texts: Can letters of recommendation be sent after application deadline in Politecnico di Milano?

texts: I have just finished my initial proposal and I currently work on the motivation letter. The Politecnico di Milano deadline for Ph.D. is next Friday, May 29,2020. My referee and former supervisor is so quick, when I ask him to respond the email sent by universities, he responds within a few hours but I want to make sure that if it is possible if a referee send the recommendation letter 4 or 5 days after the deadline.


texts: What would I need to show to change fields and get into a physics PhD program?

texts:
I've been working as a software engineer for a few years now, and have a bachelor's in computer science and math. My interest and knowledge in physics has been growing since I graduated, but I never took any formal courses after high school.

Obviously, entering into a physics PhD would require a huge amount background knowledge comparable to a bachelor's in physics. My question is what would I need to do to prove that I had that knowledge, and actually get accepted into a program?

Would it be enough to score high on the GRE, and have some strong letters of recommendation? Could I do it with enough statements of accomplishment on coursera? Or am I looking at a few more years of undergrad to get a second Bachelor's? Or could I get into a master's program, and use that as a stepping stone?

Thanks.


texts: How to handle the particular situation when mind goes blank during a presentation?

texts:
Does anyone experience a situation of blank mind during their presentation?

I had a presentation in last month in USA. My presentation was going very well, probably due to enough practice, but during the presentation my mind suddenly went blank at a point. The situation became so worse that I could not even complete my sentence. The sentence was actually:

  The reason could be due to the  fact that stronger events have higher increasing rates.

The word "higher" didn't come to my mind and suddenly my mind went blank. So I just repeated 2-3 times "stronger events have.... have... stronger events have..." and finally stopped saying. Though few other words like "rapid, more or larger" were coming to my mind to complete the sentence, but the appropriate word "higher" or any similar word did not come. Moreover, I was telling this sentence from my mind completely, so I could not take help from my slides also. Finally I changed my sentence in a different way:

  The reason could be due to the  fact that the rate of stronger events increases more rapidly compare to weaker events.

It again surprised me that I could not even able to remind the word "higher" until I heard the same word in my next presenter's talk. This is not the first time, but not often.

So I am wondering does it happen due to some particular lacks in me  that I need to develop? e.g., I am not a native English speaker. I am also wondering the proper way to handle similar situations when you don't find a suitable word to complete your sentence just because mind goes blank?


texts: How to efficiently work on multiple machine learning and data science-related projects?

texts: I am working on multiple projects on Machine Learning and Data Science. Is there any systematic way to work/manage projects to maximize efficiency in terms of getting things done while maintaining a work-life balance? Different projects are at different stages --- some are at the beginning stage, some are at the writing stage for publication --- require different types of involvements in terms of time and energy. Expert opinions are highly appreciated.


texts: I finished writing my internship report for a master degree. Now I am writing its abstract. Is it possible to mention a statistic study on the abstract and reference it in the bibliography or is this something bad to do ?


texts: How to ask for a letter of recommendation on a tight deadline, from professors I haven't spoken to in years?

texts:
I am currently applying to Ph.D. programs at several universities. Since I was a transfer student in my undergraduate years, and I have great relationships with my professors at community college, I asked them to be my letter writers for letter of recommendations.

Today I received an email from one of the schools I am applying to asking for a LOR from a professor from the school that I got my bachelor's degree (or else they are likely to reject my application). They give me time until mid January to turn that in.

My problems now are:
1. I graduated five years ago and have not contacted my professors there
2. I contacted their departments today to find out their office hours but they are gone for winter breaks already.

It seems like that my only option is to just email them. And my thoughts are that the worse case scenario is just a "no" from them. And as long as I am being polite, I would not be blacklisted (please correct me if I am wrong on this).

If that is the case,should I be straight forward in my email explaining my situation honestly and ask them if they could write me a LOR or since I have until mid January, just ask them for a LOR as I would normally do it?

I drafted the two versions. Any comments or feedback will be helpful and greatly appreciated. Or if none of my solutions is a good one, I would really appreciate any other ideas.

Thank you very much!

First version:

  Dear Dr. Smith,

  This is Mary, I took your XYZ class back in 2010. I apologize for my presumptuous email. I was on campus today but found out there is no class this week. I was hoping to ask you in person to see if you would be willing to write me a letter of recommendation.

  I was majoring in ABC and I am currently applying to CDF. (and I plan to give some more background info)

  You are the best person to write me a letter because not only did I gotten an A+ in your XYZ class and you made great comments about my group project on WHATEVER, your class was also the class that raised my awareness in XXX. I have my statement of purpose, transcripts, curriculum vita ready, which I will be able to provide.

2nd version:

  Dear Dr. Smith,

  This is Mary, I took your XYZ class back in 2010. I apologize for my presumptuous email. I was on campus today but found out there is no class this week. I was hoping to ask you in person to see if you would be willing to write me a letter of recommendation.

  I was majoring in ABC and I am currently applying to CDF programs. I have submitted my application to University of 123. They said they need a letter of recommendation from my University 321 professor. If not they will likely to reject my application. They gave me a deadline to turn in this letter of recommendation by January 10th, 2015. Would you be willing to write me a letter of recommendation? I have my statement of purpose, transcripts, curriculum vita ready that I will be able to provide.

  You are the best person to write me a letter because not only did I gotten an A+ in your XYZ class and you made great comments about my group project on WHATEVER, your class was also the class that raised my awareness in XXX. I have my statement of purpose, transcripts, curriculum vita ready, which I will be able to provide.


texts: How to respond to a reviewer request for "pictures of a real experiment" when my paper doesn't have experiments?

texts: One of my reviewers put a comment to my paper as "Show pictures of a real experimental test.". However, my paper describes a machine learning technique in electrical engineering.  I don't have any real experiments and I don't claim anything in the paper about that. I can not provide any result regarding the real experiment. The other comments are good and I worry about this comment. Could you help me to provide a response for that?


texts: Paper status "Accept with Shepherd". What does it really mean?

texts:
Recently, one of my works have received the status of Accept with Shepherd. We have received many suggestions from the reviewers.

I'd like to know in more detail in which real status is my paper and if it has been accepted or it is in a sort of minor/major review.

The paper is for a workshop of a CS conference.


texts: University's motivation for having tenure-track positions

texts:
Suppose I used to hold a tenure-track math position at a R1 institution, but then I was denied tenure. Assume I do not care about job security (and never cared) and I would be more than happy to keep working under the same conditions and would work just as hard as I worked before tenure denial. The question is: what are the reasons why the department would not be happy to keep me (under the same conditions)?

Some hypotheses:

Me working at the department is beneficial for the department at any given point of time. If this is true, then they should be OK with me remaining in my present position.
Accepting someone for tenure-track is a calculated risk the department takes (because it can not judge purely from the post-doc record whether one is going to be a great researcher or not). Now that my tenure-track is over, they have figured out that I am not good enough and it is beneficial for them to kick me out.
For an average person, the possibility of tenure is a strong motivator. It is beneficial for the department to have someone who has been promised tenure at any given point of time but it is not beneficial once the person knows they won't be given tenure. I am just a weirdo who happens not to care.


texts:
I'm about to finish up a BA in linguistics and am looking at some interdisciplinary options for grad school (specifically in cognitive science).

I have a competitive GPA in my last two academic years, though my first year was a bit of a wash to say the least.

I was thinking that it would be a good idea to go back for a second degree for the following reasons:

to boost my cumulative gpa (my academic performance in first year was a pretty big blow to my cgpa)
to gain a better understanding of my research interests. (There are certain science courses that I haven't taken that make me feel downright incompetent without, such as first year physics and math.)

However, I'm acutely aware that I know nothing when it comes to grad school admissions, especially when it comes to interdisciplinary programs such as cognitive science. Is a second degree worth it?


texts: Nowadays, since (almost) all of the submitted works are usually available in an electronic format (e.g. PDF or Word) besides the printed version, is it recommended to add an index to a PhD thesis in order to facilitate search within the printed version? Was it required in the past?


texts: What should I do if someone published my old reserarch result without mentioning my name?

texts:
Recently, I realized someone, who was my friend in the past, published my research results related to an old project without mentioning my name. I'm wondering how he accessed to my results and why he published those results in a fake journal! By fake journal, I mean it's like someone buys a website and upload some pdfs and says I'm a publisher! Fortunately, it seems this guys recently got a faculty position in the US and I wanted to know how can I sue him? It's a clear example of research misconduct to publish the results of other people without mentioning even their name. I could prove my claim by giving the original raw data, which I'm pretty sure that he cannot provide them because I just stored them in a protected storage device. Could I directly contact the office of research compliance of the university that he works for?

Edited:

I realized it is more than one paper! He published two papers! in the same fake journal with my results...

Edited:

He admitted his fault and apologized... Also, he offered me three projects to work on and even a Postdoc position!!! (I'm still PhD student and even not defended my PhD proposal). I gave this matter up because he made the situation really emotional. I'm not sure that it is a correct thing to do or not but this question is kinda closed...


texts: Ethics: Having students use my referral link for a product used in the classroom?

texts:
I was using a Web service I particularly like the other day, and noticed that they have a referral program.  (More specifically, UsabilityHub, but the details of the service itself aren't important.)  So then this hypothetical scenario came to mind.

Suppose I'm slated to teach a class, and decide that said Web service would be valuable in my teaching.  Let's say that:

It's genuinely useful in my pedagogy and/or for helping students produce quality work.
It's a commercial service and has no student discount, but the most relevant parts are free.
I don't require use of this Web service, but I encourage it (though not through any formal means, i.e. no extra credit for using this service).
I happen to use this service for both personal/hobby projects and for professional work, all under one account.

Now suppose that this Web service provides a referral program, i.e. if anyone signs up with my referral link, both I and the new user get benefits of some kind.  However, these benefits are not monetary in nature--they're a form of credit for the service, and cannot be redeemed for cash.

Is it ethical to ask my students to sign up to this Web service through my referral link, given that I use this Web service in both a personal and professional capacity under the same account?  Let's say that I tell them everything that I mention in this post, too (including my usage of the service).

Oh, and I should clarify that this is entirely a hypothetical scenario.  I'm not even in a position where this is actually an issue for me.


texts: How many assistant professor or postdoc jobs do people usually apply for in mathematics?

texts:
Assuming you want a good chance of getting at least 1 offer from a research university, is applying for 20 jobs average? Is applying for 30 jobs overkill?

Would most letter writers feel hassled by having to send off letters to like 10-15 different websites, or would they expect that is normal?


texts: What steps can US undergraduates take to reduce the frequency and severity of assignment of unearned grades, as from grade inflation and cheating?

texts:
The book Academically Adrift, by two University of Chicago professors, is one salient source. The following refers to collegiate institutions in the United States.

Reports, including from professors like Rebecca Schuman, show:

Professors, especially adjunct faculty members, often inflate grades with the goal of bribing students to leave favorable anonymous reviews. Adjuncts' jobs often hinge on these reviews, so pressure is high.
60-90% of undergraduates probably cheat often.

According to The CUNY-Wide Conference on Academic Integrity, a quote-worthy report concluded that "9 in 10 students [actually 86%, according to CampusTechnology.com] admit to cheating in college and the students who do report cheating indicate that they cheat frequently using a variety of techniques and that they suspect faculty do the same" (however, the original source seems to be unavailable).
According to the Stanford Academic Cheating Fact Sheet, "73% of all test takers, including prospective graduate students and teachers agree that most students do cheat at some point."

Large segments of both groups want students to have unearned grades. This is likely to mean:

Many students pursue unearned grades by various means, not limited to cheating. According to some professors, these include:

simply begging professors for unearned grades
escalating demands for unearned grades to institutional administrators

There is a strong incentive for students and professors to collude so that students get unearned grades. This can occur via:

acceding to demands for unearned grades
assigning grades that are disproportionate to learning and/or work (by making courses easy to begin with and/or by raising grades that would have been lower according to rubrics or other policies)
inadequately testing for plagiarism (Anecdotally, I have seen this on assignments submitted to Canvas, a platform in which all students can view one another's work. Canvas also calculates average scores for all assignments, so I can calculate average grades for the course as a whole.)
failing to adequately monitor exams, so that students can easily do searches under tables (I have seen this)
allowing students to leave exam rooms (I have seen this)

Possible steps to combat the problem might include:

ascertaining causes of grade inflation
determining whether academic misconduct is a factor, and whether implicitly allowing cheating is a common method for grade inflation, given that it confers plausible deniability to professors, unlike other methods which might require suspicious changes to rubrics or violations of them
seeking allies among faculty or even students
seeking media coverage
seeking involvement from citizens outside the institution, especially in the cases of publicly funded colleges, which have specific standards of accountability to the public

Where have such measures, or others, been attempted, and what tactical and strategic indicators can be gleaned?


texts: What would you call the temporary advisor assigned after enrolment?

texts: What would you call the temporary advisor assigned to a PhD student upon enrolment, who is in charge of the student until the student finds his/her research advisor? "temporary advisor", or "course advisor", or ...? Thanks!


texts: Include rejected paper in Masters application?

texts: Is including the manuscript of a rejected paper (without claiming that it has been published or mentioning any rejections) as a supporting document in my application ethical / would it in any way increase my chances of admission?


texts: US Master Admissions, LoR: Academic vs. Employer

texts:
As a matter of recommendation letters, how do US admissions to MS programs generally look at LoRs from employers as opposed to those from academics? And how are recommendation letters generally weighted in the application process? I know the paradigm varies by institution, so I'm just looking for an idea.

Preface: I worked full-time during my undergraduate studies and admittedly at different jobs, so I feel that I haven't built any particularly strong relationships with faculty at my institution. I do, however, feel that the individuals I've asked to draft letters at my employer could provide reasonably strong recommendations (they are supervisors).

The program itself isn't traditional: It includes an industry internship with a relevant project and paper as opposed to a research/thesis component, though candidates can register for directed research as a part of the electives.

If I can provide any more pertinent information, please let me know!


texts: Student missing exam for “medical reasons”

texts:
I have a student who failed an exam I gave three months ago and was supposed to show up for a remediation exam this week. The date was announced long in advance, and the student neither showed (all the others did show up) nor warned me. Now, she is asking for a new exam date, saying she was absent due to “medical reasons”. She produced a certificate that she was seeing a doctor at the time, but nothing indicates that it was an urgent need (rather than, say, a scheduled appointment).

How would you handle such a case? I asked the administrative staff at my institution, and they told me to proceed as I saw fit. Should I ask a more specific justification? In what form?


texts: Accepting organizing duties in a year...but waiting for a new position

texts:
This question is strongly linked to a previous question of mine:

Tenured position to be started very soon…what to do with the old affiliation

Roughly speaking, my situation is the following: I am a non-tenured track researcher who had applied for permanent positions abroad and now I am waiting for notifications (to be known mid-July the latest).

In my present institution we are assumed to make lot of organization duties, and now the head of my research group is pushing me to organize a big conference in July 2016 (big for me means more than 300 people). This means that we should start preparing applications for grants as soon as possible, webdesign, and things like this that take a lot of time.

The organization of this conference is possibly one of the main examples to my current situation: it seems to me that the only talks we have with my boss are concerning the teaching and organizing things during 2016-2017 (which is definitely very far away of my expectations to be in my present institution).

I know, due to the really good advices in the previous post I linked, that I should keep prudent saying things about my application abroad (namely, do not say a word until something is clearer), but now every day he is coming with this type of questions, and this starts being mentally tiring.

How should I manage this?

A more general question (that would contribute in more general sense to the forum) is the following: while having a non-tenured position (3-5 years), which is the horizon that one may have in order to compromise himself/herself with certain duties (organization, applying for research projects that cannot be moved from a country to another, student advising, teaching duties,...)?

Thank you in advances for the suggestions


texts: Should I use only SI units of measurements in review papers?

texts: I am writing a review paper and I came across a literature in which measurement of force is given in pounds and likewise for other quantities. In all the other papers, only the SI system of units is followed. Should I use the units used by the author or should I convert the measurement values to SI units?


texts:
I'm having a bit of a dilemma currently. Basically I applied (with my own research proposal) to three universities for a PhD. Whilst I was accepted at all three, I got no offer for funding from one, placed on the reserve list for funding for another, and offered funding for the third.

The university I was placed on the reserve list for was basically my dream university to go to for a PhD but after hearing nothing for 2 months I accepted the offer from the other university. I accepted about two weeks ago and have spoken to the people who will be my supervisors and they're both lovely people.

However, this evening I received an email from my preferred university offering me full funding. Obviously I would love to accept but I don't know how bad it looks to reject the other offer now? I would feel terrible, but one of my main concerns is also that people say the academic community is very tight-knit and obviously these academics all research a similar topic. I want to work in academia following my PhD and wouldn't want to start this career already having academics not a fan of me!

Any advice would be massively appreciated.


texts: Tuition to transfer to massachusetts during a degree

texts:
My husband is currently in the middle of his degree in chemistry (we are both independent adults without links or support to parents/family). I am the main wage earner for our household and we currently live in Colorado.

I want to move to Massachusetts for a new job and my husband wishes to come with me. He had good luck so far talking to a number of schools there about transfering.

However we are struggling to find out if he will have to pay in or out of state tuition after we move as the difference in cost is very substantial. Does this depend on the school or just on the state? Unfortunately we have got mixed and ambiguous information from the schools in question so are extremely unsure on how this works.


texts: Is it disrespectful to do research in two labs?

texts:
Context: Undergraduate computer engineering student in the US looking at attending graduate school in two years. I’m trying to figure out which research topics interest me—hopefully to find one to pursue in graduate school. I’ve only done one semester of research so far and I’m switching out of that lab because I didn’t enjoy it (unhelpful PI and graduate assistants).

Question: Is it seen as disrespectful to be in two different labs at once when trying to figure out a research topic to pursue? If not, should I be aware of any other conflicts when working for two labs?

I’m concerned primary about how this will be viewed by the professors, not the ethics of being in two labs (the research topics are pretty different).


texts: What are the differences between a cover letter and an application letter?

texts:
I would like to apply for a PhD position, and I have found the following requirement in their web page:

An application letter that includes at least:

contact information of the applicant
the topics of interest in ranked order
names and contact information of two senior academics available for reference per e-mail,
information whether the application can be used in filling other vacancies at the Department and,
from which source the applicant received the information regarding the current call.

I was thinking to put all these items in a list and fill them like some type of survey, but I am dubious if I should do that. I mean I have found templates for cover letters, but not for application letters. Is there any format for this?


texts: My department is splitting. Should I be on one side or get a joint appointment?

texts:
I am a tenure track assistant professor in the "Department of X and Y" which is a single department for now.  Though my PhD is in X only, I now teach classes in both areas.  My research is mostly in the field of X, and my tenure committee consists of researchers in X.

These two areas have a significant salary imbalance.  The starting salary of assistant professor in Y is close to the salary of full professors in X.

This department is about to be split into "Department of X" and "Department of Y", and I sense that this may not be a very happy divorce.  I am now approached by the future Dept. of Y to be involved.  I can see 3 options:

Stay in Dept. of X and forget about Y.
Stay in Dept. of X and get a courtesy appointment from Dept. of Y.
Get an joint appointment.
Move to Dept. of Y completely

How should I evaluate my options?

My feeling, so far, is that option (1) should be the safe option.  I may loose most of my students, but likely stay out of trouble. Option (2) means I teach for both departments, which may not make sense, as I will be getting my salary from Dept. of X (much lower) and do half of the job in Dept. Y.  My teaching and service in Dept. Y will also not contribute to my tenure case.  Option (3) makes more sense financially and can potentially broaden my research area, but it may be impossible to keep two department chairs happy (especially when there are conflicts between the two).

Are there other factors I should be considering?

Update: Option (4), moving to Dept. of Y completely, is not an offer that is currently on the table. It is unlikely to ever be there, as I don't have a PhD in Y.


texts: What are the non-academic job prospects for a PhD in probability?

texts:
So I am a Master of Science, majored in math, as of now. I am going to a reasonably good US university as an international student to get my PhD, which will likely be in probability, my main field of interest. I have heard a lot about how probability has applications in non-academic jobs and was wondering what would be my job prospects (in research and development) with such a PhD? I am not interested in purely academic research job.

I would like to add that I will be taking CS courses (lots of modelling courses especially), so I can bridge the gap between my knowledge of the purer side of math and its more applied side.


texts: Why do so many PhDs choose to join academia instead of industry given the pay in academia is considerably lower and the workload is much heavier?

texts:
In the computer science field, an entry-level software engineer in top-tier tech companies (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) could earn as much as a 20-year experience professor. And the workload in academia is way heavier.

For example, my friends in Google work 8 hours a day and have the weekend while my Ph.D. friends have to work at least 60 hours a week if they want to have a good publication record. They almost stay in the lab all day long and don't have the weekend.

And also, given my observation, getting a position at an even mediocre university is even much harder than getting a position at Google level companies, let alone a Ph.D. would take more time on their education.

Why do so many PhDs still choose to be a professor while they have the choice to go to the industry?


texts: If someone gets a PhD in Israel, can he work in the universities in Muslim-majority countries?

texts:
Are Israeli degrees recognized in Muslim-majority countries?

If someone gets a Ph.D. in Israel, can he work in the universities in Muslim-majority countries?

Edit:

I give you 3 names so that you can focus on the answer:

Saudi Arabia
Pakistan
Malaysia

I think some countries prohibit people from entering their countries who entered Israel.


texts: Submit to arxiv prior to a conference or journal

texts:
I'm about to apply for phd soon. I have several papers that I'm currently working on that are almost finished. That said, there is probably not enough to publish them on time. I think it might be a good idea to post them to arxiv so that I can point admission committee to my work as "preprints" in my application. But since I hope to eventually submit them to a journal or conference, what would be appropriate way to do it? for example, which license of the following should I choose? What are the difference? Would that affect my later publication?

arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license to distribute this article (Minimal rights required by arXiv.org)

Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration (CC0 1.0)
 None of the above licenses apply


texts: Citing multiple images scraped from website

texts: I scraped a few thousand images from an open source online collection (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection --> Open Access Artworks) for a coding project. I want to cite the selected works from the collection with one Harvard style citation for my code report's bibliography. None of them show up in the report itself, they're just research materials. Does anyone have a suggestion for this?


texts: Is it appropriate to call a professor for a recommendation on the weekend?

texts:
I emailed my professor about two weeks ago, but there was no response to my first email. I sent a follow up, and got a reply saying they'd be happy to write one for me on the following weekend. I waited, the weekend passed, and nothing happened. I followed up  again, and again no response to my email.

Now I am thinking to call as a reminder. My professor has written many recommendations on my behalf, and my guess is that it didn't get done  due to  laziness or  forgetfulness. Now we have a long holiday coming for the next ten days and I want a recommendation as soon as possible. Is it appropriate to call  on the weekend given the fact that it was said that it could be written one a previous weekend?


texts: How to solicit funded research projects from industry to perform while in graduate school?

texts:
My ultimate goal is to secure a position in industry post graduation. I figured a solid approach would be align myself with current problems and try and partner to solve them. This gives me resume wins for when I am back on the market. Also industry may have deeper pockets than NIH for my field. How would one go about this assuming no contacts are known a priori. Also how would a PI react to such activities if say I were to land one with funding dollars attached? I figured it would be a win-win.

Any comments are greatly appreciated.


texts: Does it matter where my academic website is hosted, for issues of intellectual property?

texts:
Say I am a British academic, who happens to have a blog, where I comment on my research and other people's research. Naturally, I do not want to infringe copyrights on any type, including intellectual property (IP). Yet, it seems that the IP law is "more loose" in the US than in the UK. In effect, whereas the US law is defined on positive terms ("this is what you cannot do"), the UK is defined on negative terms ("this is what you can do").

Just for the sake of minimizing potential, unintended infringement of IP copyrights in my blog, should I register my website in the US, or is that irrelevant?


texts: What are alternatives to Journal of Theoretical Biology?

texts:
I am considering joining the recent boycott of Elsevier, however I work with biologists on theoretical/mathematical biology (in particular, evolutionary game theory and population biology). However, It seems like Journal of Theoretical Biology  is the premier journal for technical work in this field, and my co-authors often suggest it.

What are some (preferably, open-access) alternatives to JTB?


texts: Supervisor's feelings toward publishing prior work without him

texts: Before starting my Ph.D at university X, I had a research stay in university Y. I submitted a paper related to my work done at university Y and it took 2 years to be published. At the time of publication I was a Ph.D student at university X, but I did not tell my supervisor about the submitted paper, because it was related to my previous work which was not related to my Ph.D. I am afraid about my supervisor's feelings. Will this publication make him upset?


texts: Well-regarded institutions offering distance education (PG) in applied Math

texts: Which are the well-regarded institutions in Europe (apart from the Open University in the UK) and America offering distance learning postgraduate degrees? I'm especially interested in Applied Mathematics.


texts: Are MOOCs a good way to show grad schools that I've gained proficiency in a field which is not my major?

texts: I'm an undergraduate computer science major with a specialization in networks and communication looking at a masters in molecular genetics. In addition to a GRE biochemistry and molecular biology subject test score, I'm interested in MOOCs to enhance my resume.


texts: Ph.D. admission with funding from current employer

texts:
My employer is considering contracting part of a research project to a university and I'm currently the project leader. I found that I might use this opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. degree and talked to the management of my company. They agreed for me to do a Ph.D. using this funding (I will still have to commit other affairs in my current company but that will only be part-time). We also found a professor willing to supervise me provided that the funding will be available from my employer

So my question is, would the admission committee consider this approach problematic? As I'm the representative of the industry funding provider of my Ph.D. research, if I'm admitted to the program. Also, just to be selfish, how do I gently let the department know that I will not (at least within my influence for this particular project) fund other student for this project?


texts: How do I know that journal is good apart from the impact factor?

texts:
My boss asked me to submit my research to a journal I've never heard of.
How do I know that journal is good for my career apart from the impact factor?
I would like to have my own criteria without just doing whatever my boss says. For example, how the journal is peer-reviewed, time of publication, specific topics, other authors, and how to measure these things just looking at a journal site.


texts: What is a faculty mentor for a junior professor?

texts: I see JeffE mentioned the existence of a faculty mentor in his comment on this question, so I am wondering if there is usually a faculty mentor for every junior professor (e.g., newly hired untenured profs). If yes, what are their roles?


texts: How to become committee member of a conference workshop?

texts: Is there a formal process behind deciding who should be the members of a workshop committee? Or is it more about the organizers contacting people based on their experience within that particular field?


texts: Does working in a project without being a first author of any of its papers help my career path in academia

texts:
This question is related to my previous one. Basically, I'm working in the research project as the only PhD student, other members are post-doc and lecturers. After discussing with my supervisor and other investigators, it is clear that there is no funding left for me even though they want to. My supervisor wants me to continue working but lets me decide if it is what I want or not.

Personally, I want to continue working because:

It's nice to mention about working in the funded project in my CV.
I have an opportunity to work with many senior researchers and lecturers who can write reference letters for me.

However, since I'm only in charge of performing experiments to test/evaluate ideas of others, there is no chance for me to be the first author of any papers produced by the project. For all the papers that I help writing, I only write the experiment section, while other sections are written by more senior members.

So, I want to ask if it helps for my career path in academia if I work in a project with no chance to be the first author of any papers produced by it.

Update:

My field is computer science in which the order of authors matters.
The project will take more than a year to finish, so I wonder if it's better
if I focus all my time on my PhD and private life instead. Because at
the moment, working in it is like doing a part time job without
salary.


texts: How to stay motivated during the final year of the PhD program?

texts:
I used to be an extremely motivated and a goal-oriented person. But it's been three years that I go through long periods of unproductively, usually followed by a short period of productivity. It's my last year in the PhD program. I taught a class last quarter and worked almost everyday for hours. I overdid it. Now, I don't feel motivated at all. I have to write my dissertation. I promised my advisor to submit the first chapter at the end of this month but I haven't started writing yet (I have done the research). Do others experience this? What strategies do you use to stay focused? I already took a long break (20 days), and have traveled to my home country thinking it would motivate me to work. The good news is I don't feel super anxious anymore but I am very worried since I haven't been able to focus. There are no distractions here and that's why I moved back. Any advice?

Thanks!


texts: Who should I get LOR from : manager of big prestigious company where I worked 5 years back, or unknown small company where I worked recently?

texts:
I am applying for MS in CS. 6+ years of work experience.

I worked for a huge, globally well known company for less than a year straight out school. This was 5 years back.

I also worked for a very small unknown company for about 3 years.

I can get letters from both, and the content of both will be about the same I think.

Which one should I use for applications? I already have 1 from my professor with whom I did research, and another from my last company where I worked. I just need to submit a 3rd one.


texts: Double blind review allowing arXiv submissions

texts:
I am submitting an article on a conference that follows a double-blind review system. However, the following is mentioned on its dual submission policy:

  Papers that have appeared on non-peered reviewed websites (like arXiv) or that have been presented at workshops (i.e., venues that do not have a publication proceedings) do not violate the policy.

So, if the above is true, I might as well have submitted a paper that has also appeared in arXiv, where the identities of the authors are visible. Wouldn't that effectively constitute a violation of the double-blind review policy?


texts: Improving my PhD application for math programs

texts:
This past year I was accepted into two mid range phd programs in mathematics without funding. Here's what my profile looked like:

Domestic White Male
Unknown state school in the midwest
Majors: Mathematics and Philosophy
GPA: 3.93
GRE:
Q: 168 (97)
V: 167 (97)
W: 5.0 (92)
M: not taken

Interests: Analysis, Medical Imaging/Modeling, Mathematical Physics

Major Coursework:
Complex Analysis, Discrete Structures, Applied Math (survey course mostly in Fourier methods and PDEs), Mathematical Statistics.

Recommendations:
One from a top applied mathematician who was very late in sending them out, one from a professor from the previous year who is well regarded but has not had much contact with me and one from a young professor who was fresh out of post doc.

Other:
I'm 30 years old. Some former work experience as a co-op student in engineering at a national lab, dean's list, normal stuff like that. I had only completed two semesters at my current school, though. About 6 years ago I was an engineering student at a different institution with poor grades and I did not finish my degree. Also mid to high level (lots of national, some international competition) as an athletic coach working with kids, teens and adults. Some international experience as an athlete as well. I also speak basic German.

Here's how my profile has changed:

Current GPA: 3.94 (.01 difference! However, this does mean 6 more As and 1 more A- to counterbalance my poor record from the early-mid 2000s.)

GRE Subject Score: 660 (52)

Additional Coursework: Formal Logic, Real Analysis, Advanced Linear Algebra, Intro to Abstract Algebra. This summer I am doing a course in number theory and an independent study in Galois theory.

Recommendations: I am going to give the late professor a much longer lead time this time around. He has said that he wants to help me but is always extremely busy. I will also be asking (and almost certainly receiving) a rec from the professor I am doing my independent study with.

Interests in pure math have shifted away from analysis, more into algebra. In applied, medical applications (organ/system modeling and imaging more than bioinformatics) have taken the lead over mathematical physics.

Other changes: Medalist in school's math competition, math tutor in our honors college and privately. Taking a Spanish immersion course so I can list basic spanish on there as well.

I'll be taking the GRE subject again in October and am using saylor.org and MIT's opencourseware to review older subjects. I graduate in August and will be working for a year. I'm thinking about applying to teach at a high school or community college for that time. I also plan on taking one or two graduate courses per semester.

I plan on applying all over the place (>15 apps) compared to the 8 from last time. I would prefer to go to the west coast. Can anyone let me know if the mid level UCs (Irvine, Santa Barbara, Davis) are reasonable with what I've got now, especially since when I worked at that national lab I was technically a UC employee? Any other recommendations on schools or anything I can do over the next year to boost this?

One other thing: I have no REUs, but is a good independent study with a strong recommendation from it a decent substitute?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.


texts: Are there standard example research papers for teaching methodology and experiments?

texts: Are there recommended or standard published papers (not books) that show great research methodology/ scientific methods?  I am trying to help out a friend who is in business and they are trying to study aspects of humans (in terms of their clients).  I gave him the book The Craft of Research, but it's long and I wonder if there is a paper that could do the same job.  Basically I want to show him a good example of coming up with a hypothesis, accounting for variables (such as stating that something was done in order to eliminate a problem), and analyzing the results.


texts: What is the IEEE citation style for content obtained from wikipedia?

texts:
I have added a paragraph from wikipedia in my thesis. Now I need to add reference to that wikipedia page. What is the IEEE formatting and citation style for that? Currently I use as below.

In chapter of thesis added copied content from wikipedia as below

  The waterfall development model originates in the manufacturing and construction
  industries; highly structured physical environments in which after-the-fact changes are
  prohibitively costly, if not impossible. Since no formal software development
  methodologies existed at the time, this hardware-oriented model was simply adapted
  for software development [1].

In References page

  [1] (2014, April 22). Waterfall Model [Online]. Available:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model


texts: Why do North American law schools require an undergraduate degree, when the UK's don't?

texts:
I'm aware that most NA law schools require an undergraduate degree. For example, Yale's application website states:

  You must receive, or expect to receive by the summer of 2020, a bachelor's degree (or the equivalent) from an approved undergraduate institution in order to be eligible to apply. All offers of admission are contingent upon graduation.

In Canada, McGill doesn't require a degree, but strongly recommends it for competitiveness (link ):

  While candidates who have completed 60 credits of university study are eligible to apply to the Faculty of Law, admission to the program is competitive and as such, almost all students admitted in the “University” category (see below) have completed an undergraduate degree.

That said, a law degree is an undergraduate degree in the UK. According to this website:

  Students have the choice of studying a qualifying law degree at a wide range of UK Universities immediately after high school or after they have completed an undergraduate degree.

Thus a UK barrister or solicitor will spend between 4 and 5 years in university (4 = 3 yr qualifying law degree + 1 yr for LPC or BPTC, 5 = ≥3 yrs first non-law degree + 1 yr GDL + 1 yr LPC or BPTC), while the average North American lawyer will spend closer to 7 years (4 yrs undergraduate + 4 yrs JD).

Many senior UK judges have just 1 3-year undergraduate careers, some not in law at all. For example, Lord Sumption has just a BA in History from Oxford, Lord Phillips, first UKSC President, has just a BA in law from Cambridge, and Lord Neuberger has just a BA (yes, not BSc) in Chemistry from Oxford.

The UK's leading law schools look better than Canada's. The 2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks Cambridge at 5, Oxford 6, UCL 8; but the topmost Canadian are Toronto (10),  McGill (13). The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017 ranks Oxford (2), Cambridge (3), LSE (7), UCL (12); but the topmost Canadian LS is Toronto (17).

It doesn't appear that the far briefer university education has affected the quality of UK law or lawyers.

To that end, I'd reckon that to save students time and money, North American law schools ought follow the UK's lead in not requiring UGs.

Note that to simplify this question, I haven't discussed other similar nation-states  like Hong Kong, or asked the analogous question for medical school.


texts: What should I do about my non-English publications when applying to a University in an English-speaking country?

texts:
I've recently finished obtaining my PhD in a non-English speaking country. All of my papers have been published locally, so I've never felt the need to translate them into English before. Now I'm looking to continue my career as a postdoc in an English-speaking part of the world. One of the basic requirements in Universities abroad is to provide samples of your previous publications. I wonder what my course of action should be.

I have translated all the annotations, keywords, reference information and short summaries of my works into English - but is that good enough? Should I also translate the texts of my most important works and perhaps even my PhD thesis (which would take an enormous effort, to be frank)?

Or should I focus instead on writing more articles on the topic of my research and publish them in international journals? How valuable would my translated articles be to potential employers if they weren't published in an English journal in the first place - would they be taken into account when considering my candidacy for employment?

Thank you!


texts: Advice for dinner with prospective Ph. D. advisor and grad students?

texts:
I'm applying to doctoral programs right now and I'm having dinner tomorrow night with a professor and three of his grad students. I'm very hopeful to join this lab. I've spoken with the professor before and would like to focus my attention on the students. I've never done anything like this before.

Do you  have any suggestions for questions I should ask and how I should act? I wanted to offer to pay for dinner or at least drinks since they are going to this trouble, but would that seem like I'm trying to schmooze my way in? Would it be weird for me to write notes on what they say at dinner?


texts: How to query gender in a multiple-choice poll/survey?

texts: In a study where human subjects are given questionnaires, it may be interesting to analyze whether effects are gender-specific and/or more pronounced in one gender than in (the) other(s). How can this information be gathered in a way that respects every individual independent of gender? How many checkboxes does one need for the question, and how should these be labeled?


texts: What quantitive metrics would reviewers in order to be presented as candidates for peer review?

texts:
I am looking for ideas and suggestions on when someone would have enough experience and expertise to be presented as a potential peer review candidate.

I am specifically looking at using review history data as a source and keywords search to search that source. So a solution could be related to attributing keywords. But don't let that lead you too much, this is just my current thinking.

The configuration of such a process of when does someone becomes worth showing as an expert of candidate is main area I would like suggestions and idea on.


texts: What is expected if one wants to visit a research lab as a fresh PhD graduate?

texts:
I'm planning on visiting a lab during my trip to another country. I'm just getting my PhD, so I'm not a student anymore, and maybe not experienced enough to be a visiting lecture. Visiting students, visiting lecturers or post docs might be welcomed, but I'm not sure for my case.

Is it okay to e-mail to possible labs if people like me can visit the lab(s) for about a month? What is expected in return? Do we have to give a talk, or produce some result? Or is it okay to just learn from them, without directly contributing anything?


texts: How to proceed when a professor's timekeeping error hurts my course grade?

texts:
My professor had said the midterm was 2.5 hours. This was told by all the students for weeks. The midterm comes, and there is no countdown for when submission is required, thus meaning the midterm is unlimited. I followed academic integrity and submitted at 2.5 hours; however, many students were submitted at 3+ up to 4 hours. I did not have enough time to finish 2 questions (10 marks total), because I submitted them at the correct time. This caused me to fail the course by 0.28%, meaning I would have needed 1.5 marks on the midterm to pass. This will result in me being held back a year and retake the course. My professor had not made a bell curve, neither a grade adjustment for the error she had made because there was "statistically no significant difference between students who submitted early and those who had extra time."
My question is, what are some reasonable courses of action in this situation?


texts: ScholarOne Manuscripts File Designations

texts: When uploading files in SCHOLARONE Manuscripts (IEEE journals), I can pick an appropriate file designation for each. What is the file designations 'Summary of changes' and 'Summary of differences'?


texts: How should I thank my advisors at the end of my program?

texts:
I've finished all of the requirements for my master's degree and am going to graduate this summer. As I finish up, I want to thank my advisors for investing in me so much over the last few years.

What are some appropriate ways for me to thank my advisors? (One of my advisors moved out-of-state after I started working with her, so unfortunately, I won't be able to thank her in person.)


texts: Retaking a course but the exams are exactly the same as last year's

texts:
I recently faced a problem that is, I took a course at my university last year and got some grade for it, so for further improving it I gave the course this year again.

The course is purely evaluated based on oral exams on the take-home assignments that are handed out.

Coming back to the problem, I registered for the same course this year at my university, and apparently, the set of take-home exams are the same as the last year. Since, I know most of the correct answers, I just corrected the ones I made mistake on last year and submitted the improved set of the report this year.

However, it seems that the course instructor is not so happy about it  (and does not want to evaluate me) as I just re-did the same assignments by improving the previous one.

Having said these, what I see as the problem is that in the course information they have not said anything that whoever is repeating the course should inform the teacher to get new sets. Also, I registered for the course with a new registration and not a mere re-sit. Since they have given the assignments the same, I don't agree with them saying that they are not happy with the report that I handed in.

So for avoiding the conflict of interest, however, I withdrew from the exams, also, I know that in an ethical background that is the right thing to do (technically I did not do anything wrong).

Could you advise me who is right and wrong here and also please do advise me on the technical base, who is on the wrong side and what could I have done (I know that ethically this is wrong).


texts: What do I have to do in preparation for applying for a PhD?

texts: I'm just about to go into my final year of my computing degree, and I want to continue to a PhD after completion. What preparations do I need to do prior to applying for grants/scholarships/funding?


texts: I got my MS online - How do I ask profs for a LoR?

texts:
I got my MS not too long ago (Aug 2016) from an online program at University of Cincinnati. I am planning on applying to PhD programs this winter, and I am trying to figure out the best way to ask for letters of recommendation. I am attending a conference in November where I am hoping I can finally meet my professors face to face. I am planning on sending them an email in early October to ask if they are attending the conference (which I'm betting they are because it's a huge conference), and that I would love to talk to them about what I'm interested in/why I want to pursue a PhD. I've been thinking about getting my personal statement written beforehand and possibly attaching previous papers I did well on. One of my professors wrote an amazing comment on my capstone research paper, but I'm not sure if I should bring that 16 page paper with me.

How should I approach these professors when asking for a LoR? It's awkward enough that I was an online student, so I am trying to make it as smooth of a process as possible. What should I bring with me?

I'm also going to be involved in a research project this fall at another university, and I'm thinking that will be another great source for a LoR. I am actually pretty excited about the project.


texts: How do I convince my department that not all research needs to be profit-oriented?

texts:
I have gotten a job in a sort of university of Applied Sciences; this work place wants to start a small research group, but one issue that I started to notice is the orientation they want to give it. I mean, they want that all research to give a profit. For that reason, I was wondering how to convince the persons in charge of the Faculty, that not all research will give immediate profitable results.

The faculty is information technology oriented, which has a big influence on Computer Science topics. For what I saw in other institutions, not all research is profit-oriented, but oriented to expand the knowledge about some fields.

Any advice?


texts: My professor did not cite my article in a review on the same topic

texts:
I was surprised to see a review on a topic where I have published an original article, where my article was not cited. My surprise was even bigger because this review was issued from the same department where my original article was issued and it was concerning the same topic. The first author was somebody I don't know personally, but the corresponding author is my professor, who was also a co-author in my original article. I must also say that my original article has many international citations, and it saddened me a lot to realize that my own department and my own professor, forgot to cite my (their) own published work.

I emailed my professor the fact that I felt forgotten and that this was not academically correct but the answer I received did not make things better. He said that

  many other articles aren't included, because this review was covering
  many topics and that the main topic was "A". The part of the topic B
  (my topic) was not included in the aim of the review but was asked by
  a reviewer so it was added later.

But I'm not happy with this answer, because the topic B is even included in the main title of the review. But even the topic A could be enough for a citation of my original article. Later he said that in a review article they can cite only the recent 2 years original articles and that he was not obliged to cite my (our) original article.

I have obtained my PhD from this department, 5 years ago, and my original article was published 5 years ago. The review was published last month.

Do you believe that this was academically correct?


texts: Acknowledge the proofreader of the thesis

texts:
For the proofreading of my thesis I've used the help of a paid lector.
My question is, if it's normal practice to include this person into the acknowledgements of the thesis?


texts: How can you get paid to do research when you are retired in the UK?

texts:
I am retired but still actively publishing.  I would, hopefully understandably, like to be paid to do this research.  Is there some way to get a grant to pay you a salary in this situation?  I don't believe a UK university will hire someone my age as a full-time employee.

One option is to become someone's postdoc but this doesn't seem ideal given the way the postdocs are managed by universities these days.

  Is there another option?


texts: How to use a case study in a literature review?

texts:
I am writing a literature review and I may need to include three case studies. What is the best way to go about it? Am I allowed to include the whole case study for the reader's review and then analyze the points made?

Thank you for your advice in advance.


texts:
Suppose that I am a PhD student that works as an RA in the lab of my PhD advisor. While I am in the lab, I come up with some interesting idea, and then I spend time reading and planning out a possible paper that I could work on related to this idea. I spend about a month doing this. I have mentioned a vague description to my advisor about this idea, but have not had any real discussion with him and the advisor does not really know what the idea is. I have made no concrete action on the paper in the form of writing anything, experiments, etc..

Now suppose that I have left the lab for whatever reason. My previous advisor tells me that I must write him up a full description of my idea and research plan, arguing that I was his RA while I thought of the idea and therefore it belongs to him. His reason for doing this is he wants to give the project to a different student in the lab who will carry out the work, and I will be an author but not the first author. However, I already have plans of completing the project in my new lab, which I have told my old advisor, but he doesn't care. If I do not describe the idea to the professor, there is no way he can do this since I never really told him the idea in the first place.

Is it within my rights to refuse to describe to him my idea? As in, can I get in trouble with the university? Could I get in trouble legally? I am not asking about political ramifications, the practicality of doing this, etc., only whether it is my right.


texts: Permissible gap between sub-topics of a PhD thesis?

texts:
I am a Ph.D. student who decided to change the direction midway. At a high level, I work on combinatorial optimization under uncertainty. In my proposal, I had said that I would use a technique A and its variants to tackle my problem. But now I have become uninterested in this direction.

I want to broaden my combinatorial optimization problem to P' so that I can consider a technique B which is totally unrelated to A, and since I broadened the problem I cannot directly compare the results from A.
Furthermore, I want to make some more changes in the problem to P'' and then use a technique C.

Now I have problems P,P', P'' which are variants of same combinatorial optimization problem under uncertainty but the techniques A, B and C are completely different and the results cannot be compared directly. Though I will compare A, B and C with techniques from literature separately. The underlying link is that all these problems are characterized by uncertain information.

Can I rope this into a thesis? Please note that I have finished my work with P, A and am starting to think about P', B. My concern is that there is a gap between these sub-topics and my Ph.D. thesis might lack cohesion. Suggestions/advice requested.


texts: Are there cases where an accepted paper is retracted for lack of originality?

texts: Following the answers to this question that it is quite common to inadvertently reinvent the wheel in theoretical/computational research, have there been cases where the decision to accept a paper to a journal/conference has been revoked on this ground, because someone found out later that the results were not actually original? In such cases, how would one distinguish between oversight and plagiarism?


texts: GRE scores. Is it a good idea to send multiple scores?

texts: I scored well in the Quantitative and Verbal sections of the GRE when I took it 2 years ago and terribly on the analytical writing section. I took the GRE again 2 weeks ago and my scores on the Quantitative and Verbal sections decreased but there was a sizeable increase in the analytical writing score. Is it a good idea to send both the scores or just the first one? Do universities only consider the best scores or do they average them? I am applying for PhD in Computer Science programs.


texts:
Is there any fundamental difference between a statement of purpose for a masters and a PhD?

In particular, I am talking about North American graduate schools and in the fields like mathematics and science where there is a high degree of technical knowledge. This means that there may be quite a significant difference in the level of maturity when comparing a potential master's student and a potential PhD student

For instance, it may be more understandable for a student applying for a master's to have a less extensive research experience than someone who is applying for a PhD. But on the other hand, it also seems to make sense that the committee for graduate applications would be the same and it may be difficult to actually distinguish the difference.

My question stems from the fact that I don't seem to see any examples of statement of purposes that explicitly mentions that they are applying for a masters.

I would be thankful for any insights.


texts: Is it ethical to "arm-twist" a faculty-member into passing more students or improving the class average?

texts:
I recently got "arm-twisted" [2] (by the department chair and the dean of faculty) into passing the whole (undergrad Math) class who appeared for the final (minus that one student who we all knew was not going to make it anyway) by the most lenient grading-on-a-curve I have ever done. Isn't it immoral to pass students ahead who aren't ready or those who are gaming the system? Or am I overthinking this? The final exam was set easy and "OK-ed" by a senior colleague (I am a new faculty member). I had to pass 6 students who were way below average...

Some additional remarks based on posed questions:

This is not a rant, it's a serious concern if I should go to higher authorities.
Arm-twisting ==> pressurised a lot over 4 days of meetings.
I don't think the dean of faculty is unethical at all but it looks like she is strongly influenced by the department chair, who, in my opinion, could be borderline-toxic (but I am not sure).
Grading wasn't tough - it was nominal, of course, to the best of my knowledge.
How does passing students who are way below average make them a good educator? After having spent a semester with them and/or just looking at how they scored on exams and quizzes, they definitely could benefit from repeating it.


texts: What are the academic job ranks in Sweden?

texts: Recently I read about a position as "universitetslektor" in a Swedish university. I did some research to figure out what this academic rank means. In my understanding  it is similar to a lecturer in the British system. What I could not figure out is if "universitetslektor" is a permanent position, or if there is a qualification after which this position becomes permanent. Also, does  universitetslektor refer to lecturer or to senior lecturer. What would be the analogue in the US system?


texts: Why are there no standards for awarding PhD degrees?

texts:
I am considering doing a PhD however I was surprised to find out that there are no set standards for a PhD in research.

For example, one study could test 500 patients, while another, tests only 10, yet both students are awarded their PhDs. Then there are retrospective studies, which are easier than starting a new study. Finally, there are some PhDs that are purely research and then there are some that are based on essay writing.

However, at the end of the day, the degree is the same, Doctorate of Philosophy, it does not mention anything special for those endless sleepless nights of analysing data and being able to pull off amazing statistics, as compared to a student of any other field.

So my question is, why bother going the tough route when it makes no difference at the end of the day, unless there are careers out there outside of academia, that specifically asks you, what type of PhD do you have?


texts: (APA) Citations for figures I created with existing data (An Egotistical Dilemma)

texts:
Context: I'm working on a paper in APA style. I created two scatterplots on my own using code I wrote in R. However, the actual raw data represented comes from a source in my references.
Issue: I feel I'm in a bit of a quandary: I deserve recognition for the creation of these figures, yet I feel I must still provide an in-text citation in the figures' captions. The closest parallel I can come up with is that the interpretation (in the form of visual elements) of the source's raw data is ultimately my paraphrasing the raw data; thus requiring a citation so as not to constitute plagiarism.
Should I just simply provide an in-text citation in the caption and not mention that the figures won't be found in the cited source?
If not, what's a succinct way to highlight the fact that the figures aren't in the source, only the raw unmunged data? Should I, perhaps, forgo citation of the data's source in the figure and only cite the data's source when discussing the figures in the actual text?


texts:
I am doing research in an industrial organization. Now, I have written a paper describing my work and outcomes. The idea was completely envisaged by me and the paper was written solely be me.  It was an outcome of a funded research project, but the research done was no where in the scope of the work, and I managed to squeeze time to do this work.

Now, I am confused on whom to include in my co-authors lists.
I have only one teammate, with whom I worked in the project but didn't take any help for doing this area of work and writing the paper. But I think he deserves to be a co-author since we discussed various related things.
I also gave the paper for review to my reporting officer who gave a few grammatical suggestions and tips on paper writing.

Now, the problem is, I have two more level of hierarchy above my reporting officer one of them being the director of the organization. Would it be ethical to include their names as co-authors when no discussion was made with them regarding this or should they be acknowledged ?
Note: The usual practice in my organization is to keep your superiors name before yourself(some red tapism probably), and I have already violated that by keeping myself as first author(thanks to ASE).


texts: Notetaking with Latex and collapsing text for research papers

texts:
I am looking for a note-taking software with the following features,
I would appreciate any advice!

Collapsing or folding text (Like FoldingText or other outliners)
Ability to quickly write up formulas (Like stack exchange's Markdown)
Relatively pretty
Nice writing experience
Hopefully cheap

This would be helpful while taking notes from research publications side it is highly unwieldy to have a sparse collection of text files.


texts: Should referees assume that authors will see the full report if their paper is rejected?

texts:
I have now more than once had the following series of experiences as a referee of mathematics papers:

Elite Journal A sends me a paper.  I find some problems with it, some small and some large, and describe them in a carefully- and thoughtfully-written report, but also tell the editor that even if the problems were fixed I do not think that the results are sufficiently interesting to rise to the august standards of EJA, though the results would deserve publication somewhere.
Several months later, Mediocre Journal B sends me the same paper.  The author has clearly not incorporated anything from my earlier report: typos that I pointed out have not been fixed even though it would have been trivial to do so, and the more serious problems that I found have not been addressed at all.

The first time that this happened I was quite upset with the author: based on my earlier report he had been made aware of fundamental flaws in the proof of his main result, yet he had the nerve to try to publish it anyway.  But since it has happened again (with a different author), it has occurred to me that maybe what is happening here is that the author simply is not getting a chance to see the report, because the editor isn't sending it with the rejection email.

Is there a consistent practice in this regard?  When I have had papers rejected I suppose I often haven't gotten a detailed report with line-by-line corrections, but I usually assumed that one had not been written (most of my rejections have happened fairly quickly and on grounds of significance as opposed to correctness).  If I want the author to see my report even if the paper is rejected, do I need to specifically tell the editor this?  Or have I just happened to stumble across some unscrupulous authors?


texts: How to sell my current solution to my advisor?

texts:
Long story short, a long time ago (2 years) I had a research project, that for various reasons was not completed. Some months ago I came back to it and started trying new methods, state-of-the-art algorithms, some battle tested for decades, and some novel ones that came in the past few years (after the project got put in hiatus).
I don't disagree my method is naive, but it works fast and is more accurate than all the other ones. I need to mention, my method works only in a very, very niche subset of cases, all these other methods are designed to be general and work on arbitrary shapes, so my method outperforming other methods is not a great discovery it simply can leverage more assumptions than the other methods can.
I measured and tried a bunch of stuff and well, yes the method I came up with is really, really silly it's a naive approximation (it's definitely not an exact solution), but of all the other things I tried, this seems to solve this particular problem in this particular subdomain better than all the other algorithms I have used to solve the problem, based purely on the numbers.
If a paper comes out of this, the paper would essentially be "here's how you can leverage this silly math fact to come up with a rough approximation of the true solution in microseconds, vs hours or days for an exact one".
With that being shared, I don't know if or how I can pitch or sell this to my advisor, considering that after so much time I have come with a lot more work done, just to say that the method he didn't like the first time works better than the state-of-the-art algorithms (for this specific case).


texts: Should I refuse to be named as co-author of a low quality paper?

texts:
During my bachelor I did a research internship in another country for a few months and contributed to a research project which is now, a few years later, going to be published. The research is in a specific field of computer science, but the responsible professors' main interest is focused in another STEM area. So now his grad student approached me and asked if I would review the paper. I read it and I think the quality is not good. There are many writing errors, the papers to which the results are being compared  are quite old (around 6 years) and the datasets used to evaluate the algorithms are from the 90's. This is quite old in a fast growing field like computer science. The techniques which were used are correct, as far as I can judge, but not new.

I know that the professor and his grad student are no experts in this field but I now pursue my masters degree in this specific field of computer science. I recently learned about more modern approaches and I think that their methods are not worth being published in a paper. I wasn't experienced enough to notice this when I was with them in this internship. It would also be too much work for me to fix all these issues I named.

Now I wonder if it could give me, as a computer scientist, a bad reputation to  eventually  co-author a paper which (I think) is outdated and poorly written. Can I decline being named but allow them to publish it? On the other hand, if I would be named as a co-author, this would be my first publication and maybe this would count as "better than nothing", or people would acknowledge the fact that I contributed to some okay-ish research in my early bachelors. I am not sure yet if I want to pursue a career in science or in the industry.


texts: I have done Computer Systems engineering and working for a good company. I am interested in doing a masters (not really because I have much interest in theory but because it helps in career advancement.) How do I calculate how a masters will be a good decision and worth the time, money and energy? My goal is to become a Chief Technology Officer in 10 years (I have 3 years of experience right now and 1 year of experience after graduation.)


texts:
I am invited to an online interview for a PhD position.
Actually, it is my first time.
What are the contents of the interview?
What issues are usually discussed in these interviews?
Am I supposed to represent a proposal in the context of research, at that time?
Which parameters can increase the acceptance chance?


texts: Does this imply that I am ineligible to apply for this grant?

texts:
Comment of grant reviewer in the field of chemistry:

  order to be eligible, your study must involve an inferential statistical test, and it appears your study will instead quantify the conditions required to [chemistry term]

Why would a grant in chemistry require such statistical test? Nowhere in the announcement of the grant was this pointed out. Am I understanding chemistry wrong?


texts: Choosing between PhD offers - top supervisor at my current institution or good supervisor at new university

texts:
I have offers for a funded PhD at equally prestigious universities in the same country. One is the university I did my undergrad (and doing my masters) in, with a "rising star" PhD supervisor that is very well known in my (small) subfield. The supervisor at the other (new) university is more senior, known in the field but not extremely popular.
In academic terms, it is clear that I should stay at my current university. However, I have heard many times the advice that it is good to change university for personal and academic development. From a personal point of view, I would feel excited to move university (and city). I am aiming at an academic career and so I feel that it would be too risky not to take the top supervisor at my current university (since this would give me stronger LORs and connections).
I have asked PhD students who know the advisors, and they all strongly encouraged me to take the one at my current university. They didn't do their undergrad there, however, so they didn't have the experience I would have of being 8 years in the same city and university...
My questions are:

Should I stay at my current university with the top supervisor?
If so, how to mitigate the negative effects of remaining in the same city and school?

Thanks a lot!


texts: Should I use AP scores to exempt classes when trying to transfer?

texts:
I am considering going to De Anza College (California community college) and trying to transfer/TAG into a UC or similar college. Is it worth it to, for example, use my APCS A test (got 5) or AP Calc BC (5) to exempt some of the entry-level courses that I need to transfer? Or is it more worth it to be conservative and maximize grades?
Will colleges look down on students that have AP scores yet take a similar course in college?
How would this affect my eligibility to TAG into the various UCs with the program?
Note: I have finalized my choice to enroll in a cs program if I were to attempt a transfer.
Other AP scores that I currently consider using:
AP Chinese (will take)
AP Chem (4)
AP Physics C (will take)


texts: What is the best way to ask for a lecturer position in a cold email?

texts: I am interested in becoming a lecturer at the school I received my Bachelors. I am in love not only with the school, but the field of communications. The department has been looking for ways to bring in more students, and I feel as if I could become a lecturer there and also rebrand the department. I have spoken with a professor in the department and she gave me the appropriate contact information, but what is the best way to inquire and cold email about it?


texts: Why do W (i.e., Withdrawn) grades exist?

texts:
At American colleges and universities, it is nearly universally the case, to the best of my knowledge, that students who choose to withdraw from a course after a short window early in the semester receive a grade of W on their transcript for that course. Generally this grade does not affect the GPA directly, but these W's have direct effects in that they may damage on students' academic standing or financial aid, prevent dean's listing, etc. Probably more importantly, they have indirect effects that people reading a student's transcript may assume a W indicates the student would have earned a very low grade had they finished the course.
Having discussed this with some colleagues, I've had trouble generating arguments in favor of this system. There would be obvious benefits to students of allowing withdrawals not to appear on the transcript. I would argue there would be advantage to professors and universities as well, as students would have less intense pressure to succeed in a course on the first try, thus reducing some pressure on professors to dumb courses down. The best argument I can generate in favor of W's is that they encourage students to commit to their courses, and in particular not to play the lottery in the same course over and over in hopes of getting an easy instructor. But such lottery-playing would be plainly visible in a long time-to-degree, so I don't see that the W does much but add insult to injury here.
What is the fundamental justification universities use for this system?


texts: How does job security in academic untenured soft money positions compare with job security in industry?

texts:
With tenured hard-money positions being increasingly competitive, some researchers spend their entire career on soft money untenured positions.  To me, it would seem quite bad to never know more than one or two years in advance whether one will still have a job (see also this question).  But a senior soft money colleague (who has been on soft money since starting a post-doc 25+ years ago) pointed out it's really no worse than working for a private company, where you also never know the same.  That made me wonder.

In practice, how does the job security of soft money career scientists compare to scientists working for private companies?  Is there any data which one is at a higher risk of being laid off from a position that has been held for a long (10+ years) time¹?  And if people are then laid off, how quickly they find a similar position, if at all?

For the sake of this question, consider STEM companies that are relatively close to research, such as consultancy companies developing scientific products (such as software) or performing scientific services (such as running simulations) in close cooperation with university and/or government research labs.

¹There may be a special case where researchers work for different government contractors during their career, but for the same client and even in physically the same office.  Despite the problems that entails, here I mean laid off without being almost immediately rehired to do the same job as before.


texts: Literature search engine including citation count, year, and the conference presented at

texts:
When I am searching for literature on a particular topic, I'd like to see a list of results together with three main pieces of information: citation count, year, and publication venue (i.e., conference or journal name). In my field (Computer Science), most papers are published in conferences. The conference name is an easy way to assess at a glance: (i) the general area the paper falls into (systems, theory, programming languages, etc.) (ii) the quality of the contribution (higher-tier conferences are associated with higher quality research). Citation count also helps to assess (ii), but is less effective for more recent or more obscure papers.

My question: Is there a literature search tool (software or website) that can be used to provide citation count, year, and conference in a list of results?

Tools I have tried: I currently use Google Scholar (it provides citations favors highly cited articles when returning search results), but it usually does not provide conference information correctly (this may be because it gets cut off). For example, it lists a paper of mine from "LIPIcs-Leibniz International..." and makes it hard to identify the conference, which is "International Conference on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP)". In contrast, DBLP is designed specifically for Computer Science, so it does a good job of telling me the conference; however, it does not list citation count.

If it is possible to fix the result list with Google Scholar so that it provides the conference information more helpfully, that could be an answer to my question as well.


texts: Language requirements for postgraduate studies in UK and Canada?

texts:
Universities are autonomous institutions with independent requirements and decision making procedures, on the other hand there must be some widely recognized standards.

What is the most recognized English language certificate for postgraduate (physics) studies in UK and Canada universities?

P.S. EU citizen


texts: How to address strange author order of a collaborative paper within "equal distribution" section?

texts:
I am PhD student in mathematics and am writing a joint paper with a computer science PhD student. As we will submit the paper to a computer science journal we discussed the author ordering and agreed to equal distributions for us PhD students and our respective supervisors.

The computer science student has now ordered the author names in an non-alphabetical order for us PhD students, which makes him the first author, and an alphabetical order for the supervisors, which makes his professor the last author.

Is this common practice in computer sciences? I can understand that it is their community, but this confuses me. I think it should be at least in the same order for both categories.

My supervisor told me to talk to the other PhD student. How can I address this issue without offending anyone?

How does equal distribution authorship in computer science work, anyway?

Edit: I just don't want to be fooled. I understand that being first author is important in computer science, this is why we decided to have both PhD students as co-first authors. Our supervisors are co-last authors. Having a non-alphabetical order for the PhD students and an alphabetical order for the supervisors seems to abolish this equal distributions again to me. I just have no idea how this equal distribution thing works and how to address this issue without messing up everything.
I am not sure if we PhD students will work together again, but I could imagine that our supervisors do.


texts: RA position doesn't give feedback on rejected application

texts:
I recently applied to an economics pre-doctoral RA opportunity at a North American research university. I was asked to do a 7-hour empirical exercise, which I did (took me closer to 10 hours). Unfortunately, I was not asked to proceed in the interview process.
I did ask for feedback (or just the solution set for the empirical exercise), because I wanted to figure out where I went wrong and how I can do better the next time around, but the hiring manager informed that they aren't able to provide any kind of feedback.
I found this to be extremely frustrating and somewhat annoying -- I don't care that I didn't get the job, but I think it's wrong to ask applicants to perform many hours of uncompensated labor and not even provide an answer key! Is this the wrong way to think about things?
Really appreciate any insight or guidance you might have.
Thanks!


texts: Moderating online education forums: delete, snip or leave rudeness?

texts:
I'm a moderator for an online forum for a particular module at a distance-learning University.

Part of the job is to answer questions regarding course materials, the other main part is to be on the watch for inappropriate content (rudeness, giving answers away, etc)

In the event of students being rude to each other (which is rare), I wonder what the best approach is. For example:

  I think your given use of fleebles to induce warbling is not a good
  idea for [reasons]. You must be really up-yourself to think that.

In this situation, am I better snipping the last part out (and leaving in the bit relevant to the discussion), removing the whole post, or even leaving the post there and only acting if the victim is offended. (Maybe there are other options out there?) I generally lean towards snipping, but I wonder if deleting the whole post is "cleaner" (I don't like deciding what can stay and what has to leave)

If the post was racist/homophobic/sexist/etc. then I would delete the whole post and report the student, I'm looking at cases which are rude and deserve a reminder to "be nice".


texts: How fungible are personnel salary allocations in an NIH grant?

texts:
I'm preparing an R01 for the NIH in which I allocate salary to myself (the PI) and two co-Is, as well as to non-key personnel including a postdoc. However, in actual practice, I think there is a good chance that I'll prefer to do myself the work that might have been allocated to a postdoc (e.g., if I prefer not to hire a postdoc because I don't find the right match).
If the grant is funded, would I be allowed to simply reallocate salary from the postdoc to myself (with a reduction in FTE)?


texts: Rejection of a job offer in favor of another. Is it worth trying to fight back for the first one?

texts:
I have a problem - I am looking for a job and I was on one of the job interviews, which due to the type of this job(electronics constructor/designer) it was the "target" choice that I dreamed about. The only drawback of the offer itself was that it is in a city far from the city where I come from.
Although I like this city anyway, the fact of moving and arranging my life completely from scratch has made me feel that I have to be a bit more careful with job searching, otherwise the possible failure in new job will cost me much more.

Unfortunately, it is not without significance that in my own region to find a similar job is almost impossible without experience - and my experience is only as hobbyist and and a little from the university (master degree).
In the meantime, however, after I agrred to join #1 workplace and waiting for a job letter with official employment offer, another company called me, but now in my neighborhood, to which I applied a long time ago and arranged a job interview the same day, 2 hours after. However, they offered me a completely different position in the office, related more to the supply of electrical parts.
On the one hand, at first, they offered financial conditions very similar to 1 # job (it was suspicious, because I used to be in the internship four years ago in #2 workplace as an electrician and I know that in general they paid very little to most employees), but this kind of job was not my dream and I still preferred to be in the electronics developing team - just like in # 1 job.

However, after all, after 2 days (although the boss from 2 # job insisted at the beginning, to let him know about the decision on the same day as the conversation), I chose the second job, which wasn't an easy decision. I still had remorse, but somehow I was explaining myself that it would somehow go away.
At the end I will write why I did not finally take the first offer.
But then something that disappointed me happened. The company boss # 2 arranged all terms of cooperation with me (including monthly wage) with me and directed me to make occupational medicine before work. On the second day I was to receive a referral for this research, but an hour before HR recruiter call me and says that the boss decided to reduce the monthly salary by about 20%, which made me (dutifully or not) angry. I quit this offer no. #2 finally, but and I know that if it was not a fraud and missing a promise of the company, I would choose the first offer (#1).

Why I rejected #1 job at first? I analyzed my fears, motivation, all pros and cons (both a few days ago and at the moment) and I know that:
1) #2 job boss pulled the wool over my eyes with potential opportunities, "fake" salary and why am I the most suitable person. First workplace employees were more careful and conservative when it comes to talking about work. Once, they even stated that their work is specific (after all, a work related in a way to the military industry). More infos I really learned from the profiles of other electronic designers from their linkedin profiles. the fact, however, that they called me for an interview a little later than they promised, in addition, they asked me for patience, because the recruitment is delayed in time.
I already sensed that they did not like someone like me with a miserable experience, but now I was sure they were waiting for somebody more experienced - and ultimately they might take me for lack of other possibilities. And that's how it initially happened - before I rejected their offer in favor of work no. # 2, I rejected # 1.

Now I see that I lost with my naivety and ability to persuade skill of the boss no. # 2. I lost also with my fear of the unknown, which in combination with moving so far from my home, probably also a lack of believing in my own abilities caused that I got scared of offer # 1, which I regret; c


texts: Should I scold the act of cheating before an exam?

texts:
Usually when I'm applying an exam on my students, right before giving them the questions sheet, I tell them not to cheat. I usually warn them that I will not be inspecting their every move, but I will be watchful to make sure that no communication, electronic device or consulting will be done/used.

To complement this, I always make very mean and bad comments about cheating. Stuff like "your diploma will always be tainted if you go through the University by cheating, I'd rather use it to clean my soles" or "you had all the opportunities to ask questions, consult me, the textbooks, Youtube videos, lecture notes, class monitors and myself and the other teachers before this exam. I was always honest with you and expect the same thing in return and nothing else. If you're having personal problems that are affecting your studies, there are other ways to try to circunvent it instead of cheating". I once even said (with a class that I had some liberty to say so) that, by cheating, I wanted them to look at the mirror, every day of their lives, and face how much an intellectual failure they've become.

Now, I try to make it clear that those are jokes. But I'm sure that they get that these jokes had a truth behind it. My question is: are there ethical reasons not to do so? My point is, if I can't resource to my students' conscience to be honest, then I can't resort to anything, since I can't possibly outsmart 75 or so students every time I'm applying an exam if they want to be creative at cheating.


texts: Lack of supervision at end of PhD - how approach publishing?

texts:
My PhD supervisor, who was from an external organisation, got my PhD started with initial ideas and guidance, but wasn't an expert in the topic, thus my PhD research has been mainly self directed. About a year ago my supervisor retired, and has justifiably been off travelling and working on other things.

I'm at the late stage where I am writing up the thesis and have two papers almost ready to submit. However, I would dearly like someone to read over the work and check it, as it has quite a bit of mathematics.

How should I approach publication?

Find another supervisor, even at this late stage, and collaborate with them.
Approach an expert in the specific area and ask if they will review the papers before submission. Is this an unusual request?
Submit the papers to journals and trust the review process will identify any errors.


texts: What am I expected to say about teaching plans in an interview (UK)?

texts:
I got short-listed for an interview. I will have to give a 15 minutes presentation and I need to address 1) past and present research; 2) future research; 3) teaching plans.

About the position: I need to provide 6 hours of tutorials per week; organise lectures and practical classes in a specific module; produce lecture/class notes, course materials, reading lists, and reference guides; undertake advanced academic study; undertake academic research; identify sources of research income and make applications to secure it; write research articles.

The teaching component only lasts for 8 weeks for the entire year - the rest of the year is dedicated to the tutorials and research. What are they expecting me to present in 15 minutes regarding my teaching plan? Should I go in with the assumption that I have to design a full course all by myself (even though in reality this will be coordinated with other lecturers as well)?

For clarification, the position is being advertised for a particular module only. I'm not supposed to help with several different courses, just with the one that they are advertising.


texts: How to number courses in an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum?

texts:
I am looking to assign numbers to courses in an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. Are there any formal guidelines?

The "3 vs. 4 numbers" debate has been institutionally settled - we are using 3. I know the convention of numbering the absolute beginner courses as 101.
And that the left-most number indicates the relative difficulty of the course. I would like the other 2 numbers to be meaningful as well.

At the moment, we have courses as follows:

100 level - 3 courses
200 level - 1 group of 3 courses and 2 groups of 2 courses each
300 level - 5 courses
400 level - 4 courses

For the higher level courses, the decision is somewhat easy as the courses belong to distinct areas (parallel computing, artificial intelligence etc.) and can be numbered accordingly. But the lower level courses intentionally span multiple areas and cannot be numbered so.

So, what guides or suggestions can I follow?


texts: Should I take undergraduate CS classes if all I do is applied software dev and data science?

texts:
I am a PhD student in social science who got interested in programming via data analysis in R and various utility tools in Python, SQL, Java (for web scraping, data querying, etc.).

I am considering whether I should take several undergrad CS classes at my university, including 1) Data Structure & Algorithm, 2) Software Development (both in Java), and 3) Database.

My concern is that I've seen various posters on this site claiming that what's taught in CS program has very little to do with the craft of programming itself. My main goal is to better my data analysis skills (for a data science career) and perhaps learn some machine learning and agent-based modeling. Given that goal, should I those classes? If not, what's the best way to learn programming the applied way?

(A common answer to "how to learn programming by yourself" is to do a project. However, engaging in a project without guidance and quick feedback is a very easy way to get sidetracked, especially since I'm in social science where programming skill is nothing but a tool and not valuable in and of itself. So, if your answer is "to do a project", please provide more details on how to get guidance, e.g. data analysis books)