Evidence that 'spoon-feeding' is bad or otherwise for learning

For those self-motivated learners, clearly you need to give them enough information to pique their curiosity enough to invest the time to study more outside of class. Give them too little and they will feel overwhelmed. Give them too much and they do not feel the challenge. Daniel H. Pink wrote about this in his book "Drive" (he refers to "Goldilocks tasks") which is about motivation (including motivating students though not limited to students). Clearly the "right amount" of information needed to pique one student's interest could well be more or less than that needed by another student.

That said, I think you are asking the wrong question. The goal must be to get the student to engage with the subject. Students already have so much information at there fingertips. The problem is not that they do not have access to the information, the problem is that they do not acquire the information. If they don't read the book or notes or watch the video or pay attention to your lectures, they will not get the information regardless of how much "food" you put on their spoon.

Today, the general consensus is that student engagement is key to learning and active learning is a powerful tool to improve student engagement. Active learning is not about how much information you give, it is about how you give them information (for example, discovery-based learning).

As one man said a long time ago "ya gotta wanna" meaning that one must have a true desire in order to excel. So, the issue is about motivation overall.

That said, one could ask a question, when students are engaged and asking questions about a task you have given them, how much should you answer directly and how much should you guide them to find their own answers? In this case, the discussion would move to quantity of information but it would seem that the answer to "what is the right amount" must be unique to each student or at the very least dependent on the quality of the group of students overall.

In the school where I teach I have different levels of students (different programs) and one group (weaker, less self-motivation) requires much more information to get them interested in solving problems. That is, I must get them 90% there before they will try much in the way of research. Other groups I only need to give them 20% there and they are happy to do the work to get the other 80%.


Can a master's student change their mind and look for a different project?

Of course you can tell him anything. However, from your description, be prepared for consequences. If he is really committed to this project it is just possible that your speaking out will destroy any future relationship with him. If it is possible to change advisors think about doing that if it starts to go bad. You can't just work without an advisor and you need a good relationship with whoever you have.

On the other hand, assuming he has more perspective on these things than you do, it may just be that fighting through your reluctance is the right course for now. Three months isn't a terribly long time if the project is significant. However, I don't understand why he is committed if he also thinks it isn't a good candidate for publication.

But if neither option is available to you, it seems like you are just stuck. It isn't a good place to be. And not having another project to substitute it is hard to find a way out.

Switch advisors if necessary, or push through it. It might even be that some small success in the current project will let you change your opinion about it.

If you anticipate switching advisors, talk to another professor first who is willing to take you on before you make a break with your current advisor. Don't leave yourself unsponsored.


Publishing a review of another person's proof

If you overtly title your piece something like "explication of X's proof of Y", and give the citation, (and do not literally copy verbatim swaths of their article) this is a completely fine thing to do. Or give it a more explanatory title, and in the text immediately say that you are simply expanding or elaborating on the proof in the original source(s).

It will absolutely not hurt your future, because the people who are "strict" about what "publication" supposedly means will ignore anything that appears only on arXiv, because, in their minds, it was not "published" at all, anyway. And, to many people, taking the trouble to digest an important thing and re-tell it for the benefit of others is a wholesome activity.


Create journal database: is there any easy way to auto download all the citations of a volume or all the volumes of a journal?

Most journals deposit metadata at CrossRef, and CrossRef offers an API for accessing these data.

To access journal-level data, you need the journal's ISSN. You can find it on the journal's  website.

For instance, to access the metadata of the journal International Organization (ISSN 1531-5088), you can look at:
https://api.crossref.org/journals/1531-5088 (You should use a JSON-Beautifier to format the text).

Look at CrossRef's API Documentation to find out how to fetch the journal-level data you wish to get.

Just as an example, if you modify the URL to this one: https://api.crossref.org/journals/1531-5088/works?sort=issued&order=desc&filter=from-online-pub-date:2020-01&select=author,DOI,title,references-count - - then you will see all articles from the journal International Organization issued since January 2020, and for each article you will only see those metadata that you selected in the URL, i.e. the author name, the DOI, the title of the paper, and the number of references the paper contains.

Good luck.


Students changing the result of an investigation

You know the answer to your question: This is unethical research conduct, and you need to talk about what is ethical in your class and in your lab sessions.

What is ethical and unethical is not inherently obvious. We have resolved that certain things are ethical/unethical because we care about truth, and we have seen over centuries of doing science that certain things (like omitting data points that don't fit a preconception) distracts us from finding truth. But that is a historical perspective students don't have without education. So educate them.


How to cite a section of a wikipedia article?

This question is very basic and broad in scope; have you made any effort to research it? If you search for "citation reference style" on one of the major search engines, the first few pages are full of useful tutorials.

There are many different formats used for references (e.g., Harvard, APA, Vancouver). If this is for an assignment, ask your instructor which format he or she wants you to use. If this is for a journal article you hope to publish, consult the journal submission guidelines.

Normally, page numbers are not required for short articles. For something longer, such as a book, page numbers (or perhaps chapter numbers or section numbers would be used.


How can I sell independently created software to my university?

I would suggest a different tactic altogether:
Give them a license to use the software as well as any and all updates for free. Support should not be free but done by others under your instruction. In return ask them to sign over any previously perceived ownership of intellectual property. Next ask that they help you by providing suggestions for improvements to your software. Sell it to every other university in the world.


Is it OK to work on projects from research proposal before position starts?

I don't think you should ever delay work, especially in mathematics. It is like trying to turn off your brain. Work away. I'd even say publish all you want. You aren't being hired for specific pieces of work unless you are a consultant or such. But academic positions are nothing like that.

The "worst" case is that you show up with everything completed and have to - horrors - work on something else that extends it or is otherwise "interesting."

Kidding aside, nothing is off limits in advancing mathematics. You will only be praised for working in the interim. Your research proposal just assured the hiring group that you have ideas and will be productive.


What is an informed evaluation of resource availability?

"Resources" generally means "money, and things that cost money".  So:

What resources do you need in order to carry out your research?  This could include equipment, staff, students, travel funding, software, computers, books, use of specialized facilities, etc, etc.
How are you planning to get those resources and/or the money to pay for them?  Applying for external grants, sharing with collaborators, internal university funding, etc?


Can someone become a doctor or work in health sector by completing a PhD degree in Philosophy in Medicine?

No, if by "doctor" you mean physician, and/or by "work in a hospital" etc. you mean "treating people with medical conditions".
A PhD is a kind of doctorate, but a doctorate in philosophy does not qualify you to treat ill people.
Depending on the specifics of the research project that students in the particular program you are referring to carry out, they might be able to work in the health sector broadly conceived, but they will not practice healthcare. Managerial or policy-related tasks come to mind.


Is it typical for a candidate for a fixed-term, part-time postdoc to be flown long-distance for an interview?

I write this answer from a US perspective in biomedical sciences and don't have any specific experience with academia in Germany besides friends who are there.

I would say this is not that unusual for a field with good funding resources and a position for which candidates are in high-demand (especially quantitative fields).

Even for prospective graduate students in the US in my field, it is typical for hosting programs to fly in prospective students and cover their costs during an interview.

What is a bit unusual is that (based on your comment) this is your first level of interview, as it would be more typical to start with a more informal interview over the phone, Skype, etc for a position like this. You would expect that these expenses would only be used for the top 1-2 candidates for a position. However, if the number of applicants is sufficiently low, they might feel like it is necessary to invite anyone that meets their other qualifications based on an application.

However, like hiring in industry, consider that the transportation costs involved are still only a fraction of what it costs to pay an individual to work for two years. Based on other Q&A here at Academia.SE, in-person interviews seem a lot less common in Asia, and maybe more generally in places where the ratio between salary and travel expenses is smaller.


Can someone explain European graduate programs in STEM fields?

I can give you some insight in Germany/Austria (phd in physics in Austria), not so much on the UK. Many countries in Europe now use the Bologna system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process#Qualifications_framework

It is normally a three step process for a phd: Bachelor programs is more or less equivalent to US undergrad, takes 3 years normally (all numbers with some variation depending on country and field) and ends with a bachelor degree BSc. Step two is a Master program, duration normally two years and mostly course orientated. Normally ends with a master's thesis, which involves independent research in a group under the supervision of a professor. This is a requirement for entering stage three, the phd. In general there is no funding for the master's years (maybe some for the half year during your thesis or if you TA), you are considered a student. Tuition fees depend on country/university and can be waived with stipends if you qualify (no fees in Austria though)

PhD is almost exclusively research in a specific research group and normally fully funded. Minimum duration is three years.

You see, that what you call graduate studies/phd in the US is separated into Masters and PhD in Europe, you obtain a Masters degree in the middle.

This also means that the application process is very different depending on stage. Let's say you want to start your masters in STEM in Europe. Setting visa considerations aside, for some universities you can just sign up for a Masters in Physics for instance, no entry exams. Some might require exams and charge you tuition fees.

One your done with you Masters, you can look for phd positions at either the same University or wherever you like. The availability of positions is tied to funding, which is normally under control of the leading professor of the group. So you apply to her/him and if they like you they can hire you. In most cases you don't have to get accepted by the university, you just enroll. A professor has to accept you. (Very different to the US). Often, you end up doing your phd within the group you wrote your master's thesis in.

On top of that there are graduate schools with extra funding where you apply to the program and the will assign you a supervisor.

So overall: Bacc-Master-Phd; 3-2-3 years


Can I submit my paper to arXiv with a header that says "Under review at X" when it isn't?

Remove it.  It is not appropriate to mislead people as to the submission or publication status of your paper.  You should also remove any other reference to the conference appearing in the paper (e.g. a logo).

Additionally, you'll have to upload your LaTeX source to arXiv in order to have it posted, including the conference style file, so you should make sure its copyright allows this.

(Even if you really had submitted the paper to that conference, you typically wouldn't acknowledge this in the preprint.  The reason is simple: if the paper isn't actually published in that conference, people will be able to infer that it must have been rejected, and this is something you'd probably rather were not publicly known.)

Update: Here is a question from someone who used a template that included the name of Journal X when submitting to Journal Y, and had the paper rejected on suspicion of double submission.  While I think that Journal Y was out of line in doing this, it does illustrate that these sort of misunderstandings can have serious consequences.


Are there tools to implement an institutional open access policy?

Building on Cape Code answer, what you seek for is an institutional repository. There are many, but it depends by the single institution. You should ask yours.

Software used are often DSpace and Eprints (but there are others): these systems let users upload pre-prints and other documents; release them with Creative Commons licenses, use DOIs (sometime provided by the very same institutional repository); provide digital preservation, provide statistics, etc.

The open access movement has a strong component in librarians, who in the last decades built protocols and best practices.

Every institution is different and offers different services.


After six months under review and after an e-mail to the editor

For what it's worth, May 5 was likely in the middle of the end-of-semester rush of projects, make-up student work, writing and giving and grading final exams, meeting with students who need at least Grade X to graduate, etc. In addition to this, your email could have gotten lost in the avalanche of student and administrative emails during this time. On the other hand, presumably an editor would have weathered this many times before . . .

I suggest looking at the calendar for the college/university the editor is affiliated with, and after the spring semester has been officially over about a week, I think it would be reasonable to send another (polite) email.


It's a matter of style: both bold and italic are typographically acceptable ways to emphasize part of your text, as are small caps, use of a different typeface or point size. (And, if you wonder: no, underlining is not considered good practice in modern printed text).

However, you are right that using bold is usually reserved for headings or very strong emphasis (think things like “Danger of electrocution — do not use under water” is an appliance user’s manual). The reason it is not commonly used inside running text is that it disrupts the overall level of gray of the page, drawing the eye from too far away: you want emphasis to make certain words stand out in the sentence, but you do not want the reader to skip directly to these words as soon as they set their eyes on the page.

There are, of course, always exceptions… like when you use bold (or color, or any other device that disrupt the grayness of the text), to emphasize a few stand-alone “take home messages” from a longer text, as I've done above!


Professor asks me if I have other options (to apply). How should I answer?

It sounds to me like he is just making sure that you will have other options if it turns out the school won't admit you with an outside advisor. I don't think there's any harm at all in telling the truth. If he wants you as a student, the fact you have other options shouldn't make a big difference to how much he is willing to help you in the admissions process. In fact, sometimes having other options can even make you more desirable, as it indicates other people/schools think you are valuable too. (In my case, having other offers allowed me to negotiate a slightly better package at my top choice grad school.) If you're worried that he will be less interested in helping you with your application if he knows you are also looking elsewhere, you could always say that you have applied to/been offered place(s) elsewhere, but that the opportunity to work with him remains your top choice.

Regardless of how you reply to him, however (and as I said, I don't see any reason not to tell the truth), I would say that it's always a good idea to apply to a range of schools. Hopefully you will get in to the school you want and be able to work with him, but if the school has indicated there might be a problem with this (even if you and the professor think they are wrong), you may want to have other options.


Approach adviser to help publish a paper/Journal

Two approaches:

You could say, "I think it would be a good idea to convert my thesis work into a journal paper. What do you think?"
Write up a version of the to-be-journal submission, present it to your supervisor, and ask "Do you think we could submit this, after some revision, to a journal?"

In any case, it sounds like you need to start being the master of your own destiny, and rely less on your supervisor. It is your masters' thesis after all, and your research.


Will taking a post-doc position harm my future chances in industry?

I can not talk directly about remote sensing, but in computer science, a postdoc does not harm your chances to go into industry directly ...

... but unfortunately it will also likely not help you much when applying for an industry job. That is, I would expect that your CV for an industrial job is about as strong after the postdoc than before. Given that there are opportunity costs for working in a postdoc for (presumably) multiple years (lower salary, lost opportunity to build up experience that is more directly helpful in industry jobs, etc.), you will certainly pay for doing this postdoc if you look at the grander picture (lifetime earnings, etc.).

  I would be the deputy of the group leader (who is soon to receive a full professor / tenure position) - I'd be responsible for staff management and some budget issues (about 20% of time)

This sounds like you will have actual management experience after your postdoc. If you find the right company, these are certainly points that will help your case afterwards. However, some of my colleagues have made the experience that there are a surprisingly large number of companies in central europe that summarily dismiss everything you do at a university as "not really management" (mostly due to a lack of understanding that university labs also have to deal with budgets, hiring, people issues, etc.). Not sure how representative these word-of-mouth tales are, but it is something to keep in mind.


Is it OK for an MSc Student to Review a Scientific Paper?

This is a good question: at what point in one's academic career should one begin refereeing papers?

I think the first order of business is to make sure that the editor knows you are an MSc student.  In fact, inquiring into why you were chosen to referee the paper seems reasonable to me: the answer may help you determine whether you are qualified.  Perhaps for instance your thesis advisor got the request and passed it along to you.  That's a good situation for you: you can read the paper for correctness (in my experience, assuming the requisite base level of competence and understanding, the younger the referee, the more likely she is to conscientiously read and check a paper for correctness) and then solicit your advisor's help in determining the appropriateness for the journal.

In fact, no matter what this is a good opportunity to talk to your advisor: she will be the best person (aside from you) to help you determine whether or not you are "ready" to competently referee the paper.  If she says no, you should probably turn down the request.  If she says yes, see if you can get her help on the higher level issues that you are rightly concerned about.

Let me also say that you have to start refereeing papers sometime (or you become someone who never referees papers even into the later stages of their career: I know such people, and although so far as I know they landed in that situation through no fault of their own, it is clearly an undesirable state of affairs for the community at large), and no matter what age or rank you start, you will still have to wrestle with the issues of knowing what standards to impose.  (For that matter, sometimes I get a referee request from a journal that I have never read or even heard of before.  I try to ask the editor for more information but have sometimes just been told things which amount to "Use your best judgment."  So I did.) There is a lot of subjectivity in the refereeing process, and though you may feel less confident about your opinion as a very junior academic, in reality it is far from clear that what you do will be worse than what some more experienced person would do!

Shorter Version: You need to get a sense of whether this is a job that you can handle competently in a reasonable amount of time.  Don't be afraid to ask for guidance in determining the answer to this.   Being a master's student does not disqualify you in any obvious way.  If you can do it -- without interfering too much with your other responsibilities, of course -- then you probably should.  It will be a valuable learning experience.


How important is publication for PhD admission?

I would say publications dont matter to start with a PhD, in general. Having them might help in reducing length of your PhD.

A good thing to have is liking for one area in CS, and good knowledge in that area atleast. e.g. systems or security or algorithms or formal verification or databases or distributed systems etc. Later when you join for the PhD program, you will do courses and talk with people to get an understanding on what is a good research problem etc.


Is there a list of research funding agencies worldwide, ordered by money spent?

I have not found a worlwide list, but I would suggest you to ask for a Demo in these websites:

Research Professional
Pivot

I found the links here.


Is SCI Impact Factor valid for a year? And, my PhD publication dilemma regarding it

Some theoretical background regarding the impact factor:

The impact factor released in the summer of year X ist the impact factor X-1 which means, it takes into account all references of the papers published in year X-1 citing papers published in the years X-2 and X-3.

Currently, in spring 2017, the latest impact factor was released in summer 2016 and it's the impact factor 2015. It has analyzed all references of the papers published in year 2015 citing papers published in the years 2014 and 2013.

To make a long story short, the current impact factor of a journal says nothing about the current journal and especially nothing about one single article recently published in this journal.


How to continually email references without annoying them?

People who have agreed to be your referees know you will be applying to various things (or should do: you should have given them a reasonable outline of your plans). The number of different things they need to do is not so important. What matters is the total time it will take them. If they have three references to write at once, they can copy/paste it across, having got into 'writing your reference' mode just once. If you time requests such that they have to keep coming back to it, that will take much more time and effort for them.

So, do your best to group any reference requests into as few blocks as possible. That means you need to plan ahead about your applications, and ask for some well ahead of time, so they can be done along with references for places with earlier deadlines. As a bonus, this also massively reduces the 'night before the deadline' worry.

Personally I would scrub round the 'did you send it?' email. If it's after the deadline, there's not a lot you can do about it either way. If the place you are applying is very strict on the deadline (ie including references), make sure you have told your referees that. Unless you know they are particularly unreliable (in which case you probably want to take a different approach anyway), they will not mess things up for you except in an emergency. Some places will accept references slightly after the deadline, and the nicer ones would let you know that not all your references have arrived, so you can give the referees a poke. Also, if you've given them things in a neat block, there's a good chance they will let you know they've sent the references by themselves.


Unconscious bias toward recommendation letters written by men?

I couldn't find any recent (written after 2000, that is) study that directly addresses the issue of how the recommender's gender influence how the letter is perceived. However, I did find one interesting survey study (doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2389.2009.00453.x) that asked experts in personnel-related professions how they think about LORs. One item asked them to rate on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) the following statement:

  I believe that applicant, referent, or reader gender may influence how one interprets the contents of LORs

The average response was 2.86 with an SD of 1.22. About 42% strongly agreed, and 43% strongly disagreed. Clearly there is some level of controversy when it comes to the role gender plays in LORs. The study did not, however, ask any question directly about the referent's gender, which makes it even harder to draw any specific conclusion for our purpose here.


Do publications in machine learning help for admissions into a statistics PhD program?

It is difficult to give a "global" answer to this question.

There is a very wide variety of PhD programs in statistics throughout the world, so much so that the overlap between two given programs can end up being surprisingly small.

The closest thing to a short answer is: Yes, it helps. (Or, should!)

Now, for some nuances.

Any scholarly peer-reviewed publication should be viewed favorably. Obviously, the closer your publications are to the field that you're applying to, the more weight they are likely to receive. People – even academics – tend to go with what they know and are familiar with. If the journal/conference is recognizable to them, then that will help, but it's not a prerequisite.

If, for example, you apply to any top-tier PhD programs in statistics, you'll mostly be competing against other applicants with undergraduate degrees in mathematics, so a publication in a reputable journal/conference can help set you apart.

Personally, I disagree with your second professor: I'd be very happy to see a publication in history or literature (or whatever) if accompanied by an otherwise strong application. But, I may also be in the minority there.

It depends on the departments you apply to. Many statistics departments in the US, e.g., have become increasingly attuned to the overlap in statistics, machine learning, and computer science, in general, over the last many years. Some have very active research groups in this area and regularly interact (and collaborate) with machine-learning researchers from other departments and publish in NIPS, ICML, JMLR and other like venues. And, some departments simply have more active research programs, generally speaking, than others.

Applying to departments that have focused research programs in statistical machine learning will improve the chance that your publication will be given greater weight, especially if it is published in a high-profile venue. Other departments that are either more traditional or have different research foci may weigh such a publication differently. In any event, you should try to be aware of how well aligned your interests are to those of the departments you're applying to, assuming your interests are at all well-defined at this stage.

Talk about your research. If your application includes a personal research statement of some sort, discuss your work and describe the statistical content in a concise, matter-of-fact way. If it genuinely led to your interest in applying to PhD programs in statistics, then you can describe this as well, but it should be natural and not forced.


Do Springer, IEEE, Elsevier charge a fee for non-open-access journals?

I agree with the other answers, but they are anecdotal, and you asked for some "definitive" answers to help you convince your colleagues and advisor. Here's what I found:
IEEE
None of the IEEE journals has a required charge for non-open access publications.
The publication FAQ says:

For a detailed listing of paper charges by publication, download the List of Voluntary and Overlength Paper Charges (PDF, 287 KB).

Here is the current version of that list. You will note that some journals have voluntary "sustaining" charges for "normal-length" manuscripts. In fact, IEEE policy specifically states that those charges are not obligatory:

IEEE Policy 6.9 permits some types of periodicals to levy page charges. If your publication is one of these, it is your company or institution, not you, which is being asked for support. Payment is not obligatory nor is it a prerequisite for publication.

In the statement above "page charges" refers only to charges for not-open, not-overlength, not-color-print articles. Many IEEE publications do have "overlength" page charges, which are mandatory - if your paper exceeds the "normal" length then you must either reduce the length of your paper or pay the overlength charges. The length of a "normal" paper depends on the journal and publication type (normal-length "letters" may be as short as 1 or 2 pages, for example.)  Some also have charges for color figures appearing in print, although there is no charge for online-only color.
More definitive info is available for each journal in the IEEE Xplore site, at the "About Journal" page, section "Author Resources", link "Additional Information", which opens a PDF with detailed "Information for Authors" (see an example).
(The document also does not include the recently added IEEE open access options, which do have required charges, which are listed here.)
Springer
The Springer author FAQ asks

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO PUBLISH IN A SPRINGER JOURNAL?

The answer there is:

For the majority of Springer journals, publishing an article is free of charge.

If a journal requires page charges, you will find them on the journal's springer.com homepage or in its Instructions for Authors.
Charges might apply e.g. for color figures or over-length articles. The information on these extra costs will also be available from the journal's homepage or its Instructions for Authors.
Charges for open access articles: If you choose to publish an open access article ("Springer Open Choice" article or in a "SpringerOpen" journal), there will be an Article Processing Charge (APC) to be paid by the author. As a consequence, the article can be freely read, downloaded or distributed from SpringerOpen.com and SpringerLink.com by any internet user.

Furthermore, even for open-access journals, Springer advises:

SpringerOpen journals routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries; and individual waiver requests are considered on the grounds of hardship on a case-by-case basis.

Another Springer FAQ titled Why publish with Springer? claims:

Page charges do not exist.

which I think is as close to "definitive" as you can get.
Elsevier
Some Elsevier journals do have author charges, and by searching the Elsevier site I did find a (very) few non-open journals with required page charges.  I did not find any in CS with author charges, though.
The official policy I found is:

I am submitting my paper to one of your journals. How do I find out if there are page charges associated with this journal?
Page charges are journal specific. Many journals do not have page charges for submitted papers.
To determine whether the journal to which you are submitting has page charges, you will need to find the homepage for the journal and check it's specific submission instructions.

So if you're looking for a definitive "No page charges," Elsevier is not the answer.  In practice, however, there are literally only a handful of non-open Elsevier journals that charge author fees.


You can take the best of the two worlds. Get all your PhD training (by the way, what does it mean?) at WashU and then start a clean research cooperation with the relevant people at USC, while being at WashU.
You can do that by applying for exchange funds, by "stalking" people from USC at conferences ... there are many different ways, but for sure you want to keep bureaucracy and practical hurdles at a minimum, so stick with your PhD program at WashU.


Harsh marking - is it worth complaining?

I disagree with aparente's suggestion that filing a petition is a good way to get the department to improve.

Generally speaking, an instructor has a lot of latitude to determine how grades are determined in their class.  You can challenge your grade by a petition, but whoever considers the challenge will be inclined to defer to the instructor's judgement, unless the grading was blatantly unfair or unreasonable (some universities use the standard "arbitrary and capricious"), such that the grade wasn't really related to the quality of the students' work.  A grading scheme that is just "too harsh" or "too picky" isn't likely to meet that standard.

It also isn't really a good way to bring the issue to the attention of the department, due to the adversarial nature of such cases.  If the grade is upheld, as I suspect it would due to the required standard of proof, people may tend to view it as "the instructor is right and the student is just whining".  It will also focus the attention on you personally, instead of on the fact that this is a general problem affecting many students.

I would suggest instead that you mention this issue in your course evaluations, and encourage other affected students to do the same.  Explain the issue in detail and as objectively as you can, keeping the focus on how this affected the quality of the course, rather than on how it impacted your own grade. If the department cares about teaching quality, this will encourage the instructor to work on this.  If they don't, then there is probably nothing you can do about it in any case.


Automatically checking retracted papers in bibliography

As of today, nothing for free, and definitely nothing for PDF files. The best approach to developing such a program would be writing a front-end to the database of an organization such as Thomson Reuters or DBLP. However, you are unlikely to get free access to the interface of the database.


How to support students whom other faculty abuse?

Depending on how your department works there might be something you can do. People don't like their foibles and sins brought to light. Bad things happen in the dark.

See the caveat, below, but if you have regular faculty meetings, you could raise the issue without naming anyone. "Students are complaining to me of racist/sexist behavior by some faculty member. I think we need to discuss it and whether we need policies to prevent it going forward. It is affecting their learning. It is affecting our reputation." This isn't a formal complaint about a person but it could bring about some discussion and possibly a change in behavior, if the person thinks they get no support from colleagues.

I can't guarantee that, of course. Some jerks will just be jerks.

But the caveat is that if you are a new faculty member (within, a couple of years of hire) this could be extremely dangerous for you to mention. Some places have a culture and they don't want newcomers to rock the boat in any way. All you will get, in some places, is "shut up shut up shut up". You will need to analyze how faculty generally treat one another before stepping forward. If they are willing to accept bad treatment of students, perhaps they are willing to do so generally.

In the worst case, start looking for an exit. There are some things over which you have no power and no control as a newcomer. You can find a place where faculty respect one another and the students as well.

A second option, if you don't feel safe in coming forward in public, is to feed ideas to students to make the issue a public one. Nailing theses to the cathedral door has a clear historical precedent. But this would need to come from students and they may not have thought of the possibility. Having a list of grievances posted on office doors is pretty dramatic.

But this would depend on some solidarity among students themselves. Some actions can be anonymous. Some can be through a spokesperson. And they can get a conversation going amongst faculty that is necessary.


Assume your professor is busy and that your request is denied since it hasn't been accepted.

Turn your paper in on time.

If you didn't turn it in and your deadline has already passed, you've made a really bad mistake. Finish it absolutely as soon as possible and beg for forgiveness. It doesn't matter if someone else was granted an extension at some time, you were not granted one this time.


When translating papers from non-English to English, should the sources be translated to English as well?

I will argue that, for maximum usefulness to your readers, you should do both.
In other words, put both the original and the translation in the entry, e.g. either:

  English citation (original: Arabic citation)

or

  Arabic citation (translation: English citation)

I don't see either of these are being particularly dominant over the other.  Both, however, allow one to both trace the original and know what it is without speaking Arabic.

Note that I would believe this answer should apply to any translation between languages.  It is most critical, however, when the writing systems are incompatible, e.g., Arabic, Roman-character languages, South Asian languages, Chinese, etc.


Time difference between admission offers and rejections in US PhD Admissions?

Both your reasons are in play, although the second far more so, in the math dept at my "R1" university in the U.S. That is, we make a certain number of offers to well-qualified people, expecting a certain approximate rate (perhaps 50 percent or more) of acceptance of our offers, with considerable variation. We cannot risk far too many acceptances, because of funding limits, but, at the same time, we need a fairly precise number of TAs for the following year. So after we receive some rejections from that clear-first-round bunch of offers, we can (and must) make the corresponding number of second-round offers. Inevitably the number of such is not zero, but is unpredictable, and the financial set-up is such that we do not want to risk over-committing... and under-committing for too long risks students already being informally (if not formally, since nothing is set until until April 15) committed elsewhere.


Should I omit my master's supervisor from Referees list in PhD Application?

Almost certainly no. Your master's supervisor is likely the only person who can actually speak to your ability as a researcher. As someone who has done well on their coursework, their recommendation is the most valuable to you. The fact that he wants you to continue with him is good! If he didn't, he probably wouldn't recommend you to anyone else!

  I'm confused and I'm not sure if I tell him that I don't want to my PhD with him, Will he write good remarks about me or he'll write bad remarks so that I don't get PhD position somewhere else.

This would be incredibly unprofessional and unethical. That's not to say that it's impossible, but you should have a good idea of whether it is likely based on your interactions with him. You should not assume this will happen unless you have a bad feeling about him already.

  Another problem is that if I tell him straight forward that I am not interested to continue my PhD with him I might lose this opportunity as well.

This is just something you will have to bite the bullet and do. Since you haven't already promised that you will do your PhD with him, he has no legitimate objection. If he is acting in good faith, he should not withdraw his offer from you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with applying to multiple supervisors. If he seems angry that you are, then you definitely do not want to do your PhD with him. Of course, he may then decide to hire someone else, so it is possible you will lose the opportunity, but this is unavoidable. You cannot have it both ways.


Just how important is university prestige when completing PhD?

I guess that if you want to teach at Princeton (or Oxford) then go to a place just like Princeton (or Oxford). Otherwise, I think that what you do and the work you complete will have a much bigger impact on your future than the prestige of your institution, which may be overrated. There are a number of R1/Ivy graduates in the news that I consider to have the intelligence of rocks.

Having an advisor with lots of ideas, wherever they are, is a big advantage. Being able to work closely with your advisor is a big advantage in doing good work, provided the advisor does good work.

And, your future may be determined as much by economic conditions as anything. You get no guarantees. In fact, even if you go to Princeton, expecting to teach there later, there is no guarantee that any suitable job will be available there (or at a similar place) at the time you need it.

Choose your institution on a more sophisticated set of criteria than it's perceived reputation.

I went to a big place with a lot of faculty and grad students. But the number of people doing anything that I was seriously interested in was very small. Three or four faculty and half a dozen students.

Actually, I should note that many universities (not all) have a policy of not hiring their own graduates. This is to make it more possible to bring in new ideas from the outside, as well as spread their own reputation more widely. Some will make exceptions, but only for the most exceptional candidate. As an aside, I recommended that my own BS and MS students go elsewhere for their next degree, just to be able to bump up against fresh ways of thinking.


How much can I quote a research article before I infringe on copyright?

If this is a legal question, the answer is "it depends". On jurisdiction, for one. And you can look into the 4-factor test of Fair Use if you live in the US. The "substantial portion" question is going to be most relevant here (are you citing so much that there's no point in reading the original paper any more?), and maybe the amount of commentary you surround your quotes with. This kind of use is generally only determined to be infringing or non-infringing on a case-by-case basis by the court, so there is no true answer to your question short of getting sued to determine it.

If it's just a practical question, then I don't think anyone is currently pursuing DMCA claims for quoting portions of papers, and if you make it clear who wrote the text, it's also not plagiarism (which you haven't asked about but noting it just in case).


What are the most common prerequisites demanded by Promotionsausschüssen (German PhD boards)?

Other requirements (not necessarily prerequisites) may include the attendance of doctoral seminars (i.e. presenting your work one or more times during your PhD and having a committee judge whether or not you can proceed as intended) and the presentation of a certificate of good conduct ("Führungszeugnis").

Source: http://www.inf.ovgu.de/inf_media/downloads/forschung/promotion/2013/Promotionsordnung_2012_12_19-p-4194.pdf


How can I evaluate the strength of a chemical physics program?

To evaluate the strength of the program, you need to know chemical physics at professor level. If you are an incoming graduate student, you could try to see where the alumni end up. It's not easy, because not all the departments feel comfortable sharing that information, but you can get such information from the research groups' websites. As a rule, if people get strong academic or industry jobs doing research in chemical physics, it means it's a good academic program.

Departments also like to brag about their faculty getting large grants or joining large projects, about endowment, and research groups enjoy posting on their websites their latest published research results. If their work is highly cited, that's a good sign. Generally, if a program is strong, some of the faculty and even students obtain research prizes or fellowships. Another indirect way of telling is if these people have frequently invited famous speakers for seminars.

Still, if you want to apply to a program and you are in doubt about it, you could ask a faculty or a postdoc from the field of your interest for an opinion. Their opinion would probably be more useful than my answer here. Plus, even if you know for sure a program is good, there is no guarantee you'd find the research group that's best for you.


Good thinker, bad problem solver in graduate school?

Be careful. Interesting conjectures, new ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard work of proving (or disproving) conjectures, and working out the implications of new ideas to see if they turn out useful or are just ephemeral fireworks are the real center of any science.

Just go search in e.g. Wikipedia for conjectures, there are many famous ones (and literally hundreds of less well known ones).


While showing my work to my supervisor, an adult website appeared. Am I in trouble?

It's embarrassing, but it's also understandable. I think if your supervisor has decided to ignore it, then you should take this opportunity to not ruminate. So silently thank him, and forget it.

I know advice is always easier said than done though. Rumination is defined as "to keep thinking about a problem which had already been, or can never be solved". The real problem had already been solved at the moment he decided to ignore it, so the only problem here is your rumination. To stop it, every time you feel embarrassed about this topic again, my tip is to shake the idea in your head, like it's just a toy. This will make you distract from the negative feeling.

Related:
• Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think (Taming the Mammoth) – Wait But Why
• Straightforwardness, Fearlessness and Improvisation: How to find the fresh perspective? – Ooker


There have actually been some studies (if I recall Mike The Mad Biologist's blog covered them awhile back) suggesting that biology graduate students are somewhat less happy than their peers because many of the specialized skills they pick up aren't immediately transferrable. For some aspects of "biology" this isn't true - for example, a mathematical biologist is likely just as qualified to exit into a quantitative field as an applied mathematics student, some fields of biology involve code, etc.

Failing that, some other options colleagues who are biologists have pursued:

Government positions. Some of these are "academia-lite", some of them are markedly different, but there are several branches of government that hire biologists in some form.
Teaching at the high school level. You're likely overqualified, but that's not a bad thing, and there are private high schools that very much value "X% of our faculty have PhDs..." as something to tell parents.
As you mention knowing exist already, there are biotech companies that exist, and employ biologists in many capacities.
Conservation organizations, private foundations, etc. may be of interest, especially if you're more ecology oriented.
Depending on your research area, what you did, etc. you may be able to brand yourself as a "data scientist" - at the moment it's pretty vague as to what exactly that means.
Science communication - university offices that do outreach, news organizations, etc.
With the addition of an MLS, a career as a research librarian is also potentially an option.


How to reply to editor's comment such as 'Such a revised paper may be refereed and there would be no guarantee of acceptance'? Is it necessary?

Is it necessary to reply to editor's comment like this?

No. This is just making sure that you understand that revising the paper does not guarantee acceptance.

You may wish to write an introductory paragraph for the editor before you address the specific reviewer comments. Here, you may wish to thank the editor for acknowledging that the reviewers consider your results to be useful, summarise the main improvements, and conclude that you feel the manuscript is substantially better for the reviewer suggestions.


If a student's work has been substantially (>80%) revised, is s/he still qualified as the first author?

There is no hard and fast rule about what exactly qualifies a person for first authorship, which is why it is so often a thorny issue (except in those disciplines where the convention is to always list people alphabetically).  It is also often highly dependent on the particulars of a given situation.  For example, I have had situations like this a number of times and in some cases have ended up keeping the student as first author and in other cases ended up replacing them.

Accordingly, the principles that I would go by in making such a decision are, from most important to least important:

Did you previously make an agreement about authorship order?  If so, you should almost always respect that agreement.  Renegotiating, even if things have changed significantly, is likely to be coercive to the student given the difference of power between you.
How much work was the non-writing effort?  Advisors are often much, much better at writing than students, and 80% of the writing may be far less than 80% of the work that went into a paper, particularly if the advisor's writing focuses on the "supporting" material like references, introduction, discussion, etc.  If the student has put in a lot of hard work, especially if there has been significant intellectual work, in gathering the data, then I give the student first authorship even if I basically wrote the whole text.
Is the student interested in continuing in academia?  If authorship could be argued either way, and the student has any possible interest in continuing, it's generally better to put them first.  It's a gracious act promoting your proteges and you still gain recognition as the advisor on the paper.

In the end, it is likely that it will not be clear-cut exactly who should be first author.  Personally, I prefer to err in the direction of giving a student too much credit rather than too little, but others may choose otherwise.


What should someone who works at a tech company that isn't associated with the work list as affiliation?

The co-author of my recently accepted paper works at Microsoft. The paper has absolutely nothing to do with her job, so we specified her affiliation as "Independent Researcher".


Should I reply to a non-automated email from the editor acknowledging manuscript submission?

I don't think there is any particular reason to write back, unless the editor sends a more personalized message or actually asks a question.  However, a quick note back will not be a problem either.


How to ask for a research project fee to an external investigator?

Pick up the conversation from that 'lead' s/he gave you and work forward from there:

  Hi [Name],

  When we last talked you mentioned the funding situation. You said there isn't currently any funding specific to the project. So - can you let me know what funds you guys right now as you work on it?

So you would already be insinuating that people working on the project need to be funded, without explicitly saying INSERT COIN. Then depending on his/her answer I would suggest that they/you all apply for that project-specific funding, without actually agreeing to start work - implicitly assuming (or proposing the assumption, if you will), and thus insinuating, that such funding is a prerequisite for you to start working.

If the message doesn't come across increase the strength of the hinting while giving some (but not too much) way preparing for the actual collaboration.


Does IEEE provide an ISSN or ISBN list for searching on a specific journal?

I think IEEE has organised it here: IEEE Xplore Title Lists
This list now contains information of all periodicals, conference publications, books, and standards in the IEEE Xplore database.


As a 2nd year undergraduate, what should I do to enhance my maths grad school application if I don't get into noteworthy summer programs?

If you have one bad semester, particularly just a couple of bad grades in non-major courses, it's not going to torpedo your PhD application, though to show it's not a concern, you should do very well in your major courses, taking what advanced courses you can.

For the summer, programs such as REUs can help broaden your perspectives.  These are also nice because they give you money and a chance to work with other interesting students.  However, another common option is to find a professor, say at your university, willing to work with you over the summer on a reading course or a research project (possibly informally).  Several of our faculty do this semi-regularly (I usually travel in the summer, though I've done it a couple of times), sometimes with a group of students, so try asking around in your department.

I personally think reading courses are just as good, if not better than, most undergrad research projects because at your stage the most important thing is to learn a lot of math.  While you can just read things on your own, a professor's guidance can be quite valuable.  Also it will provide an opportunity for you to get a more meaningful letter of recommendation, which is very helpful in applications.


Does publishing a manuscript in a respectable journal increase chances of getting a scholarship?

Definitely!  Why 'Masters'? If what you said is true, then aim for a PhD.  I am sure any universities will offer you a scholarship when you wave your marks and paper at them.

Note: every university has a fixed number of scholarships.  So if one doesn't give you a scholarship, don't be too discouraged. It just means there are students with a better CV than yours.  However, there are many universities and only a very small percentage will have that kind of CV.


Personally, I think that one should include all of one's significant scientific works in a CV.  What you do not want to do, however, is to give an impression of "CV-padding."

Accordingly, I recommend that you do what is done by many researchers (including myself) who publish not just in journals but in multiple different types of scientific venues: divide your publications list into different classes of publication, e.g., "Journal Articles", "Thesis Chapters", "Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers", "Non-Refereed Articles", whatever fits.

Thus, a work in something like F1000Research, which is citable archival publication but without traditional peer review, would be listed as a non-refereed article: noted as a possibly significant scientific work, but clearly labelled as different than your traditional peer-reviewed articles.


How does Google Scholar find papers on personal websites?

(Warning - gross oversimplifications incoming - if somebody doing research in Information Retrieval wants to add technical detail, be my guest!)

Fundamentally, Google finds all resources (HTML pages, images, as well as papers) on the web in the same way: periodically revisiting each and every resource it knows about, (re-)indexing it, and, for HTML content, following all links to other resources (rinse and repeat). Your web page is likely linked from your department web site, which Google definitely knows about, hence your web page is also in Google's database. Your web page links to your paper, hence Google will also know about your paper the next time the crawler checks your page. How long this will take is undefined, but Google has a lot of crawlers and is pretty smart about when to re-check certain types of pages, so it typically does not take very long.

Now, Google has specific heuristics in place to treat different types of resources differently. For instance, if an HTML page is added to the database keywords will be extracted, links will be followed, etc., while an image will lead to completely different actions. Scientific papers are not different in that sense - as soon as Google finds a PDF or Word file that "looks like" a scientific paper to the automated process, Google will generate paper metadata (title, authors, venue, keywords, ...) by parsing the PDF text as good as it can and add it to its special Google Scholar database, and this is when the paper appears in your profile.

Google's own website goes into quite some detail on this process. It also has instructions for authors looking to get their papers indexed by Scholar.


Publishing in a Procedia journal versus a 'proper' one

The journal information site says the following:

What is the Transportation Research Procedia?
The Transportation Research Procedia is an open access product focusing entirely on publishing full sets of conference proceedings, enabling fast, world-wide dissemination so that conference delegates can publish their papers in a dedicated online issue on ScienceDirect. (see link: Website)

Which means that this is actually NOT A JOURNAL. And, essentially not equivalent to a journal in any sense. It publishes the proceedings of the recently organized conferences in the related fields. Simply put, it indexes online the papers which are accepted and presented in the conferences.
Why it can not get an impact factor?
Actually, it can not; because, it is not a single proceeding. It is a collection of multiple proceedings. Say for example, International conf. on Transportation Engineering A, International Conf. on Civil Aviation (these are just names, ignore).
Even if it tries to get any impact factor, then it would be completely biased given the number of conferences and their corresponding standards of accepted papers.


Why attend predatory colleges in the US?

A few possibilities:

These people genuinely don't know any better. They think a degree is a degree. I would guess that they come from parents that did not attend college. A friend of mine started at a for-profit school because she really didn't know that there was a difference between my 4 year bachelor degree and her 12 month online degree.
People want to take shortcuts and these schools know that.
These schools spend a lot of money on commercials and marketing to try to convince people to attend. It isn't surprising that people would fall victim if you see a commercial for a school 3 times a day.
These schools also promote their currents/past students to help recruit their friends. I have certainly seen this on my own social media feeds.
I once had a manager at a large company that was working on a degree from a diploma mill because the company was imposing a new policy that all managers had to have a degree, but it didn't matter from where.

So to directly answer your questions: No, a lot of people probably don't look into the details of past student success. The type of people that would do this, aren't the ones being targeted by these schools. And even if they do, you're bound to find some successes (confirmation bias) which the school will proudly advertise.

Unfortunately, these types of schools prey on uneducated people, so while it seems like common sense to us, those people may really be getting tricked and yet the government continues to have surprisingly loose regulation.


Can a cousin write a recommendation letter for graduate school?

This is probably not a good idea.  A strong letter of recommendation will make it clear how the recommender knows the applicant.  If it is apparent that the recommender is a family member, then many readers will simply ignore the recommendation.

Furthermore, a strong letter of recommendation will describe specific situations in which the applicant did something well.  In this case, your recommender may not know you except through your family connection and probably doesn't know enough about your academic or research background to provide such examples.


Should I take a "positive, but not enthusiastically strong" letter of recommendation?

a professor that I spoke to said that he could write a "positive, but not enthusiastically strong" recommendation

This sounds like a polite way to tell you to ask somebody else.


Can I retract my name from an already published manuscript?

If I ask the journal to remove my name from the author list, will they simply do it?

No one can say other than the journal, but personally I find your wish unreasonable. The fact that you are a coauthor of the paper is now a historical fact and as such not subject to change in my opinion. Keep in mind that even when a journal retracts a paper, they don’t pretend they never published it, but rather issue a statement saying they no longer endorse the validity of the paper. This preserves a record of the historical events that occurred and maintains a sense of continuity of the picture of reality the journal presents to its readers and to the world.

Similarly, if one of a paper’s coauthors no longer stands behind the validity of the paper, I would expect the journal would at most append to the article a statement saying that you no longer wish to be considered a coauthor of the paper. But it would be dishonest of the journal, and would be doing a disservice to its readers and to historical accuracy, to pretend you were never a coauthor by simply airbrushing your name off the author list.

So, my feeling is that you are free at any time to disavow your implicit endorsement of the paper that comes with being a coauthor. You may not even need the journal’s help to do that - for example, you can post a statement that you no longer endorse the validity of the paper on your personal web page. And you can also ask the journal to post the same notice online next to the published paper - hopefully they will find that a reasonable request, and perhaps it could motivate them to investigate whether the paper contains fraudulent data. But I think it’s dishonest to pretend you were never a coauthor of the paper, and unreasonable to ask the journal to carry on such a pretense.

Finally, keep in mind that “Pat”’s dishonesty is her own. If you unwittingly coauthored a paper in which she committed fraud, that would make you a victim, not a perpetrator, of misconduct. I don’t think it reflects poorly on you that you fell victim to such fraud (if indeed that is what happened), as long as your own work on the paper was done in good faith, and you had no knowledge of any fraud or other unethical behavior on the part of the other authors.

Edit to address the comments about the last part of my answer: I understand some people feel OP is partially responsible for the contents of the paper as a whole including the contributions of their coauthors. That’s true up to the point where OP read the paper, spent a reasonable amount of time informing themselves about what the other coauthors did and how they did it, and were not aware of any suspicious signs that anyone was doing anything improper. That’s basically a very low bar of responsibility to clear in my opinion, and certainly far from what is actually needed to prevent all occurrences of fraud in a paper you are coauthoring. Beyond that, if it turns out that there was misconduct, of course it’s embarrassing to OP and they are right to be concerned and to think about how to protect their reputation, but I don’t think any reasonable person is likely to hold what happened against them, so I don’t think they need to be very concerned.


It's nice that you want to do this for your professor. Thinking over what I would like (and have received in the past), the following comes to mind:

a note (email, letter, whatever you prefer) saying essentially a longer version of what you said above. A heartfelt note of this kind is the best kind of thanks.
if you'd like to get something more tangible for the professor, a little token that they can place on their desk (like what Pete L. Clark mentions) is always nice. It doesn't even have to cost lots of money. I have students who made paper models for me (I teach geometry) and I have them all over my desk :).


How should I state 'MS dropout' in my resume when applying for data scientist positions?

First, some advice. I agree with @gnometorule, but I would state it stronger: IMHO and based on limited information you've shared, it would be a mistake to drop out so close to graduation. Even though the current culture within startup ecosystem and, overall, tech industry largely ignores education credentials in favor of "being a hustler", "being a doer", "being street smart", etc., the data science subset of the both areas actually seem to have more respect and pay more attention to people's education. This is quite understandable, considering the relative complexity of data science and, especially, its machine learning and artificial intelligence fields of study and practice.

I would strongly suggest you to consider things in perspective and do your best to successfully finish the program. Not only it will give you some advantages when competing in the job market, but also might be useful to you, should you decide in the future to go for a Ph.D., teach at some educational institution or pursue other opportunities (i.e., scientific research or consulting).

In regard to your specific question - should you decide to ignore my advice - I think that it would be better to formulate in your resume the phrase "MS dropout" not as such or, even, not as

  "University XYZ, MS program, Statistics, Years Range, Incomplete",

but rather as a positive fact / achievement:

  "University XYZ, MS program, Statistics, Years Range, Completed 90% of curriculum".

Having said that, again, I strongly suggest you to consider finishing your Master's program.


Professor announced that he would send me a project before master’s but didn’t

First, about the email:

Do you have a deadline coming up, for applying for a master’s? If so, then you should probably send him a polite reminder, something along the lines of:

  Dear Dr. X, I was wondering if you had given any more consideration to the projects you'd mentioned earlier.

Do not say something like “my future depends on this.” Firstly, your future does not. If this particular master’s opportunity doesn’t work out, it is by no means the end of your career. Secondly, it will come across as rude: The Professor is aware that master’s applications are important to your career.
Don’t expect professors to respond terribly soon. They receive a large amount of email, and are often extremely busy balancing research, administration, supervising, and teaching. If you have an impending deadline, or it has been long enough that you believe you have been forgotten, you can send a polite reminder. But pestering will only annoy the professor.

Secondly, about the projects:

Is he asking you to do projects for him, unpaid, before you have been accepted as a master’s student? This is highly unconventional, and seems like it might possibly be a scam, to get you to work on projects without paying you or giving you credit towards an academic degree.

What country is this master’s in? Usually, professors do not directly choose who is admitted to a master’s program. So your professor may not be able to guarantee your admission, even if you do good work for them on this project.

In any case, it’s not normal to be given months of homework to “prove yourself” before starting a master’s. Usually your bachelor’s grades and projects, along with reference letters, are what you are judged on.

So I would be very wary of this situation, unless I am misunderstanding what is actually happening.


Normally, if you're doing a PhD in the United States—at least in the sciences and engineering—you shouldn't have to worry about having a scholarship. The department or advisor should be responsible for paying your tuition as well as a stipend for your living expenses. So there aren't a lot of "scholarships" in the same sense as for undergraduate study. However, while there are fellowships which provide "portable" funds for graduate study, these tend to have stringent citizenship requirements, and I can't ever recall seeing one for which Indian students were eligible.

Your best bet is probably just to apply to the graduate programs in which you're interested, and see if they have funds to support your graduate work.


What do the middle digits of course codes represent?

I suspect it really depends on the university. But in my university, it represents the subfield in the department within which the course is offered.

For example (I'm in electrical engineering), EE X1X might be courses on power systems engineering, EE X2X on communication networks, EE X3X on  signal processing, EE X4X on electronics...

But in my department at least, there are enough misnumbered courses (for "historical reasons") to confound anyone who doesn't know it and is looking for a pattern.


How to know when its time to quit grad school, due to my own failings

The results my codes are calculating show that my method makes no
  improvement to current methodology and sometimes its actually worse.

For a master's degree, there is usually no requirement that your research produce a successful result. One can make a contribution to science by showing others what doesn't work. But you may find that your new method is an improvement under certain circumstances. Or you may get an idea (after you get some sleep!) for improving your method. That's exactly what happened to me.

Given your lack of sleep and your state of mind, I'm not sure you should trust your impression that your advisor is disappointed in you. I recommend you have a heart-to-heart talk with your advisor, being as open as you can about all your concerns and fears, including that you are stressed out and not sleeping. It's very common for students to feel like failures at some point during a master's degree, and your advisor should be ready to help.

  I wrote the first few pages of my thesis and basically everything was
  wrong: formatting, writing style, poor graphs and figures.

Academic writing is a very different beast than the types of writing you've done before in school. No one is born knowing how to do it. Expect to have to do a lot of rewriting as you learn this skill.


In a mathematics paper or thesis, the most common practice is simply to include all proofs in the body of the document, each one immediately following the statement of its corresponding theorem or lemma.  So you should seriously consider just doing that.

Placing proofs in an appendix might be appropriate if they are really ancillary to the main thrust of your thesis.  For instance, maybe there is a result that is not really relevant to the rest of the thesis, but you've included it simply because it is interesting.  Or you state a result that is well known, but you have written your own proof as an exercise.  Or you have multiple proofs of the same statement; you might want to place one of them in the body, and move the other(s) to the appendices.

But in any case, I would think there would not be more than a few proofs that would fit these criteria.  As such, it would be most natural to place each proof in its own appendix, rather than to group them by body chapter or any other criterion.

You could give the appendices names like "Appendix A.  Proof of Theorem 1.2.3".  Or better yet, something more descriptive like "Appendix A.  Proof of the Snargleberg–Veeblefester Theorem (Theorem 1.2.3)".  Of course, you will want to use LaTeX's \ref to produce the theorem number.

It would be a convenience to the reader if in each appendix, you repeat the statement of the relevant theorem before giving the proof.

If you feel the number of lettered appendices A, B, C, D, etc are becoming excessive, you could move down the hierarchy.  Most thesis templates are based on the book document class, in which the top-level text element is the chapter.  So if you want, you could write

\backmatter
\chapter{Additional Proofs}
\section{Proof of the Snargleberg--Veeblefester Theorem (Theorem \ref{snargleberg})}

Blah blah blah.

\section{Proof of the Dumbledore Lemma (Lemma \ref{dumbledore})}

Expecto Patronum.

Producing something like:

  A. Additional proofs.

  A.1.  Proof of the Snargleberg–Veeblefester Theorem (Theorem 1.2.3)

  Blah blah blah.

  A.2.  Proof of the Dumbledore Lemma (Lemma 2.3.4)

  Expecto Patronum.

I disagree with Pete L. Clark's suggestion to just leave the appendices with non-descriptive titles like "Appendix A".  Using descriptive appendix titles will help keep the reader from getting lost.


Is it acceptable to ask a "temporary" lecturer for a reference?

You can always email people there is no harm done, just ask in the email if they remember you (they might). They might not feel comfortable writing you one but they can just say that, it's worth a try!

Obviously respect their response whatever it is.

Also bear in mind that the reference is unlikely to be a strong one given the circumstances so you should try and contact academics you have had closer contact with first.


The question is really strange. As a university professor you can attend other professor's courses, in addition to self-education. If the time and duties is the main problem, you can take an unpayed leave, or buy out some courses. There are many ways of reducing your duties and obtaining some extra time for self-study,
by sacrificing some of your salary. Given the ratio of professor's salary to the graduate student support (at least in the US) you will be still better off than by switching to a graduate school. Let me add that in most US departments graduate students have the same teaching load as professors, sometimes more.

Speaking of the age, this is not a obstacle: I have at least one friend who enrolled to PhD after 40 (having a master degree before and working as a high school teacher), and he publishes first-class results.


Teaching for the first time: is reaching out to each student acceptable?

Establishing cordial relations with students is almost always beneficial in education. By making connections with them you are providing a form OF social support that helps with retention and academic performance.
Your concern with babysitting relates more to.the students expertise in the subject matter rather than their age. Novice students normally require much more support than advanced students regardless of their age.


Can an academic PhD thesis have more than one hypothesis?

This is the sort of thing that you should discuss with your advisor if you have questions. This may be field specific; that said, I'd be surprised if there was any sort of specific limit on the number of hypotheses discussed in a thesis.


How long before asking for a formal offer letter?

I have recently been [informally] offered a position by a university [and] they said they would send me a formal offer letter along with other paperwork "ASAP". It has been over a week and I haven't received anything.
I'm not sure how long these things should take...

Far longer than a week! The sheer number of personnel involved---e.g., your future manager, the committee that selected you, the head of school, perhaps someone above them, HR, other administrators,...---means the process is slow. Couple that with numerous inefficiencies and you'll quickly appreciate that 3-4 weeks isn't unexpected (and it might even be twice that).

Would it sound rude or desperate to send them an email to inquire
about why I still haven't received anything from them at this point?

It isn't appropriate at this point. Maybe after 2-2.5 or maybe even 3 weeks.

I would very much like to have some closure on my job search as soon as possible

You already have informal acceptance. I wouldn't expect rescinding acceptance to be particular common. (You could always ask a question about that.)


Ph.D. Topic Problem- Changing Topics/Labs

Whichever makes you a happier person. Life is short and not worth spending 5 years in a condition you don't like. If you have the money, go for it. If not, here is my longer answer.

The work experience you are getting in field A should not be a priority because you are there to do research, to contribute to science. Work experience in that field should be just a tool so that you can earn money and live properly. The excellency of people in field A are also irrelevant, as your research is in field B.

But, life does not always present us the best options. If you cannot get a scholarship when you switch to field B, then I would definitely stay at where you are now. You say you can cover expenses, but if you don't get a scholarship, how much will you lose in 5 years? That's a big number and imo not worth it (unless you have a million in some account)

I would stay there and from time to time, consult professors that work in field B. After some time, as you dig deeper, you will know more than those guys anyway.

It really depends on your budget I guess. I am not rich so I don't like the idea of Ph.D. level scientists' paying for it.


Should I ask for co-authorship as an undergrad student?

If you have conducted the pilot study and are also part of the follow-up team expanding it into a full publishable study, then you should definitely be invited to help write and be an author of the paper.

This should also be an easy and uncontroversial decision for your professor.  It's also fine and in fact good to get that clarification explicitly now.  You can just ask something like:

  I'm excited about helping turn this project into a paper.  Am I right in thinking this means I will be an author of the paper as well?

This is not a hard question, so if your professor says anything other than "yes," (possibly with appropriate caveats about you actually sticking with the project) then you should be concerned.


My experience is in mathematics, rather than creative writing, but I imagine both fields approach this issue similarly.  Issues of academic honesty have come up when I've served on admissions committees, and they're a huge obstacle to admission.  A previous expulsion for plagiarism could turn an otherwise strong case into a quick rejection.  In order to have any chance, you need to do several things:

You have to give a convincing explanation of what happened and why nobody needs to worry about future dishonesty.  This is not easy, and most people fail to write anything convincing.  For example, if you write "I didn't realize this counted as plagiarism, but now that I know, I certainly won't ever do it again", people will wonder what other ethical principles you might be unclear on (and how you made it to the qualifying exam in a doctoral program in English without knowing what's considered plagiarism).  If you write "I was sloppy, but I've learned from the experience and will be much more careful from now on", people will worry that being careful is easier said than done, and that this is too facile an excuse.  And it only gets worse from there: if you knew it was wrong and did it on purpose, then you really have a lot of explaining to do.
You need letters of recommendation from people who know what happened and are nevertheless willing to vouch for you.  A letter that doesn't mention the plagiarism will probably be ignored, since the committee won't know whether the recommender even knows about it or how their opinion might change if they found out.  (And it's a sensitive enough subject that nobody's going to call up the recommender and ask, out of fear that you would complain that the committee was leaking confidential information.)

I'd recommend starting by trying to recruit letter writers.  If you can convince enough people to write strong letters for you, then you can take the explanation you used to convince them and incorporate it into your personal statement.  If you can't secure enough letters or aren't confident in their strength, then it's not worth applying now.

  I was recently expelled from doctoral program in English for plagiarism in qualifying exam. Although it was for the lack of a citation, I attended a major research university with a zero tolerance policy.

I should warn you that this sounds like a terrible basis for an explanation.  It comes across like you are saying omitting citations is not so bad and your expulsion was due to an overly strict policy.  Maybe that's not what you meant, but this is a delicate issue and it's important to keep from being misunderstood.


How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

Professors are people too.

There are generally no magic words or special formulas for talking to professors.  That said, it is understandable that people often feel very nervous in communicating with professors because how the professor responds can sometimes have a big impact on your future.  Here are some ideas about what works well.

Make your communications polite, direct, and succinct.

You don't need to be fancy or tell your life story.  Professors are busy people, and most will highly appreciate a simple, polite email telling them what you want and why you think it makes sense.

Here is a template for such an email to a professor:

Put the topic in the subject
In approximately one short sentence each:

Tell them / remind them who you are (unless you interact frequently)
Give the context for your request
Ask what you need to ask or tell them what you need to tell them.
Invite further communication or discussion if useful.

Examples:

  Subject: Request to ignore Programming 101 prerequisite for Algorithms

  Dear Prof. Brown:

  I am a freshman in the computer science department, wishing to take your Algorithms course. I believe that it is reasonable for me to do this even though I have not taken the Programming 101 prerequisite, because I have previously built and released two Android cell-phone apps, demonstrating that I know programming basics. Would you be willing to sign the department form so that I can take your class? If you'd like more information, I am happy to meet or to answer questions over email.

  Subject: Letter of Recommendation

  Dear Professor Patel:

  Your may remember that last year I took your Advanced Topics in Advancement seminar, and did a project on pico-widgets that you liked very much. I am now planning to apply to Ph.D. programs. Would you be willing to write me a strong letter of recommendation? I am attaching an informal transcript.  Please let me know if there is any additional information that you would need.

  Subject: Out sick

  Dear Professor Xu:

  I am sick with the Martian Spotted Flu, and the doctor says I should stay in bed for a week. I'm sorry, but somebody else will need to take care of the mice while I am out. If they need information, they can call my phone and I'll answer when I can.


Do professors frown upon students who don't take notes?

Sometimes I wish students would stop taking notes and actually think about what I'm saying. I provide the lecture notes before/after class anyway...


What to do if you don't know the terms you don't know?

It's a common problem, not only in mathematics but in all fields of research. Oftentimes, we feel that there should be a term to describe a specific concept or method, but we sure don't know what it is or how to find it if it exists. Scouring the literature for a term we don't know is very difficult, if not impossible, as long as we don't have at least a direction to look for.

Basically, the best thing to do in that case is to do due diligence (e.g., ask colleagues in a suitable field, look over papers that you suspect may have used this concept or method, check some text books), but if that ends up being unfruitful you can either coin your own term or not use a specific term at all. For the former, an academic's favorite cop-out phrase ("to the best of our knowledge ...") may come in handy.

The good news is that, if an established term actually exists, you may very easily be pointed towards it during peer review.


Is the academic job market in developing / former Eastern Bloc countries welcoming towards young foreign researchers?

I have no firsthand experience on this, but based on what my friend told me and some educated guesses:

It's probably easier to find a job as a professor in these developing countries. My friend said that the qualifications as a postdoc in Singapore are sufficient to qualify as a full professor in Malaysia (both countries are in SEA, but Singapore is developed while Malaysia is developing).
Expect lower living standards. Again using Malaysia vs. Singapore as an example, you get a lot of conveniences in Singapore such as better lecture theaters, top-notch internet, nicer offices, and so on. This extends outside of academia: factors such as public transport, crime rate, and salary are all better in Singapore. On the flip side, Malaysia is generally cheaper, especially if you want to own a car.
Expect weaker students. Unfortunate but true, because all the best students leave for better universities elsewhere.
Expect less resources. You won't get as much money to create grand research plans, and the country might not be able to join big collaborations like the Large Hadron Collider. You might also have fewer opportunities to attend conferences or to meet other researchers (e.g. by visiting or have them visit).
Expect a significant cultural gap. These countries don't usually have English as a primary language. Some people might still speak it, but they are usually more comfortable with another language, and you might e.g. have students ask you about something, you explain it, and then they discuss your answer with each other in your presence in a language you don't understand. There are other cultural things such as how much responsibility a professor should have over his or her students (for example, Yoshiki Sakai committed suicide over the academic misconduct of his student even though he was cleared of misconduct). You can work around this, but it'll take time.
Finally, don't forget that your choices will affect your family as well. Finding a suitable school for your children, for example, can be a problem.

Edit: I talked to a senior lecturer in astronomy at a university in Malaysia. He found his job immediately after graduating with his PhD. He says he cold-mailed his CV to the various universities with physics departments in the country. One of them responded with an interview request which led to the job.

Clearly the job market is less competitive - I asked him who the lecturers are if fresh graduates are senior lecturers, and he said the lecturers are usually those with Masters degrees. In the West, it'd be virtually impossible to land such a position without multiple postdocs, let alone without a PhD degree.

Among other things: he said he's somehow supervising PhD students even though he's a fresh graduate himself (which doesn't make sense to him or me, but from his description it was forced onto him). He also said students are indeed weaker overall, but there are also good students.

On the flip side, he was critical about Malaysia's promotion system since there apparently was a requirement where you must publish two papers a year, which clearly emphasizes quantity over quality. Also, the university's canteen only had Malay food. If you work in the country, hope you like curry.


Should I cite the reference if I have already cited it in the previous paragraph?

There may be field-to-field differences, but generally I think it depends on how far away "somewhere in my paper" is. If it is a just a few sentences away, in the same paragraph, then I don't think you need to cite again. In this context, it is probably clear that you are still talking about the first dataset.

However, if you are referencing it later in the paper, even in the next paragraph possibly, then I think you should err on the side of caution consider citing it again. I don't think that over-citation is as large a problem as some would say.

Lastly, there may be the case where it's clear that you will be using the same dataset throughout a paper. In that case, you could just make it clear that you anywhere you refer to "the dataset," it is clear what you are referring to. For example, "Throughout this paper we use the MNIST Handwritten Digit database [ref], and any reference to 'the dataset' or 'the data', will refer to this dataset." There is probably a less clunky way to phrase this.


Should a Ph.D. be done with a low h-indexed professor

Picking a PhD supervisor based on his h-index is like picking a car based on his horse-power; you ignore a huge number of factors that are probably equally important if not more. It is drivable (can you work with this person?), is it expensive to run (do the guy needs to pampered and treated like royalty?), are other owners happy with their purchase (are his other PhD students happy with his supervision?), etc. etc. Getting a really fast car only to crash it cause you can't drive it does mean much and getting a supervisor who after a year's time makes you want to quit your PhD doesn't mean much either. Most probably in both cases people are going to think less of you.

I think the most important thing is that you say that "I have started to dislike my professor too." that is a major problem and you should not pick a supervisor that you dislike. I do not mean that by being "homies" with supervisor; I mean about mutual respect and ability to work efficiently and with understanding about each other maybe "small quirks". (eg. My supervisor avoided setting up morning meeting with me because I am a night-person; it was fine, he even joked up about it at times "Next week I have X thing going on so we probably need to meet at 11.00. I know you'll just be out of bed but that is my only available time." That did not mean though I was not expected to be always punctuational for our meeting or having worked seriously on the projects at hand.

To recap: As you present things I would say "do not to work with this professor" but not because of his low h-index but because you say you do not like him and that his PhD students seem not to take good positions (low after-sales value :) ).

You mention that US institution are out of the equation effectively; "fine". Have you thought of PhD programmes in Europe? Some small, not too famous but reputable universities in EU can be stepping stones for a post-doc in US  (Given you do excellent work at your PhD obviously).


Is it appropriate to ask an author for an English translation of a paper?

As far as I'm aware there is no obligation to provide a translation of a published paper from one language to another.

I think it would be rude to ask for a translation of a paper. However, it would generally be fine to enquire as to whether such a translation exists, or whether similar work has been published in English.

More broadly, it may be in the author's interests to provide an English translation in order to increase the impact of his or her work.
If the work is really important to you, you could always pay for a translation. At the extreme end, perhaps where there are a large number of important works in a particular language, you may even want to learn the language.


How to indicate deleted text in manuscript when using highlighted text as opposed to tracked changes


I think your question extends beyond programming-related courses and also applies to virtually any course with a significant hands-on laboratory component (think chemistry labs, biology labs, physics labs, etc).
The main reason that TAs or lab instructors are used in these subjects is because hands-on instruction does not scale as well as lecture-style instruction. A professor can easily lecture about an algorithm to hundreds of students at the same time. But can the professor also help hundreds of students implement and debug the algorithm on their computers? Not very efficiently.
This is why TAs and lab instructors are hired. They can provide more individualized guidance and instruction with hands-on learning than a single professor probably ever could, and they are much cheaper.


May additional time in college harm my chances of going to grad school?

Taking a long time to complete one degree can be a bit of a red flag in US graduate admissions. However, this does not apply in your case, because you will have three separate degrees. The fact that you have transferred from one school to another also mitigates the lengthier time you've spent in those study programs.

If you hadn't done this "master of advanced studies," spending 7.5 years as an undergraduate would probably not be looked on too favorably. But in your specific circumstance, it's not as bad as it looks at first blush.

There might be a question, however, about why you want to do EECS at the graduate level, given that your master's degree would be in a math-related field. But that would be up to you to explain in any case as part of your statement of purpose.


Is it true that a full Ph.D. is a disadvantage for technical positions in the private sector?

As someone with a PhD who did a regular postdoc and now works in the private sector, the answer is definitely probably not...maybe. As with all things, it depends on the job and your field.

I have a PhD in Computer Science. I did research for a couple of years as a postdoc. I enjoyed my postdoc, but a great offer came along for a private sector job. In my field (high performance computing), having a PhD is valuable whether you're in research or industry. In fact, we hire fresh PhDs as well as folks with experience.

That being said, if you were to go to a startup in NYC or Silicon Valley with a PhD in CS, I'd imagine that while you would probably have as much chance of getting the job as anyone else, you probably won't be getting what you might call "reimbursed" for your opportunity costs. The big companies will have research arms where they know what to do with PhDs while the small ones won't.

It all depends on what you want to do. If you want to get into research (or get back into it eventually), having a PhD will be a must, even if you take a few years in industry to shore up financially. However, if you don't get your PhD now, the chances of you finishing it later much smaller. There are plenty of people who do it, but if you look around your group right now, you can probably tell me how many you see.

The exception is getting a job where your employer will essentially pay for your PhD (not like an RA position where you make beans). There are some companies or research labs that will allow you to work on your PhD while you work for them, often using a project with your company as a part of your thesis if your interests align with those of your employers. You might be able to find a position like that.


Answering Questions from others on stack is one thing which is fine - it is outside your course.

Posting an assignment to get it solved for you or posting the solved assignment for others is not...

Students have long helped each other, by working through problems and applying the process etc but NOT by handing over a complete solution to a graded assignment - that is cheating and most institutions will be after both the cheat and the person helping them...


If lab partners form a hypthothesis together and write the same hypothesis worded differently, is that considered plagiarism?

Plagiarism is copying someone else's work and representing it as your own. This is not what you did. The hypothesis is joint work, even if each of you wrote it down individually. The differences in wording are not relevant, it remains joint work.

If any of you would present the hypothesis as their and only their work, this would be misrepresentation of authorship, which is also an ethical misconduct in research. On an ethical "seriousness scale", I would consider it to be about as bad as plagiarism.

To do things correctly, you should note down all contributors when writing down the hypothesis. Using slightly different wording that does not affect the meaning does not change anything, although to avoid confusion I would actually recommend to use the exactly same wording.