How does average profile of person that got accepted into top university look like? I define top university as Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Caltech, Yale and similar.

If relevant, I am talking about computer science field.

I am interested in all levels - bachelor, master, phd, post-doc.

Should anything beside: GPA, published papers, supervisor, commercial experience, teaching experience or alma mater ranking be relevant?

How does average profile of person that got accepted into top university look like? What does one need to have to feel reasonably secure about being accepted into top universities?

How does average profile of person that got accepted into top university look like?

For reasons mentioned in the comments, I will just briefly address grad school: It's typical to have taken a number of advanced classes (possibly including graduate classes) in your discipline from a good school, and to have done well in them.  You should have strong letters of recommendation.  In some fields (not in math, and I don't think in CS) it's typical to have done some research.  It's pretty common to be international, and straight out of another (bachelors or master's) program.  But I don't know that an "average profile" is the right thing to look at.

  What does one need to have to feel reasonably secure about being accepted into top universities?

You're not in a good position to judge yourself, so talk to your professors.  What kind of schools do they think you should apply to?  What kinds of schools do they think you can get into?  After all, they'll be writing letters for you, which are one of the primary factors in deciding your admissions.

You need recommendations that imply that you are the smartest person the recommender has ever known and sufficient outside evidence to make the recommenders' statements credible.  Generally speaking, unless your recommenders are in positions where they see lots of very smart people, this means you actually have to be very clearly the smartest person your recommenders have ever known.

(This answer isn't true for undergraduate admissions at Berkeley, because it admits so many undergraduates that it cannot actually read individual recommendations carefully.)


Our instructor threw together freely available YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles instead of lectures. What should I do? I'm currently attending university online (at a notable public institution, not a crappy school—I feel compelled to mention this because one typically expects quality from good institutions). Unfortunately, my instructor didn't put much effort into designing the course.

Essentially, though there are a few YouTube videos made by him and his colleagues, the rest of the course basically consists of:

1) The e-book that we read weekly

2) Other YouTube videos that he's linked

3) Wikipedia articles

I've already brought this to his attention in a professional manner (he didn't get upset), but things obviously won't change during this academic semester, as he's also busy teaching other courses. His reasoning is that in the digital age, since information is so freely available, his job is essentially to help guide us in finding the right information.

I disagree. What's frustrating is the fact that students are paying tuition to have an instructor tell them "Hey, here are some free videos literally anyone can find online, and some Wikipedia articles any competent student can read on their own. Go nuts." Because when you're paying tuition, the implication is that you're gaining special privilege and access to resources and knowledge that are otherwise unavailable to ordinary people/students. A student makes a choice when deciding what school he wishes to attend. In doing so, he gives up the opportunity to attend another school. If all schools just offered the same quality and degree of education, there wouldn't be any competition or a means of qualifying how good one school is compared to another.

I find it unprofessional of an instructor to do something like this. I don't want to strain my relationship with this instructor, but I also don't feel like I can let this go because the course is quite fundamental to the major I'm pursuing, and it's really upsetting that it's in this condition.

What should I do? Should I just let it pass and move on, or should I bring this to the attention of someone else? He also happens to be high up in the corresponding department, so there aren't many people above his status. I don't want to go over his head, but I feel like if I email him again about this, it'll seem like I'm just pestering him.

As a student, you are paying for the tuition (teaching). Teaching is an activity designed to help you learn and acquire new skills.
Teaching materials (books, slides, video lectures) can be good, bad or ugly, but they are only a (smaller) part of the whole picture. They are not an activity. Arguably, they matter less.

What matters more, in my opinion, is the opportunity to obtain constructive feedback from your tutors. Not the grade for your submissions, but actual analysis of your work, explaining its strength and weaknesses and providing you with some ideas on how to improve and what to work on. Not a general piece of information, but something unique and produced specifically for you.

I have rarely seen online courses where students have enough personal attention and receive more than just a few lines of personal feedback. Honestly, the situation with many traditionally run courses is largely the same. Being massively oversubscribed and under-staffed, many Departments are not able to provide students with sensible feedback on their work. As a (pathetic) attempt to compensate, they sometimes claim that they provide exclusive teaching materials, which, however, tend often to not really be any better than standard textbooks.

My suggestion is: don't be obsessed with materials you are provided with, but look at whether you're receiving enough attention and personal guidance from your tutors. If you're not getting enough feedback - it is probably time to raise your concerns or maybe even look elsewhere.

Dont judge a book by its cover
You are judging the value the instructor can offer ONLY based on the source of the course videos.
Instead assess the value you can derive out of the course based on other factors also as described in other answers such as one-on-one time you get with the instructor, his credentials, value of the certificate you are offered on completion etc.
You also need to consider the value in terms of infrastructure made available for practice.
Given that its almost a week and you havent accepted any of the answers, I assume you are finding it difficult to let it pass and move on. If so, does it interfere with your learning process? It would be in your own best interest to talk to the instructor a second time about it.


How to choose between very good journals in mathematics? I finished preparing a math paper, and am now trying to decide where to submit it.

I read How do you judge the quality of a journal?,
but it seems that the answers there mostly deal with how to judge if a journal is good at all.

The journals I am considering (see list below) are all very good. But how can I know how do very good journals rank?

I know my paper is not at the level of Annals,
so I considered the following journals:
Selecta mathematica,
Duke,
Compositio Mathematica,
American journal of mathematics,
Advances in mathematics,
International mathematical research notices,
and Crelle journal.

How can an author compare the quality very good journals such as these? Is there any reasonable way to use public data in order to sort them from best to worse?

Note: this question is looking for an answer about a general method, not necessarily a particular ranking of those particular journals.

Is there any reasonable way to use public data in order to sort them from best to worse?

Not really.  To start with, there isn't a remotely well-defined notion of ranking.  For example, it depends on the subfield (some journals attract better papers in certain areas than others), it can vary over time, and it depends on the specific goals you have in mind.  More importantly, people just don't always agree: I know some people who would argue that one of the journals you listed is clearly a better choice than the others, but they wouldn't all choose the same one.

The explicit rankings I've seen do a poor job of accounting for these factors.  At best they are mediocre (perhaps valuable as a first cut for distinguishing between journals at very different ranks, but useless for fine distinctions).  At worst they are positively misleading.

Fortunately, choosing between well-known journals like these is not so difficult.  You should look them over and try to gauge which ones look to you like they are publishing the most important papers in your area, while also asking around to get other people's opinions.  (Ask mentors of yours, ask your friends or collaborators, ask colleagues at tea.)  If there's a clear consensus among the people you ask and it's consistent with your own impressions, then you're done.  If there's a clear consensus that disagrees with your impressions, then you need to think and talk a little more.  If there's no clear consensus among several options, then it doesn't really matter which of them you choose.  After all, journal prestige matters only to the extent it is perceived to matter by the community; if the community can't make up its mind, then there is no right choice.

Carrying this out takes a little time, but it's worth it since you learn more about how things are perceived in your research area.

I have a bone to pick with some of the posters here.

First, let me make clear that I agree with certain general premises. You should definitely take into account whether a particular journal is geared towards certain fields. As an example, if you have a truly outstanding paper in algebra, you would do well not to consider submitting to Acta Mathematica. Said journal, while top 5 overall, is geared towards analysis rather than any other field. And you should look for trends, and look at compositions of editorial boards.

Next, let me address a minor point: it is a little silly, in my opinion, that Annals is considered the best of them all, when it is abundantly clear (to me at least) that Publications Mathematiques de l' IHES is really the best. I think that Annals is simply more geared towards papers which finish-off problems, and is thus more fanciful than other top 5 journals.

Now, as to my main grievance: I find it annoying that people think that quality cannot be measured. Yes, in art for example, it is virtually impossible to measure the quality of a piece by any scientific method. Ranking the quality of journals, however, is a very different game. While we may disagree how to measure quality in principal, I put forth the proposition that the only reliable such measure is the article influence score. This thing takes into account not only number of citations, but also where these citations come from. If you look at impact factors only, you might get an approximately accurate picture of the scene, but you are liable to make mistakes in your judgement, if it is based solely on that. An example here is Aequationes Mathematicae. This journal is average at best, yet it has an impact factor of 1.0, which places it at number 58 out of the 312 math journals in the Thompson Reuters database. Its article influence score, however, is 0.465 which puts it at place number 201.

Alright, so here's a list of the top 20 journals based on their article influence score:

P.S. IMRN is nowhere near the top: it is currently sitting comfortably at place 39.


Dealing with intern supervisor who underestimates my abilities I am an undergraduate student who got into a voluntary internship for a year in my department.

Without going into much detail, I'm a trainee in the lab where programming lessons are held with lots of computers available for the students(Teaching Lab).

The main problem of concern is that my supervisor, who also happens to be the administrator of the lab, does not seem to believe in my abilities and underestimates my intelligence, which I can't understand why.

When I signed up for the internship I submitted my resume, followed by a short interview from the university. I can say I got the job easily mainly due to my background.

I was hoping that I was going to work on something productive, like a research project. On the contrary, my supervisor seems to be very lazy and constantly assigns chores to me (cleaning, being his personal mailman on the university etc).

At the start since he found out I was bored he suggested to study some basic HTML (Fact is, I worked as a professional web developer some time ago!). If I reply that the tasks he sets for me are easy, he gets mad and tries to get me wrong so that he can show that I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Professors who knew me before and visited the lab asked my supervisor to offer me some motivation for extended bibliography and some more productive learning. He answered that if I have the right foundations then we can negotiate for something more productive! (Yet, he only has one paper, published 20 years ago).

What are your opinions on this? I was about to withdraw due to boredom but I only have some months left. Should I talk to a professor about this topic? Am I expecting too much or am overqualified?

I don't say this lightly, but given everything you've said: I think you should probably quit the internship, or at least present the prospect of that to your supervisor.

Some key points:

1) You say it's a "voluntary internship".  Well, all academic internships are voluntary (I hope!), so I think what you mean is that you are a volunteer, i.e., unpaid.  [Added: I just looked this up, and apparently this phrase is quite common in parts of the anglophone world outside of North America.  Sorry.]

2) You wrote

  I was hoping that I was going to work on something productive, like a research project.

That is a very reasonable expectation for a volunteer internship.  However, the parameters of the job seem to be very different:

  I'm a trainee in the lab where programming lessons are held with lots of computers available for the students.

But that doesn't sound research-related at all: it sounds like you're in a teaching lab, not a research lab.  If you were actually doing the training, you'd be some kind of TA...without pay.  Unfortunately:

  On the contrary, my supervisor...constantly assigns chores to me (cleaning, being his personal mailman on the university etc).

Having to clean up a laboratory space after using it is very reasonable.  In my branch of the academic world at least (North America), cleaning up after other people is a paid job, not part of an internship.  Similarly, mail delivery is the sort of thing for which someone is usually paid an hourly wage.  If you are doing some of this and some of something else, it might be okay if the something else were especially attractive and rewarding.  But given that you're not, it sounds to me that you're simply being exploited.  Certainly I would feel that way if I were you.

  Yet, he only has one paper, published 20 years ago.

Yikes.  So the professor is probably not even research-active, or at least not to the level necessary for it to be plausible that he is the head of some kind of research team.  He is not a good choice to supervise your research.  In view of everything else you've said, I'm afraid that it seems likely that the business about your having a "proper foundation" -- especially in the context of his willful ignorance of the skills that you already have -- is just an excuse.

I would go to this professor and say that there's been a misunderstanding.  You thought you were getting involved in a research internship, and as it hasn't panned out that way, you'd like to give notice.  If he wants to change your mind, have him mention not just the prospect of future research "when you're ready", but actually nail down research that you can get started on right away.

It would also be good to speak to at least one of the other faculty members you've mentioned.  I don't know where in the world you're writing from, so it's possible that your local academic culture is very different from mine.  But unless you find out that it would be a big bridge-burning mistake to quit your internship, I think you should be angling for that outcome.

While your situation is tricky, from your description it sounds like you have a bit of an ego which is not helping you.

One sure shot solution to the problem is to let your actions speak for you.

For instance, try to apply your web development skills when your supervisor expects something done in HTML. Try to show how meticulous you are when you are given chores (I know it can get boring but may be you will rise in his eyes if you do chores in an impressive manner). Find out what he is doing and has done in the recent past and see if you can act on something that helps his work.


Is it appropriate to mention that authors refused to provide code samples when asked? I work in a sub field of computer science. There was a recent paper (2020) that was published in a reputable conference that claimed to achieve state of the art performance on a specific data set. This data set is a hot dataset, and my research group has many papers on that specific data set (improving state of the art). I asked the authors very politely if they can share their code samples for their fairly complicated algorithm, to which they rejected and told me that it is not available.

One of my colleagues took 2 weeks to code up the algorithm, and verified its performance, as well as the claimed performance. Meanwhile, we reached a new breakthrough on the dataset and achieved a new state of the art. We are currently writing a draft.

Now, I can't help but be left with a bad taste from this whole experience. I don't see why they wouldn't share their code especially if they claim a state of the art on a very important data set. Most papers have to be compared with the state of the art to some extent, and so essentially, they're slowing down all researchers in this specific field to recreate their own work prior to publishing their own research.

Now my question is, would be advisable to add a note that the implementation of THEIR algorithm is our implementation, and that we reached out to them for their code and they declined?

would be advisable to add a note that the implementation of THEIR algorithm is our implementation

Absolutely yes. This provides important context for your experimentation and as such, is valuable information for the reader.

Even better, you could make your implementation of their algorithm publicly available, so that future groups of authors will not encounter the same situation as you did (and will cite your paper).

  and that we reached out to them for their code and they declined?

That is the more delicate question to ask. It would surely be legitimate to do so, as it would represent the situation accurately. But such a statement has a social implication, which is that the authors appear in a slightly negative light (perhaps rightfully so). Proceed with caution.

Have you been able to reproduce the results or not, from the description of the algorithm in they article? This is not clearly seen in your question.

If yes, then the article is complete and there is nothing to complain about.

If not, the, yes, there is something to say about just the wording should be different:

"We have repeated these experiments but were not able to reproduce the results"

In order to be a scientific publication, the article must include enough information to repeat the experiment. If multiple independent researchers fail to reproduce, the author gets into trouble.


How should I cite something learned second-hand (eg, from Wikipedia) when I haven't seen the primary source? I want to cite something that I have learned from a Wikipedia page. However, I'm loathe to cite Wikipedia because of the perception of it by my tutors, so I try to cite the original source.

What should be the correct thing to do when I'm unable to have sight of the primary source myself, or find it in a collection (for clarity, I should add that I have the details of the source - I just can't find it in collections available to me)? Should I just cite as much original information as I can, or should I defer to citing Wikipedia? I'm hesitant to do that, because a glance at the citation would suggest that I was 'too lazy' to source original material or just dig deeper.

For additional clarity - I know that citing Wikipedia is 'bad' etc.  The emphasis is on how to cite something that has been learned via Wikipedia (as an example) but for which the original material cannot be seen or retrieved from available collections or searches.

What you're referring to is an indirect source. In general, you should always work as hard as you can to find the original source. If that is not possible, all of the major style guides include a way to cite indirect sources. Note that you should not cite Wikipedia (see the "do not cite Wikipeida" note at the end of this answer). If an indirect citation is absolutely necessary, it should come from a reputable, peer-reviewed journal or other academically respected source.

According to Purdue University, the MLA rule is to name the author of the indirect source in the text and cite the work you have in-hand:

  For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

    Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as "social service centers, and they don't do that well" (qtd. in Weisman 259).

  Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source...

Williams College further clarifies that the indirect work should be included in your Works Cited list:

  ...include the indirect source in the Works Cited.

The APA rule (also from Purdue University) is to exclude the indirect source (called the "original source", below) from your reference list and only include the work you have in-hand (called the "secondary source"):

  ...name the original source in your signal phrase. List the secondary source in your reference list and include the secondary source in the parentheses.

    Johnson argued that...(as cited in Smith, 2003, p. 102).

  [...] Also, try to locate the original material and cite the original source.

The Chicago rule (once again, from Purdue) is to cite the indirect source, followed by the in-hand resource:

  ...Chicago discourages the use of [indirect sources]. In the case that an original source is utterly unavailable, however, Chicago recommends the use of "quoted in" for the note:

  Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 103, quoted in Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society (New York: Continuum, 2006), 2.

That said, do not cite Wikipedia in a formal document (unless, perhaps, you are actually writing about Wikipedia or collaborative editing techniques). I love Wikipedia, and I believe it is reasonably well-maintained and has a lot of good information. However, you have no way to verify if the information in an article is true -- or, if you do have a source to verify it, you would just cite that source. Aside from the tired, "Anyone can edit it!" complaint, two severe issues with Wikipedia as a citation source are:

You get whatever version of an article stands at the exact moment your web browser fetches the page. No matter how hard Wikipedia's editors work, they can't stop a bad edit from reaching your web browser if it was made seconds before you fetched the page. Wikipedia doesn't undergo any kind of pre-publication review; all review is post-publication, which means you may see totally unreviewed information. (You can mitigate this by citing a specific past revision, but it still stands that a post-publication review process means that any given revision of an article could have claims that have been reviewed by absolutely no one except the author.)
In order for a reader or reviewer to ascertain the usefulness of a source, it must have an identifiable set of authors (or, for anonymous works, at least a consistent, reasonably small set of authors). Wikipedia makes that requirement incredibly difficult to satisfy. (Again, it's possible to satisfy this requirement if you cite a specific revision of a page and find out what contributors wrote each part of a page, but it is still difficult since a potentially huge number of contributors have helped build that revision.) It's hard for a Wikipedia article to be reputable where there are no clearly identifiable authors to which a reader could attach a reputation.

If you consider citing Wikipedia, don't, as others have explained, but IMHO you should at least acknowledge it as being helpful, either with just a mention like that or a list of "non-cites" that could be used as starting points for others wanting to review Wikipedia's (latest) views on your topics.


PhD supervisor will not read draft I just wanted to get some input from the community about an issue I have run into with my main PhD supervisor.

I started my PhD about two years ago (hard science field), and about six months ago I finished a preliminary draft for most my first article. The draft is about 70 % complete, but I can't write the last part yet because I am still waiting on some final results.

I sent the draft to my main supervisor as I wanted to get some feedback on the parts I had written so far. Just before summer I had a meeting with my supervisor, and it turned out that my supervisor had not read anything in the draft even though I had sent it several weeks before. As such, I felt that the meeting was rather unproductive as I basically had to spend the short time I had allocated explaining what I had actually done research-wise instead of getting feedback on my draft. This also disappointed me a little bit as my supervisor had specifically informed me before that it was preferable that I summarized my findings in article-form instead of just sending random updates whenever I had some progress.

Fast forward until now. This semester I have spent working at another institution, and my supervisor recently came to visit me. Several weeks before this I had informed my supervisor that I would like to discuss my paper draft, and was told that this should not be a problem. However, it turned out yet again that my supervisor had not read antyhing. Instead I was told that as some of my co-supervisors had taken a look at the draft and said it needed a better focus and a thorough rewrite (which I fully expected anyways), there was no need for my main supervisor to read it. However, although my co-advisors have given me good tips on some of the issues in the draft, I still feel like I have not received proper guidance in how I can restructure the entire focus of the article based on my current findings.

As I have spent a lot of time writing this draft, and would like to receive feedback from my main supervisor on how to improve the paper, I find it disappointing that my supervisor has shown so little interest in reading my draft. It is my understanding that reading drafts is one of the main duties of a supervisor. I am now at the stage of my PhD where I can do most of the research independently, but I still feel I need input on my writing.

Is this something I should be more firm about with my supervisor? We have had a very good working relationship so far, but this issue is really starting to bother me. If anyone has any tips on how I can deal with this, then i would greatly appreciate it!

This sounds like a case of your supervisor being too busy and pushing work they consider less essential to the background. I'd suggest that, since you have alternate sources of feedback here, that you explore those and just push on toward the end.

I think it would be harder to avoid something you represent as a "complete" draft or a "final" draft. At that point I hope the supervisor moves your work up to the first level of importance.

Even feedback from a third party might be valuable if you can find a way to get it.

But there is no reason for you to stall your own progress. But trying to force someone to do something they don't see as essential in the moment doesn't sound like a plan for success. Especially when they have the power.

Write to your supervisor asking for clarifications on the writing process and how is the supervisor input supposed to be. Suggest to your supervisor that the authorship is under risk if you are the only contributor, that you are not going to waste your time with the paper (which can have an effect in the future) or that you might get interested in your own research topics if this one does not go forward. It's important that you have everything in writing.


I determined a parameter for an experiment – shall I ask for authorship? I am working in an experimental-physics group. They are going to publish a paper soon. So far, I see five authors on first draft (PhD student, postdoc, collaborator, collaborator, PI).

I am not sure whether I should ask my PI to consider putting my name on the paper or not. I was working on the project for only a month and then the PI gave me another project right after I finished it. I was not involved in any analysis of the paper, but I was working on finding a good parameter for the experiment.

Initially, when I was working on the project, I thought I would be one the authors, however, one year and half later, the first and second author of this project did too much work, so it seems like that I did nothing on this experiment compared to them.

Is it worth it to ask my PI to consider me in the paper?

Whether or not you should be an author on the paper is not about whether you did something, but whether you contributed intellectually. For example, a lab technician who washed the petri dishes and while everyone was working on the experiment in the background turned the dial of the radio to the station that everyone wanted to listened to (i.e., determined one parameter that was crucial to the experiment), did contribute to the experiment. But it was not an intellectual contribution, and so authorship is probably not warranted.

Without more details in your question, it is hard to tell whether you should or should not be an author on the paper. But, this is worth a conversation with your adviser. It's likely going to be a slightly awkward conversation, but it is one in which you can talk about the norms in your field, what qualifies as an "intellectual contribution" and why or why not everyone on the paper should or should not be an author.

Don't ask. If they think, your name will be mentioned in acknowledgement section. They must have thought about it. But, your work might not be substantial to incorporate you as an author.

Unnecessarily, if you ask, your own image in view of your professor would go slightly down.

However, you may politely ask about progress of that work like: sir, how is that work-x is going?


My main research advisor refuses to give me a letter (to help for apply US physics program). What should I do? By "main" research advisor I mean: with him, I got my most valuable research experience, greatest results and of course I invested most of my research time. Our field is Physics and I am making some achievements, but when I asked him for a recommendation letter for my PhD application, he refused and said I would not want his letter if he really writes one. I'll give his reason at the end, but I want to state my own question here first.
Will it be weird that I state my research experience with him very clearly (I think it will make a strong part) in my SoP but without his recommendation? Will the admission committee wonder where this advisor's recommendation is? If this is not a problem, does it even help that I merely mention this experience in SoP without the support of a letter? I have another piece of research experience from a very prestigious place and I have the LoR from my supervisor there, but that one doesn't have strong results as this main piece of experience and I am counting on this experience to make my application strong.
Here is his reason why he doesn't want to recommend me which might be trivial to my question but I guess you would want to know.
First, my undergrad major is an engineering field that has almost nothing to do with Physics. My advisor said if he is recruiting graduate students, he would only consider Physics Bachelors to be graduate students because it will be very hard and even impossible for students trained in other majors to shape their thinking to be suitable to do research in Physics. I am no exception, although I am doing part-time research with him and have taught myself most Physics core coursework (Damn, another equally prestigious Physics Professor in the neighbouring office just holds the opposite view). For me, his suggestion is that I should treat Physics as a hobby but forget about going to graduate school. (We encountered a nasty math problem which was important for logical completeness of our work some time ago, and he got around it with a trick which to me was "ridiculous" by then. I proposed my own alternative method, but in his view my method is rigid, and he then used my failure of understanding his trick to tell me that my thinking is already not suitable for Physics.)
Second, he is really really an "idealist" in doing research. Since I am applying for grad school, I want to speed up a little bit to revise our work to have a presentable draft (I had already derived the results by then, we were polishing the writing and dealing the above-mentioned math problem). He said I was appearing to be like a "pragmatist" because I was not acting or thinking slowly and calmly like an idealist. He even got a bit unhappy with me when I was arguing with him, wanting him to explain his trick (mentioned in the first reason) more clearly, when I was so desperate to understand it.
As a result, he said I would not want his letter since his opinion is just he won't recommend me to a graduate program although I did research with him.

Yes, it might look a bit weird, but you don't have control over that. And he is giving you good advice that he shouldn't write you a letter. Not every advisor is willing to be so honest.
But, I don't think it is an absolute block to your plans. Find others to write you strong letters and (US perspective) you should be ok.
What you need are letters from people who can confidently and honestly predict your future success based on their experiences with you. This advisor is not that person.
And FWIW, it is his problem, not a problem with your work mode. And no admissions committee should make any decisions based on guesses or suppositions. They should take your materials as they stand.

Get a job.
He is trying to tell you that you have no future in Physics at a uni.
You could try to see if someone else would write a letter but I doubt that would be productive.


Quitting a PhD program after four years and applying elsewhere I am a fourth year graduate student at a tier 1 research university in the US. I had lot of hiccups in getting started with my research. Our program is rotation bases where you rotate with your potential PIs for a semester (or more). I decided to rotate with Prof. A and continued it for another semester. However, in the summer of the year I was transitioning into my second year, I went to Prof. B to do my last rotation. Prof. B had a more concrete project that I worked on and I was super productive under him so I decided to join Prof. B's lab permanently. However, Prof. A was not happy about this since I had done two rotations with him.

In my third semester Prof. B decided to leave academia and moved to industry. I was given an option of quitting with a Masters or joining another PI. I chose to find a new PI. My research focus was in a particular area that only Prof. A and Prof. B studied. Our department is anyway too small with only 6 faculty who work on completely different areas. So, after being without a PI for almost a semester I decided to approach Prof. A to see if I could join his lab. He was not convinced initially. I had to provide detailed account of things I had worked on with Prof. B. In one of such early meetings, he told me "I don't have to do this. sufficient number of students have graduated from my lab and I have a tenure now.". But eventually, he decided to let me in his lab. Since we both didn't have a concrete project in mind, he suggested I write a review article on the project I had previously been working on. That did not go well. I wasted a semester studying that area in depth, but went in a tangential direction and couldn't finish the review. However, a new project came up through a collaborator and I was assigned to finish it. However, there were very limited questions that could be answered and my progress left him dissatisfied. I was told I could do 'cool things' with the data, without ever being told what these 'cool' things could be given the limited nature of data. In this process, I got another project to work on which I saw as being my main contribution to my field. However my PI has always found my methods to be 'too complicated'.

In this entire process, my realtions with my PI has always been deteriorating. I have been told "I am smarter than you", "I am not interested in your sloppy work", "Don't waste my time with your bullshit". My requests to talk about our method have lately been ignored.

I wanted to work in academia and I want to finish my PhD. However when I think about the relation I share with my PI has forced me to wonder if I even finish my PhD, his letter of recommendation will be a negative one, probably killing my career anyway. My post sounds toxic, but so has been my relation to my PI. I had to seek professional counselling a year back. With the relation we share currently, I don't let it affect my work. However, I am also not at peace with it in my mind.

Hence, I am considering quitting and applying elsewhere. However, I will need letters of recommendation from him to do that. How do I present my case? I have a decent GPA in undergrad/grad schools. In these four years, I was also able to enrol for a Masters in a related field in the same school.

Consult Professor B; he thinks highly of you, and can suggest someone for you to work with, who is not professor A. This may entail moving elsewhere.

Get the PhD as quickly as possible, do whatever they say, and get out. Be nice and get your degree before they decide they are gatekeepers and you should be outside the gate. You will have a worse time with the regrets and a terminal masters. They will give bad recommendations and even the professors that like you will side against you to be team players. Reapplying is a joke and you will be viewed as a quitter with a complicated story. You would retake a bunch of classes at another school. Coursework will not transfer, trust me, and you will pay again. You will be marked as uncooperative. Be nice and do research they can publish in their area. Your dreams and interests can come later. Professors are not well respected outside their bubble because they lord it over young impressionable minds. They are not the world. They live in la la land. Do you ever want to get a real job and have a paycheck or just keep paying a school for classes you probably don't need? They hate you because you are smart and they can see you still think they are the center of the universe. They are mean and nasty because society doesn't really respect them. Once you get older, you will start to see professors as losers who lord it over children. Universties sell classes; it is a business. Minimize the damage and expenses but get that degree. Stop sharing anything personal about yourself, they will use it against you. Don't be a quitter and don't be naive. You should see how these guys are with their female students...what losers. Top tier losers.


Mathematics Stack Exchange as an indicator for academic career I'm due to start my PhD in Pure Mathematics next month, fully funded by a scholarship, at an average university, I'll be specialising in combinatorial group theory, and I have a strong First in Mathematics from a Russell group university. My goal is to become an academic.

This is my Mathematics Stack Exchange (MSE) profile. I've been an active user since 2013, visiting pretty much daily, but my reputation is currently just 5,760 and I haven't used MathOverflow at all (as the questions there every time I visit, which isn't that often, are beyond me). This seems quite low. Should this worry me?

To what extent is MSE reputation an indication of potential in academia?

The only thing that a high MSE or MO reputation indicates is that a person spends too much time on the internet (and I say that as someone with a reasonably high reputation on MO).  I don't think you should take it seriously as a data point on how successful you are likely to be.

On a related note, it also doesn't play any role in things like hiring decisions.  At all the places I've worked, someone would be ridiculed if they brought up MO or MSE reputation at a hiring meeting.

It's just recreation.

Being associated with SE is not necessarily a good thing.  Not that you are like this, but many of the responders on SE simply do not present a pleasant demeanor and are off-putting in their arrogance.

Search for, "Stack Exchange Hate," and see what you get, then ask yourself, "If this is how people perceive SE, do I want really anyone knowing I'm associated with it?"

If you want to establish a reputation (which is not a function of SE to begin with), establish a real one, in the real world.


Student put my name in the acknowledgement section despite the fact I have never talked to him A high school fresh graduate was applying to undergraduate schools in the united states. He is a friend of a family acquaintance. Despite the fact that I did not even know his name, I was surprised when the family acquaintance asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him and for his friend. I do not know them at the slightest level. It seems that they were working on a research project, which looks completely silly to me (paranormal research related to the secrets of the pyramids, I did not bother to look carefully). I refused the requests to write the letter of recommendation. In the letter that the student sent me for me to submit, he says I worked with him on various things and I think that he is a genius. This was completely dishonest.
Now, I discovered that the student posted the said project on pyramid secrets (I think it is related to non-sensical theories on generating power from triangular structures) on a website, called academia.edu. In the acknowledgement section, he repeated the same claims that I worked with him on the project. I actually have never talked with him before. Now, I am a graduate student in science. This has been incredibly annoying to me. I wonder what is the best way to proceed. I have sent that person a message on academia.edu but he did not respond. I do not know how to contact him. I tried looking for a way to contact academia.edu to report this dishonest behaviour, but I do not know if there is a way to contact them. Any suggestions will be helpful.

Move on. There is little you can do about it: People can claim whatever they like on the internet and if they say that you worked with them, that's a nuisance but there is little you can do about it (in most jurisdictions) as long as they do so on websites that do not have strong ethics. academia.edu is not one of those websites with strong ethics.
Continue to do good work and build a reputation for yourself through your own publications. That's what you should focus on. The likelihood that anyone will find the pyramids publication is pretty small, and in the worst case if someone asks you about it, you can always explain the story (or just say that that must be someone else with the same name as you).

I am providing this alternative perspective which might not be the answer you wish to see. From what I can tell, you think that the kid is doing pseudo science.
I agree that he is somehow cheating; however, if your two families are very well connected, then I won't suggest you to fight against your parents and close relatives and friends.
You could write him an email, listing some literature showing that his research is pseudo science.
You require him to include your name in the acknowledgement only if he did the literature review. You require him to to list your name professionally, just like any other academic paper. You can provide him an exemplar acknowledgement, something like: I would like to thank gradstudent for helps; all errors are mine.
If he does this, you write him a fair letter.
This will be win-win for all parties.

The kid is happy that you did help.
The two families are happy because you helped; they will be indebt of you.
You will be gaining a good reputation of selflessly helping a perspective student, no matter how ignorant he was.
The university will have a fair reference letter.

All it costs is 30 min of your time: 15min for finding references and 15min for writing a generic, high-school level letter. Hell, writing a question on SE will take you more than 15 min.
Again, no one will look down upon you for helping the weak. Most people will be impressed with your selflessness.


Gender transition as a starting faculty member: a terrible idea? I'm a computer scientist at the point in my postdoc where I will have to decide soon whether to apply for faculty positions this fall or go to industry, in the US/Canada/UK/maybe Europe.1

But I've also recently come to the realization that spending half of my waking hours fervently wishing I had been born a girl could be a sign that maybe I should be doing something about that.

My situation is such that I doubt I would be able to really "pass" anytime soon, if ever. Even if I went all-out on transition immediately – which I'm not sure I'm ready for anyway – I can't imagine that I wouldn't be quite obviously physically trans at interview time and at least for a while afterwards.

I'd be fine presenting male through the faculty interview process and so on; my dysphoria is not particularly acute, and I have not yet started on hormones or anything. But I am certainly not willing to wait until tenure! I'm old enough already. (~30, but losing hair fast....)

Transition will obviously make life harder either in industry or in academia. But assistant professorships are not like normal jobs. Getting students, perhaps getting grants, perhaps teaching, and probably a million other things will all be harder in the midst of transition. It would also be combining two quite stressful experiences at the same time, and early-stage assistant professorships are not necessarily the most friendly job to the possibility of required medical absences / etc.

By contrast, my assumption is that a job as a researcher at some tech company will only provide the "usual" amount of discrimination and inconvenience, with probably better capability to handle potential medical issues, much more financial support for a potentially expensive process, and maybe fewer people I'll need to convince I'm a real person. A greater portion of these jobs are also going to be available in a major liberal city with the support structure for this process (and near my existing social networks for support).

And yet, ideally I think I'd want to be on the faculty market anyway.

So: how infeasible is transitioning as an early-career faculty member? Should I abandon this path for now and go to industry research instead, and maybe come back to it after a few years?

I'd particularly love to hear from anyone who's been in a similar situation, or to be pointed to examples of academic scientists who've transitioned before being well-established in their careers.

(This seems to be the only relevant question on the site, but is broader, and the examples of trans academics there seem to have all transitioned after already being quite established [except Lynn Conway, who (a) did this in the 60s/70s and (b) had to completely restart her career in "stealth mode"]. There are also a few on workplace about related situations for "normal" jobs, but I'm looking for academia-specific thoughts.)

1 I don't really want to do another postdoc; I'm in the second year of my current one, with a professor who's relatively prominent in my subfield, and though it's been great I can't help but think that a second one almost anywhere else would be seen as a "step down." Doing multiple postdocs is also quite rare, though not unheard of, in my area. My current position is "term-limited" before another faculty cycle comes around.

How infeasible is transitioning as an early-career faculty member?

I transitioned as a postdoc back in 2013, so I did it.  Whether or not it's a terrible idea depends on many factors, and just plain luck.  I don't have experience in industry, so I can't comment much on that.  But I'm sure it's the same situation: it depends on many factors, and plain luck.
Travel
One thing that would likely be distinct between academia and industry is traveling: conference travel is the norm in academia.  This has two important consequences:

Surgeries for transgender medical procedures are not performed in most places, e.g., in Canada, there's only one clinic that performs GRS (in Montreal).  Different surgeons have different styles, and have different levels of experience.  To be able to choose one's desired surgeon (and get the most suitable results), one needs to be able to travel, which I expect is far easier in academia than industry.
For surgery, I organized to attend conferences nearby, which helped ease the travel costs.  My hormones are prescription-free in Turkey, so I stock up when I'm there.

Traveling is more difficult for transgender people, including security inspections, applying for visas, carrying medicines, facial hair growing during long flights, dilation, shared accommodation, and so on.  In fact, some countries have anti-debauchery laws.

I highlight some other important factors below.
1. Transitioning is personalized.
Everyone's transition is different.  For many people, transitioning is essential: they choose between transitioning or killing themselves.  Other people find it suitable to not transition full time.  Many people are between these two extremes.
Whether or not what you have in mind is "a terrible idea" depends on you: (a) how critical it is to transition, (b) your financial situation, and (c) your family situation.  And many other factors: religion, friends, disability, race, local laws, and so on.
2. At no point is transitioning convenient.
I doubt there will ever be a point where you feel now is the optimum time to transition.  At the very least, a huge amount of time gets eaten up with updating one's documents and medical care, along with simply learning how to dress and behave.
One point: If you wait, are you going to publish under your dead name?
My experience is that students mostly don't get involved in the transition.  If you stay focused on the material, so will they.  I would say family is probably of greater concern than students.  However, there's inevitably some complications: your reputation (good or bad) rubs off onto your students, and writing letters of recommendation can be a bit awkward.
Some people take medical steps (such as sperm donations, hormones, facial hair removal, etc.) prior to socially transitioning.  However, WPATH standards of care for various medical treatments have real life tests, which is relevant if you're intending to seek medical treatment down the line.  You need to establish yourself as your gender to get medical referrals.
When I've asked older transgender people, they only ever say they regret not transitioning earlier.  In your case, if you end up losing your hair, it could have significant and irreversible negative impact on your quality of life; you may want to consider starting medical treatment soon.
3. Transitioning takes place with incomplete information.
Whatever decision you make, you're going to make it without all the information.  You won't know how people will react in advance.  You'll make a decision without knowing which path is best.  And, regardless of what you do, you'll probably spend a fair chunk of your life thinking you made the wrong decision.
4. Don't overvalue being passable.
Being passable helps everyday activities proceed smoothly.  However, my impression is that if someone is making an effortful attempt to present and behave as a certain gender, one's gender will almost uniformly be respected (despite not being passable).
Setting a goal of being passable is risky; it is often not achievable, and it can be devastating to accept that oneself is not passable.
I'm mostly passable nowadays, but people still find out about my past through my prior publications.  Generally even if they find out, they act like they don't know.
Hormones make a big difference to passability (but they take time).  There's also surgery, such as facial feminization surgery, which is a major improvement, but it's expensive and a referral may be required, depending on the surgeon(s).
5. Unpredictability.
Transitioning takes time, and over time people's values change.  There's also a roller-coaster of emotions, a "second puberty" when one undergoes hormone therapy, and often dieting becomes important (which may mean a lack of energy to be productive).
Particularly difficult for me was belonging to a "boys club" (mathematics/computer science) while I was desperate to establish and assert my femininity.
People are unpredictable.  Just because someone has liberal values, and so on, doesn't mean they're going to be accepting.  Likewise, just because someone is conservative, doesn't mean they're going to be hostile.  The people you work with make a difference to your quality of life in general, and it's impossible to predict.
Task difficulty is unpredictable.  There's going to be things that turn out far easier than expected, and things that should be simple which are complicated.
Mental health is unpredictable.  It's difficult to maintain mental health as a transgender person.  It's possible to end up with depression and/or anxiety, eating disorders, and engaging in self-harm or suicide attempts.  (Every transgender person I've asked has a clear plan on how they would kill themselves.)  And even without being transgender, academia can be a rough ride mentally.
Relationships are unpredictable.  In addition to transitioning having unpredictable effects on your current relationships, hormones (if you choose to go down that road) are known to affect people's sexuality, which may impact if and who you marry, which may impact your career options.  Moreover, if you end up marrying a man, by default a husband's career is socially considered more important than the wife's, and it's considered the wife's responsibility to look after children (perhaps through adoption).
6. Other points.

Don't get lost in your transition.  It's common for transgender people to end up only thinking about their transition, and that becomes who they are as a person.  My impression is that this causes others to perceive you as "a transgender" rather than "a woman".  I feel it's best to develop non-transgender-related interests.

Work harder than expected.  Job security is a big deal for mental health, but on top of this, medical treatment is expensive.  So I encourage you to make sure your colleagues have instances in their mind where you have gone beyond what's expected.

Have ambitions beyond merely surviving.  It is hard to have goals when you feel like you're merely surviving on a day to day basis, but it's good for one's mental health.  Don't just constantly perceive yourself as a victim, but do something with your life.

Expect hiccups.  While deeply hurtful, you're inevitably going to be misgendered and deadnamed, have people comment on your appearance, have people scheming behind your back, and so on.  When this happens, it makes me paranoid (Is this what people truly think of me?).  Somehow, you need to continue to be productive despite this.  As you become more established, these hiccups become less frequent.

I think it depends a lot on the institution. When I joined my Mathematics & CS department in 1998, there was already a transgender faculty member. Since then, that person has retired, but at least one other faculty member has transitioned, and my institution has explicitly welcomed transgender students, of whom there are many.

Perhaps when considering a school (after getting an offer?), you (or a friend, if you wish to be anonymous as long as possible), could contact the campus LGBTQ group, Queer Studies, or Women's Studies department to find out if there are any out transgender faculty whom you could contact.

Good luck!


What do these mysterious numbers in the subject line of arXiv mailing list emails mean? Every day I receive the latest arXiv abstracts via email, with subject lines such as

physics daily Subj-class mailing a4 1
physics daily Subj-class mailing 124 1
physics daily Subj-class mailing 490 1

With new email clients that create "conversations" from an email chain based on the subject line, the disorderly nature of the subject lines makes it a pain to sift through the last week's abstracts if I haven't kept myself up to date.

What do a4, 124, and 490 mean? These identifiers are not unique to each day's listings, but I cannot spot a correlation between them and the date of the email. Is there some hidden way to either include the date in the subject header, or remove these seemingly random strings?

Straight from the horse's mouth: there is no fix, but an update is on the list of things that "will be done when they're done".

  You may safely ignore the numbers after the text "class mailing" as
  they are used for internal audit code and essentially meaningless from
  a user perspective.

  We do have plans to update the mailing code at some stage, but the
  time-line is unclear due to limited developer time.

They look like hexadecimal. So they may be the beginning of a hash or UUID. This would be similar to what git uses to refer to specific versions in a repository. If this is the case, they are effectively random and you aren't going to find any correlation with the outside world (which is the point).


Dealing with suspects of sabotaging experiments In a group, postdoc A believes postdoc B sabotaged her experiments. A shares her frustration with the PI (without proof) in a "half-jokingly, half-serious" sense. Since then, strange things appear to be happening in the lab -- specifically, B's experiments are behaving strangely. There has been a serious decline in trust between A and B.

How should the two postdocs proceed? Should they meet? Should the PI mediate between the two? Should the PI talk to them separately? Or together?

Ultimately, how should the PI address the problem, knowing that an investigation is in practice impossible and with the goal of reestablishing a minimum level of mutual trust?

EDIT: Pushed by the PI, the 3 actors openly talked about these issues, agreeing that sabotage is extremely serious, but without pointing the finger to anyone. That seems to have released quite a lot of pressure and helped to normalized the situation. Hopefully it will last.

That would be the time for the PI to call a meeting with A and B and have a conversation among adults. Topics to be discussed are: If A has a grief with B, she needs to be specific and put it on the table. If B suspects A, he needs to do the same. PI needs to say that this is unacceptable and that everyone needs to behave like adults or else.

If the PI does not call this meeting, then either A or B need to be the grown-up in the room and do so.

Ultimately, half-truths, allegations, conspiracy theories, "experiments not working well", etc, is a situation that is to nobody's benefit. The only way to address it is to talk about it.

Because there is no evidence, then everything radical is out of the question. PI cannot fire them. Sabotaging is really bad thing, and something must be done. Revenge sabotage is almost as bad as the first sabotage.

A has first accused B, but there is no proof, it could be that she just used B to went up frustration over her own failures. "half-jokingly, half-serious" sense sometimes is sign of conspiracy thinking and that there might not be any too good of a reason to believe in sabotage, but she has made the connection within her mind, so the perspective becomes biased and she sees more signs and so on... I do not know if you can see from the results of the experiment something, like if A had small failures, but B clearly has odd stuff happening. A's "revenge" could be B sabotaging own experiments to make A look bad. I do not know about prior relation between A and B, which might be the cause to the mess.

Building up a trust is almost impossible, especially if it is clear that someone has done something. Odd stuff happening around B might count as that something. They are already adults, so I do not think that an adult telling "kids" not to be such fools would work. Nice chat about promising future research in a different department that matches better the research interest of A or B might be in a place.


Is it common to refer to someone as "Prof. Dr. [LastName]"? I have generally only heard people refer to professors as either "Dr. Smith" or "Prof. Smith". However, I received an email that referred to the keynote speakers at a conference as "Prof. Dr. Smith". Is this common? (It is for a conference in taking place in the EU and I am from the US if that helps).

German academia traditionally expects that one will use all relevant titles, so Prof. Dr. is pretty common there. Likewise other places with an academic system related to Germany in some way. As you note, in the US this would be very uncommon and the two titles you mention often used interchangeably there, even when it isn't clear that both apply.

And, if I remember correctly, it is always Prof. Dr. and never Dr. Prof. since the professorship was earned after the doctorate and is a "higher level" honorific. But "Herr Prof. Dr." doesn't fit that rule, I guess.

I have personally never seen Prof. Dr. X. At least from my experience Prof. is reserved for those who are teaching a course, but do not have a Ph.D. degree (graduate students teaching intro level undergrad courses) or faculty members who only have a MA/MS degree. Dr. in contrast is used for people who have a Ph.D. degree.


What can I do if my advisor wants me to keep working, even while I'm on medical leave for severe depression? I'm a Master's student right now. Due to previous incidents (What can I do if a student in my lab threatens to tell lies about me, and my advisor doesn't want to fire her?), I'm clinically depressed and currently on medical leave as a result. My adviser however, still wants me to do experiments for my thesis. I have 0% energy. I don't want to wake up, and I sleep 16-18 hours per day.

He still demands results, but all I want to do is sleep. I'm seeing doctors and psychologists, and all of them agree that I should take a break. I don't feel safe at the lab anymore.

In my country, people with mental illness are incredibly stigmatized. I don't know how to deal with this whole situation, and it's causing me undue stress.

My adviser wants me to work while I'm on medical leave. Actually, I did the majority of my experiments while in that situation, but I can't take it anymore. My physician knows this, and my therapist knows too. I never took my two medical leaves fully because my adviser still wanted me to work.

There is only one suitable course of action I recommend, as an advisor and a physician. Stop with anything that has a potentially detrimentally effect on your health and focus on your treatment (thus if you believe so also your MSc commitments).

Indeed, your work is likely contributing to your depressive symptoms (irrespective of the differential diagnosis between burnout and depression; e.g. Bianchi et al, Soc Psych Psych Epidemiol 2015).

Much more importantly, if you do not treat yourself now in the best possible fashion you might fail the treatment and even face substantial complications early or later, even life-threatening ones (e.g. Mann, New Engl J Med 2005).

I would definitely inform your physician that your advisor's attitude is likely a contributory factor to your condition.

Finally, notify any oversight committee at your institution, as individual or organizational issues impacting on your depressive symptoms could and probably should be addressed thoroughly (e.g. Theorell et al, BMC Public Health 2015).

Have your treating physician and therapist come up with a treatment plan?  Does the treatment plan specify a target date by which you will be ready to go back part time?

I do understand that when a person is in the depths of a clinical depression, the person may experience a strong and extraordinary need to sleep.  However, I am not sure that just crawling into a cave indefinitely is a true solution.  Thus, I'm not sure that getting your advisor off your back is really going to solve anything.

People are very good at crawling into caves and ignoring various demands family, work, and society put on them, when things are very, very bad.  I trust you will do that if things get that bad.  I hope they don't.  Broken bones, assuming they are set correctly, mend by themselves over time.  Depression doesn't necessarily go away by itself by just sleeping it off.

I hope you can work out a workable part-time schedule that allows you to make some progress while you are in treatment.

However, if you really want a clean break, short of withdrawing for good from the program, I suggest you work with your university administration to arrange a formal leave of absence for a specified time period, such as one semester.  This shouldn't be too hard to arrange, with appropriate documentation from your doctor.  This would mean withdrawing from all your current classes, and not registering for classes for next semester.

If your institution publishes its policies online, see what they have to say about "leave of absence."  Here's an example from a university in the U.S.: http://bulletin.printer.yale.edu/htmlfiles/grad/policies-and-regulations.html#leaves_of_absence


Likelihood of an undergrad publishing from home I am interested to know what the likelihood is that an undergraduate would be able to publish an academic paper (particularly in a STEM field) from home. For the sake of argument, assume they are an advanced student, and work independently of any supervisor.

Is this something that is frequently done?
Would this look any better or worse on a CV than doing it under a supervisor?
Is this something that is likely to happen, in a reasonable time frame, if the student stayed committed?

At the beginning of my PhD, last year, I had several ideas, so after thinking long and hard about them, I suggested them to my supervisor. His most common answer was "that is a nice idea, they tried that in the 90's, it didn't work".

Later, I finished my first manuscript. I was quite proud of it, and I gave it to him for review. It came back with more red than black.

Also, don't forget the resources a professor can give you. As an undergrad, I had an idea for which I needed a couple of hours in a student lab using non consumable and safe equipment, but I wasn't allowed. I then suggested the project to a professor, and a word from him gave me full access to whatever lab I would need. Depending on your case, this may mean data, computers, or having a conversation with an expert in something you may be stuck with.

So, chances are that if you work by yourself, you will have the same problems. Either you will work on something irrelevant or some known dead end; and when you get a result, you will have a hard time putting it in a publication ready form. Take as an example your own question: you wrote one paragraph, and three people have already considered your post unclear. A several pages research article, where not even the researcher fully understands what is going on, is significantly more difficult.

You can, of course, go ahead and try to research something you find interesting on your own, but your chances of getting published are significantly lower than if you have a mentor. You would have to jump many more hurdles.

I recommend you to try to publish your paper in a journal with lower impact factor which may increase the likelihood of publishing. If possible, a friend from the same field would edit the paper. Even you did not get your paper published you will get benefit from the editors' or referees' recommendations that will improve your writing.


Two years into my PhD program, and Mom is dying of cancer. Should I tell my advisor about it? I just finished my 2nd year of PhD, and my mom has been dying of cancer since the end of my 1st year. She nearly died in January but thankfully pulled through. She was just diagnosed again a few weeks ago and her prognosis is not good (resistant to chemo and can't get another surgery).

My cognitive abilities and general state of mind have suffered as a result of this situation. My research is very mathematical and being unable to stay focused for longer than 20 minutes really prevents me from making any progress. My emotional/mental state has also been seriously affected. I managed to pass my qual and aced my classes the past 6 months, but lately things are getting a lot worse.

I am hesitating if I should tell my advisor about my mom, but I feel that I'll just sound like I'm making excuses.

Quitting is NOT an option because I have never thought about it and I always wanted to do research since I was in high school.

My deepest sympathies for what you are going through.

You should certainly tell your advisor. No reasonable person would believe that you are using this situation as an "excuse" for poor performance.

Understanding your situation will help your advisor do his/her job: advising you according to your current needs and circumstances.

Your advisor may be able to direct you to mental health and other support services at your university that can help you through this time. He/she can also make you aware of other options that are available under exceptional circumstances: for example, a short leave of absence if you feel it is necessary, or an option to delay a comprehensive exam, or other similar concessions that can take some of the academic pressure off you while you focus on regaining your mental and emotional health.

You should make sure your PhD adviser knows what is going on in your life.
Part of their job is to direct you to relevant resources and understand the process. You may need to take a break from your studies to spend time with your mother and potentially, to grieve. many schools offer ways to do this without harming your academic standing. While the need to perform is important in Academia, the world is not so heartless. Turn to the people around you for help, while you can.


Was a professor correct to chastise me for writing "Prof. X" rather than "Professor X"? I emailed Professor X regarding typos in, and questions on, his book. I've never met and contacted him. My email commenced with this salutation:

  Dear Prof. X

He replied

  It is customary to address professors by their title in full, just as most people would not abbreviate the full names of people whom they do not know well.

His unpleasantness startled me. Is he correct though? If he is, wouldn't we have to write Mr. in full as Mister or even Master?

My response to comments:

I'd rather not impart more particulars on Prof. X, in case he persecutes me! I'll just say that he's Caucasian, and in Australasia, North America or UK. English is definitely his native language.

What a jerk! No, writing "Prof." is perfectly fine; his reaction is both incorrect and completely inappropriate. I cannot imagine any professor I know (even the ones I don't like) writing such a thing.

What country is this guy in? Some countries (e.g., Germany) have stricter rules for such things, but I'm still shocked he would respond like this.

  regarding typos in ... his book

Ah. Is it possible he's being snarky about your abbreviation since you criticized his typos? If your e-mail had a condescending tone, maybe he is trying to "bite back." That's the only thing I can think of.

His reply is a little pompous, but he is correct that you should not abbreviate professor (within a salutation).  Don't abbreviate senator either when writing to one.
I'm not sure that "chastise" is completely accurate.  Maybe "correcting you" is kinder wording.  Also, not sure why this is so important to you to come to Q&A site with wounds to show.  It's not a big deal.
Since you are trying to get some help from the person, I suggest to drop YOUR woundedness AND ignore HIS pompousness and just soldier on and discuss the content.


Turning down a postdoc offer from a committee member. Can that create problem in the future? Recently I responded to a postdoc 'advertisement' posted by one of my PhD defense committee members. I still have 2 months to go for my PhD defense. However, I got an offer for a position from the said committee member.

Now, I am in a fix about what would happen if I reject the offer? I am hoping to get a better position in a different university and group soon and I don't want to create any issues with my thesis evaluation due to the rejected offer.

Is it going to create an issue in the future? Can it influence my thesis evaluation?

A polite rejection to this post doc offer should neither hurt your thesis evaluation nor cause damage to your relationship with your committee member. The rejection email need not (and should not) be long or detailed, but as long as you make clear that you are honoured by the offer, that you have considered it carefully and seriously, but that you feel it is not quite the right path for you at this juncture, they will understand. I would suggest ending with a line saying that you look forward to finding ways to collaborate in the future.

All told, I think this is a positive sign for how this person will evaluate your thesis. They clearly think you are a worthy researcher or else they would not wish to hire you.


Climbing the ∞ university well - Theoretical Physics I'm an MPhys student who almost finished his undergraduate. I'm doing a masters in theoretical physics next year, probably at Kings College London. I have been rejected by Imperial and Cambridge(Part III).

Keeping in mind that theoretical physics is one of the most competitive academic fields, is there any chance of being accepted in top universities(UK or US) with such a masters degree? How high should my grades be in order to have a fair chance of being accepted at top 10 universities?

I would really like to do my Phd in a top university so that I could maximise my chances of getting a good postdoc position. More than that, I really love theoretical physics and I'd be VERY happy if I could contribute in world leading theoretical research in fundamental physics.

Edit: Especially for people with similar past experience, I would really appreciate your input.

We get this question a lot.

I don't think elite Ph.D. programs look at master's programs as a positive, per se.  For instance, if you aren't as sharp (or diligent or whatever the metric), I don't think they trade that off with your experience.  IOW, they don't trade capability for experience.  If anything on the experience level, they prefer "fresh meat".
All that said, if you think you are of the caliber that you SHOULD have gotten in, but didn't (e.g. because of grades), than fine.  There is a natural breakpoint with the masters.  I have seen one good friend (sharp as heck, but was at a so so Canadian Ph.D. school move to JHU, doing theoretical physics).

It ended up being a win win.  JHU got someone who was towards the top of his grad school class.  But note, this is very different from experience trumping skill.  More like he really should have been at JHU all along and then things got corrected.  So I would look at yourself and how you compare to the average person in the grad school classes at your target universities.  It's probably not all about brains, but really...brains (particularly mathematical aptitude) is a big part of the equation for theoretical physics.

P.s.

(1)  I am trying to be truthful and analytical to help you.  Versus telling you something that makes you feel good, but is not most insightful.

(2)  In general, "elite" programs (Julliard, Harvard physics, Goldman, McKinsey, NFL) tend to value "horsepower" over experience. One can argue if this is rational or not for them (probably it is), but in any case, it is how they behave.  Note that vast portions of the business world actually don't make the tradeoff as strongly or even make it the opposite.  All that said, in academia, really you are better off going to the best brand (people will hate on me for saying it...but it's the dirty insight).  School tends to be much more about head of the class, than the working world is.

(3)  You might also think about other areas of science where your skills could have more relative advantage...not everyone needs to be a theoretical physicist.

(4)  I checked on some of your physics questions.  Very detailed questions and I want to give you an attaboy/gurl for the effort you took into making sense of tensors.  Good drive.


Why does research on the busy beaver function get funded? I saw this video about the busy beaver function and looked at the applications section of the Wikipedia article about the busy beaver function.

I concluded that there is zero practical or even theoretical value in searching these numbers S(n) : n > 5. Now in the video the person says, that people are using supercomputers to calculate S(5). Now I assume using supercomputers is expensive and so somebody is obviously funding this research.

Am I too narrow minded to see the value of funding such research and there is actual value to it or what other reasons are there to fund such endeavors? I assume most academic research is funded by taxes and so it should bring some value to society. While there might be some intellectual value in having such knowledge, does the cost justify it?

PS: Probably this question is too broad/opinion based, but I didn't know on what SE site it would fit best or how to improve it to make it less opinion based, feel free to edit.

EDIT: The economic question is partially solved, by supercomputers being much cheaper than I thought so that argument falls flat. Still could somebody give me a hint on what the value of such research is?

Extremely likely, this concrete example is useless. So is any other concrete example. However, there are many of these examples, and we do not know which handful of them will be useful.

Some ancient people wasted time on research in number theory, some of which ended up being practically useful. Some studied motion of stars in detail far exceeding calendaring and navigational needs. This also proved useful.

Many, many studies also led to dead-ends. At the time, one could not tell which of them would.

Complex number theory projects often get approved because they might possibly have some cryptographic benefit. Much work has been done on one-way functions and calculations that require considerable computer resources. An concrete example is modulus of a prime exponent in a finite field used in RSA public key cryptography.

Also, much of the research in cryptography is classified. There might be a reason this project was approved that is known only to the researchers and the people approving the project.


Is it possible to write a proposal to get a junior professor position in Germany, when existing openings seem far from my research interests? It has been several months that I am looking for a juniorprofessor position in German institutes. Basically there are just a few opening which are far from my research interests. I have a good publication record and I was involved in writing funding proposals. Is it possible to write a proposal to ask for a professorship position?

P.S. My research lies in computer science and electrical engineering.

Stephan's answer is generally correct, but I get the feeling that this is not what the OP has in mind:

  Is it possible to write a proposal to ask for a professorship position?

I take this to mean whether it makes sense to essentially do a "blind application" for a professor position (i.e., send to a university that is not currently conducting a suitable search an application to the extend of "here are my credentials and a research proposal, please create me a position"). The answer to this question is a pretty resounding no. This will only make you seem out of touch with how academia works.

I guess you should wait till the next application season, which generally starts around fall (October-November). Most universities start posting job adverts around that time. You can apply for faculty positions that are available even if the requirements do not strictly match your CV. Meanwhile, inform your colleagues, peers, professors (basically as many people as possible in your network) that you are looking for such a position. Hopefully, if they know of any such upcoming position, they'll pass on the information to you.


Why does a mathematics department want student evaluations of a famous professor? If a professor is very famous for his research and belongs to the most prestigious academies of science for his lifetime work, I find it unusual that the math department would ask us to evaluate him.  We did so anyway and submitted the evaluations to the director of academic affairs.

Is this typically done at most American universities, irrespective of a professor's age, status or fame?  I would think that after a certain point in a professor's career, student evaluations aren't necessary.

Is it sort of a sanity check?  He was 85 years old.  Is it done to try and find reasons to force retirement of professors?

Being a good teacher and being a good researcher are distinct skills. If someone has a job that requires both skills, they should be being evaluated on both.

Let's follow that thought for a bit:

Your goal is to only evaluate the bad teachers, but not the good ones.

How do you tell the bad teachers from the good ones? I suggest you use evaluations. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Because some people who run universities think that way, student evaluations are often somewhat standardized and required for all teachers.


What percentage of registered participants eventually show up at conferences? I am organizing a small workshop which is over subscribed. We will have to reject a few applications. The worst applicants are easy to spot, but there are a few borderline cases, and I'm afraid that a few unfair decisions will necessarily have to be made.

To minimize the damage, I would like to know how many of the registered participants who we accept will actually show up, so that if I am aiming at X actual participants, could I safely accept X + dX?

I have noticed that several name tags always are left unclaimed at small meetings, because of people not showing up. I would like to know how to estimate how many people I can expect not to show up.

I am looking for answers from people who have organized (preferably small) meetings and have first-hand knowledge about the typical numbers.

--

Edit:

So the week of the workshop came and I can give you attendance numbers. It is good that I didn't overbook since we got 100% attendance (49/49 registered participants). This is despite the event being free of charge (some people suggested the attendance would be lower for free events). Some of the things that we did that may have helped secure such good numbers are thorough screening of applications and asking for confirmation upon acceptance of the applicant. For instance, we weeded out a few applicants who were unlikely to show up unless we paid for their travelling and a couple of accepted applicants told us that they would not be able to attend, a couple of months in advance of the workshop.

I am afraid that, especially for a small meeting, the variation of how many do not show up will be too large to be useful. For example, if I am organizing a 50-person event I would expect that anything from 2 to 10 would be a "normal" number of no-shows. That is, if you really can't have more than, say, 50 participants you can't really safely overbook at all. However, note that oftentimes a few participants more don't really hurt, but of course this depends on your infrastructure and plans for the meeting.

Some further considerations:

Generally, free events have a very large number of no-shows (sometimes in the 50%+ range, from what I have heard) while paid ones do not. This has led to some meetings I know introducing a nominal attendance fee, just to make sure that people think a little before signing up. Some other meetings have also tried to levy a fee only if a registered participant does not show up, but I am not sure how well this works and if it is worth the administrative and inter-personal hassle.
Note that no-shows are often not independent events, statistically speaking. For example, if you have a bunch of participants from the same group / team and they have an unexpected important deadline come up, they all will cancel at the same time.
If you have a very small meeting and you know (some) of your participants well you can attempt to use this to make a stab at estimating no-shows. For instance, I once planned an event for about 30 people, and I knew that some of the senior professors who initially expressed interest where <50% to actually come. I also knew that for some fraction of the industry participants an important client meeting may come up making them cancel last-minute. Based on this information I decided that 35 registrations for a 30-person meeting was fairly safe (we ended up being 28).

Generally if an academic signs for a workshop, they will definitely attend, unless something comes up that stops them. Why would I bother registering if I'm not attending, I have nothing to gain?

Nevertheless, you should expect the number of audience to shrink starting from the first day, especially if they get their proof of attendance. In my experience, if a PhD presents on the third day he will probably have three to four people listening. That is painful but hard to avoid.


Can a professor take a full-time 12 months industry job (get fully paid) while on one-year sabbatical? Assuming the home university only pays 1/2 of 9-months salary in the period of one-year sabbatical.

Can it be legally allowed? or does it violate any rules in general? What would be the worst consequence if doing so?

Thanks.

The only legal rules that are likely to apply here are the contractual rules for the terms of the professor's employment with the university, combined with the university's policy/contract relating to sabbaticals.  Whether or not this is allowed would depend on the terms of the sabbatical, as set out in the appropriate university policies and employment contract.

It is possible; ask your HR department whether it is possible for you.


Handling unsolicited proofs of famous mathematical problems I have been receiving mails from (most probably amateurs), who claims to have proved famous mathematical problems, like the ABC Conjecture or Goldbach Conjecture. But invariably, they all contained mistakes. I decided not to waste my time on such unsolicited documents. But recently something interesting happened.
About 14 days earlier, I have received a mail from an Indian undergraduate student who claimed to have proved the Sylvester-Gallai Theorem in an elementary way. What is more amusing is that he claimed to have proved it using Mathematical Induction and a basic Euclidean Axiom. I decided to ignore it as usual. But yesterday I got his mail, telling me that-

I suppose you haven't considered my document worthy of your time and so you haven't gone through it at all, or it may be that you are so busy that you haven't found time to check your email account. If that's the case then just ignore this mail. But if it's the first case then I would like to tell you something.
Perhaps you have heard about the Indian Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. He also sent his mathematical works to renowned mathematicians like Baker and Hobson but they didn't reply. Later he sent his manuscript to Hardy and his genius was recognized. But just suppose that Hardy also considered his work to be the work of a crank, without even going through it. Consider this be the case even if he would sent it to other mathematicians. How long could he continue sending his unsolicited formulas and theorems (which were without proof!) to other mathematicians and be rejected? Of course, finitely many times. After that, he perhaps wouldn't write to any mathematician even if he had, suppose for example proved the Riemann Hypothesis. Why would he? He was likely to be rejected.
So I suggest you at least to go through my document thoroughly and tell me precisely about it.
Please don't behave like Baker or Hobson.

What should I do now? Should I remain silent or go through the document? Any suggestion will be welcomed.

Unfortunately, I think there's little or nothing you can realistically do for most amateurs sending unsolicited manuscripts.  What they don't seem to realize is how common this is and what a bad state most of the manuscripts are in:

I average several amateur e-mails per week (and I shudder to think of how many Andrew Wiles or Terry Tao must get).  If I carefully read each paper and sent comments, that alone would occupy a substantial fraction of my professional activities, so I have to prioritize.
I at least flip through the papers, and most of them are obviously crackpot work.  Occasionally I see one that doesn't look ridiculous, and I try to be encouraging when appropriate, but I have yet to receive a publishable paper from an amateur.  The best I can do is generally to offer encouraging advice, and even that's uncommon.
Some people seem beyond hope (for example, the ones who send word salad), but some could presumably become solid researchers given the right education and mentoring.  However, this is not something I have a lot of time to provide.  I've got plenty of in-person students, some of whom would probably like more interaction, and I wouldn't feel comfortable telling them "Sorry, I'm busy trying to explain to some guy on the internet why his fuzzy understanding of quantum mechanics doesn't actually yield a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem."  Even if the amateur seems promising, they aren't likely to be dramatically more promising than my students, and mentoring over the internet is less effective, so it's still an awkward trade-off.
Some amateurs react very poorly to feedback.  If you suggest their results are known (while complimenting them on their rediscovery), they angrily suggest that you must not have understood what they meant or are trying to deny them credit for their work.  If you don't believe their results, they accuse you of incompetence or laziness.  If you encourage them to apply to graduate school, they scoff at what academia would have to teach them.  This is of course only a minority of amateurs, but it's just common enough to discourage giving honest feedback: there's too much of a risk of feeling like you wasted time offering feedback to someone who only wanted validation and responded with insults.
Part of the problem is grandiose visions.  When people spend too much time daydreaming about being the next Ramanujan or finding the proof that didn't fit in Fermat's margin, it's really unsatisfying to learn that their story isn't actually as remarkable as they hoped.  It's much easier psychologically to move to the parallel story of the genius oppressed by academia, rather than starting an academic career from scratch.  (And even people who show no sign of grandiosity in their original e-mail sometimes have it hiding below the surface: I imagine that anyone who sends unsolicited accounts of their discoveries to experts is hoping for some degree of acclaim.)

So what to do about this?  In an ideal world, I'd give lots of time and attention to everyone who wrote, but these are scarce resources.  In practice, I handle it this way:

If the paper genuinely engages with my work and shows no signs of craziness (e.g., drawing religious conclusions from mathematics), I give at least a brief reply.  Same thing if I have some other good reason to believe it was sent specifically to me, and not just as one of many recipients.
If the paper looks relatively promising but has nothing specific to do with me, I'll reply if I have time and feel that the reply would be well received.
If the paper is on a topic I particularly know and care about but doesn't involve my work and doesn't seem especially promising, I might reply.
Otherwise, I probably won't reply, and almost certainly not if the paper deals with famous unsolved problems.

I think a good policy would be to redirect those people to Math Overflow. Let them open a new topic to ask what's wrong with their proof.

If it's trivial to find errors then someone one Math Overflow will point out those errors. If their proof actually works I would expect someone at Math Overflow to recognise working proof.

You only need to write a email to redirect people to MathOverflow once and afterwards you can send everyone who sends you unsolicited proofs the same canned email.


Trust issues with my PhD advisor, is it worth fixing or can I get out? I am a math PhD student considering changing universities.
I have suspicions that my supervisor has not been very honest with me
since I told him that I considered changing universities (and therefore
supervisors) because of shift in interests. He got angry with me, told me that it would bring
bad reputation to the research group and that I can't just leave after
1 year.

In a conversation I mentioned a university, in which there is a professor,
call him professor M, whose work interests me.
My supervisor said that professor M is the only
one in his field in the university (apparently
with the intent of discouraging me from
trying to apply to that university).
I looked up the website of professor M's research
group, which seems to tell a different story
(plenty of PhD students, at least one post doc).
I found this a bit suspicious.
Moreover I recently realized that my supervisor
has coathored an article with an emeritus professor, who
is in the university, who has worked on the same field, although
not part of the research group of M. The "research group" in my
university is not that active itself.

When I told him that I want to consider alternatives
he told me that the doctoral programme is collecting
information about PhD students (which was true), and
that he needed to know whether I was part of the group or
not. He gave me 3 days to decide whether to stay or leave the
doctoral program. I asked the coordinator of the program about this,
and he told me that the list in question changes all the time and
that it is not nearly as serious matter as my supervisor claimed.
It should be noted that my supervisor is notoriously bad at
bureucratic/adminstrative university matters.

I suppose in all the above cases it is possible that
the explanation is something less malicious, such
as ignorance or misunderstanding.
In any case I am not in good terms with my supervisor
and I don't think we trust each other very much.

The dilemma is that the funding is good and secured, and that
the alternatives are abroad (and uncertain).

Could the situation be worth fixing?
Should I run for my life?
Is there a risk that if I try to change universities
he will refuse to write a recommendation letter or
write a mild one (he supervised my Master's thesis)?

Faculty are human beings. We might be given only one slot a year for a doctoral student to work with us and we thus invest (or we feel we invest) an incredible amount of time into the students in our lab. We aren't paid extra for this, which perhaps exacerbates the feeling of ownership.

While I don't know you or your advisor, I would find it easy to believe that his feelings were hurt by your desire to shift PhD programs. You are basically taking his investment in you (which you may feel is minimal, but he may feel is considerable) and throwing it in the trash.

Managing people's feelings are part of being a professional academic. You might as well practice being good at it.  Some day you'll be on the other end of the equation -- being told by a student that you had high hopes for that they no longer value working with you and that they want to move to a different program altogether. It's all part of the karmic cycle of being faculty.

Now, with that preamble out of the way. You need to let your advisor know that your shifting programs isn't seen as any rejection at all of his lab or his style of mentoring you, etc. etc. (even if part of this might be true); but rather that you are seeking something different at the other program. It's the stereotypical "It's not you, it's me" form of a break up.

I don't trust your advisor either, but I also, like you, realize the importance of stable funding. I would try to get along with the advisor. Much of this might be related to the advisor's ego if it's a big one. Talk of leaving could have resulted in a nice big bruise.

Keep in mind as well that bosses are always in an adversarial relationship with their "employees". It's the nature of the beast in the workplace.