Engineering Major applying to Pure Math Grad school

You don't say where in the world you are or where in the world you want to be.  Giving this information would allow for a more targeted response, as the mathematical background of students entering a graduate program varies quite significantly by location: in particular, most European undergraduates take exclusively courses in mathematics and closely associated fields, whereas for most American undergraduates mathematics occupies less than half of all the undergraduate courses they take.  I will answer with respect to an American PhD program in mathematics, since that is what I am more familiar with.

With that in mind: your overall math background seems quite strong to me.  It is more than enough so that admissions committees will overlook the fact that your undergraduate major was not mathematics.  That you took and excelled in five graduate courses is better preparation than the average incoming math PhD student at most American PhD programs and is similar to the average background of beginning students at, say, programs ranked 11-25 or so.  [Give or take: I have been affiliated with programs ranked both above and below 11-25 so can make an educated guess, but my direct experience is more limited.]

  What other math courses should I take for my application to be considered seriously?

The one noticeable omission is in analysis.  Both differentiable manifolds and Riemannian geometry use some analysis topics, but far from all.  Your application will be taken seriously already, but your chances would be better if you had courses like: real analysis (undergrad or graduate level), metric spaces / general topology and complex analysis.  In the US system, undergraduate real analysis -- taught out of Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis or a more recent equivalent -- is taken by most "serious" undergraduate math majors and is perhaps the number one course that admissions committees want to see an applicant take and excel in.

  Can I take graduate courses instead to demonstrate proficiency in the courses in Question 1? For example, if I am advised to take undergraduate Topology class, does taking graduate Algebraic Topology class count as taking the undergraduate Topology class?

The answer is that it depends on a lot of factors.  In the example that you give, undergraduate topology is desirable but not required.  Taking graduate topology looks great...but it doesn't entirely cover undergraduate topology, depending upon what that means.  In the US, unless otherwise specified, undergraduate topology is primarily general topology, which you are not going to learn much about in an graduate algebraic topology course.

Another consideration is that -- at least at the American institutions I'm familiar with -- grading in graduate courses is often different and more lax than in undergraduate courses.  For instance, in more than half of the graduate courses I've ever taught, every student has received an A grade.  For almost every undergraduate course I've ever taught, 25% or less of the class received an A.  (It is a strange coincidence that the notable exception was...general topology, in which almost half of the small number of students taking the course got an A.)  On the other hand, this is not always true.  If you have recommendation letters from the faculty who taught these courses explaining convincingly why you were one of the best students in the course, you'll probably get "full credit" for your grades.

  Is it bad if I took all the courses in Question 1, but didn't meet the requirements for obtaining B.Sc in Mathematics in my school? For example, my school requires that I take Statistics as part of the B.Sc requirement, but other schools may not.

Not really.  Most math admissions committees care about what you know and they find that out in large part by looking at your coursework.  We tend not to care so much about meeting other requirements.

On the other hand, now that I look over your story I admit to being a bit curious / confused about why your major is in engineering rather than mathematics.  According to your SE profiles, you have been studying and also taking graduate level mathematics courses for the last three years.  In a recent comment, you say will receive an undergraduate engineering degree in 1-2 years.  It doesn't quite add up to me -- with the math courses you've taken, how could you possibly be any further than 1-2 years away from a math degree?  You might want to address this point in your personal statement.

Added: I am currently the Graduate Coordinator of the mathematics department at the University of Georgia (and thus the chair of the committee that does graduate admissions).


Meaning of 'high-level overview' in a Maths talk?

An illustrative example:
Let's say you have been working for a very long time on a great paper in which you finally manage to construct a widget which has some amazing properties, which have important consequences for some other area of math.

Now, most of the paper consists of the construction which is extremely deep and technical (this is, after all, why nobody else had been able to construct this widget before you).

To give a high level overview of your work, you need to talk mainly about what the widget does, rather than how it is constructed. Talk about these properties and the amazing consequences to other areas in generic terms that can be understood by everyone.

Maybe towards the end, you can talk a bit about the construction. But you should still keep it high-level, meaning that you can talk for example about the main ingredients ("we use a construction analogous to the one for constructing wadgets, but whack it with a hammer in certain places to make it fit our needs"). But leave out any actual technical details.


How to deal when submitting an extender paper to a journal from another editorial?

That depends on what you mean by "extended". If it just extends the results of the conference presentation, all you have to do is to state this in the introduction and cite the previous paper. If "extended" means longer than the page limit of the journal, it is very probable that it will be rejected outhand or only accepted for further consideration if you cut it down to size. You might try to ask for leniency from the editor, but only after doing a serious effort to make it fit (perhaps by dividing into several?) and have good reasons why it can't be shorter.


Downloadable list of all accredited U.S. colleges?

Here's what you're looking for on the U.S. Dept. of Education page in CSV/Excel.

Here's the header of the file:

  Institution_ID    Institution_Name    Institution_Address Institution_City    Institution_State   Institution_Zip Institution_Phone   Institution_OPEID   Institution_IPEDS_UnitID    Institution_Web_Address Campus_ID   Campus_Name Campus_Address  Campus_City Campus_State    Campus_Zip  Campus_IPEDS_UnitID Accreditation_Type  Agency_Name Agency_Status   Program_Name    Accreditation_Status    Accreditation_Date_Type Periods Last Action


You honestly attempted to make a citation, but made some mistakes in providing the correct information. This happens sometimes and absolutely is not plagiarism because you were clearly not trying to pass off others’ work as yours.

What you are responsible for is making sure the error is fixed. If the manuscript has not been published then all you need to do is correct the reference in a revision or at the proof stage. If the article has been published you should contact the editors for guidance about the best way to proceed.


Having previously worked with ORCID and helped labs and groups add ORCID iDs to their workflows, I can share about how labs/research groups use ORCID:

As others have mentioned, ORCID iDs are to identify individuals -- they distinguish you from other researchers who may share your name. A lab or group should not obtain an ORCID iD for their singular "lab" identity as that violates the terms of use. (n.b. ORCID iDs created for what appear to be non-individuals are regularly reported to ORCID by members of the ORCID community. Check Twiter -- you'll see call outs.)

Every individual who creates an ORCID iD has an ORCID record -- a web page which lists things connected to their ORCID iD. These things can be added by the individual or by systems they grant permission to update their ORCID record, such as a journal with whom they publish or their employing institution.

Unlike Academia.edu and ResearchGate, ORCID does not allow you to store manuscripts, preprints, etc. You can however use preprint servers, zenodo, figshare, etc., connect your ORCID iD to your account in those systems, and then Crossref or DataCite will add your papers to your ORCID record.

Research labs or groups may have multiple ORCID goals:

Collecting the individual research members' ORCID iDs so the lab/group has them on record

Adding their lab/group affiliation to the research members' ORCID records -- so when the researcher submits a grant application or manuscript, the submission system will read their lab/group affiliation from the ORCID record

Using those iDs, regularly searching research information systems, such as Crossref, Dimensions, and Web of Science, for their members' works, grants, and more (only works when the members connect their ORCID iDs during submission or proofing)

Using those iDs, regularly accessing their ORCID records (programmatically) to learn of any new works, grants, research resources (facilities, labs, collections, etc.), memberships, etc. connected to their ORCID records

Physical labs with equipment, facilities, etc. used for research which have an access approval process may collect ORCID iDs during submission so they can record use of their facility as a "research resource" on researchers' ORCID records. More about this here.


Is it okay if a student wears a mask to class to conceal scars?

Of course. If there's a medical reason for it and the student can produce an appropriate doctor's certificate or what not. You would need to check the regulations.

It probably depends on what sort of mask it is. If the mask is distracting for other students  or plain silly, then I can imagine that it is reasonable to object to it. So, 'halloween mask' may not be the best description of an appropriate mask.


Is it acceptable to ask a university professor to add his/her name to a paper?

No, it's not okay to do that, it is academic misconduct to have authors on a paper who have not made a contribution rising to the level of authorship.
There is no single central set of authorship guidelines, but you'll find them from various discipline-specific societies, universities, publishers, etc. Some examples:
http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

https://provost.yale.edu/policies/academic-integrity/guidance-authorship-scholarly-or-scientific-publications

Under no circumstance should individuals be added as co-authors based on the individual’s stature as an attempt to increase the likelihood of publication or credibility of the work.

https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/653883/Authorship-factsheet-March-2019.pdf
Under the category "should not be an author":

Guest’ authors, who make no
discernible contributions, but are
listed to help increase the chances of
publication;

All of these would ban the practice you are suggesting.


Postdoc in the US : what salary should I ask for

First, it is important to understand that a visiting assistant professor position isn’t a postdoc in the sense that you are being hired primarily for research and based on your research background.  This position will be funded by the institution rather than by grants. Teaching will be an important part of the job, and your teaching experience will be important in the selection process.

The American Mathematical Society publishes an annual survey of faculty salaries.  I’d encourage you to look at the survey to get a sense of the range of faculty salaries in the US. Figure that a VAP will be paid slightly less than a first year tenure track assistant professor.  If I had to guess, I’d expect a position like this at UD to pay somewhere between $60K and $70K.


How do journal/conference reviewers make sure of the results' integrity for submitted research papers?

They don't. Reviewing papers is volunteer work, which has to be done besides the regular job. So no more than half a day is spent on reading the paper and writing the review. That is enough to filter out obvious scams. But for more sophisticated fraud we rely on people trying to use the results once published and finding out that it does not work. The threat of the subsequent sanctions (and for most, the internalized honor code) is hoped to prevent most fraud.


How can I avoid overuse of words like "however" and "therefore" in academic writing?

Let me suggest an alternate view. This is in regard to writing proofs and other very technical things. You want, above all, for your intent to be clear. It may be that "however" and "therefore" are the best available words and that they clearly express the flow of the argument.
After all, if you were writing the proof purely symbolically you would "overuse" certain logic symbols in order to be exact.
And, don't let "fancy words" get in the way of your readers deep dive into the ideas themselves. Sometimes the most obvious word is the one that is most quickly understood to express your intent. This might be especially important for those who know your subject, but are not native speakers of your language.
OTOH, I haven't actually seen your prose. If an editor or reviewer objects, then you can change it to suit, of course.


Thesis: including an information not officially accepted (legal issue)

As you say, it is a legal issue and you need to get proper legal advice elsewhere. It may well be that the government has the legal right to do what they did and you have no safe alternative. Not every government action is just, but they still may have the authority to act. There are places where fighting the government is dangerous, of course.

However, the more important question for you is how it affects your dissertation and, ultimately, your degree. If that is unaffected it might be wise to just let this go, even though it may impact on whether you can publish what you have done.

I'll guess that your advisor is giving you good advice about standing clear of the mess. There are times when you need to fight, but also times when you need to retreat in the face of authority - especially when it can have a big effect on your future.

Stay clear of the agency in the future, of course.


Typos in Statement of Purpose of PhD application.

How significant a typo is rests largely on the purpose and the level of competition. If you were being considered for a prestigious fellowship, typos in the statement of purpose could and have been used as reasons to screen people out of the competition (because there were too many strong candidates).

For traditional admissions, on the other hand, while such sloppiness cannot help you, it's not normally severe enough issue to disqualify you, unless the typos become so numerous that they interrupt the flow of the writing.


Listing a Stack Overflow user as co-author for having provided substantial programming support

Physical presence is irrelevant. I'm a co-author of a four-author paper which came out of a Stack Exchange Q/A thread, none of whom have met in person.

What matters is intellectual contribution, and the question of whether contributing to code counts as sufficient intellectual contribution depends both on the specifics of the contribution and the field of research. I'm also a co-author of two or three psychology papers on the basis of having provided programming services, even though I would have expected an acknowledgement at most, because the culture of the lab (and probably the field more widely) where the lead author did her PhD was very generous with authorship.

The person best qualified to judge the contribution made by this SO user is you, followed by your professor. Your professor will also know the culture of your field. And if, as I presume, the professor is going to be a co-author, you would need them to agree to add another co-author. If you feel strongly about this, you should talk to your professor before you talk to the SO user about "upgrading" them. But since your professor has already given you guidance, and the third party is happy with that proposal, I suggest that you drop the issue unless you feel strongly about it.


Of course you can cite unpublished manuscripts; this is regularly done in academia. However, the important issue is that you must appropriately indicate that it is an unpublished manuscript, and cite (if possible) where the manuscript was found. This will allow for due consideration of the work in context.


How to explain past PhD withdrawal to employers/potential supervisors?

I wouldn't go into a lot of detail.  The person asking you this wants one single answer, and it should be something that puts you in a good light for the new opportunity and doesn't provoke hard follow-up questions.

If you want to go into the workplace, I would say "My previous program focused too much on theory without useful application and I really wanted something more applied.  I like to work on projects that have useful application in the real world."
Alternatively, if you want to be in industry, you can say that you realized you actually don't want to work in academia and your previous program was interested in keeping you in that realm, rather than preparing you for the workplace.
If you are pursuing more education, you may focus on differences between the field you quit and your new one.  Something like: "I realized I'm really much more passionate about computer science than I am about pure mathematics."
You should do nothing to mention the issue in anything that you give to everyone.  That's information to be conveyed in an interview, if at all.

It's a given that there were probably other things going on and your interviewer will assume there is more to it, but they are not your therapist and do not need to understand the whole situation.  Only give them what is sufficient and positive.
I was kicked out of a Ph.D. program at a very late stage because I simply was not performing well.  The main reason for my poor work was personal issues that are embarrassing and were my fault but were not directly related to my studies.  Later I re-applied to a program in the same field. When they asked why I dropped out I said that my advisor was travelling my whole last year and unable to supervise me well and that I had a compelling offer in industry. Both of those are true and were significant factors in my outcome. I didn't tell them I was also having personal problems at the time that negatively impacted my ability to focus on my work.
I got into the program and finished my Ph.D.  On the job market people again asked me why I did a few years at one school before finishing at another.  I said various things similar to the above but was never in a position where I really had to explain it.  I did some studies at one school, went into industry for a while, and then went back and finished at a different school.  That's as much as people know.  To this day my colleagues don't know what the deal was and have never had enough interest to find out.  That's the way it should be---professional conversations should be kept professional and private information rarely has a place in them.
I have seen people play the "I was young and immature" card and seen it work out, but it's a big risk.  My advice is to be honest with people, but don't undermine your future by dredging up potentially harmful issues from your past.  Instead say things that are true, put you in a good light, and will satisfy the asker.


Do Postdocs have any seniority ranking or progress?

Of all the kinds of academic positions, the postdoc is probably the most variable.  The common ground across (almost) all postdoctoral positions is: you should have a doctoral degree when you start the position, and the position should not be permanent or tenure-track.  That's really about it.  (Added: I agree with @StrongBad that most postdoctoral positions have an expectation of "advanced training" of one kind or another.)

It is rare for a single postdoc position to last more than 4-5 years.  In my understanding, the ones that do are soft-money positions and thus are more explicitly doing specified projects for the PI / grantholder.  I am not aware of any kind of formal seniority across multiple postdocs: generally the reason that someone does a second postdoc is because they want a permanent academic job and haven't gotten one yet.  They may also want additional specific training / the chance to work with other researchers, but this really is "additional" rather than on top of.

In terms of salary: in my experience [mathematics, US], postdoc salaries are rather flat across the period of employment.  (I previously had more detailed information, but I am less confident that it is representative even among math postdocs in the US.)  In my department we have one kind of postdoc that pays about $10K per year more than another postdoc is funded by an NSF grant, and the salaries for the latter postdoc are set by the NSF, so will be the same unless / until we get a new grant (or an updated version of the same).

When it comes to skilled labor, wherever you work for a year or more, you gain knowledge, experience and seniority in some informal sense.  One might say that a postdoc is a process of laundering a student into a faculty member, so late-career postdocs resemble faculty members more than early career postdocs.  Most postdocs in mathematics find their way from a combination of completing / continuing their thesis work and starting new projects with their new supervisor to developing a distinctive and independent research program.  Although the particulars differ across fields, I think that something like this is the goal of most postdocs: if a postdoc only does their supervisor / PI's work then it will be difficult for them to portray themselves as a valuable faculty hire.

For math postdocs, the only formal seniority comes from teaching obligations: namely most math postdocs start out teaching freshman / sophomore level courses.  If they are competent at their teaching and interested in teaching other courses (not all postdocs are), many postdocs move on to teach a junior/senior level course for majors in their second year and some postdocs teach a graduate course in their last year.  (In my fifth semester as a postdoc I was able to teach a topics course in the arithmetic of Shimura varieties.  I have since taught about a dozen graduate courses, but none as advanced as that.)

  In your later years, do you get to build a small team of junior researchers who you hire from your grant whom you can give some instruction,,

Some postdocs are not associated to a grant in any way; they are rather temporary faculty funded by their department.  Some postdocs work under their PI's grant, in which case the answer to the question is up to the PI (and the grant proposal).  Some postdocs receive grant funding of their own, in which
case some kind of money for junior personnel may well be included.  Also some postdocs work with graduate students, in a variety of different ways.  My current postdoc is for instance a member of the dissertation committee of one of my students.

  or you divide the tasks of a more ambitious project and you take some supervisory role in addition to your own hands-on research?

That could happen.  Some large research groups employ postdocs in a kind of managerial role.

  I do not expect it to be completely administrative or managerial because I know postdocs love the actual research…but at least some mark of seniority and experience?

Keep in mind that any seniority you acquire as a postdoc is ephemeral.  Spending too much time doing administrative / managerial work as a postdoc sounds very risky if you are aiming for a permanent faculty position.  Some departments somewhere must be hiring some faculty largely for their administrative skills...but I confess I have never seen it with my own eyes.


I'm sorry about your situation. Unfortunately, there is nothing much to do here. It isn't clear that the professor acted incorrectly here; it sounds more likely that you just did not do a satisfactory job on your capstone project, according to his standards, and they (being your professor and the University) do set the rules here. It is up to them to decide whether your performance was good enough.

  I explained him in the mail that what I actually meant in the report and he replied that you wouldn't need to explain me here and you should have explained it in the project.

He is right: like it or not, you are judged based on the report, not on emails you send afterwards. It is  his job to evaluate you and he did not understand your report, so he can't give you a good grade.

  Please suggest me what action I can take against the professor and what can be done to get graduated.

Don't take any action until you are absolutely sure that your capstone project was satisfactory. If it wasn't, then you can't take any action. You seem to have assumed your report was good enough, but it is not clear.

If the professor really has wronged you here, and failed you for no good reason, then you should reach out to others at the university to discuss your situation. Talk to a different professor about it and get a second opinion on the report. Talk to the dean or to your academic advisor.


I'm in a religious country, and my religious supervisor is praying. What should I do?

I grew up in a Muslim-majority country. Do's and don'ts:

Do show respect for the religion. That means avoid doing things like comment on how inconvenient it must be to pray five times a day, don't offer non-halal food, don't invite people to lunch during Ramadan, etc.
Do do as they do, if possible and not inconvenient. For example if you take lunch together, order/pack something halal. Unless you have special dietary requirements that require you to eat pork, don't eat pork when with others.
Do dress conservatively. If your institution has a dress code, follow that. If you're female, you can usually refuse to wear the hijab if it makes you uncomfortable (depends on country however), but still dress conservatively - e.g. don't wear something sleeveless, and wear hemlines that go below the knee (this rules out wearing shorts in public).
Don't pretend to be Muslim. You can't fake it. Learning how to pray in the religion takes time; the chant is nontrivial as well.
Don't pretend to be Muslim #2: just as important, once you identify as Muslim you could be bound to obey a different set of laws. Sharia criminalizes things which are fine in contemporary Western culture, such as homosexuality. If you're homosexual but identify as Muslim, you could bring the religious police on your head.
Don't pretend to be Muslim #3: in some countries, if people believe you are Muslim, it can cause you a lot of inconvenience. It doesn't take much to become associated with the religion (extreme historical example, less extreme modern example), and once you become associated, it can be really hard to leave the religion. Potential problems you could face go up to death. In the meantime it's not just you that's affected: in many countries, there are restrictions on Muslim persons marrying a non-Muslim; plus any child born to a Muslim is automatically a Muslim.

Exception: if you were originally a Muslim but no longer believe in the religion, you don't have good options. The above advice will still bring the religious police onto you, because you're now an apostate. You would either have to pretend to be Muslim (at least you should know how to pray) or leave the country and work elsewhere.
tl; dr: Leave religious people to practice their religion and don't criticize them for it. They should do the same to you.


What makes a stellar undergraduate thesis?

For me: significant originality, even if that originality is expressed within the context set by the supervisor.

One cannot expect the student to understand what problems are interesting
to the community, and which are feasibly solved by an undergraduate.
But once the context is
set by the supervisor, there can be significant room for originality within
that context.

I was working on "locked polygonal chains" in 2D and 3D, and posed the question
to my student of whether or not such chains could lock in 4D.
The answer was provided in her undergraduate thesis, and subsequently
published in a journal: No.

The proof was very much an equal-footing collaboration, but she was
inventive and precise throughout. Especially on the algorithm illustrated
above, she was ahead of me.

  Roxana Cocan and J. O'Rourke.
  "Polygonal Chains Cannot Lock in 4D."
  Comput. Geom. Theory Appl., 20 (2001) 105-129.


Can a potential Supervisor leave a hint on you in the scholarships and influence somehow the selection?

I would expect that absent firm rules that professors lobby pretty hard for the students they most want. It isn't a question of leaving some subtle hint.

There might be rules against it, of course, and that might dampen it down a bit, but ....

There might even be "horse trading" among senior professors.

But it is just another form of competition. Having a professor strongly advocate for you doesn't guarantee much if other professors are lobbying for others and the money is limited.


Generally, a biography describes a course of a person's life. By a solid overall biographical record, I suppose you are instructed to include all phases of concerned person's history -- from childhood to current time or death (whichever is earlier) in detail.


(note: I write this answer from a perspective in the biological/medical sciences, and norms about how to 'count' thesis work varies by field; however, in the fields I work in this sort of thesis where separate published or publishable papers are 'stapled together' is the norm)

It's great that your collaborator's colleagues are going to lengths to credit their work by citing their thesis.

However, a thesis is in some ways not a full publication, isn't really peer reviewed, etc.

You should publish the paper in a more conventional way if you want it to be cited by (and read by) the broader community. Your best bet would have been to do this when the work was prepared originally (and then the thesis would have cited as well as reproduced your collaboration).

No, you can't claim citations of their thesis as your citations, you didn't author their thesis and there is a lot of other content in there that is not yours.


You should apply for J-1.

I had exactly this question when my wife got accepted for a postdoc in the USA.  She started before me.  I was told that although it may be possible to work on a spousal visa, it is far easier to get J-1 directly.

Note: One difference was that we both got paid.  An unpaid postdoc sounds quite exploitative to me, to be honest.


TA talks to others about students, what to do?

When you have a complaint about a teaching assistant for a course, you should generally address it to the instructor of record first. Even if you believe the professor will dismiss your complaint, going straight over the professor's head will make you look bad.

Here are some suggestions for making a well-received complaint:

Make your complaint in writing (email).
Do not include any subjective judgment of the TA's behavior, only objective observations of what you have seen and experienced.
Give specific evidence to support your claims.
Phrase it as if you believe the professor is not aware of this behavior, whether you truly believe this or not.
Don't offer suggestions on what actions to take ("I think you should prevent this TA from working in future courses"), just describe what you have seen.
You can specify what steps you would like the professor to take to keep your identity a secret from the TA when discussing the complaint with him. (Only you or someone close to your situation can know how identifiable such a complaint will make you, and what details need to be omitted to anonymize you effectively.)

If the professor does not seem to take the matter seriously, you can escalate your complaint:

To the department head
To a student ombudsperson at your institution


How to frame early university troubles related to mental illness when applying for masters program after more recent successes at university?

Your outstanding performance in your second attempt should be your focus. Don't let yourself downplay how much you've achieved this time around, because every candidate without your history will be singing their own praises. However, you should, briefly, discuss the previous attempt with as much specificity as you are comfortable in your personal statement. A past failure with mitigating circumstances should not be held against you provided you acknowledge it and your recent performance clearly demonstrates that you've overcome these circumstances.


Two professors want me to work at their labs, and I'd rather work with one of them than the other

I don't think you have any obligation to explain the reason for your decision.  Just tell Prof B that after consideration, you decided to work with Prof A, and thanks for his interest.


Is it appropriate to email a professor with a simpler solution than the one she provided?

Email the professor, explain that you came up with an alternate proof, and ask if it is correct.
If you approach it this way, it should be perfectly acceptable to anyone.  You get to find out if your more-clear approach is correct, and assuming it is, the professor maybe uses it in the future.  If it's not correct, you get to learn where you went wrong.  A good exercise for all involved.


Intent behind Recommendation Letter requirement?

At a minimum, a letter of recommendation is no worse than, say, a Yelp review.  The person who rated Joe's Hamburger Shack 5 stars is a total stranger to you, but knowing that that person liked it is still more data than you previously had about how good the place is.

For a grad school application, there are few sources of concrete information.  Hard data like grades, GPA, and GRE scores cover only a fraction of the relevant qualities of each applicant.  It can certainly help if the admissions committee knows the recommender, but even if they don't, the mere fact that that the applicant is considered qualified by an active researcher at an accredited instituion is a significant gain over the other information available in the application.

Also, as Nate Eldredge mentioned in a comment, a good letter will not just state the belief that the applicant is qualified, but will give reasons.  These reasons, again, come from a person who is presumed qualified to evaluate them, and are therefore more valuable.

It is true that if not only the recommender but also their institution is totally unknown to the committee (e.g., a recommendation from Prof. John Doe at East Podunk Community College), the information may not be helpful, and could even be viewed skeptically.  But I don't think this is a common case.  Even if no one on the faculty personally knows or has collaborated with any professors at, say, Harvard, you can bet that it means something to have a Harvard professor recommend someone.  Although that's an extreme case, the same principle applies to other schools in varying degrees: even knowing that the school exists goes some way towards establishing credibility.

How much weight these are or should be given is debatable, but there is simply no other way to get the information in recommendation letters, namely a qualified professional's judgment of the applicant's quality.  It may indeed be that in some cases the committee views the letters as unhelpful because they are too vague, but if many letters are informative, then vague letters are already "bad" in comparison, and provide a means of winnowing the applicant pool.  Even in a hypothetical case in which only a few letters were helpful, the school doesn't really stand to lose anything by having them, and stands to gain useful insight that they can't get any other way.

Also, I would be interested to see some numbers on how often the admissions committee really does not know and has never heard of any of the people writing the letters.  An important thing to consider is that in many cases one or more of the letter writers will have been consulted by the applicant to get advice on where to apply.  Thus, there can be a self-selection process at work: professors know professors at other institutions, thus they advise their students to apply there, and then they write a letter of recommendation.  I would guess that this significantly increases the likelihood that some of the letter writers will be known to the admissions committee.  In effect, the same people are not only recommending the applicant to the school, but recommending the school to the applicant (by suggesting that they apply there).

A little edit: Based on your comments, it seems you are also worried about situations where, e.g., the letter writer is "biased" towards recommending the applicant.  There are two responses to this: one is that everyone knows that.  The recommender wouldn't be writing the letter if he were biased against the applicant.  The recommendation is not supposed to be "impartial" in the sense that it mechnically assesses some attributes of the applicant.  It's just supposed to be the honest opinion of a real person who interacted with the applicant in a real academic context.

More generally, there is simply no getting around the fact that virtually everything in academia operates on trust.  When you submit an article to a journal, the editor has no way of knowing whether you plagiarized the text, falsified the data, etc.  When you apply for a job and list dozens of publications on your CV, the search committee probably does not look up every single one ot make sure it really exists.  For better or for worse, academic procedures are built on the notion of receiving "credentials" that indicate you are to be trusted.  When someone receives a letter signed "Prof. John Doe, XYZ University", they assume that Prof. John Doe really is a professor at XYZ University.  It is of course possible to fabricate such credentials, but to handle that problem would require a complete overhaul of academia.  The basic reason people trust a letter-writer is because academics trust each other not to tell brazen lies about who they are, where they work, etc.  They understand that the recommender may not be totally objective in his or her assessment of the candidate, but they nonetheless assume that the assessment is made in good faith by a qualified judge; that's all that matters.


Why are there so many awards in academia in the US compared with academia in France?

I have half french kids and I have spent a lot of my life in France and in the Midwest.  The answer is easy - culture.

Americans love recognizing everything.  Participation awards, so many awards that anyone that is pretty good at something will surely get one.  My 4th grader at the time got a ribbon for 4th place in a race and his French grandmother said, "Why?"  She didn't even understand it.

In France if you win something you are really at the top of your game and its a big deal.  They generally don't placate to keeping self-esteem high, even with children.   Things are more regulated, committees generally mean something and there isn't a lot of duplication.  Now I see this slowly changing in France over the years and it becoming more westernized.

Your answer is just, different culture.  England is a bit the same as America except they seem to have accreditation companies and societies that also allow you to "pay" for an award.


With a ton of context I'd be guessing; without any it's worse than that. Some subjects are no doubt much easier to set up reviews for. Some are much less competitive, needn't have the anonymity as protected, aren't technical. In many subjects your contribution to the field can be quite meaningful without necessarily being disprovable--so the burden on the peer reviewers is more like that on any critic, and less like that of a judge.

When I worked as an editor at a journal considered prestigious in American Studies and Western American Culture/history/writing and that sort of thing--before it went under the next year--my handling-time on unsolicited submissions fell along a bimodal distribution. I was as likely to hammer it out and handle it in the hour as I was to file it away for ... next ... lifetime? Least likely was that I'd get it done in some reasonable amount of time, like two weeks.

All in all I'd guess your piece was "easy" for them. That means one thing or the opposite. To put it kindly (and probably true): not a fit for that journal. OR, definitely a fit, and easy to find reviewers for because of that.


Is it OK to send email to conference chairs asking for resubmission of the manuscript?

I might have a slightly different take than @PsySp in his answer on this issue, but I think fundamentally we agree.

In my view, it's probably fair to email and ask the chair whether you can submit an updated version. But it's also fair for the chair to say no: like @PsySp says, deadlines exist for a reason and you can't assume that you're exempt from them. Get your house in order and build your paper in publishable form before the deadline comes up.


How important is mathematics in engineering research?

How important is math emphasis in an applied field like networking?

Networking is an enormous field, which runs the full spectrum from pure mathematics to actual real-world deployment, with many shades of applied mathematics, algorithm development, modeling, simulation, and experimentation in between.  There are far more than "two modes of research" in networking, as you put it.  Mathematical emphasis is fundamental at the mathematical end of the field, useless at the deployment end, and somewhere in between in between.

To put it differently, it depends on what you mean by "networking".

Why should an engineering department award a degree to a thesis where the problem has an engineering cause, but everything is simply applied math?

There is no contradiction here.  I'd estimate that somewhere between a third and half of our engineering faculty at my university can legitimately call themselves applied mathematicians.  There was even a small but serious proposal a few years ago to move our mathematics department into our college of engineering.

Will the PhD student's approach play a role in faculty recruitment?

Of course!  Hiring patterns at my own university (in both CS and ECE) suggest that the networking PhDs most likely to be hired as faculty comfortably bridge the so-called gap between theory and application, speaking to both camps in their native languages, and applying techniques from both camps to Actually Make Things Work.  (Sylvain's answer is consistent with this observation.)

Is there a widespread notion of one being superior to another?

Of course.  Networking people are people.  As in any other wide-ranging field, many experimentalists think all theoretical work is pointless symbol-pushing, and many theoreticians think that all experimental work is mindless hacking.  They're both wrong.  Some theoretical work is pointless symbol-pushing, and some experimental work is mindless hacking, which is exactly as it should be.  Neither viewpoint is "better"; they're just different.

Not chalk and cheese, but chocolate and ginger.


Recommendation letter from an Emeritus Professor

No, the form of the email address won't matter. You want letters from those who can best support your candidacy, so don't bother with others. If they are the best choice to support you, then get the letter from them. Someone with emeritus status has had a long career and is probably well known.

Of course, a former professor should identify them self as such in the letter, naming the institution.

I doubt that electronic systems will block you, as not all letters come from academics in any case.

Some of us still maintain university hosted web sites and are listed among emeritus faculty.


How to correct citations in Google Scholar?

You think

  Google scholar is unable to identify [some citations to my work] because my name in the references of article has been written differently

But, I doubt Google works this way, because numerous mistakes appear in references throughout the literature. Perhaps this issue will resolve itself over time as Google has more time to crawl.


What is the preferred order of information in an academic CV for computer science field?

Yes, this is acceptable as are many other formats. It is not worth obsession about the exact format you use (though it should make it easy to find relevant information -- so use a good page layout). What does matter is the content of the CV.

But if you're unsure, look at the CVs a lot of people post on their websites when they are on the market for jobs. So look at the CVs of other postdocs you know and see how they structured theirs. Clearly, what they did might not have been the best possible format, but it was good enough to get a job!


Is it Appropriate to Include Personal Correspondence in the Appendix of a Thesis?

You can only publish email correspondence in your thesis if all people involved in the email communication agree.  Anything else is highly unprofessional and also unethical.
On the other hand, if you have clearly demonstrated that the manuscript had an error, there is no need to add those email.  You could write that this has been confirmed by the author and cite a "private communication".
Regarding the emails, there should be no problem to save the emails even if your account is deleted.


How GRE score affect your acceptance rate

Maybe a little, but don't count on it putting you over the line. Admissions isn't a numbers game at most institutions. Lots of bits of evidence suggest that you will, or won't, be a good candidate and a success in the program. You need to build a complete picture that has enough good points to outweigh any bad ones.

If you were a bad undergraduate that is a problem that you need to overcome, or at least explain. What were you bad at? Good? How does math fit in here, assuming that is your field? What else have you done? Do you have any research experience? What are your goals and do you have a plan to achieve them.

All of these things can matter, but a good GRE is positive, at least. What else have you got?


Is there a negative stigma associated with choosing a university for non-academic reasons?

Assuming there is a negative stigma, why would you ever need to tell anyone why you picked the university you attended? Having a great passion for Japan and Japanese should be enough for anyone assuming you do an awesome project which you can and should do no matter where you go to school. This is especially true if you're likely to want to stay in Japan after your schooling to be an academic there, and it's a great reason to go to a Japanese university if you'd like to make a life there due to your passion.


As a reviewer, what steps can I take after paper is published despite major scientific and ethical concerns, with no explanation from editor?

There may not be much you can do about the scientific issues.  A profoundly wrong paper should be retracted, and a correction should be issued for anything serious that's objectively wrong and correctable.  However, the problems you've identified (poor methodology and interpretation) may not definitively fall into these categories, depending on what exactly you mean.  There's no ethical reason why a journal can't have low standards or publish controversial papers.  The primary risk is that their reputation will suffer if they publish foolish papers.

It would indeed by unethical if they claim to be a peer-reviewed journal but aren't taking the review process seriously at all, and that sounds like what's going on here.  However, it would be difficult to prove based on an outsider's view of one case.  I imagine that if pressed, the editor would claim he/she evaluated the paper and your review and decided the paper was more credible.  It would be hard to prove that there was an ethical problem, rather than just poor scientific judgment on the part of the editor.

On the other hand, the allegations of copyright infringement and self-plagiarism are ethical issues that transcend journal standards or policies.  That might be a good place to begin, and perhaps more will come out during the investigation.

Here are some thoughts:

Your proposal to share this information with the editorial board of the previous journal sounds like a good idea.  I'd contact the publisher directly as well as the editorial board.
There may be an ethics committee in a relevant professional or learned society.  They could conduct an impartial investigation, which might lead to public censure or a retraction.
You could report these papers to the authors' funding agency, if any.
You could report these papers to the authors' employers.
You could publicize your experience on the web.

Among these possibilities, #1 and #2 seem most likely to make a difference regarding the journal, #3 and #4 might lead somewhere with the authors but wouldn't address the problematic nature of the journal, and #5 could be a valuable public service but is unlikely to change much by itself.


A systematic review already exists in the literature. When is a newer one required?

When?

Whenever there is a set of papers that has significantly extended or changed the topic of interest.
If you have to do it as part of your thesis.
If you are contributing with a new approach/method in a publication (the literature review would typically be part of the Introduction).

My advice: do not spend too much time on writing and trying to publish a literature review if the problem has not evolved significantly during this time. Most of this kind of works get lost in an ocean of surveys.


Who deserves to be first and second author? PhD student who collected data, research associate who wrote the paper or supervisor?

Put yourself in the shoes of the PhD student. She spent 2 years of her life conducting a study and collecting data. She needs help with statistics and writing (this is very common). The person helping with this claims first authorship (in my field this is already questionable) and on top of this even wants to give the second authorship to their supervisor. I can't see how this is supposed to be fair to the PhD student. The post-doc at most deserves third or fourth author. Where is the advisor of this PhD student? You are doing their job (and in my field the advisor would be last author).


How does one know that the field of research they are in is the best fit for them if they are average in it?

"I love computational materials science." End of discussion.

If you can do what you love you can have a marvelous life. If you can't do what you love you will have a harder time.

But, with time, hard work, and experience you will likely improve. There will always be people better than you at whatever you do. Don't worry about it. Don't envy them. But try to form collaborative relationships that might, in time, let you work with some of the superstars.

As to your colleagues who seem to have an easier time: they may feel quite differently.


How many marks should I take off for a student using an incorrect value?

Marks are a measurement of how well the student knows the subject. So it depends on how much of a lack of knowledge that mistake represents:

in most cases, if all steps are correct and only a number was copied wrongly, then obviously the knowledge of the subject is very good, and most of the question was done correctly, so "almost full marks" are deserved

if the mistake shows lack of knowledge (for example, if that "-64" is a value of power, which can only be positive, or if it leads to an obviously unphysical result that the student should have noticed), then one might remove more marks.

a tricky case is if the mistake leads to the problem being much easier to solve (e. g. "Write the last 10 digits of 2^(64+x)"), and it is correctly solved. In this case, it would be unfair to give full marks, as the student did not show much knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, this should probably result in no marks.

It seems like your case falls in the first category, so I would see no reason to give anything less than "the highest mark that is not a full mark".


My advisor won't review my papers, and he does not let me publish them without his approval

This seems like a case in which a delegation from your group should ask for an intervention from a higher level. If it is a general problem in your research group then department heads and deans need to be aware of it.
You may not get the feedback you need, other than from each other, but the "permission to publish" needs to get resolved, perhaps as a demand from above.
It might also be possible, depending on the overall organization, for other faculty to intervene on your behalf.


How to proceed when a required math class is preventing me from graduation?

That is what I wanna know. If I could take the credits I do have and transfer them to complete my degree.

Most schools have an in residence requirement: you have to take a certain number of credits at that school to get a degree there. This prevents people from earning a degree at one school and then transferring the credits to hundreds of other schools to get hundreds of degrees.

To choose one example at random, Santa Barbara City College requires 15 credits in residence.

This means two things for you:

Transferring your credits to another school for an AS degree probably won't work; you'd have to do several classes there to meet their "in residence requirement." (Though as Patricia points out, you could possibly skip the AS altogether and transfer your credits directly to a BS program.)
This may explain why your degree audit changed after you were "readmitted" at your current school. Being re-admitted reset the clock on your in-residence requirement.

Assuming your goal is to get the AS, your situation could be one of two things.

Scenario #1 is that the rules were incorrectly applied to you. For example (and this is my guess) the advice to re-enroll as a new student was just bad advice. And now that you have done so, your situation is so complicated that the "front line" people don't know what to do (and don't care to find out). So, they're just hoping that you give up and go away.

If this is the case, the solution is to bypass the front-line people and go to someone higher up who has the knowledge and authority to fix this for you. This may be a dean. At some schools, it's hard for AS students to get a meeting with a dean. In the worst case, you could have to hire a lawyer to force them to pay attention to you.

Scenario #2 is that the rules were correctly applied. For example, some schools require you to graduate within 5 years. If your school has a time limit and you went over, then the policies were applied correctly and you don't have a leg to stand on. In this case, you would have to repeat the classes.

Of course, it's impossible for me to say which scenario you are in, not knowing your school's policies or your full situation. But it's something you should be able to find out by going through your school's policies carefully.


Is it typical for colleges to cancel a course well into the semester? What options does an instructor have in this case?

I have seen this happen at community colleges, although perhaps not past the two-week point.

I hope you have been actively trying to promote interest in your course!

At this point, your best bet, to try to keep the course alive, may be to gently try to get some of your students to lobby for keeping the course.  Be careful how you do this.  You don't want to give them the feeling they are on a sinking ship.  You can just mention that the enrollment is low, and it would be helpful for all concerned if the students were to let the department know that they feel the course is important for them, in their program of studies, and important for the department.


Giving my article the same title as a published book by another author

I'll be perfectly honest - if I was in that subfield, I would be extremely annoyed in having two works with the same title - simple search for the works would be always troublesome, mentioning one of those works during a talk would always require a digression, etc.

All of that would distract other researchers from the results, especially for the paper considering that it was published later. Ultimately it is not inconceivable that referee (whoever it might be) demands the change of the title.

Bottom line - I would try to think another witty title. :)


Does "bad credit" affect postdoc application in math?

I have a lot of experience with postdoc hiring in mathematics at several institutions.  There is no mechanism by which faculty who are reading postdoc files would know your credit score, so you shouldn't worry that it will affect your application.

HR departments don't really play a role in academic job searches (aside from technical things like approving the wording of job ads).  It is all done by academics.  So though in the private sector HR departments do things like run credit searches, this just doesn't happen during faculty and postdoc searches at universities.


Difference between "referee" and "reviewer" in the context of journal manuscript review?

So far as I have ever been able to tell, "referee" and "reviewer" mean exactly the same thing.


Grant/Funding question: "Expected Benefits and Outcomes for attending the conference"?

Depending on the funding agency, I'm not so sure that I would immediately discount the personal gains that your attendance would offer you.  However, I suspect that you might find this prompt easier if you start to think about the overall gains and extended effects that this might offer to both you and your institution/group.

Allow you to build connections with researchers at other institutions. You can also expand this in terms of types of institutions (academic, governmental, corporate) and locations of institutions (is this a regional conference, does it draw from around the world)
Allow you to identify potential collaborators for multi-institutional work
Allow you to learn about the current research in this field
Allow you to bring back information about the current research to your organization. Depending on the grant sponsor, you may want to explain how you will be distributing that information (presentation to the department, lunch talk with a research group, etc.)
Boost the reputation and visibility of your organization with the greater community
If your department is hiring faculty and the grant is funded by your university, you might be able to distribute information about the job search
If you know what the presentations are going to be on, then you can also be specific. E.g., "Meet with Professor YYY and discuss her work on field XXX", "Learn about the latest in VOIP infrastructure rollouts".
Identify potential collaborators for internet connectivity rollout in your country


Do teachers want students to add their attempts on solving their own question in an email?

Yes absolutely include it. That's the only way for the instructor to see where the gaps in your knowledge are. If you think it makes the email too long, then put a concise summary at the top and then the details below.

Edit: consider also that in the above post, you attempted to answer your own question. Look how much context that gave to the question. Imagine if you'd posted the title and the bolded statement only. We would not have understood your thought process. You might not have received many useful answers, just comments asking you to clarify what you were asking


I changed a word from a source, how do I cite it correctly?

Write:

  [...] something extended, flexible and [mutable].

You might like to elaborate in a footnote, e.g.,

  The compendium poorly translates original word as movable, but mutable is more appropriate, as noted by Marleen Rozemond in "Descartes' Dualism," page 93.

(Depending on the style, you might like to replace in "Descartes' Dualism," page 93 with a citation.)


If I wanted to quote a joke from a website in verbatim in a formal academic essay, how would I do that?

The same way you use text taken verbatim from any source.


(1) It is perfectly normal to reject offers. The other side (professors, universities) rejects application every time they make an offer, and they know that, often, applicants apply to more than one position. You might want to be open about this, i.e. that you are considering another offer at a different institute as well.

(2) How to choose which offer is best depends on many factors, a lot of which are personal. Where do you want to work in terms of location, which institute fits your personality and ideal workplace, which group is bigger/smaller/more successful/gives more room for personal contribution? What about salary/teaching obligations/availability of lab space/equipment and research participants (if you need some)...

Ask some questions during the interviews to see which place suits you best. Maybe even walk around in the city, if this is of importance for you.

(3) As pointed to in (2), go to both interviews and then ask for information that will help you make your decision.


How do you know your paper is ready for submission?

The truth is that the paper will never be in perfect condition for publication. This is the role of peer review, to evaluate the work from an expert viewpoint. In general, I have seen that after 2 3 weeks and after 4 5 revisions the quality of the paper increases and reach a saturation point where the paper needs an external opinion in order to be improved. If an external opinion is not possible(the paper might be outside a peer domain), then one must forget the paper and to reevaluate it after some time, and then to submit for publication. However, what is more important is the idea and the results from the paper, and not only the presentation form. Also, the validity of the results and the interpretation is very important.


I am studying at a university where only one faculty member speaks the same language as me. How can I get 3 recommendation letters?

References should be from people who know you professionally. This includes not only people from your current University. Consider asking a reference from the following groups of people:

Your collaborators or coauthors in English-speaking world.
Your professors' colleagues who know your work. Even if they don't speak English, but know what your are doing, you can get their reference and translate it to English using a recognised translation service.
The referees for your PhD work are ideal candidates to write your references. They will have to know your work and they may know English well or good enough to compose a letter, perhaps with some help from you or a translator.
People you met in conferences and discussed some aspects of your work in relation to theirs, even when it did not result in joint publications, can write you a recommendation. This is a bit unusual, but still better than nothing. I used this option once when I had no better ones.

I also think, that it is very likely that the situation is not as dire as you describe: there may be professors or lecturers with good command of English near to you and there is still enough time to make them aware of your work. The problem is mostly with the lack of networking, but this is possible to fix. Join the local English-speaking club. Check if your University has a seminar series you can present at. Check if other Universities in your area or nearby run seminars where you can go and present. Check if there is a local conference or scientific event where you can go and talk.

When you are on such events, join conference dinners, lunches and similar social events. Don't hesitate to ask people for help or start conversation in English. Many people in post-Soviet countries study some English in school and they are usually happy when an opportunity comes to finally use it. They may not speak perfect English, but all you need is to introduce yourself, share one interesting topic of discussion, and get their name, which leads you to their email address. Do not hesitate to drop an email: even of their spoken English is not excellent, people usually do much better reading an email, particularly with help of online dictionaries or automatic translation services. Stay positive, keep trying, use simple and straightforward language and you will hopefully find that communication barrier is not that high.

Good luck.


Proper way to Format text related to Functions in an Article about a Computer Package

First, as I argued in this answer, I suggest you to not use directly the command \texttt but to define a new command reflecting its purpose.

About your specific question, a common way is as follows:

Don't put parentheses if you are declaring the existence of a certain function  or making a reference to it (example from the Matlab documentation):

  The inv function and the expression A^-1 both compute the matrix inverse.

Use the parentheses with the input argument list  when you want to describe the details of the function and its calling syntax:

  The function max(a,b) finds the maximum between the variables a and b.


I think a very short email saying you are going to wait until the deadline for accepting the offer, with no further explanation, would be enough. You are not doing anything wrong and April 15th is the original deadline.

Perhaps it wouldn't even be necessary to explain anything. However my suggestion is that it is always better to be wrong on the well-mannered/ cautious side, than thinking "it is not necessary" and then find out it actually was.


I'm about to graduate and enter a 1-year master's program. I don't really know any professors, and I've never done research. How can I get involved?

Is it too late for me to get involved in research?

No, your timing is excellent.

  how do I actually get started?

Presumably you know what fields interests you. One of those fields should probably be your research field. If possible, opt for a master's degree with a research focus (rather than an entirely taught degree). Opt for any research focused modules. Opt for any modules in your chosen field. Conduct any coursework on research problems. Establish whether you really want to do a PhD.

In parallel, start searching for a PhD supervisor. That supervisor can be located anywhere in the world that you are willing to live. Selecting a supervisor is most likely covered elsewhere (e.g., https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10878/22768), so I wouldn't discuss further.


The book suggested for a class has bad reviews, should I use it or another?

Especially as a beginner, you should really get the recommended book. It is very likely that the course will follow the book rather closely, and trying to study the same material from a different book is usually not easy if you just started to program. If you think that the recommended text book is really bad, you can always get some other learning material in addition.

Some more explanation if you happen to think "C++ is C++ - it shouldn't matter which book the OP uses to study the same tool". Well, problems arise if the text book the OP studies uses a different didactic concept / ordering of content than the course. For instance, I am teaching Introduction to Programming in Java. Our specific text book introduces OOP notions, such as classes and methods, much earlier than most books. Students that choose to study using different books often end up being extremely confused in class, because their books never mention class hierarchies until half-way through while they are all over the place in in-class examples. Another aspect is that most programming books have their idiosyncrasies in  terms of how code is formatted, how certain basic ideas should be expressed, what "good" and "bad" programming concepts are. Advanced programmers can easily abstract from such idiosyncrasies, but they tend to confuse the heck out of beginners when applied inconsistently.


Is it a good idea that a reviewer recommend a paper to be submitted to another journal after it is rejected?

It's definitely OK to name one or a few journals you would consider more appropriate for this paper. Some web interfaces for reviewers even have that as a built-in option.

One thing I encourage you to do is to use the journal's publication criteria to back up your opinion. These may have been given to you along with the paper, or they can be found on the journal's website. If, for example, the journal X's guidelines say:

  Articles should be of high scientific quality, originality, significance, and conceptual novelty that are of interest to the wide and diverse contemporary readership of X

then it's good practice, in your recommendation to the editor, to evaluate the manuscript following these criteria. For example, you could say:

  The manuscript is technically and methodologically sound, and clearly written. The conclusions are, in large part (minor exceptions noted below), supported by the results. However, it seems to me that this detailed study of knee injuries sustained in wingsuit accidents may not be of interest to many of the reader of The International Journal of Transportation Research.


"I enjoyed our conversation a lot" is a standard phrase and doesn't mean very much. The added "...excellent job..." probably means just that, unfortunately sometimes you get more than one good candidate and he's acknowledging that fact.


How do I cite an equation that has a typo in the source?

You should indicate what the typo was and that you corrected it. This will prevent your readers getting confused if/when they look up the reference, and related annoyances (e.g., the referee accusing you of making an error, your professor giving you a bad grade, or people generally just thinking you are sloppy). Noting the correction will also create a historical record of the typo, which could be useful for other researchers working on the same topic in the future.
Related discussion for a non-mathematical correction: Quoting a typo: Do I really have to do "sic", or can I just fix the sentence?


Addressing medical issues in grad school applications

I would think that the one semester is an anomaly. As such, since it was your first semester, it likely won't have much impact as long as you explain it adequately. People do get sick. Other people understand that. On the other hand some people do tend to party a lot and others may not be so understanding. But an explanation should suffice. If appropriate (it isn't always) be able to back up your statements with some evidence - say a recommendation from a doctor that the issue is in the past.

Some people won't even blink since your trend line is positive.

If you can also show the the poor grades early on didn't leave you with a hole in your education, all the better. That seems unlikely in this case, of course.

But of course, my analysis won't be universal. Some people will look harshly, but it should be rare most places.


My opinion.
At your age (at any age) planning years ahead is hard.
I'd recommend doing what excites you most and what you're best at. That seems to be chemistry. Doors may open (or close) down the road that you can't foresee.


Who should write summary papers and what are the pros and cons of doing so?

In my field survey papers are highly cited. If the same is true in your field than the low chance of success may be ofset by the high reward if you succeed.
Regardless, you need an overview of what has happend in your field concerning your thesis. Making it an article forces you to really think through the relationships between the articles. For me it is quite common for me to read articles and think "well, it is kinda like that" and when I force myself to sit down and really write that argument down it does not work. So even if your overview does not get published, it is still a great investment in your subsequent articles. And who knows, maybe you are lucky.


Should I preserve anonymity or strictly follow a journal's instructions?

Follow the instructions. If you do it wrong, the journal will send it back to you with a grumpy note. Some journals do not practice double blind review but rather single blind, so the authors are known but the reviewers are anonymous. (Discussing the merits and drawbacks of this particular approach is unfortunately beyond the scope of this question, so please don't open this can of worms in the comments.)

In fact, once I had a journal submission returned to me because it was anonymous! The editorial assistant requested that I resend it with my name and other information proudly displayed. In that particular case, I had failed to follow the instructions. Don't make the same mistake I did -- follow the instructions!


The Priority Criteria for Selecting The Principal Advisor

There are multiple facets to this.

Quality of research
Reputation "rubbing off"
Quality of mentoring
Amount of work and stress
Personal ties
I've surely forgot something.

The major problem is that some parts of this might be more important for you than for me and vice versa. So, the basic thing is to decide what do you actually want from this position:

Get a PhD and leave
Qualify you for further academic life
"Parking lot" until you have found a better position in the industry
Have fun
Whatever.

This impacts a lot on the "weights" on the above qualities. Further, in my experience it's never a broad choice, but rather a sequence of binary choices. Say, the junior PI approached you first, you declined, the gossip in the staff room got to the star PI, he did not suggest you a position. It's an extreme example, but it's not "should I go with PI A, B or C", it's "should I take an offer from PI X or not".


Showing book cover in public presentation

No, I can't imagine anyone objecting to free advertising. It is just a visible citation, actually. If you think the people at your talk will want to follow up, you could also provide a list of titles and ISBN numbers to make it easy for people to acquire the books.

Whether your presentation could be considered a "republication" of the graphics or not, I can't say. Not a lawyer here. But publishers in general would be happy to have their wares pushed like that. If you were putting those graphics into some (printed or online) publication, you would possibly need permission, but the titles etc would be enough for such purpose anyway.

In any case, in the US, at least, showing the cover or even snippets from the books is probably covered under fair use if this is an academic use. In particular, you aren't reducing the value of the work by showing its cover.


MLA style: n. pag. in parenthetical reference?

This is what I came up with but I'm still having problems so it would be great if anyone could help.

The MLA Handbook states under 6.4.1. to put the author's name in parenthesis with an unpaginated work. But this does only make sense for examples with direct quotes if the author isnt mentioned in the sentence.

  The British "were most avid about it" (McCoy).

What do I do with an example like?

  McCoy states that the British "were most avid about it."

It makes no sense to put the author's name again at the end of the sentence in parenthesis.

Any ideas?


Can I take a year off during a masters program?

As Bill Barth suggests, you really need to check with your department and institutional policies. Every school, and often departments in the same school, can have very different policies.

The fact that you're a master's student, and therefore presumably enrolled in classes rather than actively conducting research, probably will make things easier, as leaves of absence are less disruptive during coursework than in research (for instance, it's harder to "postpone" a grant for a project to enable a student to take a semester or year off).


Slow Response from Journal: Should I withdraw a paper?

It's possible that the editor it was assigned to has left the journal.  Call them on the phone and then call another editor of that journal.  It's definitely odd for it to have fallen through the cracks like that.


I submitted a conference paper that was too long...what now?

Keeping in time is mandatory

In general, you can expect to be cut off if you are over the time limit, so you definitely should shorten your presentation - it's very likely that important parts of your talk are at the end so it's very important not to lose the ending!

In most fields, presentations are very, very different from the actual content of the paper - if someone wants to read the paper, they can do so at any time; but the presentation should cover why they'd want to read your paper afterwards and also explain things that might be easier to show or demonstrate rather than read about.

Even if in your field tradition is to read the paper as-is, that is optional but keeping the schedule is mandatory. I would suggest to reduce some parts that describe the background/foundation/earlier results which would be known by the conference attendees but might be less known for a general reader of your paper. You should mention earlier work, but you don't need to go into detail about that even if you do so in your paper.

Keep the focus of your talk on the novel parts of your paper, and also make sure cover in detail the motivation of this research and it's wider context in your field.


Is doing a PhD a good way to develop a deeper understanding of quantitative finance and statistics?

No, this is not a sign that you need a PhD. A PhD is to prove to other people that you can do novel research to a significant depth, with significant rigour.

What you want is to learn some mathematical techniques. Now, the only way to do that, is to practice using those techniques. You need some exercises that will take you from where you are now, to where you want to be. You need to do those exercises, and find out which ones you got wrong, and why you got them wrong; and then do them correctly.

A PhD isn't an efficient or cost-effective way to do that. But a taught  Masters degree (e.g. in Quant finance) might be. A free online course might be. A study-buddy who understands this stuff might be. A private tutor might be. Finding out which textbooks an appropriate Masters course uses, and working your own way through them, doing the exercises in each chapter, might be. The exact recipe will be whatever works for you. But what you need is to build up your toolkit of maths knowledge and skills, and you can only learn that by using those tools.


Multiple interviews and reimbursement from the same institution

It does sound to me like you should disclose that you are doing other interviews at that campus, particularly since they are likely to notice you back in the same building later in the week and wonder why you are there.  And, the department offering to pay your travel is probably going to wonder why you are spending the whole week there when your interview is just one day.  Finally, I imagine them knowing you're being courted by multiple departments might make you seem like a more attractive candidate.


Is there any way to detect high tech (e.g. cell-phone assisted) academic dishonesty?

Ultimately, this is not a technological problem but a cultural and pedagogical problem.

The problem with technological solutions is that they set up an "arms race" with the students, in which you will certainly lose.  Electronics are constantly getting smaller and obtaining more means of communication, so a student who really wants to cheat will likely have a means that you won't be readily able to distinguish.  Consider, for example, the recent emergence of smart watches: are you going to ban watches from the classroom?  What about low-tech but still effective forms of cheating like scraps of paper?  If you get a frequency scanner, will you be able to catch somebody using non-standard communication bands?

The best defense against cheating students is other students who understand that it cheats them out of the value of their well-earned grades.  If you can inculcate a school culture where most students are not just not cheating but actively opposed to cheating, then it will be much harder for cheaters to prosper.

The second best defense against cheating is to design exams that are more about process than product.  Think "show your work" and "essay question."  Yes, it's possible that a cheating student will outsource their work and render themselves a puppet of an expert whispering guidance in their ear, but that's a lot harder to do than secretly googling for information about Kirchoff's laws.  I am, in fact, a big fan of open-book tests, which tend to push students to focus on synthesis instead of memorization. This, I believe, has much more value to students in the long run, and also has the nice side effect of rendering high-tech cheating much less valuable as well.


RA position doesn't give feedback on rejected application

Unfortunately for applicants, academic job environment is very competitive: there are tens, hundreds or sometimes thousands of applications per post. The employers (Universities) are often overwhelmed with the number of applications. Their recruitment processes are designed to optimise their own convenience, not the one of the applicants. To put it bluntly, they have too many people who want to work for them to care about the feelings of those who is not successful this time.
Universities often make it clear that they won't provide feedback for candidates who were not shortlisted for the post (i.e. not invited for the interview). You could assume that they are supposed to provide feedback for those who bothered to prepare and attend the interview at least --- but in practice it happens less often than not.
Even though this behaviour is common, you are right in thinking that it is wrong. It is very frustrating to spend 10+ hours preparing the application, several days preparing to the interview and actually attending it -- just to never hear from them again. The good news is (at least) that if this place has a selfish and unfriendly attitude to candidates, you probably don't want to be there anyway.


Saw Principal Repeat Key Word from Famous Professor without Citation

Really a little more context is needed here but the term one needs to pay attention to here is "educator". This TED educator has coined a phrase with the intention that that phrase and its related concept is passed on and used for the purposes of education. If the phrase relates to a general educational concept then I see no reason for the principal not to utilise it in the way that it is meant to be. If, however, this phrase relates to a specific original idea which links to original research then yes, citations would need to follow. In such a case, I would mention it directly to the principal. However:

I would assume good faith on the part of your principal and that she has seen the video and used the phrase as intended without surreptitiously putting a crimp in her career if rumbled. I think that when one is in any doubt about another colleague's plagiarism, assume a higher motive.

If I were you, I would just leave it, but if it really bugs you, you can casually mention [in person rather than in writing] that you appreciated the Message to the School and you saw a TED video which mentions the same phrase and you agreed with and appreciated its application. This way the principal should feel that her Message was appreciated, and that you are taking time to view sources around the same field. It may also have the effect of making sure that any future cases of possible 'plagiarism' get thought through a little better, cited or credited if necessary.


Am I responsible for a Wikipedia article if I wrote it?

If you think the additions are useful, consider adding them. You thought your time well spent building the pages in the first place, so I would think you probably have some interest in improving them.
If the changes seem to you marginal, or time consuming, write a polite letter to the proposer reminding them that you don't own the page so they are free to improve it. If you're polite and appreciative you probably won't cause offense.


Is it legal/possible to apply for a patent based on an already published/submitted journal article?

Self-plagiarism is not the issue. The patent documents an invention. It is not a creative work itself. You could just stick a cover letter on your paper and submit that, in theory (as a provisional patent anyway). In practice, everyone says a patent that is not carefully written by a lawyer will be worthless. Lawyers especially tend to say this. However, different countries have different rules regarding copyright on the images used. So you may not want to reuse them if you transferred the copyright to a journal.

Patents are required to be both non-obvious and novel. Your own publication can count as "prior art" proving your patent is no longer novel. This is also called a public disclosure, which usually means publishing or offering it for sale to others. Different countries have different laws regarding when you can patent something that has been publicly disclosed. The US gives you a year after publication. Many other countries give you no time; the idea can't be patented there after disclosure. Applying and submitting at the same time may work but you're right on the line there, so need to be careful in other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_disclosure


I made a mistake of staying with my PhD even when I had lost interest in it. Should I continue with my academic dream?

I'm not a personal or employment counsellor, but you should probably visit one.
However,  I think the only big mistake you made was to be born in the year you were, leading up to finishing your degree in a period that is very difficult for academics generally with an unfavorable job market and, then, along comes the pandemic. It isn't you, of course. Being depressed is pretty natural as long as it doesn't reach the level of a medical condition.
But, and this is employment advice, I guess, do what you have to do to (a) get through this period with short term or less-than-ideal employment and (b) use whatever opportunities you have to move your research to an area that you are happier with. Develop contacts with people who do interesting things and who can potentially help you move on.
You can't have the past back to do over your previous life. But you can take opportunities to move to a better place. It won't be easy, but the failure is with the general systems, not with yourself.
I was one who also finished up at a time of turmoil in the academic market and had to compromise drastically to stay in academia. But it worked out over time, and not quickly. I was able to find a job that worked, if not ideal, in a place that I enjoyed and developed some contacts and relationships that helped me move to a better situation. Make do for a time so that you can make better later. Really, it is about all one can do.


Making one of two Google Scholar accounts default with given email address

I assume that "Email was verified" refers to the verified academic email address and not the GMail address associated with your account, since that is the only extra verification step asked by Google Scholar that I know of. Then, the following should likely work:

Log in to the old account, and click on the pencil icon near your profile photo to edit your profile. There, remove the email address from the "Email for verification" field and save.
Log out and log in to the new account, add the email in the same field by editing your profile, and save. This would probably send you a verification email again, which you would need to confirm.

Further, if you wish to (imperfectly) combine both accounts, it should be possible to delete the old account in the settings, and add those articles to your new account using the "Add articles" option, but I am not entirely sure if the citations will get handled correctly.


How to gain research experience after master program?

I am only familiar with the UK system, but here are some points about getting research experience in the UK.

1) Find a supervisor for your PhD.

A lot of UK departments prefer to admit PhD students who has found a faculty member who is willing to supervise and has a research proposal written together with that member. If doing a PhD in the UK is part of your goal, you could start by looking at departments/people you want to work with and contact them as a prospective student.

Some patience is required as they might not be looking to supervise a student at the moment. But I have found that most are willing to give prospective students a research project to work on before admissions or while working on the proposal. In fact, all those who were willing to supervise me ended up offering me a research project.

2) "Cold calling" for projects.

You might find that some professors, lecturers, postdocs or research fellows etc are very happy to have students with the experience to work on their projects. You can try emailing people with a very short version of your academic CV, asking for research opportunities. I have successfully gotten projects this way too.

3) Official Internships/Studentships.

Some UK universities have official internships or studentships for someone to work on a research project for 3-6 months. These may not be advertised so you need to do point 1) and 2) or simply ask. I have successfully gotten these before and they were willing to at least help pay the rent (400-500 pounds I think) or given you a token sum. I cannot be more precise about the pay because I turned down the payment in order to keep my part time job. Do note that getting paid or being in an official position will come with the requirement/expectation that you report to work daily and stay in the office for some minimum number of hours.

4) General advice.

Academics are incredibly busy people, especially famous tenured professors. Also, they might have a steady stream of students to work with. I think I was quite lucky to get around 30-40% respond rate when emailing people asking for research experience. Most of them are because I am asking as a prospective student. So please do not be too disappointed that people don't get back to you. And don't spend all your time trying to get just 1-2 famous faculty to give you research opportunities.

You should be prepared to travel and meet them, paying for all the travel fees yourself. You should also not talk about reimbursement/payment first. In my humble opinion, you need to be prepared to work on a project for free, making it clear that you want the experience on your CV and a possible paper. Then, they might arrange for payment for you. It is your responsibility to show that you are serious and trustworthy and not a waste of their precious time.

I think it helps a lot (with regards to funding) if you are from the EU as funding in the UK is usually restricted to EU citizens.

I hope this helps.


Immigration and tenure track in the United States

I've taught at both large R1 universities and small liberal arts colleges. For the large R1s, we don't care -- we simply want the best person for the job, regardless of their nationality. R1s have very competent foreign scholar offices and lawyers who know how to do the proper visa paperwork.

At smaller schools, it's more difficult. Budgets are tighter and the provost has more say over searches. If there are two candidates that are almost equally ranked, then the provost may suggest one over the other for non-academic reasons. There may not even be approval for international airfare for job candidates at the interview stage.

You have to remember that an H1B application will cost at least $10,00-$20,000 in lawyer's fees, staff time,  and application costs. The stack of paperwork for the Department of Labor certification itself is about 3 inches thick. Furthermore, even though there is an exemption, sometimes H1B applications can be very, very slow -- which means that an instructor hired in March might not be able to join the campus by August. This can be deadly for a small school that needs its faculty present.

tl;dr Be the absolute best candidate possible for the position and the visa status won't matter. Otherwise, it is a factor amongst other factors.


Highlighting sentences in the statement of purpose

I use a similar approach, using bold to highlight key words or expressions in a short free text summary in my CV. The benefit is that points I think are key to my career are visible even at a glance. As you mention, many are stressed and reading through letters take time. Although the persons responsible for the admission process should read the material carefully, it is only human to, for example, get tired after a large number of applications. Using highlighting and other forms of structuring elements (paragraph breaks or even bulleted or numbered lists) to make the text easier to access is therefore a good way to make the reading easier.

To anyone thinking that highlighting might induce unfair advantages, it is worth stating that it can also easily back-fire if the highlighting is not consistent or give an impression that is not consistent with what the text or other supporting material will indicate. In other words, any highlighting must be done with care to be a tool to simplify the access to the information and not to skew it.

Depending on where you are in your career, the CV will be the most important part of an application. Finding ways in which to summarize, for example the general impact of your articles or other activities becomes important. This is why I have a short summary text at the start of the CV, the lists of publications is then supporting the statements about number of publications, the citations of individual articles, etc.


Familiarizing oneself with state-of-the-art at the beginning of a PhD

I don't think there is a clear transition between “familiarizing oneself with the subject” and “being an expert in this topic, and generate new ideas and approaches”. The transition is gradual, and it's called “the PhD”.

However, there are ways to quantify this evolution. For example, ask yourself: in a discussion with your advisor and a few other experts on a topic related to your PhD, how able are you to make useful comments and suggestions? How often do you come to your advisor saying “I have tried to do X because I read about it and I think it can apply to my issue”?

Regarding the written “output” of the beginning of a PhD, it pretty much depends on you and your advisor. Mostly, the output is knowledge in your mind, but it can also be useful to make notes (both for yourself and your advisor) on each subtopic you discover. For myself, as an advisor, I ask students to contribute bibliographic notes (written or orally) every now and then, for me and other students of the group who work on related topics.


What are possible legal ways to obtain a textbook for free?

Here are a few ways that you should look into:

Check your university library
If your library doesn't have it, ask them about doing a interlibrary loan
Talk to your professor. They can be insightful and understanding about these things so they might be able to lend you a copy.
Search online for ebook/PDF versions. I found that an old edition of a statistics book was available on the author's website for free.

If you are out of options with obtaining it for free then you can usually find a used copy at your book store or online for cheaper.

Books certainly can be pricey, so in the future it helps if you factor these costs in when you apply for student loans/scholarships.


Extra time you spend doing research will almost certainly do more to help your chances of admission in graduate school than taking >4 years to graduate will hurt - especially if you don't have other strong research credentials (with the caveat that admissions committees are full of people, and you might run into one person who for some reason decides that taking >4 years to graduate is the mark of a failure - it isn't really worth your time worrying about each of these possible types of people).

However, you should keep in mind that graduate admissions, particularly for PhD programs in the US, typically occur only at one time in the year, for fall semester, so you should have a plan for what you intend to do the rest of the year. If you can get hired in a university lab in your field of interest, that would be ideal for graduate admissions.

This answer is based on my experience in Biological/Biomedical Sciences in the US, and advice may vary by field and country; I also have in mind primarily PhD admissions.


How does the US government shutdown affect academics?

It definitely has. And by that, it has an impact even on academic life outside of the US. One of the most important data and literature resource in medical and life science is the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, running for example the literature database PubMed. Now it has a statement on its website saying

  Due to the lapse in government funding, the information on this web site may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the web site may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.

Concerning the National Institute of Health, the website http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml states that

  Research into life-threatening diseases and other areas will stop, and new patients won’t be accepted into clinical  trials at the National Institutes of Health

I'm not sure how to interpret this, but it could mean that the research personnel is on unpaid leave.


The answer is to ask your supervisor. Theirs is the only opinion that matters. It is unlikely that anyone except your supervisor and maybe your committee members will read your thesis.

I prefer "I" but that's irrelevant. I'm not your adviser.