Can I get into computer science grad school without a strong math background?

The only way to know if you can get in is to apply to a few programs and make your best case. There are some aspects of computing that require less of mathematics and others that require more.

But, don't make the mistake of conflating computer science and computer programming. Programming is only a tool, if a necessary one, for more important things. In particular, some of the things you have probably missed are deep study of algorithms and, especially, algorithmic efficiency and complexity. These are pretty much dependent on mathematics. If you were to be accepted into a CS grad program you would be competing with people who have studied this before, never mind graph theory, for example.

There are, however, some aspects of CS that are very tied up in things like human psychology and physiology more than mathematics. There are universities that focus, especially, on human factors. Even language design can learn from such things.

All is not lost, but it would be a pretty hard road even if you are accepted. You will need plenty of other evidence of the likelihood of your success to get in the gate, however. There is a lot of competition and most of it has followed a more standard path, so many graduate programs expect and depend on that background.

As for the usefulness of math in CS, note that discrete math, probability, and logic are more central than calculus, which has some, direct application, but is only occasionally essential (say, in theoretical work).

And for advanced work, Category Theory may be needed. Deep stuff.


Can invention of UI/UX or a programming syntax become a publication?

In principle, everything that has a research contribution can become a publication. Especially in computer science, a research contribution is very roughly defined as knowledge that is useful independently of the concrete implementation technology.

That means that "look at my nice draft for an UI / syntax" isn't a research contribution, but showing (e.g., through a user study) that a given design is better than the currently prevalent design in one or more dimensions is. Of course this means that you will need to do more than just propose the new design: firstly you need to be quite intimately aware what the current state of the art is (and the reasoning behind the current design), and secondly you will need to conduct a useful study.

As a sidenote, as soon as you are asking yourself ...

  Which way of doing research can make those works look more academics?

.. you are almost certainly doing it wrong. You should not conduct some work and afterwards think about how to make it "seem more academic". You should think from the beginning what the research question of your work is, and if you can't find any, question whether you should be conducting this work in the first place. Any attempt to make work "seem academic" after the fact is typically hard to publish, as reviewers are, at least usually, not stupid and able to look beyond simple deceptions.


Is source code provided in the appendix of a thesis copyrighted? [US]

In general, US law says that you are the one who owns the copyright to your work, and you own that copyright automatically from the moment you set your work down in tangible form. US law has a concept of "work for hire," but traditionally work done in academia is not considered work for hire. More about that here: Copyright for lectures, slides and textbook: university or professor? So you own the copyright, not the school.

It actually doesn't even matter if the school has some policy on this matter, because the law says that work for hire is determined based on certain legal criteria, not based on the employer's policy. Even if you signed a piece of paper saying it was a work for hire, that wouldn't necessarily make it a work for hire unless it met the relevant legal tests.

Brian Borchers asks in a comment:

  What is your institution's policy on the ownership of copyright of the thesis? Are you allowed to keep the copyright or must you transfer copyright to the university?

He has also pointed out in a comment that there are some schools, such as MIT, that claim in their policies that they are entitled to claim the copyright on a thesis. For the reasons described above, I suspect that this is not actually something they can legally do, but in any case it has no effect on the answer to your question.

  Also, if the university is to own the right to my code, another concern of mine would be that I have used various open-source libraries and I would worry about running into license issues for using those as well.

This is a non-issue. If those libraries are under the GPL (or some other "viral" license), what would violate those licenses would be if you linked them to your code and then redistributed the binary, and your code was not under GPL. That's because linking your code to the libraries creates what's known in copyright law as a "derivative work." This has nothing to do with printing out your code and putting it in your thesis. The thesis is a derivative work of your code, but the thesis is not a derivative work of the libraries, because the libraries aren't in it.


Is it correct to tell a professor that solutions to exercise sheets are online?

I reckon most professors know that the solutions are available online. Nevertheless, telling them is a nice thing to do. It's a way of showing, that you care about the quality of the lecture, and it might even trigger a fruitful discussion.

I am well aware that the solutions to my problem sheets are available online. Students told me so, but it is also obvious from the number of correct and wrong solutions. How do I know this?

I use a random number generator to obtain different starting values for the problem sheets. Students, who don't pay attention, might get it wrong.
Whenever I add a new problem this particular question gets the least correct answers.

Now, filtering the scores from old problem sheets according to the two criteria above and correlating them with the scores of the final exam, it gets pretty obvious that "doing the homework" and "coming to "consultation hours" significantly influences the final grade. I show this data every semester, at the beginning of a new course. During this presentation I also mention that the solutions are online, however, I try to put this into the context it deserves: Trying to cheat on the problem sheets is a waste of time. The time is better spent, having a beer and discussing the subject with your fellow students.


Use of "we have a large backlog" euphemism by journal editors when rejecting articles without sending them out for review

Although I've not been "an editor", I've been involved-enough with refereeing in "pure math" for almost 40 years now that I can observe some patterns:

First, the last several decades were very productive in the sense that many, many people got PhD's in math from pretty darn good places, and were focused on research. Second, the advent of TeX + internet (as opposed to paper mail) has effectively decreased the "friction" of submission so that the volume of submissions is insanely higher than 30 years ago. Maybe 100 times that rate? Meanwhile, the number of reasonably-substantive-status mathematics journals has not at all increased, and the refereeing system (pro bono, in people's spare time) has not changed. I hesitate to suggest that referees should be paid (jeez, for one thing, this starts to create conflicts of interest worse than those already present...), but the "old" system cannot cope with the new volume.

Thus, desk rejections will be more frequent, and more aggressive. That is, in particular, editors will not want to annoy/burden their "stable" of expert referees with a higher volume of papers... (One could hope that the pool of expert referees would grow proportionately to the number of TeX'd-up manuscripts, but this seems not to be so.)

Yes, I'd be willing to believe that the rate of inaccurate desk-rejections has gone up... not through malice or prejudice, but exigency.


How much should reviewers care about other things than an article's content?

I think the gut feeling is helpful during the evaluation process - one can probably not fight it anyway, so I think one should just accept that it is there. However, the gut feeling must not hinder a review based on the content of the paper.

So, what should not happen is, e.g.:

Stop reading after a few pages because you don't like the look, typesetting, language, variable names… (you may, however, stop reading if the style hinders your understanding, which is something completely different). Even if you hate Times New Roman or Arial, be professional and keep reading.
Keep worrying about issues as above when it comes to write the comments (with the exception of the language, but I am always very careful about comments on language). Comments should mostly address the content of the paper, especially your recommendation should not be influenced by gut feeling. So once you read everything carefully, form an opinion not based on the look of the paper, but on the content (which you have digested at that point and hence, you should be able to evaluate it without taking the look into account).

One exception is figures: If figures are poorly formatted and don't allow to extract the information, this is a serious issue (too small font, pixel graphics with poor resolution, colors that are indistinguishable for common color blindness…). But also here it is more about "can I extract the information" and not about "do I like the look".

Be extra careful with gut feeling if you review something which is borderline for you field. As can be seen in the above comments, the styles of submission vary greatly between fields (extreme example: Some field have all floats, i.e. tables and figures and such, on extra pages at the end of the documents, other field have submission that basically look like a final article, some fields use double spacing, some don't…).


Determining the co-presenters of a conference presentation when the work is already published

Common practice is to include all the authors of the publication/research that the presentation is based on, regardless of which authors attend the conference.  When in doubt, always include all authors.

If you're the only one attending the conference, list yourself as lead/contact author.  That's the only difference.


Contacting a researcher for academic queries, but he/she may be a potential reviewer?

Ignore the "complications". It is overthinking the purpose of double blind review. If you want to ask them questions about their paper it is perfectly ok to do so.
After all, anyone in your field could be your reviewer in a double blind process. You don't need to be paralyzed just because you submit a paper.
If there are any ethical issues they are on the other side in deciding how and when to respond to you.


graduate admissions - Can I apply again in March for the same intake after being rejected in December?

You are trying for an equation containing two incommensurate things. It is an impossible task without a lot of statistical research. You will just need to make a decision. Check the university's rules, however, to see if rejection comes with a prohibition to re-apply without at least a substantial wait. Such rules should be public knowledge and easy to obtain from admissions officials or web-sites.


Is it bad form to cold-email professors to do post-baccalaureate research?

If you are not an undergrad, you cannot be hired as an undergrad. Most undergrads are unpaid (don't work for free!), and of those that are paid, many are paid using funds that can only go to enrolled students (the percentage varies by field). Besides, most school-year undergrad positions are on the order of 10 hours/week, although some summer positions can be full-time.

According to @J.., sometimes new grads can be hired for full-time summer internships in a transitory capacity. Usually, this would be people continuing to work in labs they have already started with, or professors hiring someone they're familiar with. I find it unlikely a professor would hire someone new for only a few months, and if the opportunities were available, they'd likely to be posted.

Now that you have your degree, apply for jobs.

Cold emailing isn't a good strategy for that (especially not in the current climate), mostly because budgets usually don't allow to hire as many people as you need, much less to have money laying around waiting for someone to ask for it. Apply for posted jobs and work your network.


I see many Indian researchers going to the USA as postdocs. But I see very few Indian faculty leaving India. Why?

I think the answer is likely to be much the same reason that you see many postdocs shifting between the US and Europe, but few faculty changing shifting between the US and Europe as well.  Postdocs are in a transient period of their career and will readily move to follow opportunity.  Faculty, especially once tenured, are likely to be settled and not particularly interested in moving, no matter where they started.

Now, India is still different than the US academically, but as India continues to develop and Indian academia continues to expand, the difference is decreasing and one should expect the flow of scientific talent to continue to become more balanced, as is happening already.


Can someone call themselves Dr. so and so (ABD)?

Yep, can't do that. Either you do or you don't have the "Dr." and if you're ABD, you don't.


Why do we sign an agreement to adhere to the United States Constitution, before teaching at the college level?

I had to sign a statement like yours in Colorado as well. As far as I know, all public employees -- including faculty -- have to sign it as a condition for being hired.

My best explanation for this is that it dates back to the 1950s when fear of communist subverters was strong in the United States (read up on Senator McCarthy, for example). The pledge was then meant as a reminder to new employees that their allegiance is with the country, not their personal ideology.

I don't think anyone is going to say that you "unqualified" if you don't sign the pledge. At the same time, I think it is not illegitimate for a country to require some sort of pledge to the constitution and shared values if you will be paid by tax payer money. You may not be asked to sign a pledge to the constitution if you work in industry, but you surely will have to sign all sorts of paperwork that assigns your inventions to the company, requires you to not say negative things about the company on social media, that you do not divulge company internals to outsiders or the press. So I think there is not all that much of a difference -- both employers ask you to keep in mind what is important to that employer.


As a graduate student, am I allowed to use university letterhead in a letter of recommendation for an undergraduate student?

Yes, letters of recommendation are official university business, so you can use letterhead.  It would be unusual if you did not.


Is it acceptable to put a future event in one's CV?

Yes, but to avoid confusion, clearly label it as such.

Similar to how you can list papers with (submitted) or (under review), you can list presentations and posters as (confirmed) or some other indication that the plan is final and has been accepted.  If you don't label it as such, there is a risk the reader may believe the year is erroneous.


how to answer "Where did you draw the line on what you included in your literature review?" during the phd viva?

One simple answer is (leave away those aspects that don't apply to your situation):

First, I systematically thought about the different directions in which related work may exist. To make sure I did not miss any relevant directions, I consulted with my advisor/other researchers and checked the related work of the related work I initially looked at. For each identified direction, I considered a handful of prominent papers, until a point was reached where new papers did not add substantially new ideas, but just variations of the ones I already had covered.


Is it alright to be out of academia for a while before applying for academic or research-only positions?

In modern dynamic society it is next to impossible to predict what happens with education systems, universities, and job market in 20 years time. Also, the success in finding an academic job depends highly on the skill of a candidate, and we do not know what your skills are now, and will be after 20 years. It is unlikely that you find the precise answer to your question here.

However, it is very likely that a proper education, and a "badge" which confirms it, will be still of some value. Therefore, quitting the high school may really be not the wisest choice.

Of course, there are stories of prominent success of people without any degree, and it is tempting to revolt the system and prove yourself a hero. Just bear in mind that a great amount of people without any degree achieve nothing and remain unknown to most. A real genius may (and hopefully will) rise no matter what, but in the long run and on average people with the structured education and degrees are more successful in getting themselves high-skilled jobs.


How to deal with a labmate using my method without credit?

Speak to your advisor. You write that you've already done so but he's like "idk". Well, make sure he knows. Don't "give hints" and speak clearly. If you're assuming that by giving hints he will understand you, don't! This assumption is dangerous, and much more often the other party is not really sure what you mean. Here's an example of giving hints gone bad. The other members of the lab were giving hints to RH88 not to come, but RH88 did not get it, went anyway, and then after he's moved he finds out they were giving hints.

If your advisor is clearly aware of the situation, knows what your grievance is, and is still "idk solve it yourself", then it might be time to re-evaluate your time in the lab.


Google scholar change main version of paper?

Congratulations on publishing with the open access journal Studium, the journal looks very nice.

I believe you can unmerge the bibliographic records for this item at Google Scholar.

Go to your Google Scholar profile and make sure you're logged-in
Click on the paper title in question which should be in blue e.g. "Investigations into the origin of Einstein's Sink" once clicked it'll bring up a new sub-window
At the top right-hand corner of this sub-window you'll see two buttons. One is to edit the record, the other is to delete the record. Click the edit button
Choose the very bottom option to unmerge the record. (screenshot below is the final screen you should see which offers the unmerge option)


Are 'please cite my paper' emails socially accepted?

Emailing them could be acceptable -- and I would even say it should be encouraged! -- but you have to tread very carefully. If you write an email like

  Hey Dr. Jones,

  I saw your newest paper on arXiv and I noticed you didn't cite [Wouter et al, 2020], do you think you can post an update and cite me?

  Wouter

this would come across very poorly, and in general the above email would be socially unacceptable.

Instead, you could follow the following steps:

Read the paper carefully to find how it relates. It is likely that you, as an author of the other paper, are overestimating the overlap. There still may be some important overlaps, and reading it carefully will allow you to narrow down on the precise similarities.

For example, you mentioned that their broad and 'catchy' title overlaps with your paper, but if the actual material does not overlap, then the overlap in the title is probably superficial and doesn't require a citation here.
Once you understand the scope of the overlap, consider how many papers there are in this topic. Is this a topic with dozens of papers every year, in both high-quality venues and low-quality venues or arXiv? Or are both of your papers the only ones even addressing this topic? In the former case, I would expect that citing you is wrong (they should instead cite one of the more classic or well-known examples in the literature); in the latter case, I think they should cite you (although given that they didn't, they probably aren't aware of your paper).

At this point there are two cases: either you have determined that there is overlap and they should consider citing you, or you have determined that it's probably fine that they didn't cite you. If you still think they should cite you, then you can proceed to the next steps:

See if your advisor or a senior colleague knows this group, and can email them instead. It would be far better to get an email from someone they know about this, rather than some PhD student they haven't heard of.
Finally, as a last resort, write the email yourself. But keep the email professional and careful.

Don't say that they should cite you; do say they might be interested in your recent work.
Do assume that the work was done completely in parallel (it probably was).
Don't overstate the overlap or relevance of your work.
Don't assert that they have an obligation to be aware of your work; the literature is usually extremely vast, and it is hard to keep up with everything, especially arXiv papers with 0 citations posted a few months ago.
If there is another paper, other than yours, that is more representative of the line of work that your paper represents, which they didn't cite, suggest that work instead. And maybe in that case, don't mention your paper at all.
Above all, focus on your interest in their work; state that you saw their work and found it interesting; you can even ask questions, see if they have tried method X or considered question Y. Best case scenario, this could be an opportunity for future collaboration (or you could be a postdoc in the group later, etc.)

I think if you follow the above steps and guidelines, the email should be OK. And if they really should cite you, hopefully this diplomatic approach will cause them to do the right thing (the scientifically honest thing) by citing you.

If you decide not to write an email, then what you can do instead is cite their work in the future. Or meet them at a conference. These are more organic ways for awareness across research groups to develop.


How to list online publications (e.g. blog posting, etc.)?

Just keep it under a relevant label to make it sure that you don't pretend to have more peer-reviewed publications.

E.g. "Blog posts", or as I do: "Popular science and education-related articles (selected)".

If there are many, be sure to select only the most important/relevant ones.


Best license for an applied research project

You don't own the source code for the project, so you shouldn't be the one making this decision.

The fact that you were the last one to contribute some code doesn't mean that you have the right to slap a license on the whole thing and dictate its further use.  In fact, even if you wrote the whole code, copyright is almost certainly owned by the university. The university legal department is probably who actually owns this decision.

Authority to decide the licensing might be officially devolved to the computer science department.  Or it might be that CS is just doing their own thing because nobody really knows what is going on. You also might get away with just putting a license on it yourself.  Someone in the department might even tell you that is fine because they don't care.

The problem with such decisions taken without the real authority to take them is that someone might start caring later--for example, if the software becomes a successful product and somebody (not the university) is making money on it.  Many open source licenses (including the MIT license) are incompatible with the university retaining rights to commercial use.  The university would have to explicitly decide they are ok with giving up this right for such a license to be ok.

Your own self-interest in the matter complicates things.

If I understand you correctly, you want to open-source the project at university A solely so that you can take it to university B and use it (and you don't want to share it further after that).  Frankly, this doesn't look great.  If there is any ambiguity in the licensing, or any dispute arises, the fact that you did this for your own benefit rather than sharing with the research community is likely to color the whole thing.  Any benefit of the doubt will be gone.

I would not do this.  Instead, explicitly discuss with the project your desire to contribute (and collaborate).

Rather than open sourcing as a means to an end, get what you really need: permission to work on the code and collaborate with them from another institution.

They might decide that the best route to doing this is open source--in which case let the department lead that.
They might decide that simply giving you permission is the right route.
Or they might even say no--in which case be glad that you are finding out that answer this way rather than in a much more contentious way later.


The standard of living you'll attain depends massively on where you are and what field you are in (note that my answer assumes tenure, rather than the horribly exploited condition of adjunct professors).

In the United States, for example, liberal arts professors are typically paid much less well than professors in science and engineering subjects, who are in turn paid much less well than law or medicine instructors.  Location makes a difference too: a big midwestern state university will probably pay less well than Harvard, but Ann Arbor is a lot cheaper to live in than Boston.  In general, though, you should expect that a professor can have a relatively comfortable (if not lavish) lifestyle.

In other countries, academics may have significantly higher or lower relative standards of living.

FYI: For many US public universities, their employees are considered government employees and thus subject to public disclosure of their salaries.  You can thus find the salary distribution of most positions directly yourself if you wish.  For example, searching this database of the University of Illinois system shows that University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign currently has 632 assistant professors: the highest paid make around $200K (at the business school), the lowest paid are visiting professors and clinical professors for whom the bulk of their income is clearly elsewhere, and the vast majority make in the range of $60K - $120K, with humanities at the low end and biomedical sciences at the high end.


If you work with coauthors, who will all have their own conflicting responsibilities, there will frequently be times when someone cannot work on a paper and the others cannot meaningfully proceed. In such times, you switch your attention to a different paper you are working on (alone or with other colleagues).

So, unless you work alone (not recommended), the "parallel working papers" strategy is less of a choice and more of a necessity. I personally am currently trying to juggle a textbook, two coauthored and one single-authored paper.

The same will apply to grant writing.

And even if you do work alone, there comes a time in a project when it's useful just to take a break and do something else for two or four weeks, then return to your initial project with a fresh mind.


Is it acceptable to reference equations in a thesis instead of writing them out?

The suggestion to put them in an appendix is a good one. That allows you to change your mind later (after you speak with your advisor). In fact you can write the main text along the lines of "the underlying equations are discussed HERE," and near the end of your writing you change HERE to reference either your appendix, or the book. It also allows you to postpone putting time into this part of your thesis, until your advisor tells you whether he/she wants it.

One concern I have is consistent notation. If you just reference to another source, are you relying on readers to figure out the needed notation changes? If so, it's better that you include the equations, properly translated.


Why are meta-analyses the most quoted type of research paper despite being often flawed?

You have it backwards.  Meta-analyses are not heavily cited despite frequently being flawed; rather, they are frequently flawed because meta-analyses are heavily cited.

Because meta-analyses often were high-impact papers, many people with poor training and little experience tried to publish their own meta-analyses, in the hope of boosting their C.Vs.  It's (mainly) this flood of incompetent authors who are publishing flawed studies, and dragging the whole field down.

  The increase is a consequence of the higher prestige that systematic reviews and meta-analyses have acquired over the years, since they are (justifiably) considered to represent the highest level of evidence. Many scientists now want to do them, leading journals want to publish them, and sponsors and other conflicted stakeholders want to exploit them to promote their products, beliefs, and agendas. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses that are carefully done and that are done by players who do not have conflicts and pre-determined agendas are not a problem, quite the opposite. The problem is that most of them are not carefully done and/or are done with pre-determined agendas on what to find and report.

--We have an epidemic of deeply flawed meta-analyses, says John Ioannidis

Eventually, hopefully, journals and authors will become more aware of this and the poor-quality reviews will be ignored, correcting the problem. As evidence for this, we see a number of guidelines and resources for improving meta-analyses becoming more widely used over the past few years:

IOM
PRISMA
MOOSE


If you're given an hour, is it bad to finish a job talk in half an hour?

Giving such a short job talk is a negative rather than a positive.  Generally the point of a job talk is to engage and impress the audience with (i) your research and (ii) you as a potential research colleague.  They want to hear a narrative that starts from a place they know and builds up to some impressive results, ideally that they would like to hear more about over the coming months and years.  If other candidates are "filling the space with good content" and you come up 33% (or whatever) short, then you risk creating the impression that you don't have 60 minutes worth of good things to tell them.

That's just an impression though.  People who care will look back through your dossier, so you needn't worry too much about that.  Moreover, usually there are only a small number of candidates brought in for job talks and interviews, and a talk / interview has to be really bad indeed in order for those who were supporting you (in the current job market, getting interviewed is certainly a very strong show of support) to change their mind.  Ending very short doesn't seem to qualify in my opinion: people who are not in your favor may point out that your talk was short, while those in your favor will think "So what?  S/he's still a good candidate..."

You shouldn't be thinking in terms of having killed your chances for a job but rather of having not fully exploited the opportunity you've been given.  Based on what you write I will guess that you are not very experienced giving 60 minute talks.  (And in fact that's how you're going to look more than anything: inexperienced at giving such talks.)  That's something that's easy to improve upon: practice more at giving such talks.  Nowadays most people use powerpoint/beamer, which makes it pretty easy to control the pace.  For something like a job talk, you should have at least one "dress rehearsal," i.e., a practice talk in front of real, live people who will stop to ask you questions.  If you did that and still came up that short, there's something to figure out: did you get so nervous that you skipped a lot of material?  If so, you can compensate by making more slides.

Let me end with an anecdote.  When I was on the job market, I gave one talk much earlier than the rest: it was from my perspective before the semester even started.  For this and various other reasons I did not have a "dress rehearsal."  I had the opposite problem: I had way too many slides (I mean actual slides, printed onto clear plastic and put on an overheard projector; this was 11 years ago) and I ended up plunking down slides full of dense text and then skipping most of the text.  I went on to give three more versions of the same talk at other places, all of which were much more polished.  Where did this shaky job talk take place?  At my current institution.  They hired me anyway, though I heard that one of my colleagues was motivated to look back at my teaching letters for reassurance.


There is no harm in applying. There are a couple points to keep in mind:

Unless the place you are applying explicitly asks about it, you don't need to mention it on your own. I do not know if you were on probation, or anything like that - you would have to look at the formal wording of the letter you received from the dean. Students at my school who are punished for cheating are not "on probation" in any formal sense.  You don't want to lie, but you also don't need to bring up anything that you aren't asked about.
If an institution does ask a question which requires you to acknowledge the incident, then answer honestly, and be sure to also address the issue in your statement of purpose. In this case, it might also be good to arrange with a professor to mention the issue and its resolution it in a letter of recommendation.

The explanation you gave in the question would be fine for a statement of purpose: you went through a difficult period, sought help, and took time to work through the issue. Many people find themselves in that kind of situation, so you are not unique or even unusual.  Some programs may decide not to admit you, but I suspect there are programs that will give you a second chance. It may depend, to some extent, on your field - fields where honesty is particularly important may be less willing.


Low math GRE subect test scores, but high scores on Major Field Test: Should I mention this in my letters of intent?

Unfortunately, whether it's better to address it or ignore it largely depends on who is reading your application materials.  Some may want an explanation, others (on the more cynical side, and they do exist) may view any explanation as simply making excuses.

If you can get one of your reference writers to say something about it, it may carry more weight.  Of course this may not be possible depending on how well they really know you, but it's something to consider.

There's also the possibility that addressing it may not even matter since the school could have an unadvertised minimum GRE subject test score, where any application with less than that score gets tossed out.  Or such an application could go in the "maybe" pile, in which case an explanation could help.

My point with the waffling is it's impossible to say what would be better in general.  FWIW it sounds like you have a very strong application otherwise, so I probably wouldn't stress too much over it.

I strongly recommend this as your next step:  Seek advice from professors in your department who have served on admissions committees.


Many institutions have a dollar limit on what is considered a small gift that does not present a conflict of interest or other unethical circumstance.  $10/person is probably well below that limit but you could probably check with admin.

However, that does not prevent the students of the second group perceiving unequal incentives for the different projects.  It could be de-motivating for them to see the other group being materially encouraged.  It would be ideal to somehow equalize the incentivizing of both projects.


How long decision in process normally takes?

No, it is not too early. "Decision in progress" means all the reviews have already been received and what's left is for the editor to make a decision. 3 weeks is pretty long for this. I would write to the journal asking for a status update.


Academic discretion: Should one participate in online forums or Stack Exchange sites anonymously?

This is a very good point. There are certain questions I'd like to ask, but cannot because I'm not at all anonymous for the reasons you allude to or because current students might read those answers. That said, I chose not to be anonymous and I have adjusted my behaviour accordingly. Maybe my students like the idea that I can answer their questions on such a public forum (well, perhaps one of the more topic specific forums).


I'm worried my former collaborators are going to publish without including me as an author. What should I do?

I would contact the PI/supervisor and say that you are aware that the publication is still in preparation and that you expect to be a co-author of it. But you should also offer to continue to participate in the development in whatever way is appropriate.
You should, at least, have an opportunity to proof the paper before submission.


Scholarship rejection | Should I tell Supervisor

Speaking as a Canadian academic, who also sits on a graduate committee. These decisions are separate, as you note, and I would not feel obligated to mention this to your supervisor. He might or might not know the outcome of these scholarships, depending on how engaged he is with the program's funding picture.

My advice in this circumstance would be to wait for the admissions decision.


How do I deal with the vast number of research papers on a topic? (for non-academics)

The situation for academics is actually quite similar to that of non-academics, when faced with any discipline where they are not already an expert.  In cross-disciplinary interactions, we are all the laypersons for the other disciplines.

I find that when I am trying to learn about a new area, often the first problem is even just to figure out what the right words are to search for.  Every discipline has its own specialized vocabulary, and often the words have unexpected meanings.

As such, my approach tends to be as follows:

Start with Wikipedia or textbooks or some other similar popular (but well referenced!) source.
Identify key terms and key sources, and use those to find some good scientific review papers to read.
That will often be enough, since I'm often less interested in bleeding-edge theories or origins than in the current community consensus.  If not, however, then the review papers generally give enough context that I can follow references forward and back from the review papers, search key words I learn from those articles, or look for other papers authored by key players.


Should I explicitly remind people to include my name in the acknowledgement?

My suggestion is that you could let her know that you would appreciate an explicit ack and that it would help your future, just as you have done here. Don't state it as a duty (which it probably is) but as a professional curtesy and "boost", which it also is.

You could even write a suggestion of the form of the ack you would like if you would like it to include anything specific rather than just a general statement of thanks. (... who maintained the human cells...).


Interview for a PhD position at a German university

I currently work in Germany, and have exactly the situation xLeitix mentions in his comments: I have positions which I am able to choose directly who I want to hire, independent of any admissions committee.

In such interviews, I want to have a sense of the student's technical prowess, as well as a sense of their motivation and interest in the position itself. Since such positions are usually directly associated with particular projects, I want to make sure that the candidate is reasonably qualified to tackle the specific project (rather than just being generally competent in the field).


Should I list all of my scientific writings and technical reports (including those written for coursework) on my resume?

As Sverre says in a comment, you should make sure that your peer-reviewed publication stands out. It is common, in an academic CV, to put such publications into their own separate section.

As far as your other technical writing, my inclination would be to include these only if they are available to the public in some way, as opposed to just being pieces of coursework. For example, if you have an undergraduate thesis which is lodged in your university library, or have (co-)written a technical report which is available from your department, then these should be included in the CV. They are a class of publication. But essays and reports that were only submitted for assessment are not the same sort of thing. You can certainly mention them in the part of your CV where you talk about your various courses and projects, but it would be misleading to list them among your publications.


Is it fair to organize conferences in beautiful tourist places?

Fairness is not a point at all in the organisation of conferences. The goals of the organisers of an event (scientific or not) is to have as much incentive as possible for people to come.
Indeed, most of the time, the organisation part has to be done before knowing the exact number of attendees, and the organisers still need to cover the expenses in terms of room rental, catering, etc. There are many ways to attract researchers for a conference:

Organise a high quality conference, where the scientific interest alone make it worth to come.
Select a "paradise" location, such that the attendees can just show up for their session, and then relax on the beach or on the ski slopes.
Select an "interesting" location, where people wouldn't go normally in vacation, but that could be a good opportunity.
Select a quiet place, with few distractions, allowing the attendees to focus as much as possible on work. The Dagstuhl seminars are quite famous for that.
Select a conveniently located place, such that it will be easy (and cheap) for many attendees to come.
Select a "cheap" place, for instance by organising during summer in a university, where you get the rooms for free, and where housing can be cheap. It can be a nice way to attract many students.

Clearly, in general, it's a mix of those, and you can't maximise all of them. And then, as aeismail said, it's a matter of whether you can get funding to attend the conference. But the question of whether is fair or not is not really relevant.

EDIT: I have rephrased the answer following David's comment. Clearly, an important point is that there is always a targeted audience for any event. If you want to organise a conference on an extremely specific topic, maybe there are only 20 researchers who could be interested. The job of the organisers is therefore to find the best way to attract as many as possible from these 20. I also want to make the difference between the reason behind organising an event, e.g., advance science, create collaboration, make money (for some scam conf) and the goals to reach in terms of organisation.


A potential collaborator applies for a grant on his own: what should I do?

I am somewhat surprised about the answers so far. The behavior of the professor as described seems at least a little unethical at best, and downright exploitative at worst. If a more junior researcher comes to you with a good idea and some first steps towards a concrete research plan, and you answer with (basically) gee, good work, now please excuse me while I do this research with my own students, I have a hard time seeing how this would be in any way considered fair. Asking the OP to be happy because he "helped progress science" after all is ... ok, I have literally no good word for this expectation. As we all know, reputation is the currency of science, and it sounds like the OP was badly short-changed.

Whether the professor "needs" the OP or not is, to me, not really the important question here. The OP had the original idea, so it is unlikely to assume that he would be entirely useless in the remainder of the project. Hence, cutting him out of the research basically right from the start seems really awful. The least you can do is take him on and give him a chance to contribute to the research - if it then turns out that he or she actually lacks all the relevant knowledge to contribute from the project from then on (unlikely), you can still decide together to part ways later on.

  And, moreover, is this type of behavior acceptable? Do I have any leverage here? Do I need it?

I wouldn't consider it ethical at all. Whether you have any leverage is another question - likely no, as (as correctly noted above), just having the idea by itself does not warrant co-authorship (but you should have been given the chance to do more), but it is kind of too late for this now.

  I'd be happy being involved with the research itself, but I'm not sure he wants that. He'd probably be best off career-wise keeping it to him and his students (and, mind you, this is a researcher who puts a lot of effort on career advancement - he's an equally talented businessperson, albeit in academic research, as scholar).

As I said, it is a bit late to ask for co-authorship of a thing that's already been written without you. If you don't actually want to be involved in the rest of the project, I am not sure what you can realistically ask for. In this case, I am not sure if you can get much more than an acknowledgement that you brought the idea to the mind of the professor.

(that being said, I wouldn't touch a collaboration with this guy anymore for the rest of my life)


How should a Phd student deal with rude professors or faculty?

There may be more happening with the professors to make them as rude as you say.  However, having said that, there is no excuse for incivility and rudeness - it is not professional and certainly not conducive to a productive academic environment.

On to your main question, on how to do deal with the day-to-day rudeness, I was in such an environment when I was completing my honours in geology.  This situation is similar to an unpleasant workplace.

This is how I got through the honours year:

Focus on your goal, not on the personalities - by this, I mean always 're-focus' your thoughts to be task orientated (not easy to do).
Form a friendship group amongst your fellow students, not to complain what is happening, but to mutually re-focus your attentions to your work.
Don't take anything said to you personally (also sometimes not easy to do).

Is it at all possible to transfer to another research group/university?  it does sound that the academics' frustrations are being taken out on the graduate students.

I hope this helps.


Usually, one should not do this because it might have implication on your current position, especially if you are not selected afterwards.

Especially in academia, people might know each other very well and in such cases one might be tempted to make a short phone call or talk at a conference.

If you want to avoid this, you should explicitely mention, that you don't want that your current advisor will be contacted because [insert good reason here].


Huge gap in the deadlines for graduate programs in US and Germany. How to commit to one?

Most universities in Germany are aware of this problem but there is no common system so the only way to find out if you can get an early decision is to ask the university you applied at directly. If your program is "zulassungsbeschränkt" it means they only accept the best X applicants so it is not possible to be accepted before the deadline but there are many programs which accept all students meeting certain requirements.

Be aware that having (even a good) Masters degree is no guarantee to get a PhD position in Germany. Only a small fraction of Master students continue to do a PhD and, if you do not have scholarship, you need to find a professor who is willing to supervise you and has funding available.


Is it acceptable to drink alcohol in front of senior staff during semi-official occasions?

Putting ice in good whiskey is universally unacceptable, but I think the answer may depend on which country you are in. If you are 20 in the USA, then no. Otherwise, you are an adult and you decide.


Why do theoretical computer science people use Comic Sans in their slides?

There's no deeper reason behind it. I think people just like it, particular its informal feel.

Theoretical computer science is a pretty informal and laid-back field. Although in many fields Comic Sans would be considered unprofessional, the standards for "unprofessional" in TCS are much more relaxed. For example, I've observed that it's far more common for professors and students to be on a first name basis with people in the TCS world, and the tone in which papers are written are much less formal. It is typical for times problems to be described with little narratives or jokes, and often problems retain names based on how they were originally presented. For example, there’s the Handshake Lemma, the Traveling Salesman Problem, and the Arthur-Merlin Protocols. That’s not to say that informal names and presentations of theorems don’t exist in other fields, but in TCS I would go as far as to say it is typical.

Heck, in his recent landmark paper on Graph Isomorphism, Laszlo Babai wrote something that could very reasonably be interpreted as a sex joke. In many fields innuendoes such as the one found in his paper would be considered wildly inappropriate. I don't know if the sex joke was intentional, but the line (although it's been noticed by many people) hasn't seems to cause any blowback or embarrassment.


The most important part about where you do your PhD. is not so much about the standing of the university, but about the reputation of your PhD. adviser. Your name will be (forever) linked to his name and his reputation. If he is a well known researcher in your field, then you will carry this positive reputation with you. If he is not well known and he has issues getting funds, then in this case this might make your PhD. harder. If I were you, I would not worry about the reputation of University A., but about the reputation of your research group.

On another note, sometimes it can be problematic if you have done your Bachelor, Master and PhD. at the same institution. In this case, you will have experienced research in a single environment and this can be detrimental to your candidacy when applying for faculty position or etc. However, if you do a post-doc in another research group later on, you can mitigate this aspect. Like I said, if you feel the research group of University A has all you need and you like the work environment there (which is crucial to succeeding in your PhD.) then go ahead :)!.


Is it a good idea to mention previous rejection and subsequent improvement in motivation letter?

If you think you might know the reason for rejection and over the course of last year you have managed to resolve the issue then IMO it is worth mentioning. On the other hand if you added so much prestige to your profile during the time then it's worth stating that you had applied last year and also state your qualifications and skills earned since then.


Postdoc interview follow-up: HR or PI and how should I approach the conversation?

You could contact both, actually, but differently. It is probably early for them to make a decision (scheduling meetings, perhaps), but not to early to follow up with the PI to give thanks for consideration and ask a bit more about the position and the work if you have any remaining question. You can also, safely, express your enthusiasm.

But pressing them for an early decision is probably a mistake.

HR, on the other hand could be asked about the typical length of time for decisions. I assume they are not as invested in the decision as the PI.


Writing a book chapter. Figure etiquette

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and the following is just my opinion.

Copyright protects expressions but not ideas or concepts (https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html). If the figures are entirely made by yourself expressing the ideas of the original works, while the original sources are properly cited, I don't think you have anything to worry regarding copyright.

Also, in many countries, a design of simple words and/or simple geometry shapes are not qualified for copyright protection. See the Wikipedia article for Threshold of originality.


What are the essential points that should be covered in a dissertation abstract?

Any abstract should cover 4 elements: context, problem, solution, and validation, in this order. The main thing you want to highlight is the contributions of your dissertation. The context and problem descriptions are essential to try to make your contributions understandable, and to convince the reader that what you have done is important. Describing the validation is important so that you convince the reader that what you have done is correct/valid.


It's certainly a good thought to make sure your letter writers don't double up on information to the detriment of their unique perspectives.

However, it certainly sends an odd vibe to ask that they three communicate with each other to do this ... They are doing you a favor writing the letter in the first place, but adding to that to try and make them coordinate with two other professors is a huge load, and plus, if you want three professors to work together, you might get your letters in a year, if they aren't too busy.

That said, it's absolutely normal to talk to one professor and ask her to write about your programming abilities in particular, and to ask a second to talk about how you are a quick study, etc., so that the letters are complementary.


How should I structure my CV since my degree doesn't reflect my primary studies?

I have a PhD in Computer Science and work in social sciences so have a similar situation as you. I get away with it as a 'methods' person rather than a 'subject matter' person. In the long run, it will be a non-issue because your research interests and jobs that interest you should overlap. But for the first post-doc position, you may need to be careful in your presentation.

First, an academic CV looks nothing like an industry CV. Get hold of some CVs from more senior academics and peers and attend any training offered by your institution. There is usually considerably more detail in an academic CV (sometimes excessive, which gives the impression of insufficient analytical skills to assess relevance).

While I am not specifically familiar with the US context, based on UK and Australia it would be unusual to use any sort of application filtering past the basic level of 'do you have a PhD'. It is important though to include your thesis title, which hopefully reflects your interests.

Any application process will include your publications. Almost all will have some sort of 'research statement' or cover letter etc. Take advantage of these to emphasise the relevance of your research and experience to the particular job. While it is fine to have a standard CV, you need to actively think about why you would be good for the particular job, not rely on fairly empty stock phrases. It is very important to write this statement or letter from a blank page for each job.

Interdisciplinarity is also attractive, but only if it's relevant - being able to use different methods is a plus in a larger research group because there's not much point in having multiple researchers with the identical skills and knowledge.


Is there such a thing as "open" double-blind peer review?

Yes, there is such a thing as "open double-blind" reviewing: the "Frontiers in" journal series uses exactly this model.

During the review process, "control" is handed back and forth between editors, reviewers, and authors in an incremental "conversation" model, in which the paper might go through many incremental revisions.  If the editor determines the paper cannot proceed or an author is unable to reply to reviewer comments, then it is rejected.  Otherwise, reviewers, once satisfied with the paper, sign off with an endorsement.  When all reviewers have endorsed, the paper proceeds to publication and the identity of the reviewers is revealed on the final published version.


How can a book's copyright year be in the future?

As I understand it, anything published after a certain date, possibly in September, gets the following year's date. It is merely a convention. I don't know if it started with publishing textbooks or not, but that would make a bit of sense. The academic year starts in September in many places.
The convention may only apply to certain kinds of books and only in certain places, but the practice is long standing.
Copyright is very long now, but back when it was shorter an extra year meant something. And publishing late in the year would, in essence, be giving up a year of protection.


How to create a collaborative list of references

Have you thought about using Mendeley? It provides both an online interface and a client. You can add notes and tags to resources, which can also be organized in folders. You can also create "groups" to share (part of) your library with others. There is a con: it is owned by Elsevier, which I'd rather not support. There are also alternatives but I haven't tried any of them.


Who reads the NSF postdoc fellowship applications? (mathematics)

Some NSF programs are reviewed across sub-disciplines with reviewers that present a cross-section of mathematics. If memory serves me right, then that's true for CAREER proposals, for example, and I think also for the postdoc fellowships. In those cases, you'll have to expect that your audience consists of people in applied and pure mathematics, and you will have to find a level that keeps both of these groups interested in your proposal.


Are postdocs students or staff when calculating staff/student ratios?

For the US, there is actually a fairly standardized answer, though it's complicated.  The short version appears to be:

  Postdocs who teach count as 1/3 of a staff member.  Postdocs who do not teach are not counted at all.

First, note that the number usually used in the US is student-faculty ratio. (Not "staff": in US academic parlance, "staff" typically refers to non-academic university employees: administrative assistants, accountants, gardeners, cooks, etc.)

We can pretty quickly eliminate the possibility of postdocs being counted as students - I've never heard of postdocs being considered students anywhere in US academia.  They don't enroll in classes nor work towards a degree.  (Even for PhD students working exclusively on research enroll in classes each term until they graduate, typically a 12-credit course called "Independent Research" or something similar.  Postdocs do not.)

So, are they counted as faculty?

There is an organization called the Common Data Set Initiative which sets forth standard definitions for university statistics like student-faculty ratio.  CDS doesn't actually gather data or publish survey instruments, but their set of standards and definitions is written in questionnaire form.

Item I-2, "Student to Faculty Ratio", says:

  Report the Fall 2014 ratio of full-time equivalent students (full-time plus 1/3 part-time) to full-time equivalent instructional faculty (full-time plus 1/3 part-time). In the ratio calculations, exclude both faculty and students in stand-alone graduate or professional programs such as medicine, law, veterinary, dentistry, social work, business, or public health in which faculty teach virtually only graduate-level students. Do not count undergraduate or graduate student teaching assistants as faculty.

For the definition of "instructional faculty", we refer to Item I-1, which has a table explaining how various types of faculty members should be counted.  For

  instructional faculty in preclinical and clinical medicine, faculty who are not paid (e.g., those who donate their services or are in the military), or research-only faculty, post-doctoral fellows, or pre-doctoral fellows

it says they should not count as full-time instructional faculty, and should be counted as part-time instructional faculty "only if they teach one or more non-clinical credit courses".

So this is the answer.  A postdoc or other researcher who does not teach any non-clinical credit-bearing courses should not be counted in the student-faculty ratio.  A postdoc who does teach at least one such course should be counted a part-time instructional faculty member, and contribute 1/3 of a person to the denominator of the ratio.

Of course, it should be kept in mind that this data is provided voluntarily by each institution, and it is ultimately up to the institution to decide how they classify each of their employees.

With regard to rankings, the best-known rankings in the US are the US News & World Report Best Colleges Rankings.  They explain that they generally follow the CDS definitions when collecting data from institutions.


Difference between article and letter in Nature

They have a difference in the allowed length, and the importance of the results. Articles are longer and supposed to have "far-reaching implications". In other words, no chance to get an article unless you revealed that the moon is actually made of cheese or the like.

Letters are shorter, yet still very prestigious.


Do graduate schools consider courses that are exclusive for one country?

This depends on the nature of the subject and the program to which you are applying. Anything that's "on-topic" for your field would of course be considered—so if you're doing a graduate program in something like philosophy, theology, history, or something in that part of the "spectrum," such a course probably would be considered. However, if you're studying something in, for instance, the sciences or engineering, or something in the humanities far removed from this—such as music—such a course would probably receive much less consideration.

Moreover, a grade of B in such a course is almost certainly not going to make a significant enough difference in your GPA that you would have been admitted if you had gotten an "A," but will be rejected because you got a "B."


When writing a letter of reference, is there any reason not to show it to the student?

Is there a reason not to show a student their letter of reference?

One important reason is if you make direct comparisons with other students, which is one of the most useful things you can do in a letter.  If you say "this student is even more promising than X, and perhaps comparable with Y, but not quite as strong as Z", then it doesn't seem appropriate to tell the student.  Even if your letter doesn't name anyone specific, but instead says "this student was among the top two in a class of twenty-five", it still leaks a little information about how other students performed in the class.

Even aside from direct comparisons, you'll be making implicit comparisons if several students compare the letters you wrote for them to see whose is more enthusiastic.  That doesn't raise the same ethical issues, but it's still awkward.  I have no interest in telling students my private opinion of how they compare with each other.

  The second question is, is it reasonable to refuse to write a reference for a student when the student does not waive their right to see the reference.

Why not?  The fundamental question here is whether you ever have an obligation to write a letter.  In general I'd say no, although there are cases in which it would be offensive to refuse to write for anything less than very serious reasons.  (For example, Ph.D. advisors owe letters to graduating students.)  Under most circumstances, refusing to waive the right to see the letter sounds to me like a fine reason to decline to write one.

There are also all sorts of intermediate options you could choose.  For example, you could tell the student you would have to write something like "I warned this student that I could not write a compelling letter if he did not waive the right to see it, because I would be unable to compare him with other students.  He insisted that he needed a letter from me but was unwilling to waive this right, so I will do the best I can.  I can confirm that he received an A in my class and has sufficient preparation for further study in this field."


"and" in section title: "Apple and Pear" or "Apple & Pear"?

Many journals specifically state what they expect, or often it can be ascertained by looking at their previous issues.


Does a late reference letter to UWaterloo accepted?

This question can probably be best answered by the MSDAI's point of contact. You can find their contact information here: https://uwaterloo.ca/graduate-studies-postdoctoral-affairs/future-students/programs/data-science-and-artificial-intelligence-mdsai-co-op


bibtex entries for versions of the c++ standard

I just had to use a better search query. "cite ISO/IEC 14882:2011" gives as a first result this page: https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/24b660c16d9a5ab0ad595b1555402c797/gron.

Here's the BibTeX entry:

@book{ISO:2012:III,
  added-at = {2012-10-08T01:13:47.000+0200},
  address = {Geneva, Switzerland},
  author = {{ISO}},
  bibdate = {Mon Dec 19 11:12:12 2011},
  bibsource = {http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/isostd.bib},
  biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/24b660c16d9a5ab0ad595b1555402c797/gron},
  day = 28,
  interhash = {ff5df6d7fa67f89d7d5ea964dab3e3c9},
  intrahash = {4b660c16d9a5ab0ad595b1555402c797},
  keywords = {C++ Specification Standard},
  month = feb,
  pages = {1338 (est.)},
  publisher = {International Organization for Standardization},
  remark = {Revises ISO/IEC 14882:2003.},
  timestamp = {2012-10-08T01:13:47.000+0200},
  title = {{ISO/IEC 14882:2011 Information technology --- Programming languages --- C++}},
  url = {http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50372},
  year = 2012
}


I would consider doing both - the original (usually with a date accessed anyway these days - although I don't do much website citing), and a note that it is still available (as of your article) on the Wayback machine at the given address.

Now, it is always (sadly) possible that Steam would consider requesting the Wayback folks to delete their listing in the future, but it provides a hint.
Further, I'm surprised that Steam did not migrate the old site over to their new site, but that might have been a lot of work.


Should I quit Master's after 2 months into the program? Please help!

There is no right answer for this question but I can explain what my approach would be.

Question I would ask:

Does the content of the master study interest you?
Is the gained knowledge/degree useful for potential career paths?
How much money do you waste by quitting?
How much money can you make by working instead of studying?
How would quitting/continuing affect your mental health?
If you do already have a pending job offer how does quitting/continuing affect the offer?
Do you really want to write your thesis on the side will practicing a full time job? (stressful, long time)
Can you work half time at the job?
Will your potential employer support/endorse your expanded study?
What is the future intend of pursuing an academic career?(Quitting a Master's program can place barriers for acceptance into other master programs and PhDs in the future (suggested by@Mefitico))
How will quitting affect your CV?

For a "sober" look at all those question a decision matrix would be useful.

If the financial calculations are to complicated asking a question here may help.


How important is it to have a PhD advisor in mind when applying to math PhD programs?

This is a case where there are very large differences between disciplines and also large differences between countries.  In this answer, I address the situation in mathematics vs. laboratory sciences in the US.

In mathematics, in the US, most graduate students are supported as teaching assistants rather than as research assistants.  The research assistantships that do exist are usually given to more advanced Ph.D. students.

In the science disciplines in the US, where most students are supported as RA's it makes little sense to admit a student to a program unless one of the faculty is willing to support that student as an RA.  Since faculty want to get the most out of their graduate students they are very selective and put a lot of effort into training the students in the particular work needed in their lab. As RA's, graduate students are skilled and valued employees that contribute significantly to research.  This is particularly important in disciplines with lots of fieldwork or lab bench work.

What makes a graduate student attractive as an RA candidate is not always just their academic background.  Particular skill sets (programming and data analysis, or scuba diving, or mountaineering) can make a student attractive for certain RA positions.  For one project that I collaborated on, graduate student RA's collected rock samples at altitudes of 18,000 feet above sea level in Peru.  I've worked with other graduate students that did fieldwork in Antarctica.

At most universities in the US, first-year graduate students in mathematics are expected to take graduate courses, work as TA's, and start to look for a research advisor.  There's no rush to start on research because the students are supported as TA's and because they typically need one or two years of course work before they can do anything useful in research.  Furthermore, most graduate students in mathematics contribute little or nothing to the advisor's research.

As a result, graduate admissions committees in math usually work to admit the strongest available students without much thought about who the advisor will be.  Since these students will be working as TA's, there may also be some emphasis on recruiting students with the communication skills and personality to be effective TA's.

Note that mathematics departments with research groups in different areas of mathematics will often times allocate x TA slots to research group A and y TA slots to research group B.  This helps to spread the students out among the research groups.  It's based on the student having some idea of the general area of research that they want to pursue but not on whether a particular advisor wants the student.


My recommenders copied letters from online

Yes, it counts as plagiarism on the part of the teacher. There are 2 possibilities if they check the letter and find the plagiarism:
1. the university thinks your teacher copied the letter from an online source. This will make them be highly skeptical of the teacher as an academic and it will probably negatively reflect on you as a consequence. They might think you have worked in an environment where plagiarism is pervasive for example.
2. They think you forged a letter from your teacher by copying one from the internet and sending it in their name. This is of course even worse for your chances.

Either way, even if the universities don't check all letter for plagiarism,you must consider the possibility that the reader at the university will recognize the letter. Or they might suspect plagiarism after reading it and check this specific letter.
My advice would be: ask for an original letter, but whatever you do, don't send this letter.


Should I tell my tertiary education provider about my autism and ADHD diagnosis?

If you are in the U.S., and if you are referring to post-high-school education, there is a sort of bifurcation, by law and custom: there's no point in mentioning any sort of trouble unless you have registered with "disability services" (or equivalent), who will negotiate on your behalf with various departments for reasonable/purposeful "accommodation" (about extra time for exams, or quiet rooms for exams, etc)

In that context (again, in current U.S. college or university) individual instructors are explicitly not to make any judgements about disability issues, about accommodations, etc. After all, they/we are not experts in understanding such things.

Similarly, (other) chronic medical conditions (since the previous is biochemistry, presumably) are not within the purview of instructors. E.g., the side effects of anorexia or bulimia can be occasionally debilitating. Despite being able to make inferences, I do not want to intrude in peoples' private lives, so I do not ask for any sort of detailed explanation for anything. "Medical issue" (as reason for absence or "incomplete") is more than enough.

It is unfortunately true that the "immediacy" of most classroom/exam situations (such as demands for "class participation") are biased against shy or nervous or ... people. The typical rationalization for this is that it is often unhelpful "out in the world" to be shy or nervous or ... so to operate in a way that penalizes that is merely a presagement of what is to come? (Um, wait, don't people pay tuition, not to be filtered only, but to be educated and assisted in that education? Nevermind.)

You might make a more informal remark, as pseudo-apology-in-advance, explaining possibly unusual behavior or reactions as due to ... whatever you'd care to say... rather than a negative-critical reaction to whatever's happening in class. But something more on the order of "I have some personal issues that may cause me to behave quirkily at some points, and I don't want you (the instructor) to think that it's at all a reaction against what's going on, it's just me". Or to your taste. No reason to give more details to any reasonably sophisticated college/university instructor in the U.S. (Of course, some are not sophisticated, and further, often themselves having issues that make such sophistication difficult, sadly-ironically.)

A bit ambiguous answer, but reflecting the legalities and intentions of current U.S. stuff, I think.


It is never too early to look around for PhD positions. Start out by looking at what is advertised to see what is available and where. If you already know of places to go then get in touch with the department/research group to present yourself. Having a few papers under your belt will be a plus so provide a CV and the papers in your first contact and add a statement of what you want to do and why you are interested in that place.

Being focussed and showing you have a strong urge to continue is likely to impress.

I can understand it is difficult to say no to two offers and move away but remember that you are free to move. Saying no to a position without funding should not weigh you down. The other position is a little more sensitive of course. But, people move for many reasons, personal and professional. I do not think you need to explain your motives. A change in location is enough. Moving is a positive so there is nothing remarkable about doing so. There is, furthermore, no reason to bring up any negatives about your present location. If your move stirs bad feelings then it is a sign things are not right anyway.


What is the motivation for a graduate student to help to develop a professor's MOOC?

Why do anything that's not strictly required to graduate? For the experience. Because it sounded like fun. Maybe they're interested in teaching and really excited about the opportunity to develop a curriculum from scratch? Maybe they're excited about the pedagogy behind online courses and want to learn more? Maybe it's a rare opportunity to try something new that most academics don't get to do?

If you only do things that are strictly required to graduate and publish, you'll miss out on a lot of interesting experiences, and you'll be less interesting to a hiring committee than someone who went above and beyond seeking out experiences to develop as a researcher and teacher. The goal with grad school shouldn't be to just publish and graduate. While it is sufficient to just publish and graduate, it's hardly a good way to make the most of your time in grad school. Go for the exciting teaching project. Volunteer to help organize that conference. Apply to that interesting summer school. Get involved in that intriguing research project. If an exciting opportunity comes along, take it. Develop a MOOC instead of TAing yet another semester of calculus (or whatever grad students in your field normally do). That's my philosophy at least, and that's why I would have jumped on an opportunity to develop an MOOC.


Can I submit the paper to arxiv and the conference at the same time?

Worrying about other people publishing your paper isn't something you should do. One, it's not in your control, that'll happen if it has to happen. Two, even if it does, there are always other parameters which can differentiate the paper.
This conference says you can post it to Arxiv, so go ahead! But I don't really think it'll stop someone else from publishing their material else where. Especially when the pre-print upload date is so close to the conference many might not even realize that their is a paper with the same domain!


Any recourse for testing on material not mentioned in the class syllabus?

In one particular university class, many people stopped attending after about half the semester was over as the professor was "confusing" as many people phrased it and opted to instead study from the textbook.

In retrospect, I hope you see the flaw in this approach. If your instructor is confusing about something, you go speak to them, in person, to get to the bottom of the things that are confusing to you. Your instructors are there to teach you this stuff because a majority of students are not adept enough to do it on their own.

  The course syllabus outlines the chapters in the textbook that would be subject to testing.

Well, in my syllabi I say something like "this outline is tentative, and subject to change." Assuming your instructor did not have this disclaimer in the syllabus: too bad. A syllabus isn't a legal contract. You'll know better next time.

It would be "nice" if instructors could always think of every little thing to put in a syllabus so that whiny students who don't bother showing up, etc. wouldn't come and complain about how a lack of effort on their part was somehow someone else's fault but their own.

  Is there any recourse now in terms of marks or having the question removed in your opinion? Furthermore, could you provide on brief response as to whether you think the prof was justified in doing this?

I do think your instructor was justified. However, I'd also like to point out that you have options, if you really do think you were not given a fair exam. For example, you could go and talk to the course instructor about it (you know, like you should have when the course got to be "confusing").

I hope more than anything that you learn a valuable lesson here: when things don't go your way, don't look around to find someone else to blame — take ownership of your actions.


I would suggest that you not claim any title that wasn't assigned by others. You can give a description of what you did or suggest that the work was "similar to GRA" but that is different from saying that you actually had the title. Your only official "title" was student, I think.

While what you say might be accurate in some sense, the problem is that someone seeing official documentation and not finding you listed with a title you claim, all start to wonder why and even thing you have given a fraudulent answer. While that isn't your intent, you don't want to open the possibility of such an accusation.

I suspect that in Germany it is especially important to be accurate about titles, though that may be changing.

But, for a CV, have a section on experience with a very brief explanation and a phrase "similar to ..." that gives the person the right idea about your duties, but not claiming a title.

You could also, in a mail or email, ask the institute what you can call yourself on your CV. But I'd suggest that you want the answer in writing and from someone official if it isn't a formal position you held. Then there can be no question of your intent.


What incentive does a professor have to allow a student to enroll in a course that is already full?

I disagree with your proposed strategy.  The marginal added workload of one additional student is usually negligible, and the average grade for the term is not usually something that reflects well or poorly on a professor to a significant degree.  These aren't usually the main issues.

I would expect the professor to make the decision by trying to balance the benefits to you of taking the course, versus the negative effects on the other students from having the course be more crowded.  Your case will be more compelling if you can show that:

Not being able to take the course would represent a major hardship for you.  Something on the level of delaying your graduation.  If the only effect is that taking it later is somewhat less convenient, means a fuller schedule, means getting up at 8am, etc, that won't be compelling.
The fact that you couldn't register for the course normally is due to circumstances beyond your control, and not a result of inadequate planning on your part.
You are adequately prepared for the course, and are reasonably likely to pass it.  Being a "good student" overall means something here, but more to the point is showing that you have done reasonably well in all prerequisite courses.  If your preparation is marginal, the professor might think there's not much point in giving you permission to take a class you would be likely to fail.

There isn't much you can do about the negative effects from crowding; let the professor evaluate that.  Don't make suggestions like "I could skip all the lectures so that there will still be enough seats".  That tends to counteract #3 above.

Definitely do not attempt to bribe the professor with money, favors, etc, in exchange for being allowed to take the class.  (This should go without saying, but I have known it to happen.)


Which license should I aim to publish articles & software under?

CC licenses are good for the written word, but you need a software license for software. You're going to have to have two licenses at the very least. On top of that, depending on your publication venue, you may not have a choice of license. Many venues require the transfer of copyright in order to publish, so your license for your articles may not matter once you give up your copyright.

To answer your question directly, for publicly funded work, I prefer the 3-clause BSD over public domain for software, but this is partially due to my institution's requirement to either use GPLv2 or BSD for software. For documentation CC-BY is my preference, and I have no institutional requirements there. I have these preferences because I believe that publicly funded work should be as open and free as possible to the people (i.e. the public) that funded it, but I adhere to an academic perspective that credit should be given where credit is due.


Two figures are redrawn and merged into one. Are reproduction permissions required in this case?

Combining other people's published figures to create a new figure does not allow you to waive requests for permission to reproduce a figure. Each individual component is someone else's intellectual property, and they have the right to be credited for the work. Note that many journals have simple mechanisms for requests to reproduce, and usually it's just a matter of asking for the necessary permission.

Simply redrawing someone else's figures for a part (a) and (b)-type figure does not spare you from requesting permissions. If you have completely redrawn and combined figures (for example, to illustrate how the two figures are more closely connected than in the originals), then you are creating a new intellectual contribution. You need to cite the original work that you've adapted, but you would not be reproducing the figures, and therefore would most likely not need to secure reproduction permissions.


Is it right for a conference to demand proof of purchase of flight tickets?

I do not think that the conference organizers have made good decisions about how to handle things.  However, it is understandable that they should want firm confirmation that people are actually going to show up.  Since they are operating a conference with no fees attached, it is unfortunately too easy for people to sign up, hoping to attend, but then cancel when it turns out the the time or funding are not available.  This is a regular issued for conferences and meetings without any direct fees attached, and there are several ways to deal with it.

Some conferences rely on personal relationships with the people who will be participating and presenting.  If the people who are going to be giving talks are known acquaintances of the organizers, these connections can be leveraged to ensure that the registered participants will indeed show up.  (The day after tomorrow, I am leaving for a free conference, which I am attending even though it conflicts with a family event that I might like to attend.  I know the people running the conference, and if I bailed out, it would cost me in terms of my professional relationships.  Since I committed to attend many months ago, I am sticking to my commitment.)

The people running this conference are taking a different approach.  They are not willing to put people on the presentation schedule unless they can verify that they have made travel plans.  While I can understand the motivation for this decision (they do not want people who are slated to give talks to cancel, leaving gaps in the program), I do not think that it is a good approach to take.  Asking for verification of flight information seems intrusive and unprofessional.  I see no reason to believe that the organizers are acting in bad faith, but I suspect that they may not be very experienced in running academic conferences.  So whether you feel like complying with their request for flight information depends on how you feel personally about this unorthodox request.


What should I do if I have published a paper that I did not write?

Be sure to never do this again.

I think it's reasonable to remove the paper from your CV and forget about it. Otherwise, people are definitely  going to ask you about it in interviews.

Other than that I don't think there's much you can do to remedy this.


Should I finish my undergrad in 3 years (this year) or 4 years? Which option is better for graduate school application?

There is no benefit to graduating in less time except getting a year ahead. No one will be impressed by a 3 year graduation.
It's more important that you show proficiency in courses related to your intended area of study, and obtain research experience.
If someone's option was to graduate a year early or do a research project, I think the answer is obvious: stay and research. You have some research experience already, so your decision seems mostly between applying right away for grad school or gathering more experience for awhile and then graduating. The choice is entirely yours, there is no "best" answer.


I'm a strong supporter of LGBTI+ rights, but if I encountered a rainbow flag in an article with no particular connection to those issues and nothing else to explain the choice of that symbol in particular, I'd be more confused than anything else. The editors may also be confused about whether you're trying to sneak in a political statement.

Leaving politics aside: rainbow colour schemes are often a bad idea because they're not very good at communicating information.

As Dmitry Savostyanov suggested, it's wise to ensure that your diagrams are still readable in grayscale. Rainbows often fail this test because colours far apart on the spectrum may be close together in luminance (brightness), and vice versa. Even for readers who have full colour vision and are reading the colour version, rainbow palettes can create the illusion of abrupt changes where there are none, and so forth. For those with colour-vision impairments, they're extra-poor. For more information, see Borland and Taylor's Rainbow Color Map (Still) Considered Harmful.


posting photos of my students in classroom

In the US, it would violate FERPA to identify students as having been in your class. I assume other countries have similar laws and I think most would agree it is a violation of their privacy (i.e. unethical) to do so without permission.

Talk to legal counsel at your university and do everything under their guidance, which would probably involve a signed release by each student.


Is it ethical to ask about the professional profile of a candidate at another university before a job interview?

In most situations fitting the pattern you describe, you should not ask your colleague.  There are several possible cases:

If the candidate has requested their application be kept confidential, you absolutely must not reach out to them or to anyone else the candidate has not listed as a reference.
If the candidate is currently in a tenure-track or other permanent position, I would not ask without checking with the candidate first, because outing them could be very problematic.
If the candidate is currently in a soft-money or other contingent position, then I would similarly be very careful about asking, but the consequences are not as dire as in the previous case.
If the candidate is in a postdoc or similar position where they are expected to be looking for a permanent position, then asking is a violation of the implied confidentiality of the job application process, but it is a common violation.


Submitting paper to arXiv as an undergrad

I will leave the question of whether or not you should submit the paper to arXiv versus another venue for discussion elsewhere. However, I do agree with the comment that you should talk with the professor who gave you the assignment about your plans, as he or she may have constructive criticism for you.

In general, if your work represents an original contribution, and you feel comfortable with sharing it with the public, then yes, you can go ahead and submit it to arXiv. You should note, however, that in a number of fields, papers cannot be submitted until you have been endorsed—that is, recognized as a valid submitter by someone who has already themselves submitted a number of papers in that area. If the professor of the course is someone who can endorse you, then that should be sufficient.


Can I pursue a Master's in the USA in software engineering after a Bachelor's in IT in Nepal?

You can apply for the master degree in computer engineering with a bachelor in IT. However number of things here:

You will pay a lot of money for a master degree in the US. So what is the game plan here?
If you get into a true to the core engineering course, you will have a hard time, as they will focus on the practical aspects of computer science and it might be very hard for you to complete your degree on time. For example, you might see a typical student can create a simple compiler in a 5 hours sitting, while it might take you three months to get to that point.
If you want to continue to the Ph.D. program after your Msc, you will still have some problems, because your marks might not be good based on the second point.
If you want to start a company after Msc, I would suggest to think about it very carefully as Msc, with huge tuition fee, might not be a good choice.


Why are some research papers scanned with OCR instead of actual PDF?

In many cases, even through the early 2000's, publishers produced print journals using older type setting systems and did not produce PDFs of the papers for online publication.  Once the papers were type set for printing, the publisher might have discarded all of the files associated with the papers or they might have just kept a file containing a print-ready image of the paper.

Many journals had old material of this sort dating back decades.  Since it would take a huge effort to type-set all of those older papers again, journal publishers have settled for simply scanning the earlier papers (or retrieving saved images of the papers) and then publishing the images of the papers online.

Using optical character recognition (OCR) is one way to extract the text from these images.  However, OCR isn't 100% accurate, and in any case it can't preserve all of the formatting of the paper.  Thus OCR text from a scanned image of a published paper may be somewhat useful for indexing, but it really isn't equivalent to having the original document as a text PDF.

A different issue is that you may have received a copy of a paper from someone other than the publisher.  For example, if you made an inter library loan request to get a copy of a paper, it's possible that someone at another university library scanned a printed copy of the paper and sent that scan to you.


Understanding "prerequisites" for undergraduate research with a certain professor

The "prerequisites" are really going to depend on the field that your professors of interest are publishing in. Which will lead me to the next point: if you're interested in this field, read some publications from these professors or other professors/experts in this field, then stop by their office hours or talk to them and mention your interest in the field and what you can do to gain more knowledge.


How should I state my masters degree in my CV if I finished the program, but the ceremony won't be held for several months?

Find out from the university when the degree is conferred. This may be before or after the ceremony (it could be already conferred). (Also see: What date should I use for graduation?)

If the degree has already been conferred, you can write that you have a masters degree (the ceremony is irrelevant).
If it hasn't, write that you have completed the degree requirements, and expect the degree to be conferred on X date.


What is the impact factor of my short communication paper?

Impact factors are assigned to journals not papers. No paper has an impact factor. The impact factor of the journal you published in, and the format makes no difference to that (as long as it is a peer reviewed format).

In my field (molecular biology/genomics/bioinformatics) people absolutely cite short communications.

Once a paper is published, you cannot publish exactly the same work as a full length article. You might publish further analysis of the same data, or the same analysis on different data, or different work that comes to the same conclusions, but you cannot just expand this same work to a new paper. Your new paper must also acknowledge the existance of the previous, and therefore would probably not be seen as as novel as the first one.


Writing a report/paper etc. - How to deal with citations that have poor English?

It the material is technical in nature, then you should not be quoting verbatim in the first place.  Instead, you should be paraphrasing the information in the paper, which should not be affected by language problems.

If, on the other hand, you actually do need to precisely quote, e.g., for a work on the anthropology of science, then you should use "sic" to indicate that the errors represent a faithful transcription of the original.

An example of its use:

  Sir Puffington was a tireless if somewhat incoherent advocate of faster-than-light travel:
  "Why should Her Majesty's subjects be so arbitrarily limited, when Vulkins [sic] and Star Trucks [sic] are not?"


Can a student with a weak or average undergraduate math GPA realistically become a professor?

You shouldn't give up hope yet, and you should follow your dream while having a backup plan or two in case things don't work out.

Nothing that you've written rules out the possibility of your going on to graduate school, but it also isn't sufficient to ensure that you will be adequately prepared for admission to graduate study in mathematics.  What you do in the next few years will determine whether or not this is possible.

There are many more steps beyond simply getting admitted to a graduate program and it's way too early to predict things will ultimately work out for you.  Take it one step at a time, and be prepared to reassess your goals in light of your future successes and failures.


Agreed to an earlier starting date for my post-doc position, but my question about initially working from home remained unanswered

1) Is my request reasonable? I think that given the current state of affairs my physical location shouldn't be too relevant for the university, at least until late August/September.

The request is reasonable for multiple reasons: 1. since it's for a limited time during your post-doc, 2. since you agreed to an earlier starting date than originally planned, and 3. due to the current pandemic.

  2) Does it hurt to ask?

Assuming that your future employers are reasonable, it won't hurt. If they are not reasonable, now (that you have not signed the contract yet) would be an excellent time to find out.

  3) If the answer to (1) is yes, how should I go about asking this? Who would be the right person to talk with? If (1) is a no, thoughts and comments are also welcome.

You should ask the same person who asked you if you can start earlier (probably the PI?) - as you already did. I was not nice of them not to answer your question. Probably, they either did not read the question or forgot to answer it. It's absolutely advisable to send a friendly (one-sentence) reminder about your question.