Stipend vs employment contract in Saxony (Germany)

Recommendations:

Calculate whether the scholarship offer is a fair offer (see below).
If not, the employment contract is the only feasible option.
Check whether the institution insinuates that a scholarship is basically the same as the employment contract wrt. to your contractual duties. If so, that is (at least to me) a big red flag about an inclination to institutional abuse of power. And that means that you should also think carefully whether you want an employment contract with that institution.
At least, check the customs of your group-in-spe and how much freedom postdocs have there. Your group leader may be in a more or less good position to give you more freedom than the institution normally does.

Note I use "scholarship" here for the German Stipendium. AFAIK, the English stipend/scholarship do not directly translate to the German Stipendium.

Others have already told you that the social insurance treatment is very different. I'd like to expand a bit further on this.

IMHO the best (fair) starting point for comparison is to consider the scholarship equivalent to the employer's gross (Arbeitgeberbrutto) of an employment contract for which no income tax is due.

Scholarships for scientific work are not subject to income tax
Check with my tax office that the particular contract that is offered fulfills their criteria for this, though. One of the criteria is to check whether the contract is actually a scholarship and not an employment contract.
Health and long-term care insurance is mandatory whether you are employee or not.

Not being an employee and being young and without family, you may be able to get a cheaper private health insurance than the governmental one.

You can also go with the governmental health insurance (called "voluntary" or sometimes "voluntary mandatory" tariff, there will be no health check for this). In that case, your fee will be the same percentage as employer + employee percentages together, approximately 1/6 of your income. But while for an employee only the wage is counted, in the voluntary tariff all sources of income count (small time freelancing as a side line, interest/dividends, rental income?).

If you are coming from a foreign contry, you may be able to bring a health insurance with you. Health insurance for young academics going to work abroad for a while can be surprisingly cheap.
Unemployment insurance is for employees only. You don't have to pay, but you'll also not be eligible for benefits later on. Currently relevant: these benefits include the Kurzarbeitergeld (short-time compensation). OTOH, a scholarship is not bound to working hours, so the scholarship is anyways paid also if you cannot work due to your workplace being closed because of SARS-CoV-2.
I'd argue that you should put at least a comparable amount aside into an additional emergeny fund.
Pension cass is not mandatory. If you want, you can make voluntary contributions, though, and in that case you can largely decide how much you want to pay into pension cass. Such contributions will count both as contribution years as well as according to the amount paid in.
Again, if you choose not to contribute it is probably a good idea to put at least a corresponding amount (between 1/6 and 1/5 of your income) into your own retirement fund.

The pension cass is also responsible to decide whether a given contract is an employment contract or a scholarship - you can ask them for clarification. If they find it is not a scholarship*, there will be a big stink though, since you just exposed your institute-in-spe trying to commit social insurance fraud.

Whether these points put you at an advantage or a disadvantage will depend on your actual circumstances.

(I've had the luck to get a scholarship as PhD student that was actually fair according to this calculation - but it was the only one scholarship program that paid so much that I'm aware of. When I write "I'd argue": acually I have been arguing when that funding agency was cutting the scholarships that a fair comparison would tell the scholarship holders that while it is ultimately their own decision, they should consider the social insurance percentages as ballpark for how much they should put aside for rainy day/pension)

You will not be covered by the work accident insurance mandatory for employees. Part of this is not a disvantage: as long as your institute has employees, the place anyways needs to be safe according to work accident insurance rules.
But: you have a work accident there will be differences to you. Your treatment will be paid by your normal health insurance. But work accident insurance patients may be treated preferentially wrt. waiting times (OTOH, there is no free choice to which doctor to go initially). This includes any accidents you have on the direct way from home to work and back.

There are usually some specific advantages for scholarship holders over employees:

Many scholarships have associated training programs on various topics
Many scholarships give you additional project/book/travel money that noone but you can spend. In that respect it's like a mini-grant for you only.
You are more free in your scientific work than an employee.
Of course, many professors leave great freedom to their employed postdocs, but not all do. A scholarship legally means that you must be free in this respect.
@mmeent has a point that some institutions have a bad reputation of abusing scholarshiops, though: not only of not paying what would be fair according to the calculations above, but also by insinuating that the scholarship holders are bound to directions of the institute like employees. In other words, abuse of power.
Since you are not an employee, e.g. the copyright of software you write stays yours - it will not be automatically transferred to the university.
Same for inventions.

Again, many institutes are happy if their postdocs take software they wrote with them and go on taking care of it rather than risking more abandonware - I had one such institute that put the software under a FOSS license for this reason and I still take care of the software almost 10 years later. But I've also been at an other institute where the standard license is best described as "no bit leaves the house".

Since you may change to academic employment: at least within Germany the wages depend on your relevant work experience. Scholarship may not be counted automatically by prospective employers, but you can ask your institute to certify (write a letter) that they consider your scholarship as equivalent to you working.

Employment contract

  mandatory working hours  associated to the employment contract

In the past, this again was something that was pretty much up to your PI/professor (and when I had the scholarship the professor didn't make a difference between scholarship holders and employees - he argued that this would only create more and unnecessary friction among people who substantially did comparable work).
However, there is a newish court decision that employers must properly document the working hours of all employees. Properly tracking working times of PhD students and postdocs will create huge difficulties with overhours. Whether anything will happen in practice is a totally different question.

From the "work a lot" aspect, you'd probably be fine as employee as well because if you have overhours, you are supposed to take them off as soon as possible. This includes taking days of during the week. What is more difficult is that your employer may not be allowed to let you work the times you do now (long hours, evenings and  Sundays may be problematic)

pension cass contributions are mandatory for employees. However, if you do not reach the required minimum of 5 years of contributions, you cannot get a pension and instead you can get the employee half of the contributions paid out as a lump sum. If you have more than 5 years of contributions, you will be eligible for the corresponding pension payment once you reach pension age. Regardless of where you are (within the EU, "your" pension cass will also pay out the German part)
As an employed post doc, academic freedom does not apply to you: you are bound to the directions of your employer.
Many academic PIs let their postdocs do their own research, but some PIs or institute directors like to excercise their power...
In Germany, a fixed term contract can not be canceled by either party once the probation period (6 months) is over. (An agreement where both sides agree to void the contract is always possible, though.) The employee has the right that the employer agrees to void the contract, though, if they have a better offer. But they need to actually have such a better offer.

* there is some concern that since the pension cass will receive mandatory contributions if they find it to be an employment contract they are not exactly unbiased in these decisions in general (that's not only about scholarships, also about other contracts such as freelancing).


What should I do when my students use their phones in class?

Well, we are educating adults - and they should be able to decide what's good for them and what's bad.

Of course, this philosophy does not work out really well in real classrooms - but some students are using their phones to look up terms I used or check concepts I was teaching online - yes, it really happens!

What I'm doing is confronting them with the results of such behaviour: I'm telling students, that they failed a test because of their phone usage (not only in class but in general). From time to time I demonstrate that they do not follow the course by taking someone as an example for something who is currently using the phone and they do not recognize we are talking about them.

But if you take it too serious, you can only lose.


Describing a still working self developed software system in a research paper. Which tense to use?

Question: should I use anything other than the present indicative active tense to describe a system's behaviour.

Question: is there any reason to write in another tense? Will it help a reader to understand the system better if they think of it as functioning at some time in the past?

Answers: if you are describing a mis-behaving or erroneous system ("when I pressed button 'B' the system gave off a cloud of smoke") then it would be useful in that it would distinguish the mal-functioning instance. But you are trying to describe a properly-functioning system and so the present indicative active tense is preferable: "Press button B, The green light illuminates ...". It reads like a manual and so your write-up will be useful.


Why the taboo against naming discoveries after yourself?

Traditionally naming after scientists has been considered an honour bestowed upon somebody by their colleagues. This is why there are plenty of such names in latin animal or plant names. one very good example is Strigiphilus garylarsoni, a chewing louse, named after Gary Larson, author of the Far Side.

Naming can also be subject to strict laws. In some countries, it is, for example, not possible to name official places after persons until after they have passed away. This is to prevent people to inflate their own reputation while alive (it is quite easy to see where such behaviour is going overboard). But, this is a digression.

The main point is that etiquette indicates that one does not name things after one-self, one can hope that the work is so appreciated by others that a naming occurs. It is probably also a good thing that everything we discover is not named after a person. I drove my Smith at 120 kiloJones per Dickens.


Lecturing (teaching methods) for a diverse group of students with weak science backgrounds

Teaching 'unprepared' students is always a challenge and prep takes a lot of time (four to five hours of prep for one hour of lecturing sounds about right...and maybe a bit low). So, overall, your numbers seem to be inline with norms.

If you want to make your teaching more effective, you should read some books about teaching (there are many). You should read this question for some ideas on improving yourself as a lecturer.

Generally, 'active learning' - where the student is the focus of the learning process (as opposed to the lecturer being the center) - focuses on engaging students, putting the load on their shoulders. Group work is particularly useful. I've seen studies (not handy) that say that in every learning situation, group learning (e.g., group discussion) always improves the learning effectiveness.

You should do more prep and you should do less in class (they should do the work in class) and they should do work outside of class. All of this needs your careful planning but some students will think they you are not doing anything...but they will end up learning more in the end.


As a supervisor, what feedback would you expect from a PhD who quits?

In general, I feel the two items you list already (over-)fulfill what justification you strictly speaking owe an advisor on your way out. You lost interest in your research subject, and you are disappointed with the university's managerial practices. I am not sure there is all that much more to say with regards to the first item, and it's not particularly actionable for the advisor anyway.

For the second item, I am sure he would appreciate some concrete examples of situations that you feel where inadequately handled. At the very least, this gives him ammunition for future discussions around improving managerial processes ("we already lost je_b because of situations X, Y, and Z" is a much easier to make argument towards change than an abstract "we need to improve some stuff").

The only areas where I would tread lightly is problems where he is himself the culprit, or could have reasonably made a difference but didn't. Personally, I would use the common advice from Workplace.SE here on exit interviews - don't use them as a chance to blow off some steam. The chance that you will enact positive change is low, but the probability that you burn some bridges is very high.


Are there any guidelines for how to distribute images in a (bachelor) thesis?

The basic guideline for this should be your institute's guideline on how to layout bachelor or master thesis.
From a typographic standpoint you should never mix one column with two column layouts. LaTeX offers packages which you can use to wrap text around figures to reduce white spaces.
Like you said and did, I also would put the figures around the spots where they are mentioned in the text. LaTeX arranges them automatically (you can however specify some positions in your figure environment). But from my experiences, it does a very good job at finding the right positions.


Is it a good idea for a nonnative English speaker to have native speakers help make the English in statement of purpose perfect?

It's definitely a good idea (in fact anyone in your situation should do so), I have seen plenty of people around me in my graduate school who had done so. There even exist professional services specialized for this task (it's a pretty big business in some countries).

Regarding your concern that the jury might think that you have been "cheating", forget about it:

by providing a flawless statement of purpose despite being non-native, you are showing the jury a lot of motivation;
if the statement of purpose was used to assess your true level of English, they wouldn't ask for TOEFL/IELTS;
when writing research articles later on, you will still often have a native speaker around to answer questions.


Is it worth delaying a PhD thesis submission to gain more publications?

I think you should consult with your sup regarding your situation to complete the Ph.D. and your future. Are the publications important for your graduation?

However, I think I have a more important question: Are you on scholarship or financial constraint? Can you live on your scholarship while waiting for the publication?

If this is not the case, I would suggest that you should submit your thesis, regardless of your publication status. After you submit the thesis, you can still be in the circle, such as doing casual teaching, marking, etc.

However, if your scholarship allows you to do that, then yes, you may wait. Nevertheless, publications while doing Ph.D. are not necessarily the only thing for you cross the bridge, but it is the experience. It is very difficult to get your paper accepted especially in a high-rank conference if you hardly get any proper supervision.  With a good team, you may find publishing easier than right now.


Strategy to avoid duplication when my paper is under-review

Sadly, priority is established by whoever is first to publish, not by when the work has been conducted (since this is normally not really traceable). However, depending on the discipline, there are normally multiple ways to handle this problem:

Posting a preprint: probably the easiest way to show that your work has existed before it appears in a peer-reviewed journal is to send a preprint to a preprint server, such as arXiv. How "useful" this is for establishing priority depends a bit on the discipline, but at least your work is out there and you have a fairly solid argument to convince people that you at least did not copy from whoever published before you (if it comes to that).
Multiple discoveries: in many disciplines, it's simply not true that once a paper on a specific idea has been published no further similar work can be accepted. Frankly, in an experimental discipline, as long as there are not a handful of similar experiments with results pointing in a similar direction a theory isn't really accepted anyway, so the second, third, or even tenth study may still provide sufficient value to be considered even at strong journals. I think in math things are different (but if you are in math you would probably post a preprint).
"Being vocal": it goes against the instinct of some people, but in my experience a good strategy to fight against losing priority is to tell as many people as you can what you are working on. If you already give talks at conferences about your preliminary results, tell your collaborators, publish partial results, or blog about it, the word what you are working on is out there long before your paper actually appears. This has two effects. (1) It detracts people from working on your topic in parallel (or, if they already are, seek collaboration). Your competitors fear the same thing you fear (and, if they are just getting started, they may feel that you are way ahead of them). (2) Even if somebody beats you to publication, the community is well aware that you and your competitor just worked in parallel on the same topic (see also "multiple discoveries").


I would think you don't even need to go into much detail: just the fact that you have found the author's work sufficiently helpful that you want to express thanks... will be enough, I think.

That is, ... perhaps contrary to the fake myth that textbook and course-notes writers have large, expressive fan clubs... mostly one feels that one is speaking to the void, with no response. (Nowadays even to keep track of IP addresses of hits on one's site seems to require an extra load of various things equivalent to "Google Analytics", which slow things down enormously, so are not usabe... I remember the relatively-better-old days when I could see the IP addresses of people who hit my web pages...)

I myself do make a point of communicating to people whose writing is especially good, at all levels, especially if it's not "heroic, prize-winning" glamor stuff, but is simply very, very good.

We, collectively, should do more of this, I think.


Where might I find a collection of before and after proofread articles?

If you perform a search for "examples of bad student papers" or "examples of bad writing" you should find many examples. As an added bonus, many of the examples are then analyzed to provide suggestions for improvements.


How many words is a typical scientific publication (particularly in biology)?

This source mentions that they're "typically 3,000 to 10,000 words in length". This page may give you some tips on the length of specific parts of the paper, as well.

BTW, I think the length of the publication can also be dependent on where you are submitting it. Also, you can check yourself creatively by going to sites like http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/, and copy+paste the text into a word counter. ;-)


What is a "very good higher education degree" when applying for a German PhD?

Basically, you need to have a master's degree. If that master's degree comes from:

A German university
A university in any member country of the Bologna Process
A few other countries considered "equivalent" but not participating in the Bologna Process, such as the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan

then it is almost always automatically accepted. On the other hand, if your degree is from another source (such as India, China, Iran, Africa, etc.), or is from a German Fachhochschule, then the degree must be certified by the university as being at the same level as a German master's degree before you can be admitted. Also, after your admission, you may be required to take some additional courses to establish your candidacy (although this is usually on the order of two to three courses during your first two years).


Post doctoral while working on self employed job

This is a complex issue with a lot of variables. If your post-doc is for work completely unrelated to the work of the company then there is probably no serious issue as long as you faithfully complete the required work.

However, you will also face several issues if there is some relationship. For example, will you have conflicts of interest between the two aspects? That would make it hard-to-impossible to carry on. Likewise, are there intellectual property issues? In other words, is it possible that you will learn something in the post-doc that is, for contractual or other reasons, off-limits to your company. There may be other issues as well if there is any overlap.

For issues such as these, both the post-doc project PI and a lawyer should be consulted.


Do graduate students go home for the summer?

I have seen a wide variety of decisions about the use of the summer break from classes, both in the case of students from the US and those from abroad.  It really runs the gamut.  Examples:

One friend couldn't afford the air fare to visit his home town, during his entire PhD.  This was very stressful for him.
One friend made his good-byes in May and came back in late August married, with his wife accompanying him.
Some students visit family for part of the summer.
Me: when I needed the money I worked as a secretary in a temp agency over the summer.  Otherwise I enjoyed the break from TA'ing, which allowed me to immerse myself in my exam prep or my project.

It's a very individual decision.  I don't think one should decide about summer plans based on what other people do.


Will dropping out of a masters make it harder to get accepted to a masters in another field?

I can only say this with all of my heart:

Above all else, choose a field that maximizes both your earning potential and your love for the occupation.

In that statement, I've narrowed it down to two variables. You can make it more complicated if you choose, but I'd advise against it. Trust me. 25 years from now, you don't want to regret having chosen the wrong occupation. I can't stress that enough. Look at this resource regarding occupations.


How have perceptions of ResearchGate changed from 2014 to 2018?

I have a Researchgate profile, but I only see my activity decreasing in the near future. To me, the issue with RG is that it only appeals to junior or unknown scholars. While it is great that they now have a way of disseminating their research, RG doesn't help reaching the "big names" because most don't use the platform. Most fields are sufficiently small that people reasonably know each other or can ask someone else to be introduced. Hence, RG doesn't help narrowing the gaps between academic circles of "big names" and "unknown researchers", although this is something urgently necessary.

Additionally, many of the services that RG provides are subpar compared to competitors. I already have a number of ways to keep updated with the current literature in my field, and most of the recommendations that RG sends me are unsurprising or duplicate. The citation/read count is mostly useless, and many services such as Google Scholar and Scopus are much better at that. The platform for including current projects is also fairly inflexible and generally asks to share more than what the researcher is comfortable with---lab webpages are much better at that. I also don't see RG as a reasonable platform for uploading preprints, and like many uncurated venues, most people who do resemble cranks, and I don't use RG to look into someone's publications because it looks messy and incomplete. I use Google Scholar, Scopus or personal webpages for that.

I have never used the "Questions" section of RG, but the few times I glanced it, I expected to see some sort of a forum for academic discussion over some topic, but it seemed more like a watered-down version of SE minus the efficient curating. And most questions remain unanswered.

I do keep my RG updated, and every week or two I receive a request for a pdf of one of my papers. I suppose easing this request process is an advantage over other means of communication, but I don't think many people who use RG attend those requests anyway. I have also never received a request to collaborate through RG, but I have received such requests through e-mail.

I think the rationale behind RG is interesting (i.e., connecting researchers online), but it just doesn't work well, and doesn't appeal to most of the relevant people in (my) community. Collaborating in science is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. I don't see how an online platform that connects people who don't know each other and have no way of knowing how each other work can reasonably help at that.

I do think one aspect of RG is fine, which is post-publication peer-review. But while it does allow people to publicly comment in publications, the platform is also not built for long comments, only back-patting, and most people don't use it for that anyway.

In general, it seems that maintaining your own webpage, even if with much less functionality, appears to be better than having a ResearchGate profile. But two things that RG attempts to implement are worth pursuing: 1) post-publication peer-review, and 2) some way to connect people from the same field but who belong to different academic circles.


How much effort should weekly homework be worth?

I use a rule of thumb that out-of-class work, including assigned reading, should be about twice the in-class hours.  So, a class with 2-1/2 hours of classroom work per week should have about five hours of outside work per week.

For a 15-hour load with 2-1/2 contact hours per three credit course, that works out to 37-1/2 hours a week, a fair approximation of full time.

For any class, some students will find the work to be easy and it'll take less time than you estimate.  Others will find it difficult and it will take much more time.  You're looking for the median and a fairly low standard deviation.

Early in my teaching career, I asked some classes to keep a journal in which they recorded the time spent out of class.  The responses seemed highly suspect, so now I just talk to some of the better students from time to time and ask about how long they spend.


Title for a paper that theoretically compares several algorithms and implements one

Difficult to choose a title without more information, but why not choose:

Performing ..., theoretical comparison of four algorithms, and implementation of ...


How much is the normal salary of a postdoctoral fellow in North America and Western Europe?

Let's find some official numbers and statistics. From this article:

  As a baseline, in 2012, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research Service Award (NRSA) postdoctoral stipend for new postdocs was $39,264, increasing to $54,180 for those with seven or more years of experience. Funding levels at universities are broadly similar.

Post-doc salary guidelines depend on individual institutions, and benefits vary widely from place to place. In addition to salary, checking the benefits is important in the US, but less important in more civilized/socialistic (strike out the inapplicable term) countries.

A job site that gathers salary information from US job advertisements has the following for post-doctoral fellowships:

  Post-Doctoral Fellow average salary is $39,302, median salary is $38,000 with a salary range from $20,779 to $961,896.

I think it's safe to say that $961,896 is an outlier, but apart from that, the median matches  the NRSA number. It also shows that there is a broad range of salaries, even by browsing the job listings on that site.

For Europe, as I've said the situation is heterogeneous. I know how to find numbers for UK, at least. If you look at jobs postings from jobs.ac.uk for post-doctoral positions, the range appears to be £28,000 – £37,000 (apart from a few outliers). This would be roughly $44,000 – $58,000, but you have to adjust for taxes, health insurance, and then cost of living (which can be quite high in UK).

In France, CNRS is the largest scientific employer, and its post-doc salary is:

  The gross monthly salary of a CNRS postdoc is 2,500 €

As an anecdote, when I started as assistant professor, my salary was significantly lower than my post-doc salary. And even some of my post-docs in my group had higher pay than me (as well as some industry-employed PhD students). But money's not everything…


Group-building for project, how to handle non-response?

First stop would be to get a phone number of the student - you might be able to get it from the university if you can't from a friend or classmate. Explain the situation to the student and I'm sure they'll understand - it's a common enough thing to happen.

If you can't get a phone number or feel it would be inappropriate (I honestly don't think it is in a time critical scenario), then send another email with a deadline. If you wanted you could put a read receipt on it so you'll know if they've opened it - some people dislike this though as it feels a bit intrusive.

In terms of the second student, explain the situation fully and say you've got a deadline - ask if they'd mind waiting till them, but you can't expect them to wait if they get a better/more suitable offer.


Is it better to write "Related Work" at the start or in the end?

The main advantage of putting related work near the beginning is that it allows you to very clearly define what is new in your approach.  I like to do that when I'm attacking a very well-defined problem and my contribution is closely related to what has gone before; e.g., if I've modified algorithm X so that it runs twice as fast, then I must review prior work on algorithm X.  I try to work the review into the flow of an expository structure -- i.e., introduce prior work as you move naturally through the introductory and motivational concepts.

The disadvantage of putting related work near the beginning is that the reader must wade through it before getting to the important part of the paper -- your contribution.  It also may interrupt the flow of exposition.  So I put the related work nearer the end when possible; for instance, if I'm solving a problem nobody has considered before, or exploring some newly discovered phenomenon.


How many recommendation letters should you ask a professor to write?

Normally, you should choose the two people who know you best and can write you the strongest letters, and ask each of them to send one letter to each program to which you are applying. Each of them will write one letter and send copies of it, with minor modifications if needed, to every program, so it isn't much more work than sending one letter.

This is to your advantage (you get the strongest letters) and also minimizes the total amount of work.

If a program needs more than two letters, or you think another professor would be a more suitable writer for one particular program (for instance,  if they have connections to that institution), then you can ask for letters from them as well. But there's no need to get letters from more different people purely for the variety.


How should personal/health be presented when explaining a bad grade at an interview?

Don't dwell on it, and don't bring it up unless your interviewer specifically asks about it. A couple "pass" grades doesn't sound too terrible to me, lots of people have much more serious marks on their academic record, such as a semester in which they failed most/all of their classes. Even in that case, though, I wouldn't bring it up in an interview.

Your academic record will be viewed as a whole, rather than in microscopic detail. A concerning pattern would be poor grades in courses central to the work you want to do, like underperforming in math compared to other subjects if you are in a STEM field. Two "pass" grades in one semester is not such a pattern.

If an interviewer asks about it (I actually doubt they will, or if they do, it might actually be more tongue-in-cheek than serious: more of a comment on the rest of your strong record), I wouldn't dwell on it, either. You don't really owe them any details. "Yeah, I had a stressful family situation that semester and didn't feel as focused on my coursework" is more than enough (could also mention that it was specific to the time of the exams that solely determined the grades).

The rest of your record speaks for itself, so let it do that. Keep your focus on what's actually important in the interview, which is your interest in research. I think an interviewer would find it strange, maybe uncomfortable, and counterproductive if you spent the interview trying to explain two grades rather than talking about research. Once you start a research career, your past grades become mostly meaningless.

(as a disclaimer, I'm from the US and don't have any experience interviewing in Europe, though I'm fairly confident my answer translates or I wouldn't have written it)


Transcript error, college unresponsive - how to handle?

A couple of suggestions. First, I think that having three "majors" is pretty rare, so a system error omitting the possibility would be easy to make.

Second, I doubt that if you are good enough, then the third major isn't going to put you "over the line" in any application when two won't. (Caveat below)

Third, just explain it somewhere else in your application materials, such as your CV or cover letter, and also ask that the registrar will back you up if asked. Alternatively, have a faculty letter writer make it clear on your behalf. It is best if someone else, rather than yourself only, makes the statement so that it gains credibility.

Caveat: If that third major is your specific field of interest in graduate school, then you may need to have a letter from the registrar as part of your materials. Though, if you are in the US, even that probably wouldn't be essential as it isn't an absolute requirement that you continue in grad school in the studies you did as an undergraduate. Other places are a bit more strict, perhaps.


Applying for Academic position after Phd completion

Talk to your supervisor about how to formalize this role.

Most likely you can get an honorary contract or something similar, which will give you an official affiliation with the university that you can put on your CV.

Besides putting it on your CV, it will also allow you to use the university affiliation when publishing.

The only barrier I see to this would be visa issues, if you no longer have a right to work or study in the country of the university.  I'm not sure the impact on an unpaid position, but it's possible that this would prevent an honorary contract.  In that case, simply put something less formalized like "collaboration with X on articles based on PhD thesis" I don't think it will cause much of a problem.

Potential employers are worried about gaps where you are doing nothing; as long as you can show you are academically active, even if not in a formal role, I don't think you have to worry.


Is there a risk my Statement of Purpose will be plagiarized if I post it online?

This is very unlikely if you do your statement of purpose well: the document should be too specific to your situation and interests to apply to your English TA.

To reduce the chances of it being plagiarised, try considering some standard tips for a good statement of purpose [emphasis mine]:

  Tell them what you’re interested in, and perhaps, what sparked your desire for graduate study. This should be short and to the point; don’t spend a great deal of time on autobiography.
  [Summarize...] [r]esearch you conducted. Indicate with whom, the title of the project, what your responsibilities were, and the outcome. Write technically, or in the style of your discipline. Professors are the people who read these statements.

And so on. The common theme among these and the remaining tips is that the statement of purpose should really highlight your unique qualifications and interests.


What is the difference between hypothesis, thesis statement and research goal?

I had this same question recently and did some research on it. The definitions I found weren't consistent, but from them I derived the following.

Thesis statement -- A definitive statement about the way the world (or your system of interest) works, especially what is most important in causing or influencing the behavior of the system.

  "Family expectations has primary significance on the performance in college for Latino girls in the Western US" is an example of a thesis statement.

Research goal -- Expresses what you hope to learn or shed light on in your research.  Specifically, the goal should specify what type of results you are hoping to achieve. It contextualizes your work in relation to other research, especially theory.  It also feeds into your choice of method.

  "My research goal is to develop a theoretical model of cultural influence on college performance, contextualized by gender and ethnicity" is an example of a research goal.

Hypotheses -- What specific conditions or relations do you aim to test or evaluate in your research.  Any research that does not include a method for hypothesis testing should not claim to test hypotheses. A hypothesis statement must be specific enough that it is testable by the methods you choose, and also it should be falsifiable -- i.e. it is clear what evidence might prove the hypothesis false, and such evidence should be plausible and possible.

  "Low family expectations has a detrimental effect on the college completion rate and time-to-complete for high-achieving Latino girls" is an example of a hypothesis statement.

Notice how there are specific, testable conditions and metrics -- "college completion rates" and "time-to-complete".  These conditions should appear as metrics in your research methods -- i.e. instruments and analysis methods.


How should I ask my advisor on help with something I should know how to do?

The way to frame your question can have a huge impact. If you did your due diligence and researched some material on this (books, lectures, papers, StackExchange!), and are still stuck, then there is a chance that your questions are more than valid.

If you start your email or personal question by: "I have tried three ways to do this.."  and then show/tell them that you have honestly tried your best, your supervisor should help you out. That's what they are for.

Also, feeling like a fool today may accelerate your advance in the future. Postponing communication like this is not always wise (given that you've done your part).


Is it okay to contact a professor for collaboration and say the goal is to publish?

(This answer builds on @Alexandros's comment.)  As I understand it, one of the principal merits of having "physical" courses and lectures -- I mean, both the lecturer and the attendees are affiliated with the same university in the same geographic location, and they all show up in a certain room at a certain agreed upon time -- in our technologically advanced age is to facilitate "analog" interactions of all kinds between the lecturer and the attendees.  Sending a proposal via email seems to squander the advantage of your physical proximity to the lecturer.

I would suggest simply asking to talk to the lecturer in person about the project you propose.  You can ask either in person or by email, whatever seems best or quickest.  In my opinion, the fact that you are "sitting in" on the course rather than (presumably) formally enrolled in it just means that you should be understanding that the students enrolled in the course should have priority in any scheduled office hours.  Assuming you're affiliated with the university in some way, I don't see why you should feel hesitant to contact the lecturer (as I said above).  By the way, most academics are very interested to talk further about topics related to their research-level courses: more often than not, they are more interested in that than all other kinds of student interaction.

In terms of the publication issue: YMMV, but I personally would not lead with that.  My motivations for collaborating with others are: (i) learning more about a subject of interest, (ii) answering interesting questions, (iii) writing up what we learned / did in a way that will be helpful to others, and so forth.  This is nicely aligned with wanting to publish papers, but that's not what I said and that is not my precise motivation.  To me, having a student mention "publication" in the first meeting would turn me off a bit as being overly mercenary and insufficiently intellectually curious.  But that is my personal perspective and also my perspective as a pure mathematician.  Still, I think that most academics need to be grabbed by the intellectual / academic aspects of your proposal in order to proceed with it, so I would expect most of the first meeting to concentrate on those.  If you don't interest the faculty member, there might not be a second meeting.

Conversely, if you meet several times with the faculty member to work on something, then he is interested enough to spend time on it, which is highly correlated with it being publishable.  In any event, I think there are no guarantees for this kind of thing: you never know whether something will be publishable until you do it and try to publish it, of course.


Redrawing a schematic diagram/image/schematic circuits to avoid Copyright infringement in publication

Question 1
Since you have asked us to assume that fair use does not apply (a big assumption!), your question hinges on "copyrightability." In the United States, one requirement for copyright protection is that the material have "at least a modicum of creativity." (That comes from Feist, a Supreme Court case about the uncopyrightability of the white pages of a phone book.) The standard line is that facts aren't copyrightable, only expression. Relatedly, the scènes à faire doctrine eliminates copyright protection for tropes and conventions, and the merger doctrine eliminates copyright for very simple expressions of facts. A selection or arrangement of uncopyrightable components is copyrightable, so long as there is creativity in that selection or arrangement.

Here's an example from the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices (2017):

  The Office may register a work comprised of rocks that are selected, coordinated, arranged, and fixed in such a way as to result in a sculptural work. Likewise, the Office may register a photograph of a rock, a drawing of a hand-tool, or a written expression of an idea. However, the Office cannot register a mere “compilation of ideas,” a mere “selection and arrangement of hand-tools,” or a mere “compilation of rocks,” because ideas, handtools, and rocks do not constitute copyrightable subject matter under Section 102(a) of the Copyright Act.

If you use only uncopyrightable components of the original and do not copy a creative arrangement of those components, then you do not need permission (nor do you need to rely on fair use). This is simply something copyright permits, without permission from the rightsholder in the original work.

I've based my answer on U.S. law, which is my expertise, but this concept of copyrightability has equivalents in every copyright regime. The details, including the threshold of copyrightability, do vary significantly. For a slightly more international perspective, you might want to check out Copyright for Librarians, Module 3: The Scope of Copyright Law.

So, the answer to question 1 is, "it depends." Sometimes yes, sometimes no. (A lawyer's answer, I know. Sorry!)

Question 2
As for question 2, rotating a 3D graph, I disagree with the assessment that that's "OK," but perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Certainly reproducing a 2D graph with a 90 degree transformation would implicate the reproduction right. Perhaps what is meant with the 3D graph is such a rotation as to require creation of new material (e.g., showing only the side that wasn't visible).

Question 3
Certainly it is "legit" if it doesn't involve copying copyrightable material.

Question 4
Whether to cite the original depends on what your version looks like, as well as the norms within your discipline. In the U.S., citation is not a matter of copyright law. In countries with stronger moral rights regimes (virtually all other countries), attribution can be a matter of copyright law, but if your new figure only uses uncopyrightable components, that still shouldn't be an issue.

Expertise: I am a U.S. lawyer who works in an academic library teaching faculty, staff, and students about copyright law.


How difficult is it to transfer to a different field of study in a master's program compared to getting admitted in the first place?

This depends on both the institution and on how different the two fields are. If two fields are closely related they could conceivably share an admissions process and the department might not care much which program a given student follows. But in other situations, it might be quite difficult.

A change from engineering (other than, perhaps, Electrical Engineering) to CS is a pretty big jump and the two programs probably have different entrance requirements. There might even be a waiting list in one or both programs.

You can ask the institution for guidance, of course, but don't assume it would be easy. Asking would be better than just delaying.


Paths to specialize in antique book and manuscript conservation and handling

Book conservation, restoration, and preservation are parts of library and information science. I suggest that you look into accredited masters programs in that field. In the US, the American Library Association is the accrediting body.


Should a PhD Supervisor have a PhD in the same research subject, as the PhD student?

It doesn't matter what the supervisor's Ph.D. was in, originally: fields are protean and careers take all sorts of strange paths.  What really matters is whether the supervisor's knowledge is sufficient to supervise the research that the student will be conducting.  That depends on the path of their career, the precise focus of the student's research, etc.

My advisor, for example, had a Ph.D. in mathematics (since computer science didn't really exist as a separate field yet), but has worked in artificial intelligence, electrical engineering, physics, VLSI, biological modeling, and astronomy, and would be quite appropriate to supervise students in projects in any of those fields, if their focus and his background had sufficient overlap.  Likewise, my background in artificial intelligence was no barrier to supervising a biology Ph.D. (which I have done), given the path of my own research over time.


Is just 'being interested in the topic' a bad reason to do a PhD?

To be a bit snarky towards your professor, I don't think that we can truly answer this question until we have some sort of passion-ometer that can distinguish degrees of caring.  How much interest is "enough" is just not quantifiable.

That said, there really does seem to be a qualitative difference in how people do in a Ph.D. based on their degree of motivation to be in the program.  There are lots of good things to do with one's life that are much more short-term rewarding than doing a Ph.D.  Thus, people who enter a Ph.D. program just because it seems like a reasonable next thing to do with their lives are likely to run into difficulty and end up exiting to one of those other nice alternatives.  People who are having trouble but do not have alternatives and feel trapped in their program (e.g., due to visa issues) are at a strong risk for harm to themselves or others, up to and including suicide or violence.

But passion for a particular topic isn't a make or break.  I think the key is whether a person finds the ongoing struggle of research rewarding.  If you find that you have a taste for that, a Ph.D. is a good idea; if you don't, it's probably a bad idea.

And it's difficult to really know until you've really engaged with some big research or engineering projects.  If you have, you probably know if you've enjoyed them enough to make a life out of it, whether you stick with a particular topic or end up shifting over time (as most active researchers do eventually, as their original topics either succeed or hit dead ends).  If you haven't ever really engaged with research before, I would recommend getting involved in some research first before making the longer commitment to a Ph.D.---although a 3-year UK Ph.D. is short and focused enough that such a preface might not be necessary.


How to gain strength for an exam I have been studying for 2.5 years which is only 15 days away?

Take a two week vacation. Do things you enjoy. Relax. Exercise. Watch TV. Sleep.
The gain from any studying you can do in two weeks will be minimal, compared to the previous three years. The gain from going into the exam rested, relaxed, and with energy will be immense.


How do people in academia know whether their research, result, theorem or thesis is original work?

I think that to answer this effectively, one needs to carefully distinguish between two concepts that are often conflated in discussing research: originality and significance.  The originality of a piece of work is the degree to which it is distinguished from other pieces of work, while the significance of a piece of work is the intellectual impact that it has.

I think that these two tend to get tangled up because what typically concerns us is significance, but significance can only actually be measured in retrospect.  Originality thus gets used as a proxy for determining significance.  Intuitively, it makes sense: the more creatively different an idea is, the more likely it seems that it will have an impact.

Originality, however, is a matter of both perspective and scale of measurement.  Newton's famous quote: "If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants", summarizes that no intellectual work exists in a vacuum: the myth of the lone genius is just that, a myth.  Edison did not invent the lightbulb, he made a significant improvement in its design which moved it past the tipping point; Einstein did not invent relativity, he had a mathematical insight which crystalized a collection of growing problems that many were starting to pay attention to; Hopper did not invent the compiler from whole cloth, she simply was the first to achieve that milestone amongst a number of others who were working on the automation of computer control. Reinvention, at this gross intellectual level, is not only frequent, it is to be expected.

At a finer granularity of measure, however, pretty much every non-plagiarized work is quite original: even if two people come up with effectively the same approach to a problem, how they approach it and how they validate their approaches will generally end up being very different, simply because the space of possible viable realizations of a program of research is so large.  Likewise, even a highly "unoriginal" idea at the grand scale may have great impact when introduced to an area where it is not commonly used, such as the recent Bayesian revolution in cognitive science.

So, originality per se is not a very useful measure; instead, you really want to be able to evaluate the likelihood of intellectual significance in your work.  For that, there is simply no substitute for getting to know the community that you want to impact.  You can do the most beautiful and elegant research in the world, but if it does not connect with intellectual issues that matter to others, it will remain in a sort of limbo... perhaps to be revived in 100 years (cf. the swing between frequentist and Bayesian statistics), or perhaps simply to be forgotten in the archives of history.

Thus, when it comes to evaluating one's own research, the thing you really should be worrying about is not unoriginality, but insignificance.  If you are working honestly, you will be original.  To estimate the significance of a piece of your work:

Know who you are trying to affect, and learn how to speak their language.  This typically involves reading relevant parts of the literature.
With respect to that literature, be able to explain how your work changes how people in that community should be thinking and acting.

And that's the (perhaps unsatisfying) long and short of it: if your work is done honestly and has an impact on the scientific community, then its originality is sufficient.


Professor blatantly taking course material from internet (other schools)

What you describe is over the top. However, it is quite common for professors to take material from other courses or textbooks. Preparing a course from scratch is a lot of work and that work is unnecessary if there are already courses online with similar material. Usually, the professor will combine several sources and/or add in some of their own material, rather than straight copying.

The professor should acknowledge the source of the material. I often see course websites list textbooks or similar courses at other universities. Invariably, much of the course material will be sourced from those textbooks and those other courses.

However, you say that your professor is also copying exams from this other course. This is dangerous if a student figures out the source. I think this is actually the bigger problem. This may also explain why the professor may be reluctant to name the source of the material.

TL;DR: The practice is allowed to a certain extent, but it sounds like this case is possibly excessive. In your situation, I would tell the professor that you found similar exams online and are worried that the students will find them too, but I would avoid making any accusation of plagiarism.


How to find someone online to collaborate on a joint paper?

The things you seek from a coauthor (advice on journal selection and English usage) are not in themselves a sufficient basis for coauthorship, but rather just being thanked in the acknowledgments.  A coauthor on a scholarly publication needs to make a substantial intellectual contribution by being seriously involved in the research.

I do not know of any website designed for academics seeking coauthors, and I wouldn't recommend approaching it from the perspective of "I'd like to publish a paper and am looking for someone to help clean it up and submit it."  That's not likely to find you the sort of intellectual connection that would lead to genuine coauthors.  Instead, you may get no responses, or you may get unscrupulous coauthors who just want an easy way to get their names on papers.  (And even if that doesn't bother you, think about it this way: if someone's willing to put their name on your ideas, could you really trust them not to add some plagiarized text to the paper?)

Instead, research collaboration should come before coauthorship, so the question becomes how to find collaborators.  That can come in all sorts of ways: you can talk with people at conferences about common interests, you can write to people whose papers are on similar topics, etc.  Sometimes collaborators meet through participation in websites where they discover a common interest.  (They aren't necessarily collaborating on the website, but they may start to correspond after interacting through the website, and the correspondence may turn into a collaboration.)  Once you are actively working on research with someone, writing a paper together will come naturally.


Figures of Merit (Erdős number) in Resume/CV

As a mathematician, I don't view an Erdős number as a sign of merit in any serious way. It's more of a cultural in-joke.

There are over 9,000 people with Erdős number 2, and far more than that with Erdős number 3, so it doesn't really set you apart. So, if you published with Erdős, that fact will be clear form your list of papers, and if you haven't, your Erdős number tells very little about you.

My own Erdős number is 3 (two ways), FWIW.


Should I send a thank you note to the reply of a potential PhD adviser?

I would say, write a very brief e-mail in response saying something along the lines of "Understood, thank you very much." It's probably unnecessary, but it takes fifteen seconds to write and five to read and delete.

In particular -- a thank you note has essentially no possibility of annoying the professor, at least if it is not also accompanied by some sort of request. I would say -- if you are contemplating writing a brief thank you, then you may as well do so.


How to deal with a professor who delayed my contract signature until I received better postdoc offers?

In my opinion neither party has behaved very well.  You received an offer and accepted it.  Then you asked for a contract and it was not provided in a timely manner.  However, from your descriptions it doesn't sound like you conveyed how important it was to you to sign the contract at a certain time.

  I would reply that I need to start it early so I can settle and finish the boring paperwork

This is not very clear: early and late are entirely subjective terms.  It is plausible that the professor thought she was acting early.  You should have said "I need to sign the contract by Date X, or I will have to consider other offers."  Yes, this is a somewhat strongly worded statement, but step back and took a look at the situation: is being firm about getting a contract on a job that has been offered and accepted going to place the job in any jeopardy?  Almost certainly not, and if it does then perhaps you're dodging a bullet by not taking this job.  Also, interviewing for other jobs after you've accepted a job offer is a significantly more precipitous action.  It is understandable but only ethically watertight if you made best efforts to nail down the job you've accepted, and it's not clear that you did.  Moreover, having the professor find out that you interviewed elsewhere -- which is extremely likely in most academic communities, by the way -- risks annoying her much more than a "Please stop dragging your feet" email.

Moreover, doing work for a job before you've signed a contract is a very bad idea.  How do you signal more interest in a job than actually starting the job?  If you pull out after doing work then the professor is almost certainly going to be surprised and a bit miffed (unless she has been playing games with you all along).  On the other hand, if you end up never signing the contract and not taking the job, the work that you've done goes down the drain.  Good luck getting paid for it, and good luck maintaining an academic collaboration with the professor.  But for the record, I blame the employer more: a wizard professor should know better.  She is not behaving professionally.

In my opinion this is not the start of a beautiful friendship.  If you have another job offer that you think is significantly better, in my opinion yes, you can take it.  You haven't signed anything, and you made inquiries about signing which were not handled in a timely manner.  You should expect that if you pull out of this, the professor will be displeased with you.  But that happens sometimes, and it should not stop you from acting in your own professional best interests.  Still, you should be thinking about how not to get into this same situation in the future.


Should I be content with poster paper or should I try again?

I would recommend to take the chance to visit the conference and discuss your poster content with others. This will give you good feedback and show you how your work is regarded in your field.


Upload the libraries that you use, along with your LaTeX source. This will ensure that your system and arXiv are compiling your source using the same libraries (rather than different versions of the libraries), which should ensure similar results (any remaining differences are due to the compilation process).

This solution bloats the upload to arXiv. Bloat can be partly avoided by only uploading troublesome libraries. Alternatively, you could try specifying versions of packages.


PhD in Quantum Computing - useful outside of academia?

Many types of companies look for Ph.D. holders from highly ranked institutions, even if they won't work on their research area. Think about it: this type of people have gone through a rigorous merit-based selection process; they have been trained to crack hard problems that require creative solutions; and they are used to going through a process of independent study, deep thinking, and experimenting to get results. It is not uncommon, for example, for financial or consulting firms to tap onto that kind of talent. Many R&D companies will also hire people with a variety of advanced degrees.


What is a post-print of an article or research paper, and what is it used for?

A postprint is the final version that is given to the journal for copy editing and typesetting.  It includes changes made in the refereeing process, but not the journal's typesetting.  It is often referred to also by the phrase "author's final version".

In contrast, a preprint most specifically refers to a manuscript as it was before peer review.  However, the term preprint is often used more generally (for instance, when referring to a preprint server) to refer to any version of the manuscript besides the journal's final typeset copy.  Thus it is common to find postprints on arxiv.org, which is commonly referred to as a preprint server.

Postprints are mainly used as a way to provide green open access. Many publishers allow authors to distribute postprints through their own website, an institutional website, or a preprint server.  Many institutions (e.g. Harvard) assert a non-exclusive right to distribute postprints written by their employees, regardless of publishing agreements.


Is it a bad idea to submit a paper merely to elicit reviewers' comments?

The other answers mention that submitting a paper only to get some feedback is a waste of time for the reviewers, and it can be particularly damageable for your reputation when the submission is not double-blind. Remember that academia is a small world, and reputation a very important aspect.

In addition, submitting a paper to a venue usually prevents to submit it to other venues, at least during the reviewing process. When you're pretty sure that the paper will be rejected, you might miss other opportunities.

Finally, there is another risk: the paper might be accepted! Of course, at first, you might think it's a good thing, but if the results are not good enough, it might hurt your reputation, and there is of course the possibility that you're wrong. Publishing wrong results (and I'm only talking about mistake, not fraud) is far worse than getting a paper rejected. On top of that, if the paper is published, it might be harder to publish only the improved results, as they might not consist a novel contribution on their own.


Is it negatively viewed by PhD programs if I completed my masters in 3 years instead of the standard duration of 2 years?

A Master's in Mathematics is presumably what is necessary for a PhD in Statistics (check with universities you'll apply to): There's no need to switch. It'll cost time and money. Instead, change the classes you'll take as soon as possible.
Bureaucrats are looking to tick-boxes: They'll presumably be looking for a undergraduate-, postgraduate-degree, or both in Mathematics. They'll likely not consider the classes you took.
A PhD supervisor may be interested in the courses you've taken. Their opinions will vary considerably. Get in touch with some candidate supervisors and ask them.
To a supervisor, a Master's with fifty percent more classes may make you more appealing to a candidate with fewer classes. But, it isn't necessary, so I'd suggest you don't give-up a year. You can learn whatever you don't know during your PhD.


How do I properly cite a research paper?

Why not both?
"As summarized in \cite{A}, both \cite{B} and \cite{C} equally
contributed to the discovery of $FancyResult."
"Smith et al discussed a new approach in \cite{X}. While the result is not yet complete (see \cite{X1,X2,X3} for work on it and \cite{Y1,Y2} for critiques), it contains interesting aspects that shouldn't be overlooked."
It is usually not a problem to use the same word as an author, especially if it is a technical or predefined term. Especially if you mention the source in the same paragraph, no one should blame you for that. As soon as you start quoting whole sentences, you should make that clear though. If you feel like you are just repeating the whole paper in (as good as possible) your own words, take a step back and think about what you want to achieve with the literature review. You want to give your reader an understanding of what has been done and is currently been done in your field. This should enable the reader to both understand your work, and also understand that your work is a viable contribution to current research topics. One way to do this and avoiding copying papers is to chain multiple together. Think about what you want to discuss, then discuss topic X and put all sources for this topic into your text where appropriate.
Make sure that your citations (bibtex or whatever you use) are all in the same style. Especially if you pull them of the Internet, they might differ, e.g. some places put "Lastname, Firstname", others put "F. Lastname" or "Lastname, F.". You can avoid this, to some extend, by always using the same source for your bibtex code (e.g. google scholar), but even there you should check it properly.
Also, if you have multiple citations in a single \cite, try to order them ascending. Simply because something like ", ... this was already shown in [5,18,2]" doesn't look as nice as "... already shown in [2,5,18]".
Of course, the standard advices like "don't cite what you haven't read or don't fully understand" applies, but I guess you are aware of that.

Overall: Don't worry about formal rules too much. You are telling a story, make it good, informative and interesting to read. Do so why following the rules and stay professional as required in your field of course, but don't make the rules your number one priority.

And just for completeness: Also discuss these questions with your advisor, they might see things differently than this random guy on the Internet, and in the end they are the one grading your thesis.


Pros and cons of double majoring vs a Master's

In general (and from the perspective of academia) I would say many undergraduate students overrate the value of double majoring and misunderstand its importance. Having two majors does not make you an expert in two fields. Moreover, depending on the fields in question, it doesn't aid your ability to go onto graduate school.

All things being equal a masters degree is

more useful for employment (I've never seen a job that explicitly requires a dual major but some jobs list a masters degree as a qualification).
a better indication of academic ability in a field
a more impressive credential than a dual major.

But there are several things that could make things unequal.

First, there are cases where showing a background in two fields is valuable, because a job bridges two skill sets. As aparente001 suggests in a comment, majoring in administration and art might better show an aptitude for managing a gallery than just one or the other. (Another example: a patent attorney often has a degree in science).

Second, there are cases where a graduate field requires knowledge (or some competency) in multiple underlying fields such as materials science (chemistry and engineering).

Third, if for personal reasons you desperately want to study both because you believe you will never be able to study the other after you go to graduate school, then it might be worth it to someone to spend 1 or 2 years to do that.

While there may be other special circumstances that make sense of it, I would say it's unlikely that the value towards academia of getting a second major is worth two years that could have been spent on an MA.

(For the record, I did two majors and don't regret it -- but I finished both in the usual 4 years).


Discussing with university professors before being undergraduate

Most professors will enjoy talking about their subject with a student who is motivated and interested, so you shouldn't be bashful about asking them questions. Just try to ask "good" questions, as opposed to questions which can be easily answered with a moment's search on Wikipedia.


Can a professor tell you that you can’t use your phone before or after their class?

I think your description of what’s going on is misleading. The professor is not “telling you you can’t use your phone before class”. He’s telling you you can’t use your phone before class in the classroom when he’s also in the classroom.

Is that reasonable? I honestly don’t have a strong opinion. I can certainly see why it’s annoying to you on the one hand, but can also see things from the professor’s perspective - if he wants to use those thirty minutes before class to review the material he’ll be discussing, and is easily distracted by phones (yes, professors are prone to distraction just like other people), he may well think his need to have a distraction-free working environment so that he can deliver good instruction for his class overrides your personal need to use your phone during that time and makes it okay for him to decide what is and isn’t allowed in the classroom, even though the official lecture time hasn’t yet arrived.

It’s possible you can win this on a technicality by turning this into some kind of principled fight over individual rights. But I don’t see a point, it wouldn’t be a real “win” for you or anyone else in any meaningful sense. Your professor may be a slightly unreasonable person with a slightly rigid personality, but in my opinion the mature thing to do in this situation would be to respect his wishes and find some other place to use your phone before class.


Where should figure captions be placed if the journal asks you to place each of them on a separate page at the end of the article?

I have seen some journals that ask that you put figure captions all together on a single page separate from the figures themselves (an extremely annoying requirement both for reviewers and authors). But I doubt that is what your journal is asking you to do.

More common is just that you put each table and figure on a separate page. So the caption would appear below (or possibly above) the figure. Both the caption and figure would be on the same page. And that page would be at the end of the manuscript. This is standard in, for example, APA style. See this annotated sample manuscript.

So to answer your specific question the image file is commonly embedded in the document, and the image file would not include the caption. The caption would be  standard text from latex, MS Word, etc. and only the figure component would be an image file.


How do I choose research project topics for the project requirements in graduate classes?

Much of your approach will depend on the requirements for this specific project, but there are some generic guidelines that one should follow when beginning a new research project.

You should choose something interesting to you. This seems obvious, but some people fall into the trap of choosing what seems easier or less work and end up losing motivation because they do not enjoy what they are researching. If your instructor gave you 5 areas of applicability to choose from, the first thing to do is find what interests you most. I would strongly caution you against picking something that seems like the quickest option just because you have a time limit.
Become familiar with the area. If all of this material is new to you, do some cursory research wherever you can find it (all the way from a reputable book to Wikipedia). You do not need to become an expert for this class project (since it’s not your thesis), but you need to have a working knowledge and basic familiarity with the topics.
Read/write a literature review. A literature review will tell you what work has been done in a research area. You should read literature reviews that have already been written, but a good researcher will write their own too (even if it is just a smaller section in the paper). By assessing the work being done in your specific area, you will be able to narrow your topic and find gaps in the current research where you can add your own. This is one of the most critical steps to conducting new research. Note: This part of your research should focus on peer-reviewed material (like books and journal articles), not the aforementioned cursory material.
Narrow your topic as much as possible. If it seems daunting to become an “expert” in your area, you are probably thinking too broadly. Your instructor is not expecting earth-shattering research, so do not worry about your contribution being small.

If you follow these guidelines, you should naturally be able to find a problem to work with that is within your skill level, is interesting to you, and meets the requirements for the course. It is difficult to assess how many hours of work this would take, but if the instructor has not indicated this otherwise, I would use the time as a guideline for how detailed your project should be.


Pessimistic with direction of academia-industry project

My answer is rather a statement about what not to do rather what to do:

Do not do a PhD in a field you are not interested in. And do not choose a field of research for your degree just because of convenience (offer/opportunity). I cannot emphasise that enough.

In addition, switching topics drastically after a PhD is very difficult. It is possible, but I have seen it rarely succeed.

Usually, people start with a related topic and then drift away in the direction they are interested in. However, drifting from ATC to Topology/QM does not look obvious; Quantum airplanes? Topological path planning? Braid groups for flight patterns? Perhaps...


Should I send professors money for illegally downloading their books?

With that in mind, would it be appropriate to simply send those odd 10 dollars to the author of the book that I am illegally downloading?

First, I would be concerned about your legal exposure. You would be effectively admitting piracy.

Second, you cannot unilaterally change the terms of sale. When the professor published the book, they agreed to sell it through the publisher in exchange for certain terms. The legal and (in my view) ethical options are to accept or decline these terms; you cannot invent and execute your own terms instead, even if they seem reasonable. In short, this is a rationalization. (That said, I personally am sympathetic to your concerns about publishing companies exploiting college students.)

Thus, the "appropriate" thing to do is to buy the books through legal channels.

  If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

Not a professor, but I have taught and written a book with thousands of copies sold. I'm sure I am losing money due to piracy, but I have never received a payment like you describe.

Realistically, if I were to receive cash anonymously, I would probably chuckle and pocket the cash, or maybe set it aside for a few years to see if anything came of it.
If I received money from a known student, I would be very concerned about the appearance of impropriety, and would not accept it. I would also be concerned about whether I should report the piracy, though I probably wouldn't.
If this "caught on" and I was receiving a non-negligible amount of money from many pirates, I would have to talk to the publisher and seek guidance.


Pursuing a research career in a university without teaching duties, is it possible?

Yes. In the UK such positions are called Research Assistants or Research Associates. There are also Postdoctoral Researchers.

These are full-time salaried researchers who are employed on specific grant funded projects. The only down-side is that they are often fixed-term contracts linked to the fixed term research grant; however, UK employment law does offer some protection, because if you land several sequential fixed term positions at the same institution you are regarded as a permanent employee with greater rights when the funding ceases.

Such positions are advertised in the Academic press (such as the Times Higher Education Supplement) or on jobs.ac.uk.


Thomas is correct--any journal put out by Springer as well as by university presses will have a specific policy about preprints. Look for the policy on the journal home page or the press's "authors' rights" web page, which often has information for prospective authors (i.e., authors who have submitted a paper for consideration but haven't received a decision). For example, the "Guidelines for Authors' Rights" for the University of Chicago Press's journals division  (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cont/jrnl_rights#faq6) states:

"To avoid citation confusion and compromising of peer review, we discourage online posting of pre-prints and working papers. If you choose to submit a pre-publication version of your paper to a non-commercial, discipline-specific pre-print or working paper archive, however, we require that appropriate credit be given to the journal as described above and ask you to remove the working paper from the archive after your article is published or replace it with the published version. Any version of your paper submitted to a pre-print or working paper archive can be made available only under a license that forbids commercial reuse, or you will be required to remit the appropriate fee to make your article available in the journal under a comparable license. If you deposit the published version of your article, it may be made publicly available only after the appropriate embargo period* has been observed. You are responsible for informing the manager of the archive of the embargo period that must be observed.

Please also note the comments elsewhere in these Guidelines regarding prior publication and anonymous peer review and the use of copyrighted material in your article.

*The embargo period is twelve (12) months unless otherwise required by mandate."

So I would advise checking out the specific journal's policy as well as Springer's "authors' rights" pages. Depending on what you find, you may be better off removing your essay from the preprint archive, if that is possible, at least while the essay is under consideration for publication. Good luck!


There are several benefits of writing book reviews for publication:

Develop an understanding of the publications that are out there. Just like how reading academic papers affords you the benefit of being abreast with the latest research, writing book reviews allows you the opportunity to learn more about a field.
Develop a relationship with a journal. Journals need people to write book reviews. It can never hurt to build a relationship with a journal and its editors.
Develop a profile in the academic community. Book reviews are in no way akin to writing an academic article on a research subject. But they can put your name out there and allow you opportunities to become better known to you academic community.

All told book reviews allow your voice to be heard on a subject.


How to defend badly graded master thesis?

While I wish I could be more positive, the fundamental fact that is in the German grading system, a grade of 3,7 on a master's thesis is a disastrous grade that is essentially unheard of. Virtually all master's theses receive grades somewhere between 1,0 and 1,7. A grade of 3,7 is very much a "pity" grade that allows you to pass the master's program, but is essentially going to be an albatross around your neck. You will not be able to use the degree to pursue advanced study anywhere in Germany, and gaining employment with that kind of grade will be a lot more difficult.

You will want to check the Prüfungsordnungen (examination rules) for your program to determine if you are allowed to resubmit or repeat the master's thesis, rather than take a grade that low on the thesis. In that case, you may find that option preferable to having to deal with the consequences of a D on the thesis.


Posting Teaching Videos on Personal Website

Assuming that your lecturing skills are actually good, I don't see any downside at all to making videos of your lectures available online, other than the trouble involved in creating and posting them. I don't see how anyone would think there is anything remotely inappropriate about this (unless you start attaching 100 MB copies of these videos to emails you send to places where you are applying for jobs; needless to say, that would be a bad idea).

As for appearing "overbearing", depending on how you present these videos on your personal website, it may conceivably be seen as overbearing or in poor taste if they are displayed too prominently (e.g., as a silly example, a large video player window occupying almost the entire page with a flashy caption saying something like "Meet The World's Best Lecturer!!!", but probably that's not quite what you had in mind). But a couple of links to YouTube videos with informative captions such as "A calculus lecture I gave on 11/11/15"), or even a standard-sized embedded YouTube view, should not provoke anyone's ire in my opinion.

As for the potential upside, I think you are very correct in guessing that most committee members would not have the time or energy to view an hour-long lecture by a job candidate. The chances that even a small part of your videos will be watched by more than a few people are not very high. With that said, it is not inconceivable that some people will watch parts of your videos to get a sense of your abilities (I have done this myself on a few occasions, and even googled candidates and found videos of them that they did not think to provide). Even some committee members who don't watch your videos may still be impressed by the fact that you are willing to provide such documentary evidence of your lecturing abilities, and view this as a sign of honesty, trustworthiness and self-confidence.

As for creating more videos, I don't think anything beyond one or maybe two videos will have any added value, so I wouldn't bother with that.

Finally, let me repeat that my advice is given under the premise that you are a good lecturer whose videos will be impressive. You may think your talk went well, but it may be good to get objective confirmation of that from a friend or colleague before you proceed.


How can undergraduate TA's better lead tutorial sessions?

Tl;dr: Keep it specific, personal and short.

One way to get feedback, that I found useful is the following:

e.g. as you said, they might think, that you are going too fast.

First, find a very specific set of questions on three levels, like "Who would like to see more examples?, Who sees enough examples?, Who would be happy with less examples?"

And then at the end of the lesson you say: "Before we finish I quickly need some feedback. Please raise your hand, if you think I show too few, enough or too many examples?" Then you ask the above questions and count the number of hands.

If you are still concerned, that their answers might be influenced by the presence of their peers ("I don't want to look dumb/like I need more examples"), make an "anonymous survey", where they all rest their head on their table, close their eyes and then you ask the questions. They'll look at you confused, the first time you ask them to do it, but they get used to it quickly.

Another example: If you feel like the way you explained a concept was unhelpful, you may ask "Who made a step forward with that explanation?" or "Who just got confused?".

Another option

Ask a student in person directly after class / or before class about the last lesson, if your class is preparation to solve an exercise sheet. Ask them when their peers are around them, e.g. while packing their things. Again, I suggest asking a very specific question, like "I showed you this example, was that any good?", this might also give you an opportunity to ask a follow-up question and with this I made the experience, that often the peers offer their opinion. You may do the same about your LaTeX notes, something along the line of "Is that any good to you?".

I'm aware that this kind of feedback does not give you an overview of the general opinion, but at least it gives you something to think about and improve.

For a more general feedback, at the end of the semester I handed my students a small slip of paper (so that they don't feel the need to write a ton of things) with two categories: "That's what I liked best:" and "That could be improved:".


What should have capital cases in the title of works in the bibliography?

It depends on the citation style. Basically there are two possibilities: title case, or normal English sentence style.

If you are writing for a journal, it surely has a citation style that you should adhere to. In practice, however, the style of citations won't really matter until the time your paper is accepted, so you do not need to worry about it when writing.
If you are writing for yourself, you are free to decide as you prefer, as long as you are consistent. If you are writing a thesis, be sure to inquire  because some OCD university committee might have imposed requirements.

Bibtex is essentially a program to abstract out citation styles and apply them programmatically, separating content (in the .bib file) from formatting. Using a properly formatted .bib file, you just need the command \bibliographystyle{} to change from a style to the other.

So, how should the title field be formatted in a properly-written .bib file? Like this:

title = {Handwriting Recognition with Hidden {M}arkov models and Grammatical Constraints}

Basically you use title case and embed into a pair of braces the characters that should stay in capital even if the text is converted to sentence case. Bibtex can convert automatically title case to sentence case (but not vice versa). Commands for diacritics and special characters (such as \"a or \c{c}) and dollar-delimited formulas should also go inside an extra pair of braces.

Incidentally, another tricky aspect of Bibtex syntax is author name formatting. Authors should be in the format

author = {von Lastname1, Firstname1 Middle and Lastname2 jr., Firstname2}

or, if full given names are not available,

author = {von Lastname1, F. M. and Lastname2 jr., F.}

Note that 90% of the bibtex files that you will find on the internet, even the ones from the publishers' websites, are badly formatted. Bibtex's syntax is quirky and complicated to get right.


Do reviewers usually ask for data? (Computer Science/ Data Science / Data Mining)

I have asked, or been asked, for data a vanishingly small but non-zero number of times. But I'm pretty secure in asserting that it's rare.

As for why - I would hope they would specify this when they requested it. Among the reasons would be to see if your results are genuinely obtainable from your methods. This is not necessarily just looking for fraud, etc. but checking to see if your writing is clear enough that by "following the recipe" they get the same answer.

Another possibility is they want to try an alternative analysis. For example, in my field, there is a variable selection method that is commonly used and also wrong. Generally, I ask authors to re-do their analysis with a more appropriate method as a reviewer, but it's entirely possible this won't change the answer. Having the data would let me check for myself.


What are the career prospects after being an RA?

Being an RA (Research Assistant) means you get to work closely with one or more post-docs and faculty members in a context that generally requires technical,  problem-solving, and communication skills -- skills that are definitely valued highly by employers.  So, assuming that you do a good job, your supervisors should be able to write strong recommendation letters for you, recommend you to recruiters from industry, or possibly put you in touch with people they know in industry.  Also, you may be able to use your RA work and experience as a discussion item in interviews.

A lot of the industry jobs that undergrads tend to work in look (to me) like grunt-work: website development and maintenance, routine programming, stuff like that.  It seems to me that an RA would be much more preferable than those simply because it can allow you to be more creative and possibly also sharpen your communication skills.  Of course, it's possible that you have some unusual set of skills --- say, Unix guru or security honcho --- that would make you suitable for a very different kind of industry job that would be even more attractive to employers down the road --- but in my experience this tends to be rare.


Should I quit my Ph.D. program in scientific computing to become a software developer?

Only a partial answer but a fair warning, if you have not been keeping up with the news with respect to coding bootcamps: avoid it at all costs, seriously.  Learn to code by yourself through books - you have the "smarts" for this judging by your PhD in Sci Comp candidacy - or take CS courses at your school to pick up enough depth and breadth, which is what bootcamps severely lack (but make grandiose claims about).  I urge you to Google search some articles about this disastrous outcome that many bootcamp candidates are facing, e.g. stigma that they are unqualified coders.  E.g. Google, I think, now automatically desk-rejects applicants with bootcamps on their resumes, after hiring one too many failures.  Good luck.


How detailed should a methodology be presented?

This is extremely dependent upon the journal you are submitting to (and who the audience of that journal is) and the roll of the dice on who your reviewers will be. Where one reviewer believes that it is critical to demonstrate that you have met your assumptions for regression with the inclusion of residual plots and formal tests, another (and equally as qualified) will state that such inclusions only add clutter to the methods. And finally, you might have an editor come in and say that it should be included but moved as an addendum. Even scanning prior journal articles is not always the best indicator (though its a very good one) because editors change and reviewers are different.

Your best bet is to go with what you feel is correct and allows for the clearest replication of your methods. If this involves going into the mechanics of back propagation and what a sigmoid is, then so be it. If, as you have stated, that you feel that a reference will suffice, then thats ok as well.

To give an example, I have two papers coming out this fall where-in both use the same method to calculate a statistic. Paper one, the reviewer felt that I should explain, in detail, how that statistic is calculated due to probable reader unfamiliarity. In paper two, the reviewer accepted the simple citation of "this statistic was calculated in the manner described in _____(XXXX)".

So, in summation, it depends, and you should use your educated determination as someone with knowledge of the literature to guide you.


Public data repositories: Multiple figures as one reference

I routinely use OSF (Open Science Framework) and have a single reference to Supplementary Materials that links to a compressed file on OSF. You can "register" (fixed snapshot) the set of materials you want and have a single reference (including doi). I don't do it quite like that, I simply refer to Supplementary Figure 3 or whatever in the paper, and provide the link in whatever way the journal requests supplementary materials be linked.

But it doesn't have to be a single compressed file. The way OSF archives work is that the single link is to something more akin to a webpage and you can have multiple files able to be downloaded as well as a wiki style information page. It would be annoying for your readers to have to download multiple files though.


I don't want to report them, I probably don't have the guts to do it, especially because it's such a socially accepted practice.

A "Snitches get stitches" mentality will not solve your problem. Cheating is unethical. You know that you are "at a disadvantage" if you keep your ethical behavior and the others don't.

  Cheating is pretty easy though: one has the lecture notes and all the past exams with solutions on the phone and can easily consult them without being caught

You seem to know how people are able to cheat at the exam. I would suggest that you report how people cheat (not who) to the professor in charge of your exam. He will either be able to implement counter measures to prevent cheating or change the exam format. This way you can avoid denouncing specific individuals while still preventing them from cheating.


Is there a standard system example for writing papers which introduce a newly developed programming language?

The biggest problem that you face when writing a programming language paper is explaining why the world needs another programming language, rather than a library or an API or something of the sort.

I would thus recommend skipping "standard" examples such as "Hello world" and recursive factorials entirely, and instead going straight to a set of minimal examples that illustrate the value of the new language.  Only in the case of a particularly extreme langauge will the standard examples be necessary to help understand the scientific concepts.

Note that documenting a programming language is an entirely different matter.


Is it appropriate to cite editorial articles in a thesis?

Absolutely cite any source you get information from, but don't rely on popular sources too heavily. To use the arguments and not cite them would be plagiarism. To ignore important arguments would be irresponsible. Sometimes the best source for arguments are found in popular literature, because scholars bring together all of their main work in one place, after the heavy academic lifting (which you should also cite).

However, if the only cites you find are non-academic, you need to ask whether or not the question is sufficiently important to merit study. It may be difficult to get such an article published. In the early stages of some ideas or issues the only writing is in popular outlets, but beware that it is very hard to build a good academic paper at that point.


The correct term for a collection of homework?

This is how I would phrase it:

  There will be a total of six homework assignments for the term.

This statement is completely unambiguous. Say it straight. No need to be cute.

Phrases like "My homework portfolio for the term consists of six assignments" and "Homework plan" could potentially be confusing to students. What's a homework portfolio? Do I need to keep it in a special folder? Does it need to be labelled? Are there other assignments besides this portfolio? Why, as a student, would I care what your plans are? You either have homework to assign or you don't.


What is the typical Legal Structure of a modern College?

As I understand it, in a typical private U.S. research university the different colleges or schools that make up the university have no legal independence, and they are simply administrative units within the university.  (On the other hand, part of the endowment generally consists of restricted gifts, which can only be used in certain ways or by certain departments.  This can give the corresponding parts of the university more power or independence in practice than one might otherwise suppose.)

  Do the Colleges have members, and if so who are the members? Are all the matriculated members, or just current students? Are the faculty members of the College?

This is entirely a matter of university policy.  Current students, staff, and faculty would usually be considered members of their corresponding colleges, but this can vary (and some universities just aren't organized this way in the first place).  In practice, this generally doesn't mean very much: it may determine some requirements for students in addition to departmental requirements, it could be listed as an affiliation on your publications (although departments are more common), it might give a few privileges such as building or library access, and it tells you how to fill out university forms, but it's otherwise not a big deal.