this removes any incentive for students to try and improve their mark this way. The questions would probably still be asked but that is more because students don't like going to office hours.

While you probably could try punish the offending student under your institution's academic integrity rules, I think you will have difficulties identifying the culprit without significant effort and possibly underhand tactics from your part. Even if you could identify them I wouldn't for the reasons outlined above.


Is there a celebrity culture in academia and should we discourage it?

Academia is an extremely primitive and immature system in many ways, driven disproportionately by emotion and status over merit or egalitarianism. You will be reminded of a lot of academic social behavior if you read about the social behavior of the other primates.

However it is a unfair to suggest that people are simply acting as smitten teenagers swooning over big-shots because they have their own academic reality show. It is a social system which is behaving rationally in rewarding those who move it forward (or some new direction which at the time seems to be forward). Papers are almost a sideshow (written by underpaid postdocs), and citation count is merely a proxy metric for this. But impact, that which citation count tries to measure, is a very real and valuable thing; how well you can attract lots of funding to a research direction, as well as attract lots of other researchers into that direction, determines how important your career is to the system. And, in the absence of other sources of information, makes for a decent predictor for how important your work is currently and will be in the future.


My Proposed PhD supervisor is ignoring my email

This is obviously an important decision for you, and it's understandably making you anxious. However, you have to accept that the decision won't be made until March. Repeatedly contacting the folks making the decision, asking if they've decided won't help. They have a process they have to follow, and they can't make promises before they've completed that process. Sending repeated emails asking about the status of their decision could be annoying them (it would annoy me), but if they're reasonable, professional people it probably won't affect their decision on the position. However, no one can guarantee that. You just have to live with the uncertainty for a couple of months.

As long as your application is complete and accurate you should just put this aside until March. Find something else to keep yourself busy, or seek professional assistance if the anxiety is overwhelming.


Should I withdraw my paper from a journal which even didn't give me the manuscript number after one week?

One week is not an especially long time. You write that you've had previous experience with this publisher and they gave you a manuscript number promptly, but you didn't write if it's the same journal. Different journals can have different workflows - for example I've seen a journal which processed new submissions once a week, i.e. if you're unfortunate enough to submit your manuscript the day after they process new submissions, you won't get a manuscript number until one week later either.

It's up to you whether or not to withdraw, but I'll say that I've never seen an author withdraw after one week. I have however seen authors write to the journal asking about the status after one week. If you're really concerned, I would do that.


Correct typo error in the article title that published Early Access of the journal

Make your changes in the proofs, or at least tell the journal what changes to make. From what you describe, "Early Access" means the paper hasn't been published yet; the journal just put whatever was accepted onto their webpage. In that case the proofs are your chance to make changes - this is also the most convenient time for them.


Should I waive my right to view my recommendation letters?

Among the faculty members I've known (at US research universities), there's a widespread feeling that recommendation letters should be completely confidential unless the writer chooses otherwise, and that viewing them using FERPA is unethically taking advantage of a legal loophole.  Almost all the students check the waiver box, and if someone doesn't, then the letter writer is more likely to assume it was by accident than on purpose.

In this context, my advice is:

You should always check the box.  If your recommenders believe you may look at the letters later, they will probably write weaker, vaguer letters.  (For example, the most compelling letters often involve comparisons with other students, which may be omitted if you'll be reading the letter.)
If you are not checking the box on purpose, you should say so explicitly.  If you do this silently, people may assume it was an accident, and then if they learn later that you viewed the letters, they will be more offended than if you had announced this plan in advance.  (And they may actually find out, since the staff who handle your request may find it troubling and leak the information even if they aren't supposed to.)
You would learn less than you might expect from looking at the letters.  It's remarkably hard to judge letters out of context, without having seen other letters from the same people, and it's not likely you'll discover a clear reason for your rejection.  If anything, it might mislead you: you might decide that Professor X was damaging your chances by being insufficiently enthusiastic, without realizing that Professor X is never enthusiastic and in context this letter was viewed as very positive.

I think the fundamental worry many students have is of a terrible letter, a single letter that ruins what would otherwise have been a successful application.  This can happen, but I see an example only once every few years.  And even in those cases, it often looks like it should have been predictable to the applicant.  (For example, if you have had difficulties with someone in the past but things seem better now, don't ask for a letter without a serious discussion of how they think things stand now.)  So I wouldn't worry too much: the chances you could dramatically improve your application by substituting a letter are small.


Are there intellectual property concerns if I submit "under review" papers as part of my application?

Is it acceptable to submit such papers as part of my application?

Yes, you inform people about your work in progress. I do suggest to add the submission date for the two papers, and if a first review has been performed, its date too.

And are there any concerns on the intellectual property of the work (since it is yet to be accepted)

I would say yes, if you plan to patent some of the ideas, but it might be too late if you have submitted it already.

And yes in general too. I have seen at a conference C2003 two posters side-by-side, on very similar topics, by researchers from country A, and country B. As I new the researcher from country B, s/he told me that s/he submitted to C2002, which took place in country A. His/her paper was rejected, and s/he suspected his/her idea was used by country A reviewers. No proof though. To maintain your legacy, you can put the paper on a free paper archive, like arxiv. Depending on the precisions you give in your applications, this risk is more or less likely. Do not believe in unknown people honesty.


PhD Application (in Australia): no confirmation email

It is fair to enquire about the status of the application. If it is done via direct email to the professor, which is rare, there may well be no confirmation. The people involved will email if the application is to progress further.

If you are interested in a PhD, take a look at www.jobs.ac.uk. There are many thousands of PhD places on there across Europe to apply for.
There is a huge amount of funding for this academic stage, not necessarily requiring the best marks, which may seem surprising but it is true. There are also equivalent sites in other regions.

Also, there is no reason to assume you are not still in consideration. I once emailed and it took more than two months to receive an interview offer. Besides this, it regularly takes many applications before one of them comes back with an offer of an interview.


Prefix Dr. or Mr./Ms. if I have an MD but not a Ph.D. in medicine?

First, note that the title that you give to a ScholarOne manuscript handling system probably doesn't matter at all --- more than anything else, that is in there to avoid offending you if you are particular about being given your title.  The actual publication of the paper will typically omit titles, so putting in the title just regulates what the system will call you in email.

That said, Dr. is a correct title to use as an M.D.  In fact, many people will argue that opposite, that it is Ph.D.-holders whose use of the title is dubious!


What do I do if I don't have anyone to write my letters of recommendation for undergraduate research programs?

Just go talk directly to people who might be interested in working with you. They won't be far away, anyway. You have to build up a reputation to get LoRs, and given your current status you just won't have it.


How to demonstrate programming knowledge in CV, while applying to academia and industry?

I would recommend not trying to use the same document to apply to qualitatively different positions.  Typically, companies do not want a CV, they want a resume.  Prepare a resume following industry standards, which includes your skills, programming languages, etc., and use that for your industry applications, while you use your CV to apply for postdocs.


Application for master's course: should my motivation letter include my contact?

You should probably make it easy to find your contact information by anyone reviewing your application. It is probable, but not necessary, that they will have your complete package, but if they can find the information easily, they will be more likely to contact you rather than delaying it.

So, a certain amount of repetition is called for, I think.


If the contract for the grant is finalized, you can list it as an achievement on your CV.


How many times should one proofread their paper before submission?

There is no global constant q such that more than q proofreads are required. It depends on your writing style, the topic, your mood and many many other factors.

A comment though: In my experience, no matter how many times you personally proofread the paper, there are cases where it is not enough and you need a second or a third person to proofread your paper to catch mistakes for which you have a blind spot (i.e., no matter how many times you read you won't be able to catch the subtle mistakes and this is more true if you are not native english speaker or you are younger researcher.)


My original data is in someone else's thesis without my knowledge or consent

In a case like this, the most important first step to take is preserve all written records. In particular, you need to have the proof that you were the one who collected the data—perhaps it’s in the form of laboratory notebooks in your own handwriting, emails showing that you were the one who collected the data, or anything else that unambiguously shows that you were the data collector. This protects you from any charge of wrongdoing.

The second step is deciding if you want to take action in this matter. If you feel the use of the data is sufficiently problematic and you are willing to deal with the fallout of reporting your advisor and a fellow grad student for plagiarism, then you should cautiously proceed. However, if no one has raised any issues and you don’t want to make an issue out of it, it is understandable that you might want to wait until you are no longer directly part of the group before taking any action (or doing so anonymously).


What should I do if a professor says she doesn't understand my questions in office hours?

It's possible that your professor just doesn't want to help you: in that case, obviously, you need to find somebody else.  Or it may be that she just has bad interpersonal skills and comes across as rude and patronizing when she's just trying to be efficient. In any case, I'll assume that she does want to help but genuinely can't understand your questions.

Most likely, it's because you're asking the "wrong" question.  A common phenomenon is the so-called "X-Y problem", where you're asking about the wrong thing. For example, you've tried to solve an exercise but you couldn't do it. There are two basic possibilities: either you used the wrong method, or you used the right method but got stuck somewhere in the implementation.  In the X-Y problem, you start asking detailed questions about how to fix your implementation of the method when, in fact, your problem is that you used the wrong method. There's a great post about recognizing and dealing with the X-Y problem on meta.stackexchange.com.

A related phenomenon is asking questions that only make sense to people who share a particular misunderstanding of some other topic. You don't understand X so, of course, you're asking about X.  However, the root cause of this is probably that you don't understand Y.  Because you don't understand Y, the way you think X works just doesn't make sense: your question only makes sense in the context of your misunderstanding of Y.

Random (and slightly silly) example.  Suppose a student of automotive design notices that the tyres are black and the steering wheel is black, too. He decides that all wheels have to be black so there must be a reason for this and builds up some elaborate theory in his head about how black things rotate better or something. And then he sees that his friend's car has a beige steering wheel. The next day, the student goes to his professor and asks what mechanisms the friend's car uses to compensate for the deficiencies of its beige steering wheel. This question makes perfect sense to the student but is total nonsense to anybody else.

The solution is to work backwards through your assumptions with your professor, to try to find the step where you misunderstood.

Student. What mechanisms does my friend's car use to compensate for the deficiencies of its beige steering wheel?
Prof. Er... I don't understand your question.
Student. Well, cars need to have black steering wheels because they rotate better. My friend's car seems to steer fine so it must have some way of dealing with the bad rotation of its beige steering wheel.
Prof. Why do you think that black steering wheels rotate better? [Note that slight differences of phrasing in this question can make the professor seem much more or less sympathetic. "What makes you think that..." can come across as being annoyed, for example.]
Student. I'm not sure but maybe it's because [whatever]. But the tyres and the steering wheel are both black so there must be reason.
Prof. Actually, that's just a coincidence. The tyres are black because they add carbon to the rubber to make it stronger, and the steering wheel is black because the designer thinks it looks nice.
Student. Ohhhhhh.  I get it, now.

It may be that your other professor is better at answering your questions because he's better at figuring out what the root cause of your misunderstanding is.