What is the difference between a Panel Study and a Cohort Study?

The terminology for longitudinal research designs differs somewhat between disciplines. However, to my knowledge most discipline refer to a "cohort" as an entity that can be distinguished by a certain event as for example the year of birth or graduation from high school. The general idea is that there is an observable variable for the cohort membership and that individuals from the same "cohort" have something in common, e.g. the risk to die from lung cancer due to a common time of exposure. Thus, a "cohort study" looks at one cohort or compares different cohorts. In most cases, cohort studies use longitudinal research designs, but there are also cross-sectional cohort studies.
The use of the term "panel study" seems to me more vague but a "panel study" is in most cases a longitudinal study which has at least observations from two points in time. Panel studies do not need to focus on cohorts.
Hence, cohort and panel studies both look specifically at the timing of certain events and variables.

For further information you could for example have a look at the following articles in the International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences:

Mason, W.M. and Wolfinger, N.H. 2001: Cohort Analysis, in:
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences,
edited by N.J. Smelser and P.B. Baltes, Pergamon, Oxford, pp.
2189-2194.
Duncan, G.J. 2001: Panel Surveys: Uses and Applications,
in: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences,
edited by N.J. Smelser and P.B. Baltes, Pergamon, Oxford, pp.
11009-11015.


In my second year of a three year PhD program and I now hate research. What career can I do?

Contrary to how the world looks from inside of a Ph.D. program, most teachers aren't professors and most professors aren't focused on research.

The professors who educate Ph.D. students are mostly at research-centric institutions, but there's a lot more undergraduates in the world than graduate students, and most higher education institutions are not research-centric.  There are lots of good undergraduate-only institutions out there, which expect their faculty to do at least some research in order to get tenure, but it's far from their primary duty.  Many other higher education institutions are community colleges or other institutions that don't primarily cater to full-time just-out-of-high-school students, and they are even less likely to want research (or give tenure).

Next, don't forget that people spend a lot of time getting educated before they go to college.  There's probably a lot of places to put health education to work both for teenagers and for younger kids in school systems.

Finally, there is also a large and complex educational ecosystem that exists entirely outside of traditional education institutions: companies educate their staff, government agencies, community groups, non-profits, etc. all have populations that they want to serve in various ways.

In short: you've got lots of opportunities, even of none of them is likely to make you rich.


Is there an archive like arxiv.org for agricultural papers?

Posting on biorxiv.org should be an acceptable practice. Did you try and they removed it?


Is it ethical to cherry-pick reviewers based on their previous reviews of your manuscript?

There are ZERO ethics involved.  First, you suspect, but do not know, who the original reviewers were.  You may be right, you may be wrong.

Next, suggestions for potential reviewers are just that -- suggestions.  It is the responsibility of the editor to pick appropriate reviewers, and your suggestions are just one potential source of information in the process of doing so.

I'd say even if you recommend people who you respect to referee your papers, they'll surprise you regularly with critical reviews (if they're doing their job).

The biggest ethical quandry you can get into in the process of recommending referees is probably some sort of pre-arrangement with those you suggest.  This is to be avoided as less than stellar behavior.


What percentage of STEM PhD applicants have peer-reviewed publications?

I'm in a CS department at a mid-ranked school in the US, and have reviewed applications for Ph.D programs in CS for the last 6 years. I didn't compile detailed numbers, but my sense is that the number of candidates with "actual" publications (as opposed to fluff pubs) is of the order of 5%. I suspect this number is higher for the top-ranked school.


Updating my resume for industry. I switched labs in grad school - what to put on my resume for this time period?

Just list it in brief. A single sentence will do it. You say 1-2 pages, so unless you’ve filled 2 pages, you should have room for one sentence (one line) to account for that time period.

What you see as irrelevant might give interviewers some insight and a good opening for questions. It might also give you a competitive advantage over other candidates and is unlikely to put you at a disadvantage.

This kind of C.V. doesn’t have to be rigorous and exhaustive. Responsibilities/work experience is sometimes (usually) listed chronologically from most recent to oldest. The most recent is often the most relevant but it all paints a picture. As an interviewer, I would definitely ask for clarification on any gaps. Gaps can be seen as deceptive and might cause a C.V. rejection.


Should we compete for tenure positions at top universities or be happy at second tier universities?

As I am sure you expected, this is a highly personal decision that nobody can make for you. Since you seem to be based in Europe (you are talking about ERC), I will frame my answer in the context of applying in Europe:

Your point that "you are the man" at a lower-ranked university when you bring in a high-reputation grant may be accurate, but you also need to ask yourself the question why people don't routinely bring in such grants in these institutions. Do they not support applying for grants in the same way? Do you not get enough time to develop an excellent research program? Do you not have access to sufficiently qualified students? Are the grant agencies biased in their evaluation? As a rule of thumb, it's typically harder to develop an internationally excellent research program at a lower-ranked university than at a top one, for a combination of different reasons.
Especially, ensure that the lower-ranked university that you are looking at actually values the same things you do. Many lower-tier universities "officially" want to compete for top grants and improve their research profile, but not at the expense of what they already do. In practice, this may mean that you have to compete for top-level grants while doing more teaching or service for your institution.
The "label" of working at a top university can help you in various ways, including easier access to valuable companies and excellent students.
There are challenges with being a "big fish in a small pond" - the small fish around you may not be thrilled, there may be little to no chances to collaborate or get inspired, and it's much easier to have large impact if you are not just one faculty standing alone.

With all that said, there are certainly advantages to being at a lower-tier university:

It can be easier to have a reasonable work-life balance at a lower-tier university. However, again, do be mindful of teaching and service responsibility - I have certainly seen people at smaller teaching universities that are considerably more busy than I am, because they have to teach an awful lot more than me.
As you say, it's easier to get a job at a lower-tier university, and a faculty job now may be better than getting, maybe, a faculty job at a top university in 3 years (or not).
Salary-wise, there will initially be little difference between excellent and lesser universities. I doubt that top universities pay less than weaker ones. However, you are right that if you actually end up as the big fish in your small pond, you have a good basis for negotiation - but that feels like something that you should not rely on in your career planning.


Could I plot data from other papers in my figures for comparison?

Yes, you can do this. Note that data per se isn't copyrightable in most places. But citation is proper to avoid any charge of plagiarism.


PhD student and slow, painstaking writer. Any advice?

This is not a complete answer as it is only one possible strategy, but it became too long for a comment.
My advice would be to read lots, and not just academic papers and textbooks. Read well-written fiction, in English preferably, since that is the language you have to write in at the moment. I personally like the Sherlock Holmes stories as they are short and fun, though the language is a little archaic due to the time period they were written in. Otherwise just browse the fiction section of your local bookshop (or online equivalent) until you find something that catches your attention.
When reading, think about how the author varies their language and sentence structure according to the effect they want to create (short, sharp sentences to show surprise or anger, for example). Try to notice how they build the narrative, and how they structure the story. However, don't do this for every single book you read as that would quickly get tiring. Prioritise reading enjoyable books and over time you will hopefully get a feel for how to construct pleasing sentences and sustain longer passages of writing.
It could also be that your technique of amalgamating past work leads to your "ground hog day" style. Out of all the possible strategies you list, I think that creating a structure and sticking to it will be the best for helping you to avoid this problem. Let me use my thesis writing strategy as an example:

I made a list of all the chapters I would include and a one sentence description of the material that would go in each chapter.
For each chapter, I made a bullet point list of all the topics that would be covered in that chapter.
For each topic, yet another list or short description of the key points I needed to cover.

Overall, I ended up with something like this:
Chapter 1 (background cosmology)

introduction

historical overview
topics covered in this chapter

general relativity

field equations
FLRW solution
figure showing spacetime shapes

dark energy models

LCDM
quintessence
k-essence

Chapter 2 (methodology)
etc ...
This structure leaves me with an almost paragraph-by-paragraph plan of what to write. Then it's just a case of filling in the blanks, i.e. writing a paragraph or two for each of those items on the list. Adding material such as tables and figures comes last, though their rough placement does appear in the list. The additional benefit of this is that you can show your plan to your supervisor even before you finish writing, and they can suggest things that you missed or topics you could skip.
Finally, your comment about clumsy pen-holding made me wonder if you have considered the possibility that you could be dyslexic? There are many strategies to help with that which I won't go into here; a quick google search should help you. If you think that could be part of the problem, your university may have an office specifically for supporting students and staff with dyslexia (and other related difficulties) and I recommend you get in touch with them for some one-on-one advice.


Are there differences between SM, MS, MSc, MSci degrees?

There is no difference: M.S., M.Sc., and S.M. all mean Master of Science.  The difference for S.M. is that it is in Latin: scientiae magister.

I have no idea whether it will actually help anybody's confusion to translate back to MS, but there is certainly no question of honesty.  For anybody with a Ph.D., however, I expect it will not make the least shred of difference, as a Ph.D. supersedes it quite effectively.


What are your policies regarding ownership of computer code in your lab?

I can only comment on your first question. Since you work for a large US-based institution I would be surprised if they do not have policies regarding IP generated by using university resources. That is, it may not be up to you to decide how ownership is handled. Many big universities have their own office to deal with technology licensing, patentable inventions, and so on. Since (in my limited understanding), this is a huge legal minefield, I would recommend contacting them first before you set any policies that you cannot keep. This is even more so if any external funding is involved, since funding agencies might also want a piece of the pie.


Grant applications with overlapping deadlines: listing other grants one has applied for?

This is how I do it and perhaps this could work for you too. Usually I list the applications that I have already submitted and that are under evaluation and I specify the budget size and what the funding will be used for (PhDs, postoc, own salary) and in particular I specify for for each of them if it is related or not to the current application. I also mention somewhere what is the priority, e.g. that if both the current application and one of those that I have applied for already -and that is on the same topic - will be funded, then one of the two (usually the smaller in terms of budget or prestige) will be not be maintained or will be withdrawn. It's a bit difficult to list applications that you plan to do but haven't written yet, because in principle you might not manage to submit them. So usually I avoid doing that unless I am 100% sure I will submit it. I also think it's pretty normal to submit similar project ideas to different councils and in different formats, and this simply shows that you are active in the hard job of fund raising so for me is a positive sign. In general it's always good to be transparent when it comes to applications.


Is it alright not to include my previous supervisors as co-authors, when publishing PhD work, now that I graduated?

Authorship standards vary a lot between disciplines, but generally the hierarchical relationship between you and the other authors should be irrelevant. In other words including them before only because they were your supervisors was wrong* so is excluding them now only because you feel they have no leverage anymore.

You mention the reputation of the journals, this is not a relevant factor. It's true that some more reputable journals describe authorship criteria explicitly, something that lower-tier journals rarely do, but the expectations is always that the listed authors contributed to the presented work according to the customs of the field.

It's impossible for anyone not closely related to your personal situation to tell you if they deserve authorship or not. What can be said is that quite often do graduate students underestimate the scientific contribution of their supervisors.

Your only option is to discuss the matter with them. Do they actively ask to be co-authors? Have you told them that you think their contribution is not significant enough?

*I know that this still happens, in some fields too often. That's why I wrote should be and not is.


If I took electives from another program during my BSc and MSc, how should I list it on my CV?

You shouldn't. This is what your transcripts are for.
If you truly need to point out your data science experience, note briefly when you refer to your education, in the cover/application letter, that this information can be found there.
If you don't think your transcript reflects well enough to refer to, then mentioning the courses without a willingness to back that claim up, will come across as suspicious.


How to fund a 2nd master's degree (UK), or should I directly go for a PhD?

In general there is no funding available for MSc courses in the UK. In some cases there are 1+3 courses (i.e., a 1 year MSc and a 3 year PhD) where the MSc course is funded, but in general this is not the case.

One benefit of this is that the admissions criteria for MSc courses are pretty low. Essentially anyone with a 2i or higher degree classification can find a program willing to accept them.


How to respond positively to a scientist's rejection e-mail (PhD program)?

I would probably not bother to reply; the negative answer that you got seems to have to do with the fact that there are no open positions. The best you can do is to keep an eye open for PhD positions being announced in the future.


Can I use 'Fortunately' in an academic paper

If you, yourself, question the usage, then you should probably avoid it.

I think that in the present case, if you need a bridging word, then "However" works just as well.

In general it is probably a bad idea to ban any given word, not knowing all possible contexts in which it might be used.

That said, I find no problem with using "Fortunately" in this context. It is, indeed, fortunate that the times and the work of others have come together to provide us with ways to a solution of the problem at hand. In other times it might not have been possible, for example.


How to cite when I want to use a direct quote in the same sentence as an in-text citation with no parenthesis in APA?

That is incorrect according to the APA Style Blog. The correct way would be

  Pieters and Wedel (2007) “revealed goal control of attention even during a few seconds of self-paced ad exposure with an eye-tracking experiment” (p. 224)

NB: there is a period after the p.


Why is a job interview needed if I am the only suitable candidate for a research-assistant position?

There are a few possibilities.

It may be that an interview is required by the policy of the institution.

It is also likely that they want to get an idea of how you would fit in personally. If they are happy with your application materials and have no reason to doubt your honesty in that, they just might want to know if your personality seems compatible.

Yes, it is possible that you don't get the job. If they decide you are a complete jerk (sorry, nothing implied) they won't want to hire you and will most probably restart the search.

But, I'd advise that it isn't anything to worry over. Just be yourself and use the interview to help decide if you want to work with them. If you decide that they are complete jerks you will want to keep looking.

They may want to quiz you on aspects of your knowledge that are especially important to their work. Be honest in your answers, even if you aren't familiar. Be positive, of course, about your abilities and adaptability if that seems appropriate.


My prospective supervisors are not emailing back, should I just submit a PhD application anyway?

I know your feeling, I was in your situation once.

Thing with Asians universities (far east and south east)
They will not reply to your email unless they know you, or even if they are corresponding authors and you ask them something, they will never reply. That is my experience and in general, I think you should meet them through conference attendance and research work.
The University of HK is regarded top tier in the world, I don't know much what is your field, but I assume they get tons of emails.
Generally, for China, if you are self-funded student, they will allow you to apply without supervisor consent, but if you need scholarship, Acceptance letter is MUST have, this is same with MC, Taiwan, Japan, Singapour and others


Concurrent workers independently published part of my results. How to convince the referees that I got the results independently?

You've been scooped, I'd say it's common. You could write: Further to publication of our preliminary results [1], X et al. showed ... Or: In parallel with this work, X et al. showed ... (You could cite your technical report elsewhere in the latter instance.) You can then explain how your work improves on theirs, especially as your results are way more exciting.
Your approach to result A may be different to X et al., which may allow you to present the result in the main body. Also, your result A may be slightly different to their result A (i.e., you may have slightly different results). Speak to your advisor about how to approach this.


How to approach PhD admissions after leaving previous PhD because my advisor tried to force me to manipulate data

You can tell the committee that you and the PI were not a good fit. That you tried to make it work for a while, but, as you reached a stage where you were ready for more research independence, it became increasingly clear that your two research styles were incompatible. For example, you had differences in opinion on which data were trustworthy enough to merit a publication. After a number of attempts to reach a common ground, you concluded that the best course of action is to start another PhD elsewhere. You are sad that you have lost some time, but overall, you were doing research and that's what matters, and you don't mind putting in a few extra years if that means you can do what you love.


They're generally legitimate. The negative reviews and boycotts aren't about the quality of the journal, but are because of Elsevier's alleged high prices (see The Cost of Knowledge). Elsevier publishes some of the best journals in some fields, e.g. The Lancet and Cell.

Having said that Elsevier gives their editorial boards some leeway on what to do with their journals, and to my knowledge up until recently that included not conducting peer review if they don't think it's necessary or appropriate. This journal Medical Hypotheses was an example. That journal published a paper denying that AIDS is caused by HIV, there was a backlash, and Elsevier replaced the editor-in-chief. Although you should be fine in general if you publish with Elsevier, to be sure, you'll have to research the journal in question.


I'm graduating engineering program in only six semesters but have gotten no serious work experience along the way. How much will grad schools care?

The lack of professional or industrial experience will likely not significantly influence graduate admissions committees, particularly if you're planning to apply outside of your undergraduate field. However, what will matter is that you don't mention any real research experience that you've acquired in any field, whether your own or another. When applying outside your "home" area, this will almost certainly raise alarm bells for committees, because they will have little solid ground to decide whether you will succeed in their program or not. (For instance, they may have a hard time deciding if you can successfully complete the coursework phase of their program, and they may not be able to tell if you will be able to become a competent researcher in that program, if research is part of the degree.)


Equal contribution for second and third authors

To answer your question nr. 4 ("Other creative solutions?"):
Making explicit each contributor's role based on CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) may solve some issues.
Many publishers already support the integration of such formalized contributor statements.


How formal should a recommendation be in the US?

Formality is the wrong parameter to worry about.  Write at whatever level of formality you are most comfortable writing to your target audience.  (But err on the side of formality, unless you know your reader personally.)

The parameter you should worry about is credibility.  Your readers don't just want to know that you think highly of the student; we want to know why you think highly of the student, and why we should trust your judgement.

  He is not only quick at learning and good at solving complicated problems, but also with a logical and creative mind that enables him to raise some insightful views. I was also deeply impressed with his diligence and outstanding communication ability, compared with my other students

This is not a terrible recommendation letter because the praise is insufficiently strong; it's a terrible recommendation letter because the praise is vague.  Which complicated problems?  How do you know he has a logical and creative mind?   What insightful views?  How did he show diligence?  How and where did he demonstrate his outstanding communication ability?  (And do you mean speaking, writing, or both?)  And why should we trust your judgement at all?  Be specific.

Without these details, this letter looks like flowery boilerplate that could be applied to anyone.  The letter says nothing specific about the student, which makes me think the writer knows nothing specific about the student.  Moreover, the letter says nothing about the writer's expertise, strongly suggesting that he expects to be trusted merely because he's old and tenured.

In short: Show, don't tell.

The "horror stories" page you link to gives similar advice.  (Did you actually read it?)


Discussion turned into argument with the conference keynote speaker, would it be appropriate to email an apology?

Academia is one of a few areas where it is still OK to have a discussion and even an argument. In fact, some research groups are involved in long-standing discussion / heated competition / argument. Academic discussion is considered a way to improve our joint understanding of the world and to further the scientific progress and knowledge.

However, as in any game, there are some rules to understand and follow.

It is OK to disagree with someone's argument, but you should listen and do your best to understand it first. If you don't understand something, ask politely. If you still don't understand, ask someone for a third opinion. If necessary, allow yourself time to think before you continue the discussion.
It is very important to be polite and not to become personal.
Seniority per se does not matter so much: professors do make mistakes sometimes, and they know it. However, it is important to remember that most of professors are called professors for a good reason, and they are indeed experts in their field. Their words are not always infallible, but usually quite well thought through. It is OK to ask a professor to explain his/her statement, but it is good to show that you generally respect and trust them as colleagues and experts.

As long as you followed these rules, I think you are fine and there should be no hard feelings. Otherwise, it could be a good idea to write back with a sort of apology. Professors are people first, and as all people, they have feelings, which should be respected. So if you fill you hurt their personal feelings, an apology would be nice.


Can you do a phd in maths at Cambridge university without an honours degree?

The definition of an honour student, honour course, etc. might differ between universities, some universities don't have this concept at all. So your degree from your home university might be enough for Cambridge or not, maybe even a honours degree from your university might not be enough.

Who did you email at Cambridge? You might want to try to contact something like an international office, they might be able to tell you the exact requirements for an international student applying.


What are the qualifications typically found in textbook authors? Is a Ph.D. in the field a "must," or do some people write textbooks who hold Masters degrees (yet not a Ph.D.)?

There are no rules for this in terms of minimal qualification. Why would there be? Readers want good books. Publishers want to sell books. Who cares if the author has a PhD or not?

In fact, trying to get deeper, it's often difficult to define precisely even what is meant by a "textbook" in the intuitive sense you probably mean.

For example, would books in the O'Reilly Media series be considered textbooks? Would instructional e-books? Etc.

As such the answer depends widely on the publisher or the book series (if any) you wish to contribute to.

For book series, there is typically an editor in charge who will make a judgement call on whether or not you are qualified and whether or not you can contribute something good to the series.

If dealing directly with a traditional academic publisher (I'm thinking of the likes of Springer), you (and your book proposal) will again be evaluated by their editorial staff before they agree to a contract. Likewise, they will only publish the book pending review by a number of experts that you propose.

But again, it varies widely.

In summary: I think if you have enough genuine material for a textbook -- material that people want to read -- you could find a reasonable publisher even without a Masters/PhD.


I am leaving current PhD position to move to X university. Should I inform X university that I am currently a PhD student?

I don't see any reason not to just lay it out as you have here. "I think that the program here would better suit my needs and I think I'll get better research and career advice here."

People understand that other people want to change and move "up" when possible.

But I would also take some care that you fulfill your promise to your current advisor about finishing the research to the maximum level possible. You say it is a short-term commitment, so I think it wouldn't be overly burdensome to continue until it is done or until circumstances make it impossible to continue. In case you have to leave it, try to do what you can to leave it in a stable state in which others can, if necessary carry it on. That way your current advisor is more likely to remain a supporter in your future.

But your proposal and your actions seem perfectly normal and natural to me.


How to ask an university for application selection result before accepting an offer from another university?

A related, but not truly duplicate, answer

Just ask. Tell them you have been accept at X, but Y is your first choice. The admissions committee does not need much explanation since it happens all the time. Asking to speed up the process will not hurt your chances. They may not be able to speed anything up, but if they do/don't, they will not hold it against you.


Is the following a form of dishonesty on the part of the school?

Does no really matter if the school is government recognized or not. Two things here.

Accreditation / Membership -  usually costs a lot of money each time you need to "refresh" it, so the school may have chosen not to do so. That does not necessarily mean, the school is not up to the standard. It may even be that school has decided not to participate as a member to this organization because of reasons unknown to you.

Next to that, these companies makes its name by doing proper evaluations. Those are always based on certain time period, and the conditions in the school at that time. Within 4 year period, a school can change half of its staff, have a new director, and a completely different set of standards, guidelines, and internal quality assessments. This is why schools must comply with the accreditation or membership standards continuously in order to keep their accreditation. And that is why these companies have a right to ask the school to remove it from their website / media.

It is not possible to determine from your writing, if we can attribute the school with dishonesty (requires knowledge of wrongdoing) or if this is part of the school policies working too slow, but in any case, if the company has contacted them, and instructed them to remove the false media materials, and they do not do so in a reasonable time, I would consider it at least a breach of trust, and most likely also contract.

Please note, that for a school that most likely advertises every start of the academic year, it will most likely make financial and moral sense to change these materials shortly before that start of the new academic year, which is a long time. If this bothers you, always feel free to write a letter to your school explaining your viewpoint. You can also write anonymously.


How feasible is it to pursue PhD in mathematics for a computer science undergrad?

Any mathematics PhD program will require math coursework in abstract mathematics, which you likely have none of.

You will need enough real analysis to cover all of baby rudin, and a full year-long course in algebra. That's the bare basics for surviving first year graduate level courses for the first year exams.

It is completely feasible if you take another year or two and get a mathematics degree. You might want to consider getting courses in real analysis/algebra/complex analysis/logic and maybe a course in probability and then applying to masters programs for mathematics. There you could take graduate courses, do a math thesis, and then assuming your grades/prestige aren't already tanked, there's nothing in your current history that will prevent you from getting a good Mathematics PhD.


In all kinds of assessments, but especially oral exams, carefully prepared rubrics can help increase consistency and decrease subjectivity. From "A short guide to oral assessment":

  One of the advantages of oral assessment is that it can often be
  marked quickly on the spot. To support this, the use of a marking
  guide or rubric of some sort is usually essential. The use of rubrics
  in oral assessment has many benefits:

  It provides assessors with a common reference point for their
  judgments
  It reduces the likelihood that judgments will be based on
  extraneous factors
  Providing students with the marking guide in advance helps them
  understand the nature of good work and helps them to evaluate
  the quality of their own work in the assessment
  It provides a basis for peer evaluation/feedback
  It makes marking more efficient
  It provides a useful framework for feedback to students.

Further details depend on the format of the exam, and on whether you want to include things like presentation skills in the grade or not.

In [1], there is a predetermined set of questions that are graded as follows:

  Students are told that they will be asked a series of questions
  that are designed to evaluate their understanding of the
  material. Students are instructed to “think aloud” in order
  that their thought process can be observed (9). The grading
  system is explained and they are shown a scoring sheet. Four
  scores are possible for each answer: 3, 2, 1, or 0. Students
  answering a question correctly and without prompting earn
  3 points. Each prompt a student receives results in a deduction
  of 1 point. Mistakes made along the way have no consequence
  on the grade if they are self-corrected. Following
  the questions in the order they appear on the scoring sheet
  allows for consistency in the administration of the examination.

In [2], the content of the exam varied with each student. Therefore,

  Developing a rigid rubric for an oral
  examination was not feasible when each student individually
  determined the content. This required the evaluation criteria to
  remain roughly defined to facilitate evaluation of all students,
  no matter which reaction they chose. The rubric shown in
  Table 2 was used to guide the evaluators when grading.
  Presentation skills included oral and nonverbal communication
  (such as writing a reaction mechanism) and delivering
  information in an organized manner. Student knowledge
  about their chosen subject was evaluated partly through
  reviewing the content they had prepared for the session and
  whether they presented the required information. The ability of
  each student to answer questions was used to assess depth of
  knowledge and the extent of the research undertaken and to
  gauge how capably a student could synthesize information
  quickly, problem-solve, and think critically. For example, one
  student mentioned a recent innovation of their selected
  reaction being undertaken via solid-phase synthesis. Their
  knowledge regarding solid-phase techniques was subsequently
  assessed through further questioning to determine the depth of
  their understanding.

  To limit inconsistencies and subjectivity, which are reported
  problems in oral testing, two of the course instructional
  staff were present for each examination

In the "poster exam" format described in [3],

  The grading of the poster exam occurs in two parts. First
  students are graded on the content, organization, and design
  of the poster itself, the oral presentation of the poster, and
  their ability to answer questions on the poster. The students
  receive a group grade, which we chose to score as 60% of
  the exam. The detailed breakdown of the poster evaluation
  is shown in Figure 1.

  ...

  Individual knowledge of the broad subject matter is
  probed in the second half of the test with an individual oral
  examination administered to each student in the poster group.
  Questions are drawn from a database constructed by the
  course designers and instructors, and labeled according to
  degree of difficulty. After each poster exam the database is
  refined and enlarged. The examiners are asked to draw questions
  randomly from the database and score the answers on a
  three-point scale of outstanding, acceptable, or unacceptable.
  Each student’s response is scored and entered on an answer
  sheet, which the students do not see, and returned to a folder
  that remains with the group. The next examiner then has access
  to the folder and does not repeat the prior questions asked.
  In this way each student receives at least two different oral
  exams, and most are given three. Examiners tend to conduct
  this aspect of the poster exam in one of two ways: some ask
  each student a different question, while others give the same
  question to all students.

[1] Roecker, L., 2007. Using Oral Examination as a technique to assess
student understanding and teaching effectiveness. J. Chem. Educ, 84(10), p.1663.

[2] Dicks, A.P., Lautens, M., Koroluk, K.J. and Skonieczny, S., 2012. Undergraduate oral examinations in a university organic chemistry curriculum. Journal of Chemical Education, 89(12), pp.1506-1510.

[3] Marino, R., Clarkson, S., Mills, P.A., Sweeney, W.V. and DeMeo, S., 2000. Using poster sessions as an alternative to written examination—the poster exam. J. Chem. Educ, 77(9), p.1158.


Students who want to take higher courses early

You may consider:

Transferring to another South African school that would be of a similar level but more flexible about the upper level classes.
See if you can find a way to go abroad.
Stay where you are but try to get into those higher level classes.

3a. Try to get permission directly from the instructor.  Maybe you won't get credit for the class -- but if you are permitted to sit it (audit) the class, that's progress.  A good way to start working on this would be to visit the instructor's office hours with a couple of good questions that will show your aptitude, level of knowledge, and communication skills.  After getting to know the instructor in this way, you could then ask for permission to attend his or her class.

3b. Try going above your department head.

I personally favor method 3b as the preferred approach -- if it works.

Now, what to do about your feeling of isolation?  Here are some ideas for you to consider:

Do some tutoring/mentoring/teaching.  This can be rewarding and can help you break your isolation.
Take some classes in fields where one might be able to apply some tools of applied math or statistics.
Get started with one or more interdisciplinary projects with folks in other departments.
Interact with mathematicians in other countries with email, letters, etc.  Here's one way to get started with this: read some papers you're interested in.  Write to an author of one of the papers, to say that you read the paper with interest; say what you found most interesting; ask something.  You could mention that you would be very glad to be able to correspond with grad students.  Then see if a correspondence relationship develops.


Why do students go for a PhD even when chances of getting academic jobs on its completion are slim?

The issue is that the frame of your question is wrong. You’re assuming that the purpose of a PhD is to get an academic job, when that is not the case: Many people who get PhD’s have no desire for an academic job, even from the time they apply!

The number of academic positions is indeed insufficient to absorb all the PhD’s. But there are lots of other “landing spots”:

Industrial research and development
Start-ups
Non-university government research institutes (like the US NIH or DOE lab system, or the Max-Planck-Instituts in Germany)
Finance and consulting
Administrative and Supervisory positions in other disciplines.

Overall, PhD’s have a lower unemployment rate than non-PhD’s. It’s all a question of where they want to go.

As for doing a PhD, the basic skill it teaches you—the one that makes you valuable to lots of people—is the ability to learn new fields quickly and become an expert in those fields. You don’t always need specialized knowledge in your PhD topic to get into an area.

But ultimately the reason for doing a PhD is the love of research and discovery. People pursue research careers because that’s what they want to do.


When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it?

Let me answer your question by means of an example. In my on-going research I am using a notion called "Schlichting completion" which is originated from a paper written in German by a mathematician called Schlichting. I can't read German, but using a dictionary, I've found some clues about this notion in his paper. So I cited this paper, even though I have only read about one page of it. The reason is sometimes we have to cite a paper, because some fundamental notion has originated from that paper and we have to give credit to the person who invented that notion. Other reasons for citing papers are:

They have a nice review of the subject and/or contain relatively a comprehensive list of references related to the work.
They have done some parallel or complementary works.
They have some results which are used in my papers.
They contain reasons which motivate my work. For example, they ask or suggest a problem which is addressed in my work.
They give more examples, applications and/or ideas related to my work.

etc.

So you do not have to read all contents of a paper before citing it. But make sure it is relevant, useful, some how necessary, interesting and/or important paper with respect to the work you are presenting in your paper. As a final remark, it is always nice to point out where in the paper you are citing is related to the discussion, for example specify the theorem number, the page number, etc.


Taking a math teaching job at a local 4-year college,

In my experience, very few 4-year ("university") institutions in the United States still offer tenured positions to faculty without terminal degrees in their field (except in very unusual circumstances). In mathematics, the terminal degree is a PhD, and you will find that virtually all schools require a PhD in their job advertisements for tenure-track faculty. Sometimes an EdD is acceptable or even desired for teacher-preparation positions.

So, if you want to go into university teaching with only a master's you need to be aware first and foremost that you are not on the "usual track".

History

In the past, it was not uncommon for non-research-intensive institutions, such as regional comprehensive universities, to hire permanent faculty with a master's degree and give them tenure. This was partially due to a focus on teaching, rather than research, and partially due to difficulty attracting candidates to more remote, rural locations where these institutions are often located. Some institutions still have older professors who were tenured under this system, perhaps hired in the 1970s.

The historical factors are no longer as pressing. Even at non-research-intensive schools, there is more pressure for research than in the past. And there are so many new PhD graduates each year that the job market for tenure-track jobs is already saturated with them, even at non-prestigious schools. Institutions also have some pressure from accreditors to have courses taught by faculty with terminal degrees.

Options for master's degree holders

There are still two realistic options for finding mathematics faculty positions with only a master's degree:

Some institutions, particularly larger ones, hire a number of full-time "instructors". These positions are usually not tenured, but they are often full-time (w/ benefits) and on renewable contracts.
Community-college still often hire faculty with master's degrees, in my experience.  These institutions often have their own version of "tenure" (which may go by another name).

To maximize your chance of getting a position at these institutions, you need to focus on building a strong vita in teaching. Community colleges, in particular, are often looking for a very different skill set than 4-year universities.

There are also part-time ("adjunct") jobs, where you are paid by the course. These typically don't have benefits, often do have lower salary, and according to many accounts they are a very difficult way to make a living.

Things to consider

In the job market, you have to watch out for yourself and be your own advocate.  The director mentioned in the question may genuinely believe he is offering you a good position, but he probably has other pressures as well, such as finding instructors for all the courses. So be careful to do your own research into the department.  If the department has faculty without a PhD teaching real analysis, that is not a deal-breaker, but it is a red flag that needs to be investigated.

You always need to pay close attention to the salary and job security in these positions, which vary greatly between institutions. For example, some institutions have strong unions, which lead to job security that is comparable to tenure. Others have essentially no job security. Salary also varies widely (it won't ever be extremely high, but it could moderate or extremely low). Beyond your starting salary and benefits, you also want to investigate whether the institution has a regular policy for raises for non-tenure-track faculty, if you are planning to keep the job for a while.

If you are also considering PhD studies, you should be aware that teaching for several years with a master's is not likely to help your odds for admission to a PhD program later. The job options for a PhD are also very different, which is not to say that they are always better.  So you should take time to decide what track is best for you, before making a commitment to either one.


PhD Application, Mention of published Papers

I have seen different ways of this being handled but one way could be to write in brackets that you done around (50%) of the total work for the paper.

It is more common than you think, many published PhD thesis have papers in which the PhD student is the final author in all of the papers inside the thesis, but they include a note that they where responsible for 50% of the work.

Having papers published will look great regardless.


I am a professor at a top 20 school in mathematics and I have been on our department's hiring committee for the past several years. I can assure you that we take absolutely no notice of the contents of that particular website when making decisions. We consider ourselves competent enough to form our own judgements on any particular candidate. In the past, we have interviewed plenty of people whose name occurs frequently on that list, and plenty of those whose name does not appear at all.  Moreover, the accuracy of that website is dubious at best; at my own institution it sometimes lists people who are not at all under consideration, and usually doesn't list people who are - including those who have been given offers. The only time I made any attempt to edit the website was when it claimed that we  didn't have any positions available at all (which was false). I suspect that at least on one occasion someone invited themselves to our institution to give a talk and then put their own name on the website as a candidate (they were not). Thus, I suspect that the effect this particular website has on job offers is minimal at most.


Does partnering with institutions that don’t offer graduate degrees meet NSF's broader impact criteria to work with “underrepresented groups”?

I think the reason we want to increase representation of underrepresented groups is that they have the inherent potential for higher representation and achievement and just need some help getting going.

You can't say

  I decided to do recruit theatre majors to our math PhD program, because theatre majors are underrepresented in our program compared to math and science majors.

Theatre majors don't, as such, have inherent potential to do well in math. (Or if they do, some other example will serve to illustrate the point.)

So you'd want to make the case (or have the case already be clear*) that the institution not offering a graduate degree was serving students with inherent potential to do better.

*Regarding that, see @ElizabethHenning's comment below.


Orientation of Table Headers in Science Report

This is how I would do it (essentially your first example):

My rationale for this is as follows:

It allows for including the average over your trials – which you have to compute and probably show anyway, and here is the best place to do it, as it can be compared with the data from the individual trials.
Your reader usually wants to quickly assess the following:

Do the individual trials for a given length agree with each other or with the average?
Do the average values agree with some information outside this table (theoretical expectation, figure, official solution)?

Both are not very comfortable in your second example: You either have to check groups of three that are not well separated visually or you have to go over the data in steps of three.
The structure of the table is more easy to grasp.
Each direction is only used for one purpose – in your second example, going vertical could mean increasing the length but also going from one trial to the next.
The least import information you have is the trial number; in fact it shouldn’t matter at all.
The suggested layout avoids it dominating the information and repeating it – if you show it at all.


What should you do when your supervisor is ill?

Since in a recent email your advisor has told you about the health issue, it is perfectly acceptable for you to sympathize/empathize with them and it would not be out of place to ask if you could do anything regarding your work to accommodate them. That said, if you feel uncomfortable raising the issue, you should be able to depend on your advisor being mature enough to tell you what he/she needs in terms of accommodations.

If your advisor had not mentioned anything to you and you wish to sympathize/empathize with them, then you need to be more delicate.


Why do big funders not act as publishers?

As you note, in a major sense this is actually already done on a large scale by the NIH in the US.  The NIH requires that all publications resulting from its funding be made freely available on PubMed under an open access license within 12 months.  While PubMed Central does not do peer-review, it does provide the other half of the functions of an archival publication, in providing hosting and curation.

By doing this, the NIH is accomplishing most of the goals you mention, because there is now much less pressure to subscribe to lots of high-cost journals.  At the same time, however, this is better for the NIH than running journals itself for at least the following reasons:

Running journals does have a significant cost, even if that cost is often hidden in free society journals and overcompensated for in for-profit journals.  Forcing compliance as a byproduct of funding is probably much cheaper.
If the NIH started running journals, it would be competing with traditional journals, and thus would obtain much less coverage than it does by just forcing public deposit of their articles.
Scientific publication is highly international, and even the biggest countries are a minority of the researchers in any significant field. There may thus be significant perceived or real conflicts of interest if a major government funder is running the peer review process for other nations.

In short, it appears to be currently much more efficient to accomplish such goals by using the compulsory power of contract clauses than by investing in competition with the existing publication ecosystem.


What to say when I contact my future advisor?

It's not clear why you need to send an email, if you and her already agreed to talk over the phone. Anyway, I guess you can send an email as a reminder and to set up an agenda for the phone call.

I would just say something like:

  Dear NAME/TITLE/WHATEVER_IS_APPROPRIATE_IN_YOUR_CULTURE,

  I'm looking forward to our phone call on DATE at HOUR.

  Just so that we have a starting point for our conversation, I'd like to please get your advice on the courses I should take (the deadline for course selection is approaching soon).

  Also, I haven't heard any final word about my application from the department since DATE. I know you just got back from your research expedition, but I was wondering whether you have any update about the status of my application. Thank you in advance.

  Looking forward to talking to you soon,

  NAME


Are there style guides for lists of figures / list of tables?

I don't know of any style guides, but you should first check with your university, as they may have a thesis manual of sorts for you to follow (mine does, and part of my job is to make sure students follow it). Usually students will likely follow a journal format in their field to format the captions. Again, contact the appropriate office at your university to get help with formatting the captions, if they have guidelines. Otherwise - almost anything goes, and you should be consistent in how you format the captions.


Once the articles are accepted by a journal, it takes time for coming online. Moreover, your question is unclear and lacks further details such as the following:

Are you sure the journal is indexed by Scopus (have you verified by from Scopus site?)
Whether the article has been published as "online-first"?
Has it been indexed at the least by 'Google Scholar'? -- Usually, Google Scholar is fast in indexing as it directly captures the metadata from the journal site.

For the articles to appear in Scopus page, it will take some more time than Google Scholar takes. There are internal steps that are taken care before indexing the articles in Scopus. It usually takes 3 weeks to 2 months for an article to appear in Scopus (from my own experience), I can't provide data points. Also visit a similar question here.


What can a letter writer say in a teaching letter to make a candidate stand out?

I've served on many search committees in a mathematics department.  At our institution teaching and research are both important, and I wouldn't describe our institution as entirely "teaching focused."

In my experience, most recommendation letters that address teaching don't show that the letter writer has actually observed the teaching of the job applicant and don't say much about what the applicant actually does in the classroom or how effective this was in promoting student learning.  I'm generally impressed by letters which describe direct observations of the candidate's teaching.

e.g. "Jane had average student evaluations of 4.0/5.0, which is very good in my department." isn't very helpful (especially since I can read the teaching evaluations that the candidate submitted with the application.)    On the other hand, I'd like to see something like "As the calculus course coordinator, I met with John on a weekly basis and regularly observed him in class.  His lectures were well organized, and he regularly incorporated pair-and-share and other active learning strategies.  In interacting with students he consistently has a positive and encouraging attitude.  I have never had to deal with complaints from students in his sections.  John's students also performed well above the course average on common final exams."


The issue here isn't writing a paper in a "more scientific" way; it's just writing more correctly and precisely. To be brutally honest, the writing in the original draft of this question is so poor that I would immediately reject any article written in such a style. It's not merely technical writing: there are problems with basic usage, grammar, and syntax.

The best way to improve is probably to work with a competent and experienced writing tutor who can help you identify the mistakes you are making and how to fix them. However, this is unlikely to be a "quick fix" unless you are willing to devote substantial time and effort to make your writing better.

Online tools like Grammarly can attempt to point out problems but they are neither completely reliable nor, in the long term, suitable substitutes for personally understanding the guiding principles of standard persuasive or technical writing.


Asking questions/sending note to the three authors of a paper in economics, three personalized letters?

My solution would be to send one mail. Personalization seems a wasted effort as you don't know the people, I assume. It even seems a bit presumptuous.
But put all three authors on the TO: line, not some there and some on the CC:, line. The latter feels like you are picking a lead author and they may not agree with that.
With twenty authors, the corresponding author solution would be fine, but with only a few, send it to all.


APA subsequant citation for two different studies with same first author and same year

This page from the APA says to just write them out with the number of authors necessary to distinguish them on the second and subsequent citations. So, for yours, I think you would do: (John, Tom, and Harry, 2014) and (John, Gary, and Frod, 2014). Since the second name is enough to distinguish, you could stop there, but "et al." and just listing the third name are equivalent, so you list the name.


Should I do another master followed by a PhD or do a PhD directly

I am thinking about following another Master's degree in applied maths...The courses include measure-theory based probability and more challenging statistics, in which I am interested.

You don't need another degree to research the theoretical aspects of machine learning (instead of the application). During research, you can study any aspect of mathematics that are necessary and your supervisor et al. can help you.

  which track should i consider ?

The theoretical aspects of machine learning. Perhaps with a supervisor that is also interested in applied machine learning, so that you can switch, should you want to.


Revealing one's original ideas in job applications?

Regarding the application letter:

The aim of an application letter should be an invitation to a job interview. Keep in mind that an employer (within and outside academia) wants you to work on their problems.

You could try to spark their interest by stating something like "I have worked (are currently working on) some original solutions for the XYZ problem.", without going into details. When they are interested in the details, they can ask you in the interview.

Try to avoid elaborate descriptions of your current ideas. Not so much to prevent anyone from stealing them, but rather because they tend to distract from the primary goal of an application letter: to get invited for the interview. Just sufficient information to make them curious would be perfect.

Regarding the application interview and/or research statement:

When your current work is only partially related to PI's work it is not necessary or desirable to go into the details, and there is little chance of anyone stealing your ideas anyway.

When there is significant overlap, it might be wise to put a preliminary paper online (e.g. on Arxiv). In that way you can claim the ideas to be yours, and freely discuss them.


Should I get a CS PhD if I'm only interested in industry research?

Having a PhD or other Research Doctorate will definitely help you with many large companies. At some companies there is a fairly large gap between what someone with a degree can do and earn and someone without. "Senior Scientist" may only be open to PhD holders for example.

Moreover, some companies really need people on the cutting edge of research. Think Alphabet/Google here and similar data and algorithm driven places.

But I'm speaking of large and established companies. IBM, Bell Labs, and such. It may not be quite as valuable with newer companies and probably not at all with startups. But, large companies can support large scale research that may take a while to mature. They can offer a stability of employment similar to that available in an academic position.


How to deal with this type of rejection without review report?

Educated guess of what happened: they invited reviewers (which automatically updates the status even if the reviewers don't agree to review). Some/many of the reviewers then declined to review, giving reasons that made the editor decide to desk reject your paper.

I'm not a mathematician, but from what I've heard, 4.5 months is not a particularly long wait for mathematics papers. If so, it's not really fair to say the journal treated your manuscript in a subpar manner.

There's nothing you can do about this except submit to a lower-tier journal.


When citing a thesis, do I list supervisors as coauthors?

When citing, you should include the document's author(s). For a thesis, that'll be a single author. You needn't name any other contributors, e.g., any supervisors.


Is it a good idea to send a reference letter upon contacting a potential PhD supervisor for the first time?

No!

As a PhD student, I received tons of "potential phd candidates" offers on my mail, merely because I had an institutional mail. For professors, this is way, way worse. Cold e-mailing with attachments is a bad idea.  It would end up on the spam/ignored folder.

Matter of fact, do not contact him yourself, ask your MS supervisor for an introduction e-mail, because coming from a known sender, it will have more chance of being read. Introductions are always better than cold calling...


Paper status changed from under review to Awaiting Decision

It depends. If you know that in this journal (and you discipline) the papers are typically reviewed fast (e.g., one month), then it indeed likely that your paper is already after peer-review. In contrast, if in this journal the peer-review typically takes several months, then it might be long desk-rejection. It is indeed not rare to get desk rejection after several weeks. Also, keep in mind rejection rate without review in your journal. If it is low, then it more likely to be already after review.


Are PhD "minimum admission requirements" flexible?

Easiest solution, contact the University's graduate admissions office. Admission criteria will depend on funding source, if you or your supervisor have direct funding for the PhD admissions is usually more flexible, but if you're applying for a competitive scholarship you might struggle to compete against peers with MRes/AU Honours/publications.

I'm assuming you're going through the UK honours system based on your question. The Aussie system is a bit different where and honours is more akin to an MRes in the UK (see here for more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honours_degree).


Can/should math majors consider graduate school in physics?

A pure math major with no physics classes beyond those required for an undergraduate degree is going to be woefully unprepared for graduate school in physics.  There is, in fact, relatively little overlap between pure math and theoretical physics; vector calculus, linear algebra, and group theory are about it.  (I double majored in pure math and in physics as an undergraduate, and there was very little useful overlap between the two, although some more subtle connections do become apparent at the advanced graduate level.)  I would be very surprised if graduate program in physics would admit somebody with no physics beyond two introductory semesters of mechanics and electromagnetism.
Many (although not all) graduate programs in physics will let their less-prepared graduate students take (or retake) senior-level classes in classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and electrodynamics.  However, if you have little to no familiarity with the intermediate level physics topics, like waves, special relativity, thermodynamics, statistics (even people doing research in purely theoretical physics generally need to have to have a very firm understanding of statistical methods), etc., you are simply not going to be prepared for physics graduate school.  An undergraduate major in applied mathematics is much more likely to cover material relevant to graduate study in physics.
Many of the strongest physics students double major in math, since a physics major already typically requires a certain number of advanced math classes (selected from things like vector analysis, linear algebra, group theory, probability theory, etc.).  And there are also people who major only in math, but take enough intermediate- and advanced-level physics classes as well to make them plausible candidates for graduate school in physics.  Some physics departments (such as mine) would seriously consider math majors with this level of preparation, but others will not even look at applicants without a full program of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, etc. classes.  So if you are hoping to go to graduate school in physics, you will probably need to take a significant number of intermediate physics courses, at a minimum.  (Sometimes, these courses may not actually need to be taught by a physics department though.  There are often applied math classes covering wave behavior, for example, that could be suitable substitutes.)


Why are we not teaching university student how to learn/study?

Why are we not teaching university students how to learn/study ?

Historically, professor profess rather than teach and it was not considered part of the university's job. For example, this PhD comic makes fun of that. Thus, the onus in the student to learn rather than the professor or instructor to ensure learning. This includes both the college-level study skills and the ability to teach themselves new materials beyond their coursework.

Pragmatically, many universities (at least in the United States) recognize new students (e.g,. freshman) do not have these skills and do teach them. For example, my undergraduate school offers courses such as Wildlife 100: Wildlife Profession and Preparation that:

  Provide a background on careers in the wildlife field and an overview of skill development necessary to work in the field. Exposure to opportunities in research, internships, and extracurricular, as well as guidance on creating an effective program of study.

Furthermore, many universities in the United States offer tutoring or learning centers to help students develop study skills for their current courses (e.g., Texas Tech, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale).


Is it normal for professors to not have families or not spend time with their families over the holidays, due to pressure of work?

The extent to which academics lead deadline-driven lives varies tremendously.  It differs between fields (even otherwise similar fields; for example, theoretical computer science tends to have far more paper submission deadlines than pure mathematics does), between types of institutions (such as research universities vs. liberal arts colleges), between career paths (such as running a research group that requires substantial ongoing funding vs. doing individual research on a theoretical topic), etc.  There's also a large factor of personal taste: some people thrive on deadlines, while others try hard to avoid them.

It's also worth noting that deadlines often repeat in cycles.  For example, yearly conferences typically have submission deadlines at the same time of year, as do certain funding opportunities.  Which conferences or funding opportunities are most important/relevant vary between people, so two professors could have completely different schedules of deadlines throughout the year.  It's possible that your visits with your sister happen to line up with a pattern of deadlines that matter to her.  That would be unfortunate, but not necessarily representative of the rest of her time.  In my experience deadlines are not particularly likely to coincide with holidays.

If you are curious you could always ask your sister (or, for that matter, your father).  For example, "I noticed that you often have deadlines around Thanksgiving.  That sounds pretty stressful - is this typical for how you spend your time?  What's your job like on a day to day basis?"


How to decide the appropriate level of explanation for math in academic papers?

I find that the choice of how much explanation to give math is generally a three-way negotiation between three factors:

Your estimate of the audience: different communities will need radically different levels of explanation for the same mathematics.
Adjustment based on the opinions of the reviewers about what needs more or less details
Any length constraints on the paper.

Of this #1 is really the important thing: you really need to understand your audience in order to decide how in-depth to go with your mathematics.

For example, I recently published a paper which spent several pages explaining a mathematical formulation in depth for its target cross-disciplinary audience.  The reviewers requested further expansion of the mathematical explanation (which I was happy to provide).  Were I writing for the community from which the mathematics came, however, I would instead spend several pages explaining the context of the problem, but then the math itself would be covered in just a few sentences.


One year into PhD, feeling lost and inadequate, Help!

This is the reason you gave for pursuing a PhD:

   I hated working on my master's thesis, but I nonetheless grabbed the opportunity to start a PhD, because I convinced myself that it was something that I would be good at, I wanted to overcome my anxiety and challenge myself mentally, and the stipend is very decent.

You don't say that you were anxious about writing the thesis, you say that you hated it, which sounds to me like you simply don't like doing academic research. But that is the whole point of a PhD. Furthermore, the only career a PhD in history really prepares you for is research and teaching, and you don't say anything about your feelings about teaching.

So it sounds like you enrolled because of extraneous expectations from both yourself and others. Getting a PhD is not a merit badge, it's very specific training for a very specific purpose. There are plenty of other ways to show that you are smart. And "losing" one year is no big deal, especially when compared to spending even more time going down what might well not be the right path for you.


Is it necessary to send a corrigendum? Does it make my paper look ugly?

Given your clarifications 1, 2, and 3, I would suggest leaving it alone.

The modern trend is for the corrigenda and the errata to be used more for "serious" stuff, and less so for "cosmetic" changes. The guideline, for example, given by the American Physiological Society is:

  if the author determines that it is scientifically necessary

While Nature uses the following definition for a corrigendum:

  Corrigendum. Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Unless the venue in which you published your work states otherwise in their publication guidelines, a stray sentence that is not factually false, does not invalidate your claims, and does not impinge on the efforts of other researchers to reproduce your work is likely not "scientifically necessary."

Even if you insist on perfection, you should also be aware how corrigenda are viewed by other researchers in your field. If in your field the prevailing view is that corrigenda are used for "scientifically necessary" changes to your article, then you need to be prepared to answer questions about your correction in the future (usually of the form, "Why is there a corrigendum issued for your paper? Are you sure it doesn't change your conclusions?")

Lastly, a minor point is that if you published in a journal which charges publication fees, quite often your corrigendum will come with a not-so-small price-tag also.


Referring to previous work “by the authors”

I would avoid "the authors" unless it is exactly the same set of authors (preferably in the same order).

I don't see anything wrong with "B1, A2 and B3 have shown that..." even when A2 is one of the authors of the present paper.  It seems a little strange at first, but is quite common.  I have also seen phrases like "B1 and the second author have shown that..." to refer to a paper by B1 and A2 while avoiding mentioning A2 by name, but in more complicated examples it gets pretty unwieldy.


How to cite (Chicago author-date) papers your paper is about

I often see this issue when reading student lab reports in psychology. So for example, a student is paraphrasing a number of claims made by Smith (2000), so they write:

  X is related to Y (Smith, 2000). The cause of some stuff is blah blah (Smith, 2000). Then the system does that (Smith, 2000). But several reasons for this include A, B, and C (Smith, 2000).

One problem with this form of writing is that it does not make explicit the link between statement and citation. There are many possible links between citation and statement (e.g., Smith asserted a claim; Smith conducted research and obtained a finding; Smith is one reference among many where a generally accepted fact in the field is asserted; etc.).

In general, if you are writing critical commentary about a particular article, then your writing style will need to be explicit about claims made in the target paper and what is your analysis. One way of restructuring the text is to make the author explicit in the text. E.g.,

  Smith (2000) proposed that X is related to Y. He found evidence that the cause of some stuff is blah blah. He went on to show that the system does that. He proposed  several reasons for this including A, B, and C.

Note the full in-text reference is provided in the first sentence. The remaining sentences make it clear that the propositions are related to the citation in the first sentence. Furthermore, the connecting words (e.g., "proposed", "found evidence", etc.) provide further information on where the propositions came from (e.g., theory, mere assertion, empirical evidence, etc.).


How do I generate an Undergraduate Thesis worthy of publication?

What do you expect from a good bachelor's thesis?

The expectations for a bachelor's thesis vary from country to country and from field to field. However, I think the main points can be summarised as follows:

the author shows a good understanding of the given problem
the author is aware of the existing literature in the field, can discuss the literature critically and understands where their problem sits in the literature
the thesis is well-written and successfully communicates the author's findings, ensuring that anyone wishing to replicate their experiments could do so

A bachelors thesis is NOT expected to be an entirely original work nor does it need to represent an advancement in the field. I think I am safe in stating that publishing work from a bachelor's thesis is highly unusual.

A successful thesis requires consistent work on a specific problem with demonstrable results that can be disseminated to the community (be this your peers at university, future employers or maybe to a journal for peer review).

You are missing one key ingredient: a supervisor.

At the bachelor's level, it is very difficult (due to inexperience or unfamiliarity with the literature) to identify a problem which is open-ended enough to allow plenty of work on it, but not so esoteric or challenging that the student will not be able to make any meaningful progress or learn anything valuable from the experience.

You state that

  Most of my lecturers are PhD scholars themselves struggling with their own papers. Ego in academia may prevent them from assisting me in my paper.

Have you asked them about this or are you making an assumption? They may well be very happy to supervise your project; after all, getting other people interested in research is very important for academics.

I think that you and your thesis will be far more successful if you find a supervisor who can give you the guidance and direction you need. Your supervisor will also be able to answer your questions about publication of your work (if it merits it-- again, I stress that publication should be low on your list of priorities. Get to know the literature, gain some expertise surrounding your problem and write, write, write).

Now to address your questions about an Ig Nobel.

I'm not sure if you've maybe misunderstood what these prizes are about: they're a gentle satirical mocking of the Nobel prizes, and generally awarded for ``pointless'' or silly research-- not serious science. I'm not sure that aiming to be awarded one for your bachelor's thesis is a good idea.

You can nominate yourself for an Ig Nobel, but as their own website states (emphasis mine):

  Self-nominees seldom win. It seems characteristic of the Ig Nobel prizes that the "Igginess" is a side-effect, not a goal.

Don't aim for an Ig Nobel. Concentrate on finding a supervisor, working on a tough problem, writing a great thesis and getting to know the joys and pitfalls of research.

There are some other questions and answers on this site that may help you further:

Finding a supervisor (this question is about getting a supervisor at another university, but the advice is applicable to your situation).
Do's and don'ts of undergrad research
What counts as undergrad research (when aiming for grad school)


Proper ways to contact US academics from outside academia?

I am developing an application I believe would be a wonderful (free)
  asset to the study and comprehension of a particular subject for
  students and docents alike.

Consider presenting it at an academic conference. In my field, there are usually industry booths at the conferences. But there is also often the opportunity to present innovative software with a poster, or sometimes even as a talk.

Don't expect any responses to unsolicited emails marketing your software. These will usually be regarded as spam.


As @Alexandros said, it is not clear why you would be risking your health, should you decide to finish the program. Working remotely on dissertation is certainly feasible (I've done that personally), if your committee doesn't mind and the program allows it. However, defending dissertation remotely might be more challenging to obtain permission to, but still possible. All that very much depends on your university, the program office and, to a lesser degree, the faculty involved. In regard to your specific questions, they are IMHO very broad and, thus, impossible to answer without knowing lots of personal circumstances and even after that the advice could be taken with a huge grain of salt.


What is the real maximum score of subject math GRE scores currently?

I'm not a mathematician and not involved with this test; all I know is what I read on the internet. If anyone can confirm that they've seen someone get a perfect score in the last few years, that'd be great.

The maximum score is (almost certainly) 990. I assume you were looking at this, which shows that any scores 920 and above are in the 99th percentile; that is, only 1% of test takers score 920 or above. This does not (necessarily) imply that scores above 920 are impossible.

From the GRE website:

  Every Subject Test yields a total score on a 200 to 990 score scale, in 10-point increments. Note that each of the individual test scales occupies only a portion of the 200 to 990 score range.

The second sentence is a little vague, and in principle could imply that the top few scores are "not used." What we know for sure is that since 200-990 in 10-point increments is 80 possible scores, and there are only 66 questions, there will be at least 14 values that are not used. Since they said the scale is from 200 to 990, it would make little sense to "not use" the top few scores...but it's possible.

One wrinkle: there is also this practice test in which a 66/66 only gets you a 910. But, I don't think we can necessarily extrapolate from that; it may just be that the practice test is easier than the current test.


Timing and length of 'author response phase'

It's still relatively rare for conferences to have an author response period at all, and when it happens, it's typically very different from the response to a journal submission.

For a journal, you are expected to submit a revised version explaining how you've changed things to deal with reviewer criticism. For a conference, on the other hand, the author response period is typically more an opportunity for quality control on reviewers, in which the authors get a chance to say things like: "Reviewer #3 claims that this paper should be rejected because we didn't do experiments, which we find confusing because several key experiments are presented on pages 4-5."  The program chairs then use this review/rebuttal pairing to make decisions on which papers will be accepted and whether they will need shepherding to ensure quality of the camera-ready (for those conferences that use shepherding).

As such, the response time is typically quite short, often only around a week, and typically happens not long before decisions are scheduled to be sent.


Publishing paper after graduation without advisor's name

This would depend entirely on whether he contributed to the work and, if so, how much. A minor contribution might require an acknowledgement, but if you worked together to develop the ideas in the paper he might well need to be co-author. You can probably judge this.

However, there is another possible angle to consider. If you are planning to go on in academia and your old advisor can help you with that, then even a minor contribution leading to co-authorship might be good for you in the long run. That would be especially true if your advisor is a major figure in your field.

But you have a delicate situation since the paper has already been accepted. Depending on what your advisor says you may want to delay, or you may want to use the acceptance to convince him that sole-authorship is fine.

See this question to get information on predatory journals also: With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam?


Should I contact an editor at the journal that rejected my paper, to ask for feedback?

No, I don't think you should contact the editor. Journal editors are very busy people, and they don't have time to offer individual comments on every paper.

If you think that your paper did not get a fair review, for example if you have reason to believe the reviewer did not read or understand the paper, then that is worth contacting the editor about. But if you simply want to discuss the paper, the editor will likely view your request as not worth their time. They have already given you their comments on the paper, in the form of a rejection decision: in other words, the editor does not consider your paper appropriate for publication in the journal, and a discussion is not going to change that.

I also think asking for suggestions on how to improve the paper would be inappropriate, because you have already been given suggestions, in referee #2's report. My advice: make the improvements suggested by referee #2 and try submitting the paper to a different journal where it might be a better fit.


Is it acceptable to ask a professor who is not your supervisor to give you M.S. thesis topic?

I occasionally get emails along these lines, and I am almost never thrilled. The sole exception where I would consider this case is if I know (a) the student personally and think (s)he is good, and/or (b) I know the advisor personally, and (s)he recommended the student this model. In all other cases, my response would be negative.

What you need to be aware of is that a master student who is actually somebody else's student, and who presumably even sits physically remote, is a risk on so many levels. You have no idea how good the person is. You have no idea whether (s)he actually works or is just procrastinating between status updates. You have basically no leverage, so if you assume the student is not working hard or is involved in unethical behavior (e.g., rigging the data), you can do pretty much nothing except pull out of the cooperation. You have no idea whether the person's actual advisor is fine with this, or will start sabotaging the agreement when (s)he figures out that her/his student is actually working with somebody else. It is even unclear what the implications for the student are - maybe her/his university does not even accept a thesis primarily supervised by somebody outside of the institution. And even if all goes well, you are still supervising a student in somebody else's name (i.e., doing the work of somebody else).

All these things considered - would you invest one of your good ideas, or, even worse, your limited time supervising such a student?


At a loss after enrolling into PhD programme

Well.. WELCOME TO A PHD!

Sadly all that work is normal and it's only getting worse. Doing 4 essays overnight is not uncommon, research will be tossed away by professors, you wont have time for friends or family, and your health will deteriorate and you will loss/gain weight. All unless you can somehow automate things (a dictation software helps A LOT), or you can externalize the homework, which is not ethical and might not even be legal.

Oh! and your research and enthusiasm is meaningless. You could have the cure for all types of cancers but if your references are not in proper APA it all has no value. Thats academia. You are not there to research, you are there to document properly a research. (Im already expecting this answer to be downvoted a lot as it touches many sensible fibers)

In my PHD I ended up with a horrible lower-back damage that send me to the orthopedist-traumatologist, a friend got facial paralysis, around 30% of those who entered dropped, and the ones who managed to  take  it lightly was because they didnt have much responsibilities, work in bureaucracy and had people to do their HW for them, or similar.

A PHD is a big commitment that frankly isn't worth for many people, but a lot of people realize it only after enrolling. But hey, if you are stubborn then you already have the proper character trait for it, you just need to accept the cost of opportunity, which is that you have to set aside basically all else besides work.

If you are ready to drop, perhaps you should enter an MBA instead, the workload is almost just as bad but at least you don't have to worry about research and it's not so academically oriented, which might be more motivating. Also speak with your professor and negotiate sending your HW by mail as being in the lab is an impossibility for you, or at least negotiate only going  a couple days and the rest work at a distance.


Why are tenure-track professors hired on the basis of their research when they spend most of their time teaching?

Because they don't spend most of their time teaching.  For example, officially the expectation is that I spend half my time on research, a third on teaching, and a sixth on service (e.g. administrative responsibilities).


How to proceed when PhD advisor leaves academia or moves to a new university midway?

One issue is what your advisor is doing.  If your advisor is leaving academia (e.g., going to work on Wall Street or for the government), then you are probably on your own, but moving to another university is generally not a big problem.

If you haven't started doing research yet, you should probably just switch to a new advisor, but if you are already making progress, then staying with your current advisor is often the best approach.

One possibility that wasn't mentioned in your question is moving physically to the new university as a visiting student while staying enrolled at the old university.  You still work on research with your advisor, and at the end receive a degree from the university you started at.  Maybe it varies between fields, but this is pretty common in mathematics, and it avoids some of the difficulties like transferring credit or different requirements.

If your advisor is supportive (and they should be!), then this is generally not hard to arrange.  It's easiest if they are technically going on leave from the old university, rather than resigning immediately, but that's a pretty common way to arrange moving between universities, partly because it simplifies situations like this.  (And even if your advisor is not going on leave, you just need a colleague to step in as the formal advisor, while letting your advisor handle the day to day interaction.)  The major reason for difficulty would be if there was some serious problem at the old university, such as a personality conflict with the department chair, which could make the department unwilling to be flexible.


Is there a free (as in freedom) alternative to Publons

It seems now there is a free (as in free speech) alternative, via ORCID. A few months ago they introduced a system to make verifiable peer reviews visible in your profile. You can read more about it here. I was thinking of making a Publons profile, but given that it is owned by a commercial entity, it ends up being just another data mining company, very much like academia.edu and researchgate are. Great that we have now an alternative!


What is importance of author listings when resumé/CV differs from actual publication?

In general, author position must be the same on a CV as it is in the official publication. Changing author position on the CV is generally deceptive. In particular, first authorship often conveys a greater role on a publication. So this may suggest the applicant is trying to indicate that they had a greater role in the publication than they did.

That said, it seems like a rather strange thing for an applicant to do. If someone is going for an academic job, it is common that the employer would have a look at a few publications. Thus, it would quickly become evident that CV and publication differ in author-order. And this would typically be perceived poorly by the employer.

A common and better strategy is to bold or star your own name in the CV (and perhaps the names of students you have supervised). This makes it easier for a reader of a CV to scan author position.


Independent Publishing as a University Affiliate

First, you don't need university affiliation to publish papers. Different universities might feel differently about your situation, so you should ask someone, perhaps in the department for which you teach. They might not want you to use the university's name if you aren't on the payroll, especially if you aren't subject to their normal rules.

The one important thing that the university might be able to do for you is provide IRB advice if your research involves human subjects in any way.

Other than that, you can probably use anything that is merely descriptive, such as "adjunct instructor at H*d University".

But, "Independent Researcher" may be your best "affiliation". The reviewers will be interested what you write in your papers, not your university. Your email address will indicate some association in any case.


What is the socio-economic argument or historical basis for university tuition fees?

What do you mean, "introduced"?

Someone has to pay for the teaching in any case. Students paying for their education has been the default option since at least Bologna in 1088, when the studies happened because enough people wanted to pay for such an education. It has continued to be the case throughout history, except for some prestigious universities that got sponsored by wealthy rulers or religious studies that got sponsored by the church estates. It must be noted that this sponsorship shouldn't be considered "public education" but is rather analogous to various current stipends/grants/etc, since these were meant for a very small number of individuals, not as education for masses.

It's not that USA has "introduced tuition fees" - instead, some countries, like the Scandinavian countries mentioned, have comparably recently (historically speaking) introduced free higher education for everyone, but USA hasn't (yet?) introduced that.

Who are the actors here?

As for most questions about society, you can't really talk about "THE motivation for X" without being explicit about WHO has that motivation.

The core actor here is the people who actually decide on exact amounts of tuition, i.e., the people who manage the (often private) universities, not their students, faculty, parents or politicians. For them, there are at least four valid reasons for having tuition fees:

That's income that they can use for whatever needs, so tuition is better than no tuition in that sense; even if they have other funding as well, most education institutions would prefer a larger budget;
It filters out people based on their motivation - in any university setting, you don't want students who are "just visiting", as they disrupt the motivation and learning of others. Recent data from MOOCs with no barriers of entry show that this creates a large class of people who join just to try it out, since no real commitment of resources is required; that's okay for a MOOC, but disruptive in the 'classic' university environment, where you need to limit the number of students to whatever number you can afford do service properly.
It filters out people based on their ability to pay - that's generally considered an inappropriate/illegal/evil goal nowadays, but back when the system was implemented, maintaining the separation of classes was an intentional goal (e.g. Numerus Clausus policies even in 20th century), not just a random byproduct of policies; your school and degree would have a better reputation if low-class "undesirables" would be kept out of the classrooms. A currently relevant argument is that diplomas are in some sense a Veblen good, where being affordable means less demand as you're believed to be cheap, thus automagically worse.
They can't handle any sudden drops in income. Much of university expenses are fixed - building maintenance and tenured faculty won't become cheaper if you suddenly lose 20% of your income; so any cost reductions must be accompanied by a large influx of money (from whom?) or be a slow process of reducing volume - either teaching much less students, or doing much less to teach them.

[edit]

There's no market pressure to reduce tuition

In a reasonable market there are downward pressures on price and demand - customer ability to pay and customer price sensitivity.
Recent changes in USA and some other education markets have greatly reduced those pressures.

The wide availability of student loans has resulted in a situation where people are buying education that they can't really afford - paying large amount of money (that they're borrowing) for even those education programs that won't actually have a "return on investment", while not having the spare resources to pay for it as a "hobby expense" for improving themselves. The impact of this is yet into the future, as student loans are maturing and the related bankruptcy cases are (and will be) rising.

And, more relevant to this question, student loans remove the visible difference between cheap and expensive university programs. Universities don't compete on price, since people don't choose them based on price. Some people do, but the majority of students don't think in a manner "oh, I can't afford a $40k tuition in a better university, so I'll apply only to $20k ones" in the same way as they would when purchasing, say, cars for the same amount; since the loans mask the direct impact on their daily budget. This means that universities have little motivation to lower their prices, as being cheaper won't gain them much, and being expensive doesn't restrict them from getting the good students they want, since the good students will get loans/stipends anyway.


seeking reimbursement after faculty interview

I think it's pretty standard that "travel expenses" include all meals purchased from the time you leave home until your return.

Some institutions do meal reimbursement on a "per diem" basis, where you get a flat amount per day for meals, regardless of how much you actually spend.  In some cases there is a slightly lower rate for the first and last day of your journey, reflecting the fact that you might have been at home for part of those days.

If you are unsure, you might get in touch with the administrative person in the department who handles travel reimbursements and ask them about their policies.  This person is typically not involved with the hiring process, so there's no need to worry about making a bad impression.

Side comment: You are probably worrying about this a bit more than you need to.  If you're on the job market, this is probably one of the first times you've had people paying your travel expenses, and it's normal to be a little sensitive about that.  But paying travel expenses is a very standard part of academic life, and for the most part, the people paying for you are not going to notice these sort of financial details or let them affect their perception of you. It's just an academic chore for them, and it isn't their personal money you're spending!  Just use your own best judgment, and unless you do something outrageous, like asking to be reimbursed for strippers and champagne, you'll be fine.


Do I have to include thesis topic/advisor name after career change?

You are not obliged to include any information in your CV, IMHO, neither morally nor legally.

Of course, people can be asking what were you doing if you got your masters (let's say) in 2012 and started your current PhD programme in 2015, and they'll likely ask you in an interview about this. Or (especially if there are no interviews, which is the case for many PostDoc programmes) simply not consider your application because of the "grey areas".

As for whether to do this or that: Remember that in academia, CVs are very verbose and usually contain all relevant information. If you're deep into your current PhD and you have some publications, I don't think that listing details on your masters is necessary. I, for one, do not list the names of the supervisors at all; they are obvious from my publication record.