Is it cheating to give someone my old exam revision notes? Last year I completed an exam at University and a friend is doing the same exam/class this year.
Would it be cheating  if I gave her my revision notes of the semester (written before I did the exam)? They don't have any exam-related answers, just summarized lecture notes.
I read that it is cheating if a student has an unfair advantage over other students.
I don't want to get her or myself in trouble.

Thank you.

No, it is not cheating.

It's also not cheating for them to go to the library and find a particularly well written textbook that no-one else had.
It's not cheating for them to hire a tutor.
It's not cheating to share your revision notes with other students before your exam.
It's not cheating to do a unit completely including exam, then repeat it in the next year to get a better mark (In fact, this is normal if you fail)

Most would say not even cheating (or facilitating) to tell them about the exam in your year.
E.g. along the lines of "I focused my study too much on the topology part of the unit, but there was only 1 topology question in the exam. But I don't know how it will be this year."

Some would even argue that its not cheating to share with a past student a copy of last years exam, with fully worked solutions. On the basis that the instructor is not going to use the same exam twice. This is a bit more dubious though.

At the end of the day, the purpose of the exam is to test how well they know the content.
So the context of an unfair advantage is one that lets them do well in the exam, without learning the content.
No one cares how they learned the content.
They might have gone to lectures, read the textbook, watched youtube lectures from other universities, read notes from a friend, or even have been working in the field for decades and just be attending the exam to get the paper to prove it.
No one is assessing an unfair advantage at learning as cheating.

I don't have enough reputation here to leave comments, so I'll have to leave them as part of an answer, but I would note, from my own academic integrity research, that the answer isn't always clear cut.

On the face of it, passing notes to another student sounds fine.

In practice, it depends a lot on how the notes were compiled and any additional value added.

As an example, there are sites that exist which reward students for uploading their lecture notes. They often breach the copyright of the original author (think of all the work the lecturer/professor went in to compile that course). Or, they breach the copyright of the university (since many universities automatically own the copyright of teaching materials produced by someone employed by that university). That would often result in an academic penalty based on breaching academic misconduct regulations. Deliberate breach of copyright could also result in a case that is taken through the legal system.

Now, in practice neither of those are likely to happen, but there have been several recent cases of cheating in universities being progressed in the real world, for instance, students getting someone else to take their exam for them who have ended up with a prison term.

What if the notes are edited before being shared? Well, the same copyright issues still apply. There is a point where the editing is sufficient that the notes could be considered a new piece of work, but that is a long way away.

What if the notes are being shared for free between students? The same issues still apply. A lecturer is unlikely to be concerned if it's a one-off event with a good reason (a student was ill and couldn't attend, so you supply them with a copy of the lecture notes), but a systematic activity, like constructed revision notes, may be considered unacceptable.

What then might be a good way to proceed?

One thing you might want to do is contact the lecturer and offer the edited revision notes, to be made available to all students in the class as an additional resource. Many lecturers are very happy to supply additional material that they didn't have to compile themselves.

I agree with the other comments that you can use other existing sources to supplement your knowledge, such as textbooks, MOOCs, academic papers or YouTube videos. I'd always encourage my students to do this. If nothing else, it shows a wider interest.

Some students do hire outside support. Again, this is usually okay if it is just tutorial support, with the proviso that a lot of essay mills now operate in this space, with the intention of upselling towards their other cheating services. There are other obvious areas that aren't acceptable, but do happen, for instance hiring a teaching assistant who has privileged access to the course materials.

Reviewing previous test and examination papers also sounds perfectly acceptable. In the UK, those are all expected to be available to students. It still amazes me when I hear about universities where they're not available.

University staff themselves are expected to lead the academic integrity movement by example. That includes not allowing one student to have an unfair advantage over another student (consider the example where one group of students, such as a fraternity, has compiled a test bank which students outside that group don't have access to).

By the same token, there would be an expectation that coursework questions and exam questions were not reused. Using these could be said to be encouraging students to cheat. This would be uncommon in the UK, as the culture is to write original questions and have them externally checked, but if it did happen, I'd expect it to be a disciplinary issue.

Going back to the original question, if you do share your notes, I'd recommend checking that the content hasn't changed. I certainly update my materials every time I deliver a module, sometimes quite substantially where I think that I can improve the student experience (or when it's important to include an additional concept, which generally means trimming somewhere else). That's another good reason for running the notes past the lecturer to check that the information is still current.


Do I need to report that the professor I have been assigned to TA hasn't assigned any work for me to do? The professor I have been assigned to TA hasn't assigned any work and has stonewalled me. I have sent three emails to check in and he hasn't responded. How should I respond? Should I bother reporting this to my graduate advisor?

UPDATE!! - He finally responded. He did have some issues, but is doing much better and is going to be more responsive moving forward. Thank you for all the great advice on this forum!

First try some other methods of getting in touch with him.  Call him on the phone, go to his office (during scheduled office hours if possible).  It's possible that for some reason your emails are not reaching him, or he's just overwhelmed with other stuff and forgot to reply.  Don't throw around words like "stonewall" unless you have proof that he received your emails and is willfully refusing to reply.

If you can't, then yes, you ought to report it.  Your advisor may not be the right person; I would look to whichever faculty member supervises the TA program in your department.  It could be the chair, or graduate vice chair, or some similar person.

It could be that this is a sign of bigger problems, and if so, it will reflect poorly on you when it is found out that you knew something was wrong and took no action.

As long as you are getting paid, this is a desirable state of affairs.
Send him an email or two to CYA ("please contact me with any instructions", "let me know if you need any help as the course goes on").
Go do your research and work on YOUR degree.

P.s.  Please do not also complain about being bumped up to first class and forced to drink champagne and eat filet mignon.  Act nonchalant and move ahead pleasantly.


Should I quit my PhD after 4 months? I've been thinking a lot before asking this question, but now I feel it's time to seek some advice. I started my PhD a couple of months ago and now it is almost 4 months since I put my hands on this project. I joined a very small research group (I'm the only PhD) to embark on an industrial PhD in the UK. I moved away from my home country, I rented a flat and my girlfriend joined me a few months ago. Should be an ideal condition but for me, it's a nightmare.
I don't feel well. Every day a sense of depression and anxiety is constantly present thus forcing me to spend most of the time alone. I don't like my project and I don't like the environment despite having two supervisors who are very kind to me. I don't want to stay in this condition anymore but at the same time, I don't know what to do. I don't have the courage to speak with my supervisors and explain my condition.
Does someone have any advice on what should I do?
P.S. I would like to add some details just to give a clearer picture of my condition. I graduated with honours during both my master and my bachelor's degree. I was the best student of my years in my course. I felt that a PhD should be the most suitable choice for me.
I decided to start this industrial PhD in collaboration with a huge company thinking that after it I would be immediately hired. But now I don't know exactly if this is my way. I'm constantly obsessed with the idea of going back to the lab every day... it's really hard and demotivating. I started thinking of getting a job where you do your hours and then you go back home without any thoughts, problems, or pressure.
P.P.S. Thanks for all your answers, it's quite an encouraging fact that some other people went through the same thoughts.  I feel that I will start speaking with my supervisors to inform them about my condition. However, I have some concerns connected with the founding of the project.  In the case I'll quit, do I have to return all the salaries received? Some of you have experience with that?

No one here should tell you whether to quit or not. But you need to find a changed situation somehow. Some suggestions...
Talk to your supervisor about the situation with your project and see whether there is some alternative that will make things better. Another project? A modification of this one? More assistance?
Talk to others in the research group about how they see the project and its likelihood of success. Are they happy or just coping like yourself?
Talk to a mental health professional about how you can arrange things so that you don't fall into depression. Many universities provide professional counseling.
Talk to your girlfriend about her wishes, goals, and plans. Ask her if she has any advice for you.
Find some "escape" activities so that you don't spend too much time working. My escape was bicycling with a small group. It had the advantage of being aerobic, but other things can help. Resting your mind can actually aid productivity.
Think about your goals as well as whatever options are open to you. Options about staying as well as about leaving. What are the pros and cons of each? How can you achieve your goals and stay sane?
The hardest part, as you describe it, is to find the courage to talk to your supervisors. But that is probably the essential step to find a way out of the dilemma. But don't just continue on, hoping for the best. Some situations need to be escaped.

The biggest mistake I made in my doctoral studies was not speaking up for myself at a certain point. In my case it was because I had an unhelpful advisor. But my lack of courage cost me about three years. I was successful after a change of institutions and only realized later how I'd missed the opportunity. There was also the issue of burnout after an intense undergraduate program.

One of the reasons to do a Ph.D is to learn self-discipline. If you find that you don't "switch off" when you get home... learn to switch off when you get home!
It's actually a very common problem in all sorts of jobs these days. The job may not require people to be "on the job" all the time but a lot of people do. Your brain will work on a task for two reasons:

If you pressure it to (anxiety)
If you get excited by its ideas (reward)

Set the boundaries, break the habits, remember that your work will get done even if you don't constantly work on it. Your work really will be more effective if you have good quality down time.
If after this you still aren't keeping up with the project, it's simply not suitable. Change your project, or defer, or quit.


Should acceptance letters be answered? If somebody receives an email from a journal stating that their paper is accepted for publication, should they write back?  If so, what should they say?

There might be exceptions of which I'm not aware of, but usually, no, you don't reply, unless there are specific queries from the editor.

The courteous thing to do is to write back and say "Thank you for the good news! -- Best, Anonymous Physicist"

There is no need to write back, but being nice is never a bad idea.


How to ask my professor to write recommendation letter for me? Now I'm in a community college and I am trying to gathering recommendation letter to apply to graduate school.(I have already got my bachelor degree). I performed well in calculus and got an A in that course. After i got my grade, I wrote a thankful email to my professor and he replied me that I am the top student in his course. I thought he is nice. Therefore I asked him whether he can write me a recommendation letter to me by e-mail but there is no-reply. I considered if he didn't see my email, so I went to his office and wanted to see him in his office hour. His office hour was posted on the wall and on the schedule he said if anyone want to see him please notice him ahead of time. So I e-mail him again to ask for an appointment. Here is the content:

Dear Prof XXX:
It's XXX, a student who finished your calculus 1 last semester. I went to you office yesterday and record your office hour on the wall. Would it be possible to meet with you next Monday 11 am (office hour) about whether you can help me write an recommendation letter?
Regards

He didn't reply me. I almost lost my confidence. I don't know whether I need to go to his office directly. I am afraid it's impolite or disrespect. And I don't know  if he don't want to do it, why he praise me in the first thankful note?
Hope anyone can help me.

Your e-mail looks okay as an appointment mail. There are a few possibilities. The professor may be busy with some important things he has to do. He may be on vacation, not available. Please don't lose your confidence yet. You probably should wait a few more days for him to reply.

It is also possible that he didn't think an A in Calculus I is good enough for him to write a recommendation letter for you. He may want to wait until you get another A for Calculus II and then write a good recommendation letter.

However, depending on which field you are going to study in graduate school, the professor who taught you Calculus I may not be a good candidate to write you recommendation letters.

You already have Bachelors degree. I think the recommendation letters written by the professors in the university where you graduated from, who had more working experience with you would be more helpful for your graduate school application.

Honestly, it seems unlikely to me that any level of performance in calculus could be relevant to any graduate school admission process or prediction of success/failure. For mathematics or engineering or science, it's too elementary, by far. For non-mathematical things, it's simply irrelevant. In either case, the intellectual context of "calculus" is almost always too rudimentary, uncritical (whether or not there are epsilons and deltas). That is, at most, its intellectual context is that for students just beginning college, most likely disinterested in the subject, and most likely not really needing the content, either. And large numbers of students take such a course.

Thus, even a top grade in first-year calculus is not really a distinction in the first place, and is certainly not a good basis for letters of recommendation for grad school.

In fact, to have such a letter might be viewed as an indicator that you do not understand what the grad programs involve.


How to avoid being (falsely) accused of plagiarism when reusing notations and definitions I'm currently writing a paper of my results in a field of pure mathematics.

My work is a generalization of an already existing result, which is not mine. My adviser and I think that there is a substantial differences between my result and the already existing result, and so it's worth a publication.

Since I'm generalizing an already existing paper it will be very convenient both for me and the readers that I will use the same notations and definitions as in the other paper. So I wrote those down and cited the other authors.

The part of definitions and notations is roughly 10%-15% of the whole paper, and even though I properly cited the other authors, I'm worried to be accused of plagiarism by the "automatic plagiarism detector", which I heard most journals use.

How can I avoid being falsely accused for plagiarism?

It is generally known that definitions and restated theorems can cause significant textual overlap between papers to an extent that could be considered problematic. There is no point in worrying about automatic plagiarism checks for journal submissions: If a journal is relying on that alone without an editor checking, it is not a reasonable journal to submit to anyway.

What you don't want to do — is to copy their definitions exactly. Even though you are in pure mathematics, definitions, phrasings, and explanations can and should be different. Moreover, in a paper, the things are introduced in a specific order – and I doubt that you have exactly the same focus as the previous paper. Thus, even a very similar section with the definitions & notations will be different.

I also suggest to include in the paper:

in the introduction: the sentence/paragraph that highlights the connection (problem statement, similarity, differences) between yours and the original paper
in the main part: the sentence that discloses using the same notations as in [1].
possibly in the submission itself (if allowed): a PDF of the preceding paper that has to be read by peers to judge the novelty of this publication and how it extends the obtained results.

In general, for peer review in a reputable journal, you should not be afraid of automatic machines too much. Especially, if you/your advisor have a history of publications in this journal/field and good reputation. Also, if you follow the general guidelines for "writing in your own words for your own paper goals", you should automatically pass even the strictest automatic machines.


Colleague presented poster of our shared work at conferences without my knowledge or express permission My colleague presented two separate posters, one at a domestic conference and another at an international conference, based on the work both of us have been collaborating for past 1.5 years.

Before submitting the abstract or the poster, they did not seek my approval. In fact, I was not aware of this until recently.

In the poster, they put themselves first in the author list and me as second. Apart from the fact that poster submission was not disclosed, the authorship order was not explicitly discussed.

In the poster, they included an elaborate set of their contact information, even (non-traditional in academic publishing) details such as tweet handle and other auxiliary information, when clearly there was space to include the rest of the authors information.

I am offended by this. I am not sure what the universally accepted academic code of conduct in such instances is?

Ultimately there isn't a single valid approach here. The appropriate level of response depends on several factors, including the field in which the work is being performed, the nature of the conference, the status of the work relative to publishing practices in the field, and so on.

For instance, if you're in a field where posters are peer-reviewed before a conference, then it's a much more significant issue than presenting a poster at, for instance, a Gordon Research Conference where posters are explicitly considered to be "for discussion only" and are not intended to be used for publication. As for the author order, some societies (for instance, the APS) expect that the poster (or talk) be given by the first author as listed at submission—whether or not this is fundamentally the way it would be listed in a paper.

Looking at the ethical issue—has the work been published already somewhere or otherwise public? If so, your co-author may have thought it was OK to present a poster on the material; after all, you've already consented to publishing it elsewhere. On the other hand, if this is the first time the work has been presented, then it absolutely is ethically wrong to present the work without your consent.

The level of your response, though, should be scaled according to both the level of the offense and your desire to continue the collaboration. If you're angry that it was done but still want to work together, a somewhat measured response (the "sternly worded letter" approach) is probably best. If this has poisoned your relationship to the point where you can't see continuing to work together—and you want to have your colleague punished for the transgression—then you should make that clear. But I would hope the opening salvo here should be open and forthright dialogue with your colleague rather than a report to an ethics committee.

(Also, this advice can't really be generalized to large-scale collaborations where it simply is not possible to obtain informed consent from every participant on every paper produced as part of the collaboration.)

I am not aware of a "universally accepted academic code of conduct". Based on your description, your coauthor's behavior was unethical (by my standards), but they did not break any laws (I am not a lawyer, just guessing).

The first point I would check is your coauthor's institution's Academic Code of Conduct or similar document. If they violated their employer's guidelines, you can notify their employer if you wish.

You can also check the conference submission guidelines for requirements on author order and contact details. Again, if they violated these, you may let the conference organizers know. Other than that, I do not think you have formal ways to punish the coauthor.


How to find a university without min. GPA requirement for Master degree (any state/US)? I am an international student who is able to self-finance his master degree education in the US.
I looked at a relatively big number of schools that offer a master degree in software engineering and most of them require a minimum bachelor degree GPA of 2.5 to 3.0 .. I graduated with 2.3 from an accredited school in Egypt.
I have 6+ years of experience in the software development field, 2 Oracle Java programming certificates and passed the IELTS test (6.5).

How would I find a university that doesn't require GPA or require ones that is less than or equal to 2.3 and would get me a student visa in the US? Could I find one in the usual published university guides, or should I call/write a bunch of admissions offices or take other measures?

My desired fields of education are Software Engineering or Computer Science with a focus on software development.

Most universities usually require a work experience of 2 years if you don't meet their GPA. I see your GPA is not bad and I don't know what you're waiting for because you already overdid the experience part by going all the way to 6 years. You should apply asap and the only worry is to make sure that your application is superb


Do academic reviewers have a duty to critique authors who submit questionable research? I recently reviewed a paper that made some very strong claims that were not supported by the data. However, it was much more than that. These claims were so extreme that that were actively misleading: e.g., "The present results represent the most important findings in personality psychology to date." (Not as bad as this example, but not too far off..)

I wrestled with two options in my review.

A.) I could respond in a scientifically disinterested manner: e.g., "These strong claims are not supported by the data. Please revise them."

OR

B.) I could go beyond that and politely "critique" the authors for their questionable practice: e.g., "These strong claims are not supported by the data. In fact, they represent such an "overselling" of the manuscript's findings that they are actively misleading. Please revise them and we urge the authors to avoid such hyperbolic claims in the future."

In the end, I went with something like option B.) because I think that there is inherent value in stating firmly that these kinds of practices are not okay. As a scientific peer, I did not at all appreciate these obvious efforts to oversell the results for the sake of "a top publication." As reviewers, we are the guardians of scientific literatures, and when appropriate, perhaps we should scold our fellow researchers for questionable scientific practices to deter them against such behaviors in the future.

This begs the intriguing question: Do academic reviewers bear a responsibility to critique authors for engaging in questionable practices that undermine the validity of scientific literatures?

Very interested to hear the views of others!

Edit: "Reviewer" is intended to refer to one's role as a reviewer of publication submissions for journals.

My feeling is that rather than explicitly telling the authors what to do in a context other than the present submission, it would be better to explain your objection to their present submission in a way which would make clear to any moderately receptive party that the advice would apply more generally.  E.g. something like

  In my opinion, the authors overestimate the significance of their work to a degree that becomes actively misleading: virtually no work in the field has the level of significance claimed by the authors here.   In general, work which is described in such hyperbolic terms can be hard to take seriously.  Those who do make major breakthroughs tend to describe the advances in more sober, factual ways.

This is plenty heavy-handed.  Anyone who is listening will get the message not only to tone down the language in this submission but that such language is never appropriate.  Still, you aren't telling them what to do, but only giving your (expert) opinion on the consequences of their actions.

Be a professional, and be helpful.  What's the point of chastising the authors? will they think you are 'smarter' than them? No, to them, you'll sound clueless or/and arrogant.  Hence, it is a waste of your time and frankly, doesn't help  the editor because he/she will think you have some axe to grind.  Your ONLY job is to help the editor make a decision, and if you are kind, provide constructive comments to the authors.


When referring to study at Oxford why is the word "read" used? When reading about people who have studied at Oxford the word "read" is used instead of study. Example:

"He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford"

Why when discussing study at Oxford (and maybe other universities) is the word "read" used?

This is just a peculiarity of British English that read can have this particular meaning. The New Oxford American Dictionary says:

  read
  3. chiefly Brit. study (an academic subject) at a university: I'm reading English at Cambridge
    [ no obj. ]: he went to Manchester to read for a BA in Economics.

So, it's more about language itself than the official title of the diploma or an academic custom.

— Hey, wait, but where does this idea come up to associate “read” with “learn, understand”? Surely there is a reason? And why is it English only?

Well, as it turns out, the meaning of “learn, understand, think, explain” is actually the original meaning of the Old English word from which we inherited read! The Old English word is rædan (“explain”, amongst its meanings), from Proto-Germanic raedanan, from Proto-Indo-European root re(i)- (“to reason, count”).

Now, in many languages, the words derived from this root kept their original meaning. In German, raten means “to advise, counsel”; in Icelandic, ráða means “advise, decide, solve”.

Now, at some point something in Old English went sideways. Wiktionary states very clearly:

  The development from “advise, interpret” to “interpret letters, read” is unique to English

Etymonline is more specific:

  Transference to “understand the meaning of written symbols” is unique to Old English and (perhaps under English influence) Old Norse raða. Most languages use a word rooted in the idea of "gather up" as their word for "read" (cf. French lire, from Latin legere).

Now, the original meaning of the word read is retained in some contexts in British English, but was lost in other forms of the English language, such as American English.

As a summary, the hard question is not really “why can read mean study”, but instead: why did read come to mean “read”?

(source for the above: my memory, which is backed by the most excellent Etymonline)

The respondents so far have missed a crucial point. When one ‘reads’ for a degree in the sandstone Unis in the UK, it is different to a normal course of study. Reading for a degree involves few lectures or tutorials, and consists mainly of being allotted texts by an academic supervisor, who then discusses what you have learned, and possibly sets essays for you to demonstrate logical argument and research. There’s no classroom study as such. It’s more about analytical thinking to earn your ‘Oxbridge’ degree.


Why do highly successful people in computer fields say a degree in Computer Science is not worth to get "JOB"? I'm studying Engineering in India. In Information Technology, Many CS-friends of mine told me that that degree is not worth it and that none of the subjects will be useful in my computer science career.

I subsequently lost interest in studying until a friend filled me in on the uses of each subject included in our course. I started studying hard since I understood the importance/application of these subjects in the computer world. I scored well.

Also, I made projects which were included in course with Interest.

I wonder why people are giving less importance to the Computer Science degree and why they say that it is not important in the real world. I think if it is studied enough, it can definitely yield a job.

My answer follows the answer provided by @DmitrySavostyanov.

I also feel you are basing all your conclusions based on a false assumption and hypothetical facts.

I have done engineering in the same field as yours. I am working in a quite well-known place. And, trust me, all the things that I have studied in my bachelors are coming up every time I start my day. At least the Mathematics and Algorithm aspect of the courses.

Your friends are probably not clear about what are they doing and they are diffusing the same idea into your head. That happens in the engineering studies.

Further, your claim people are giving less importance to CS is baseless. I would stay with my above statements and exaggerate that CS at present is at the apex of anything. However, I do not see partition between CS, Electrical Engineering, Physics. At the end, everything is Science. So, based on that we can say that we must know our fields as much as we can and then think of expanding it further.

If you look at Computational Biology and Computational Fluid Dynamics (and such like), you would see massive use of Computer Science knowledge and mathematics.

TL, DR; Don't listen to such junks from your friends.

Whoa... you have it all way, way wrong to answer the OP's question.

I have an advanced CS degree including a Master's in the subject from Stanford.  Granted, I graduated in 1993, but it did me nothing to actually land a good-paying job.

I got great job offers at the time I graduated - as most college grads do, but factoring in the time-value of paying back my tuition (I'm not sure about IIT or India in general but in the US many of us take out many loans to get through a University program) none of them had a ladder that would equivocate the cost-payback of the education itself.  In other words, financially I would have been better suited flipping burgers at McDonald's.  Universities, especially for CS, are dinosaurs.  I'll be surprised if they even exist in 20 years.

To understand Computer Science, or any science, is an application approach - like a craft.  It's not boiled up in Academia.  Meaning this: a great plumber doesn't go to a University to learn about fluid dynamics.  They learn, then apprentice (at a plumbing firm) for years to understand real-world problems - then if they want to build something on their own, they're required to keep up on the latest in plumbing technologies to continually be useful in their field.  CS/IT is exactly like this.  Philosophy, which is generally an arbitrary study - is what Universities are generally good at teaching and conducting "group think" about.

I run my own company now, and I can assuredly tell you that I don't even look at the education section of a resume of a person I'm about to hire.  I look at their work experience and their work product, along with [in some cases] a portfolio of code [in the case of, say, a CSS or UI/UX engineer] and whatever is relevant to them.

Find what within the subject you are passionate about and grab every book, every online course you can and apply yourself.  If you can't immediately find a job, there are countless ways to create your own (using freelancer.com , upwork.com , even fiverr - and countless others).  Once you've amassed a work product that you can demonstrate - "look at this that I've done" - you'll find that your chances at employment will far outweigh a college graduate chance's.  Lastly, you may end up freelancing for life ; nothing wrong with that either, many successful people do it in every category/every profession.

No college degree needed.  It's useless, unnecessary and a complete utter waste of your time in 2018.

That's my 2 cents.


If you're black, how do you answer "Oh you're a professor? So you teach African Studies?" In a comment to How do you answer "Oh, you're a professor? What do you teach?", @JohnSmith wrote

I'm black so it generally goes "Oh you're a professor? So you teach African Studies?" I generally storm off.

John's reaction is understandable.  But I'd like to explore some alternatives.  Note that John's experience is not isolated to black professors.  For example, another comment on that thread pointed out that some stupid people tend to assume a female professor teaches gender studies.
How do you answer "Oh you're a professor? So you teach African Studies?"
I'm looking for a lot in an answer.  It should:

be short
open the thoughtless person's eyes
allow for a graceful exit by both parties

Here is an example of the kind of answer I'm looking for:

Question posed by a white person to a transracial black adoptee: "What country were you born in?"
Answer: "Long Island."

Edit: Please assume there was no hidden agenda.  Just some combination of garden variety cluelessness and stereotyped thinking.
Typical scenarios: neighborhood picnic... parent meeting at your child's school... standing in line at the grocery store....
Edit 9/18: This question closely mirrors the other, in which the questioner is not an academic, and the academic feels socially isolated and uncomfortable, and unsure how to respond.
What's different here is that there is an additional layer of discomfort related to being an obvious member of an under-represented group.  Think of a Venn diagram.  The set of people interested in "So you teach African Studies" question is a subset of those interested in the original "What do you teach?" question.
I would ask enthusiasts of this site who have no personal interest in this question to allow those of us who do, to explore this very real problem -- even if you yourself have never experienced it and do not anticipate experiencing it.
But who knows, you might encounter a similar problem some day on a trip to an overseas conference, or in an unfamiliar corner of your own country.
Permitting an exploration of this question can potentially be useful to white, male, straight, in short, hegemonic, academics in another way.  If your department is one of the many that are striving to diversify, this question is an example of things that matter to the diverse candidates you are trying to recruit.
Edit 9/22: Reading the answers and comments led me to an idea.  (If the question gets re-opened again(!) I can post it as an actual answer.)

Well, no, but if you're trying to choose an African Studies course for next semester, you're welcome to bounce some ideas off me.

(I have a feeling this is the kind of answer I'd get in a lot of trouble with from my children.  They'd say it's too annoying....)

What's wrong with a sensible answer:  "No, I teach Chemistry."

"No, White Studies."

Instant mental derailment that might prompt a dialog.


What's the proper order for multiple educational degrees/certificates? Assuming someone has a PhD, MD, CISSP, CPA, CFA, MS, etc. etc. What's the proper way to order them after their name and is the comma needed after the last name? (i.e. Jane Smith, PhD, MD, etc. or John Smith MD, PhD, etc.)

Questions over titling are almost always a matter of local convention and personal preference. You can read more than you wanted to know over at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-nominal_letters

A few rules of thumb:

If you're naming someone in a friendly context then your biggest concern is usually etiquette rather than technical correctness. If someone insists on being called "Jane Doe, PhD, MD" rather than "Jane Doe, MD, PhD" then it would be incredibly rude to object to them. Most people would not care, but if in doubt you should ask.
If you're establishing the credibility of someone, such as in a piece of journalism, then you list only relevant degrees starting with the highest degree. Even if multiple degrees are relevant it's likely that one degree will be most relevant.
If you follow the cite note for US degrees in the Wikipedia link above, you'll eventually get to this page, in which a protocol expert says that this is the appropriate order, with ties within each category being broken alphabetically:

1) Religious orders
2) Theological degrees
3) Academic degrees
4) Honorary degrees, honors, decorations
5) Professional licenses, certifications & affiliations

Don't list degrees that have been superseded by another degree. That is, don't say "John Doe, PhD, MS, BS" because the MS and BS degrees have been eclipsed by the PhD.

My understanding is that two degrees may be listed if they are in different disciplines, even though in one discipline a degree may be lower in status.   e.g.   PhD, MPH  where the PhD is in psychology and the MPH is in public health.

How else would one establish credentials in both fields.


what do you do if you have test anxieties? What is the best way to resolve test anxieties?

Cognitive behavioral therapy, conducted by a licensed mental health professional, does reduce test anxiety.  This is usually used in severe cases.

Students who are told that it is normal to be anxious will feel less anxious and perform better.  Students who are told that being anxious will help them get a better grade also get a better grade than students who are not told that.

Reflecting on why education is important helps students overcome their anxiety.

These strategies are based on experimental evidence.

Know the material very well.  "Overlearn."
Do lots of practice tests on your own, under test conditions (no breaks, no lookups, time limit, etc.)


Do postdoc salaries or other academic position's salaries differ much between US and Canada? I hear that the salaries in US are generally higher with lower taxes compared to Canada. Is this true for postdoc salaries or other academic positions? Sites such as glassdoor give roughly the same salary for postdoc which is 50000 CAD/USD. What a bout taxes, is the tax really lower in US? For an annual salary of 50000 CAD a person pay ~7600 CAD in federal taxes and for 50000 USD a person pays ~5800 USD. This does not include the state taxes. I am a second year postdoc in molecular biology with a background in physics.
My source for Canada federal tax
My source for US federal tax
Glassdoor US postdoc salary
Glassdoor Canada postdoc salary

This isn't really an answer, but rather a heads up about how a single average number won't help you decide about taking an offer in one place rather than the other.
First, and foremost, however, there are things more important about a career than your salary. If you make a lot of money but hate the job, then your life won't be very satisfying.
Next, the economies of the two countries are similar, but not identical, and the similarity and ties between the economies keeps personal income (overall) on a rough parity. Otherwise there would be a lot of pressure for academics to emigrate from one country to the other and that doesn't really happen. So salaries may be nominally higher, but so are prices of nearly everything.
Next, as the comments already made make clear, the variability between cities in the two places is probably more important than the variability between the two countries. If you have to live on the US average salary in, say, San Francisco, you will be starving, but in Lansing, MI you will be pretty well off. And whether SF or Lansing is better or worse for you depends a lot on what you like to do with your free time. Likewise Toronto.
While taxes may be nominally lower in the US, the higher taxes paid by Canadians (like Europeans) buys a lot of services that don't exist in the US. The big one is health care which is covered by taxes in some countries other than the US. And the US has been postponing infrastructure investment for so long that our roads/bridges are terrible. I don't know if that is the same in "The Great White North" though. Likewise the US spends far too little on elementary and secondary education. Low taxes in the US is why we can't have nice things here unless you are (very) rich.
Finally, the postdoc is only a way station, not a career. The salary will be "sufficient" even if not extravagant in most places. Certainly much more than what you earn as a TA. But the goal is to move through a postdoc to obtain a more permanent position. With that in mind, the salary is probably the last thing you should weigh in choosing where to postdoc. You want to go where your opportunities for moving to the next step are best.
Think about the life you lead, both the work life and everything else.

Another major difference between job availability. In Canada always difficult to find job both academy or industry. Some point is better in Canada but at the end of the day you need job?. Therefore both countries have mixed benefits. If you want to go academic career then USA is much better choice than Canada. Canada have less resources and weather is another major issue in Canada almost 7 months winter and 3 months summer and 2 months mixed weather. So you can think lot of positive and negative points in both countries.


Including a joke in an otherwise correct exam answer as the student I just read Ethics of awarding points for hilariously bad answers, and it reminded me of my Senior History exam in high school. I was confident in my knowledge and noticed that I had a lot of time left for the second half of the exam (the part where we were allowed to use our historical atlas), so during this second half, I often included a short joke comment between parentheses after the otherwise correct answer. For example, one of the questions I remember asked something about one of the European invasions of WW2, and after the answer itself, I joked about how it wasn't the first time they were conquered and listed a couple of other times they were conquered, like by the Greek, the Romans and a couple other groups I can't quite remember. I think I gave about half a dozen or a dozen jokes like that after relevant, for no other reason or justification other than because I felt like it.
My teacher afterwards told me she found it quite funny to grade my exam, though I cannot really remember anymore whether she adjusted my grades because of them. I don't think she detracted any points and while I can't remember for sure, I think she added a couple percentage points because I showed knowledge of the subject matter beyond what was required. Again, I just did it because I felt like it, though I'm uncertain whether I was influenced by remarks from a substitute teacher that they liked to laugh at absurdly bad exam answers in the teacher's lounge (again, high school, and in a special education school at that).
Now, obviously I didn't do this with the intent of getting a better score or something like that. I just did it because I felt like it, autistic brains are weird like that. But I'm wondering: Assuming an answer that's correct as far as you know, could it be a problem as a student to add a relevant joke to an otherwise correct answer? Could it impact the immediate and/or long term evolution of my grades, education and professional/academic life beyond just this exam, whether negatively or positively?

As I understand, your main question is:
Could it impact the immediate and/or long term evolution of my grades, education and professional/academic life beyond just this exam, whether negatively or positively?
Immediate grade: Obviously. People might have different rules on how they grade. Graders are usually humans who are impacted conciously and subconsiously by their students' actions (and how they speak, look etc.) One teacher might like you more for making jokes, one might be angry that you wasted their time, one might not find the correct answer because you wrote too much irrelevant things etc. One might not care. In grading, almost everything is possible.
Long term evolution of grades, life: Most likely not. If you have one teacher in different courses who likes you or doesn't like you because of jokes, this might play into other exams. However, usually, after a course is over, if at all, people care about the grade you got and not why you got it. It's unlikely that anyone will see the exam after the end of the course.
If you get extremly famous, it might be a nice episode about you that you made jokes on exams. Or not.

could it be a problem as a student to add a relevant joke to an otherwise correct answer?

Yes: The invasion and conquering of a nation isn't funny. Joking about such events won't curry favor with examiners. Although examiners should be impartial, they are human and some impartiality could be lost.


Retract an already submitted recommendation letter (written for an undergrad student) In the middle of the current semester, a student in my large lecture class (of an undergraduate course) asked me for a letter of recommendation, to supplement his application to transfer to another, much stronger, school. (In case this matters: this is in the U.S.)

He is one of the quiet students: while he doesn't actively participate, he doesn't cause any trouble either. So during that first half of the semester I didn't have any personal communication with him, and therefore I didn't really know him; I mean I didn't have anything to say about him as a person. But he attended class, and his first two midterm test grades were A (90+ numerically). So I told him that I agree to write the letter, but it would be short because I can only write what I know about him, which isn't much: I could only say that I've known him for half of the semester and that so far he has been performing really well. The student said it's fine. So I wrote and submitted a letter of recommendation.

This was a month ago. Fast forward to today, and by now he's like a totally different student: he's still quiet and doesn't cause any trouble, but he often skips classes, and his third midterm exam was an F (50 out of 100).

I know that it's not about me, and I don't take this personally. It may sound like he changed his ways as soon as he's gotten what he wanted from me, but that would be silly of me to assume. Probably it's just that he believes that he's already in the other school and doesn't care about this school anymore.

But my dilemma is that now I know that he is not the kind of student that I described in my letter and recommended to be accepted to the other school. By putting my name on the letter I effectively vouched for him and his ability to perform at a certain level. To me, it's as if I made a promise to the other university, but now I see that I misled them (albeit unintentionally).

Do you think it's a good idea to contact the other university and request that my letter of recommendation be retracted from his application package? Any thoughts or advice?

I think you should do nothing.

(Nothing with respect to the letter, that is.  You may of course want to consider intervening with the student as you would with any other student whose performance suddenly drops off.  As Azor Ahai says, he may be experiencing some sort of academic or non-academic problem.)

  By putting my name on the letter I effectively vouched for him and his ability to perform at a certain level. To me, it's as if I made a promise to the other university, but now I see that I misled them (albeit unintentionally).

I don't see it that way.  You couldn't possibly make promises about his future performance, and the receiving university will not have interpreted it that way.    They are well aware that "past performance is no guarantee of future results". Provided you made an honest assessment based on what you knew at the time, your letter was in no way misleading, and you have no obligation to correct it.

Proactively sending a followup unrecommendation would come across as somewhat vindictive, and I think it's sort of an ethical gray area.  The student consented to having you send a letter, sharing his academic progress, at a particular time; I think it's a little questionable whether that consent extends to having you send additional letters.  (However, if the other university should contact you to ask about him, I do think it would be appropriate to give them an update on his more recent work - but to me that feels different.)

That said, I don't think the student is really likely to profit from this anyway:

Your initial letter, saying "I've known him for half a semester and so far he's doing fine in this one class", can't really have done much good for his application in the first place.  If the other university is "much stronger", having such a letter, in place of a very positive letter from someone that knew him well, may have sunk his application from the outset.
If he does receive an offer of admission, it will almost certainly be contingent on continued satisfactory academic progress.  The other university will review his final transcripts before he actually starts in the program.  If he receives a poor grade in your class, they may very well revoke his admission.  Indeed, discussing this possibility with the student may encourage him to shape up.

Let it go.  I think there is a little bit of a logical/philosophical/character flaw in many academics (so valuing precision over a more Bayesian view of the universe) to want to regulate things around them. (We see the same things with reviewers that think they control if a paper is accepted or not, rather than just being advisors to the editor/author.)

You wrote a valid letter.  Going out on your own to write ad hoc (not requested) negative letters is uncool.  Settle down and be more phlegmatic, more Stoic, more Zen.

And don't you have something else to work on?  To worry about?  Go invent a room temperature superconductor or solve a Millennium Problem or something.


What should I do if a professor's grading makes me feel bad? I have a professor who grades all his exams by himself (homework, midterm and probably the final). For whatever reason he seems to be a likeable guy during the lecture but he absolutely "wrecks" the homeworks, etc. when he grades.

For example, if you make a little error he will put a huge X across the page or over the entire question. Absolutely massive. And sometimes he will circle a solution or step he does not understand and write ??????????? in red. Finally, this didn't happen to me but happened to a class mate of mine, he wrote "fail" on a question that had some problems with the solution. Now I remember he put "big problem" on one of my answers, taking out all marks, without further comment.

Also he sometimes do not thoroughly read through a question but just marks it wrong, then he changes the marking a few moments later i.e. he will write a huge X over the entire question and put a minus whatever the total points and then scratch out his reading mistake but leaves the huge X there. His marking is also uneven, sometimes he will put -5 for a question and then for whatever reason scratchs it out with a red pen and put -10.

(picture this, but imagine that the X is over your entire answer)

Honestly, I find that not just homeworks, but also emails. I think he has a way of overreacting to any little thing he doesn't see fit. For example, I asked him a simple question I had regarding some reference I found online which disagreed with his lecture. He said I need to review basic "insert course name here" because everything I said to him is totally wrong. Then I emailed him back telling him that the claim was contained in the link, by another professor. He just replied I should write my emails more clearly next time...what a guy.

By the way he never clarified that issue I emailed him about, which I think he believes is trivial and only tangetial to the course (he tends to cover only portions of his sum total lectures), but a question is a question even if it is not on the exam, isn't it?

Is his behavior reasonable? It just feels like he is on this power trip whenever he grades stuff. I am scared to approach him because I feel like he marked one of my question wrong after he wrote a huge X and probably discontinued to read my solution which was written on the back of the exam. What should I do?

I would recommend approaching this by thinking about the following question: what is your goal in receiving grades?

Some things that we commonly do with the grades that we receive are:

Use them as feedback on our strengths and weaknesses in understanding material
Certify our degree of education, thereby obtaining further opportunities
Obtain personal validation from good grades

It sounds to me like you're focusing primarily on the personal validation that you can receive from the professor.  Otherwise, it would be the marks you receive that matter, rather than the size of the X used to mark them.  I would suggest that you instead focus on the more concrete gains that you can obtain from the class, whether intellectual (point #1) or material (point #2).

In that light, the style of markings does not matter, but the precision of his grading does.  When you are concerned that he has not graded you correctly, go to office hours and seek understanding of the reason for a grade.  Perhaps he is being sloppy, or perhaps not---but if you approach him with an entitled attitude such as you are showing in your question here, you are unlikely to obtain the information that you desire.

If you have problems with your professor's grading policy, there are a few ways to address this problem:

1) As mentioned earlier, you could attend office hours.

2) If, after a visit with the professor, you feel you have not received a satisfactory response, you will always have the option of appealing to the professor's supervisor - depending on the college, this person may be the head of the department for the relevant discipline.

3) If it is not too late, drop the course. This is what I did when I had a professor with a bad grading policy. Note: While I knew I could not get a refund due to the timing, I thought I would be able to register for another class at no additional cost. However, this was not so. Luckily, an Admissions and Records official approved my petition for a refund.


Any tips for preventing perfectionism when it comes to notetaking? This is a slightly seperate question from before.
I was curious on hearing any tips from the community regarding: Preventing perfectionism when it comes to notetaking?
It can be trying to make the notes look perfect (aesthetically + information-wise it troubles me not understanding a couple of key points after having written a bunch of notes down and I'm reviewing them).
I don't do color-coding and doodles, but I like underlining key parts of my notes a bit too much.
I feel like it's all about having this nice condensed packet of beautifully written notes for future review, which is wrong. I know some people will address how this is not a good way to get information in my brain and I agree you should address that, but also please address the perfectionism aspect of my notes because I will still have to take notes in life anyways and that is why I'm asking this question
This is tied to preventing perfectionism in general I guess too.
Note: I wouldn't say I have OCD as I'm not at that level in other aspects of life or to an extent in academics, but still it is a 'perfectionist attitude' or 'minimalistic, beautiful notes', etc

This question, combined with your previous one, makes me think that you are confusing two issues: transcribing information and understanding information. These are not the same thing.  In fact, if you focus more on transcribing information in detail, but you might actually learn less than if you had taken no notes at all.  See for example this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/
I think you need to break yourself of the habit of taking too many notes.  Here's what I suggest: read an entire chapter or lesson without taking a single note.  Don't write anything down at all, just focus on understanding the material.  Sit on your hands if you have to to prevent yourself from writing.  If you don't understand the material, read it again (or maybe look in a different book, find a relevant website etc,).  Once you think you have an understanding, try to summarize the entire chapter very concisely, for example just 10 bullet points.  if you can't do it that concisely, you probably didn't understand it.  Go back and read again.
After while, once you've broken yourself of the habit of taking too many notes, you can go back to taking a few short notes as you read.
Edit: To clarify based on Buffy's comment: I'm not suggesting this as a long term strategy.  Long term you need to find a balance with the right level of note taking.  I'm suggesting this as a short term (say a week or two) approach to get you out of the habit of excess note taking.

One of the answers here suggests you go to the opposite extreme and not take notes at all. Another suggests that you just ignore the issue and be perfect, but maybe in a different way. I think both are misguided.
A scribe can take aesthetically beautiful notes with no knowledge at the start or at the end other than knowledge of the alphabet and a bit of penmanship (for notes on paper). It has nothing to do with learning.
I want to suggest that you learn to become more effective in your notetaking.
Of course, if you have tons of time on your hands and nothing better to do, then "wasting" time isn't an issue. But as you advance in your education, that will become less true since more will be asked of you.
Background: To learn something, you need to do more than see or hear it once. In order to make it part of your knowledge you need to reinforce the learning. In a course, the reinforcement usually comes from the instructor asking students to do various exercises, whether technical or not. The teacher also provides the second element: feedback. This gives you an idea about whether you have learned the right lesson from readings or lectures. Reinforcement can be negative as well as positive and I've had a few students struggle because they reinforced the wrong thing early on. But another thing that exercises do is to help you apply the knowledge to various tasks. If you can do that, then you have some assurance that you have actually learned it.
Advice. Let me suggest that you spend your time more effectively directed at learning, rather than copying. Since you are mostly learning from books, I'll give advice that would be different if you were learning from lecture.
Most books written for study are divided into chapters and the chapters are divided into sections. We won't go into the paragraph level of division that might be important if you were learning from scientific papers rather than books. But books also have page numbers.
I suggest that when you read a section of a book, you do so three times. The first time you just read it to get an overview. The second time you read it, perhaps later the same day, or the next day, you read it to try to extract the most important ideas that the author is trying to convey in that section.
But for the first two readings you don't try to take notes, or not your final notes, in any case. In the third reading you do take notes, but they are very sparse. What you want to capture in your notes is the single most important idea in that section. Capture it in as few sentences as you can. Two or three sentences ideally. You can also try to capture one or two subsidiary ideas, but make sure you note the relationship. On this reading you are taking notes, but you can annotate those notes with page numbers from the book you are reading so that if when you later look at the notes you don't immediately remember the details, you can go back to the place in the book immediately for more reinforcement. But use your own words, don't copy sentences. Don't be a scribe.
At the end of a chapter, you can take some additional notes. What are the key ideas of this chapter. Not all of the ideas, just the key ideas. If you can do this from memory, without rereading or looking at the section-level notes then you have probably learned something.
One level I've neglected here, which is to connect the flow of ideas through the chapters. One of the notes you can take, separately from the above, is how the key ideas of a section or chapter flow from and are connected to the ideas from the earlier sections and chapters.
You aren't just copying things. What you wind up with at the end is a structured outline of the book. And if you've been good about page numbers, then you can go back to the book if necessary to find the detail.
But, this "plan" for reading might not be a lot less "obsessive" than what you are now doing. But it will give you more than a faithful copy of the book that you already have in hand. The main idea here is to capture ideas from the readings, not words.
And if the book provides exercises for you, then do those. Ideally all of them.

Note that this "read it three times" idea was used as a recommendation for doctoral students who need to learn from academic/scientific papers. I don't know its actual original source.


What is the difference between Abstract, conclusion and summary? The above question is self explanatory, still I would like to break it into two parts.

Q1. What is the difference between abstract and summary/conclusion?

Q2. What is the difference between summary and conclusion ?

Thanks

The abstract is written for the potentially interested reader. While writing it, keep in mind that most readers read the abstract before they read the paper (sounds obvious, but many abstracts read like the authors did not consider this). The abstract should give an impression of what the paper will be about. Do not use jargon or any abbreviations here. It should be understandable for non-specialists and even for people from fields somehow far away.

The conclusion should conclude the paper and is written for the reader who already has read the paper. In other words: most readers have read the paper when they read the conclusion. Again, this sounds obvious but, again, a lot of conclusions do not read like this. It does not make sense to write a conclusion like "we have shown this and that by using this and that method". Well, this is what the reader has just read (and what he may know since he has read the abstract). A proper conclusion should tell the reader what she can or he could do with the newly acquired knowledge. Answer the question "So what?".

A summary sums up the paper. I am not sure if a paper needs a summary.

I've written some tips for abstracts some time ago:

Avoid jargon. Although this sounds obvious, most abstracts contain jargon in one way or the other. Of course one can not avoid the use of specific terminology and technical terms but even then there is an easy check if a technical term is appropriate: Try to find a definition on the internet (if the term has a fairly stable wikipedia page, there it is not jargon) – if you do not succeed within a few minutes you should find a different word.
Use buzzwords. This may sound to contradict the previous point and in part it does. But note that you can use a buzzword together with its explanation. Again, the example from the previous point works: “Funk metric” may be a buzzword and the explanation using the name “Finsler” is supposed to ring a bell (as I learned, it is related to Hilbert’s 23rd problem). This helps the readers to find related work and to remember what was the field you were working in.
General to specific. In general, it’s good advice to work from general to specific. Start with a sentence which points in the direction of the field you are working in. So your potential audience will know from the beginning in which field your work is situated.
Answer questions. If you think that your work answers questions, why not pose the questions in the abstract? This may motivate the readers to think by themselves and draw their interest to the topic.
Don’t be afraid of layman’s terms. Although layman’s terms usually do not give exact description and sometimes even are ridiculously oversimplified, they still help to form a mental picture.

The abstract is like a movie trailer.
The summary is an arrangement of actions/events of movie in a short way.
The conclusion is the objective of the movie in light of the evidence and arguments given in the movie.

The conclusion of one person can vary from that of another.


Where to correct an inefficiency of algorithm in a published paper? I spotted a serious inefficiency in our algorithm, which was already published. Basically, we have an algorithm to encode a problem A into a formula X. But we later found that we can encode into a formula X', which is equisatisfiable, but with much less (up to thousand) of variables.

This change is very trivial in logic, if we need to correct the algorithm, we only need to change 1 line with one subscript. But it improve the performance drastically, up to 10 times in some instances.

If somebody build on our work, I don't want them to make the same mistake. If somebody want to compare with our work, I want them to compare with the improved algorithm, not the result we reported in the paper.

But the change is so trivial, how could I let everybody know?

The change only appears trivial to you now that you know about it.

Moreover, while the change may be simple, the validation of that change is not: I'm sure there's lots of experiments to run to verify your statement, and maybe some new analyses to be performed as well.

To me, this sounds like a fine opportunity for a followup.  If your paper was published in a conference, then the improved version can go into the "extended version" journal paper.  If your paper was already published in a journal, this is a good time to follow up with a short conference paper.  If you're in a field that doesn't like conferences, there will probably be journals that take "short papers" or "application notes" or some similar.

Bottom line: one way or another, there should be a good place to put this not-as-trivial-as-you-think piece of work.

Sounds like a prime opportunity for a second publication!

In all seriousness, you can cover/publicize this through a white paper. It has the benefit of being picked up by Google Scholar and should be found by anyone doing a literature survey of your work. Most universities have a method of publishing white papers or you could use a service like arXiv.

If you'd like to generate a little more publicity, throw up a blog post or some sort of social media post as appropriate to your field (i.e. Twitter, Reddit, etc.).


How is the quality of a paper evaluated for application purposes? Suppose a situation when two students trying to apply for a PhD position in pure mathematics and they both have same GPA, same Rec.Letters, etc except for their published papers. Let both applicants have one paper published each, but applicant A has a "much better" research done compared to applicant B.

What makes applicant A's paper "much better"?

If it is the number of people cited his/her paper in their references it is absurd because time is the main factor of growth of its credit.

If it is the reputation of journal the paper is published it is also not a good judgement because the very same journal can contain both proof to FLT and a PhD paper.

I don't think the length of paper matters... I don't think the time that a researcher has spent matters since no one asks that...

This is a question of comparing two research paper which neither contains a solution to a famous unsolved problem; it's about papers that normally publish by students (or even professors).

The quality of a mathematical paper isn't an absolute. It may not even be apparent for years. Quality is judged by individuals and two judges may come to opposite conclusions on the value.

Number of citations is no more than an indication. A person working in an especially arcane sub-field with few other researchers will naturally have fewer citations than someone working in a popular field. Who cites your work may mean more, actually.

The quality of the journal in which you find something is an indication, but partly that is a matter of coincidence. Perhaps the paper in the "lesser" journal is, again, in too arcane a field for the editors to have included it. It isn't that this means nothing, it is just that it isn't an absolute indication.

If the purpose of the question is anything beyond a hypothetical, related to who is more likely to advance, then that really depends on other factors. Certainly one paper isn't a great indicator. As a comment by Prof. Santa Claus notes, a future advisor is more likely to want to work with the student who has more to contribute to the actual work of the subfield of that advisor. Something in either paper may help that person to make a decision, but other factors will also come in to play.

This doesn't, of course, address the issue that some problems in mathematics are considered important. You mention famous unsolved questions of course. Giving a first correct proof of a problem already considered important is, of course, quality work.

This may be a bit of an odd reply, but bear with me..
When you go to school, you go not to learn, but to learn HOW to learn. This takes training for an undisciplined mind. Years of training.
When you head off for college and university it's just a progression. The subject matter may be far more complicated, but showing that you have your own personal grasp of an understanding is what "they" are looking for and not just copying text to show you've found the relevant information.
So when you do your paper/s, truly come to an understanding on the topic before even starting to write. If you do that, then the answer will flow from you and it'll show anyone that reads that you actually can learn.


What to do about students who ask for help too often? For my writing courses, about 5% of students will come to me prior to deadlines asking for help with their paper. I see no problem advising students, as I often similarly came for help when I was an undergraduate. Recently, though, I found an increase in students who apparently just want to abuse this:

Students will bring me some plagiarized work, showing it to me early, as a sort of test if I will notice. It seems difficult to punish plagiarism when the paper is not yet submitted.
Students will bring in papers again and again, with little changes put in at each stage, hoping their minimal effort each time will be sufficient to reach their goal of a "D".

I've tried stopping students, but then they are angry when they see the "F" that they hoped I would help them get away from. While most of these students are probably just incredibly lazy, there is a chance that some among them are genuinely trying to improve, but just struggling a great deal, and I can't see it.

How might I go about blocking such abuses?

Here is one strategy:

Specify the level of changes the student needs to make before they can come back again.
Request that the student shows you what changes have been made by comparing the old and new versions of the assignment.
If student has failed to reach the level suggested or fails to show you the differences, simply tell them to go away until they have made the requested changes. Simply state that your previous comments still apply.

Adding a time delay between when they ask and when you give feedback or when you give feedback and when they can come again might also help.

If you see something definitely plagiarized, you could try to get them to claim it as theirs when they consult you and fail them on the spot for making the claim whether it's in class or not.

I do agree with @DaveClarke that on this or the other issue, announcing a policy at the start of the term (no more than N consults per assignment/per term, and plagiarism is an automatic F and will also be referred to the school's academic conduct team) would help set expectations, cut down on abuse, and give you grounds to say "No, it wouldn't be fair to others if I helped you again before you turn it in."


How to cite R packages when using Mendeley? In Mendeley, the closest category for an R package appears to be "Computer Program"; however, R itself is a computer program, not its packages.

Other literature sources seem to cite technical documents about R packages instead of the actual packages.

Aside from manually entering the citations, is there a way to incorporate R packages in my Mendeley library?

Each R package has a different way to be cited. Some were formally published as scientific articles in journals, some only as packages. The only way to know for sure is to check how the package maintainer want you to cite their package, with function citation.
Base R also comes with function toBibtex that help you export the correct citations as a bibtex file.

For instance:

> citation("Rcpp")

To cite Rcpp in publications use:

  Dirk Eddelbuettel and Romain Francois (2011). Rcpp: Seamless
  R and C++ Integration. Journal of Statistical Software,
  40(8), 1-18. URL http://www.jstatsoft.org/v40/i08/.

  Eddelbuettel, Dirk (2013) Seamless R and C++ Integration with
  Rcpp. Springer, New York. ISBN 978-1-4614-6867-7.

  Dirk Eddelbuettel and James Joseph Balamuta (2017). Extending
  R with C++: A Brief Introduction to Rcpp. PeerJ Preprints
  5:e3188v1. URL
  https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3188v1.

To see these entries in BibTeX format, use 'print(<citation>,
bibtex=TRUE)', 'toBibtex(.)', or set
'options(citation.bibtex.max=999)'.

> toBibtex(citation("knitr"))
@Manual{,
  title = {knitr: A General-Purpose Package for Dynamic Report Generation in R},
  author = {Yihui Xie},
  year = {2018},
  note = {R package version 1.20},
  url = {https://yihui.name/knitr/},
}

@Book{,
  title = {Dynamic Documents with {R} and knitr},
  author = {Yihui Xie},
  publisher = {Chapman and Hall/CRC},
  address = {Boca Raton, Florida},
  year = {2015},
  edition = {2nd},
  note = {ISBN 978-1498716963},
  url = {https://yihui.name/knitr/},
}

@InCollection{,
  booktitle = {Implementing Reproducible Computational Research},
  editor = {Victoria Stodden and Friedrich Leisch and Roger D. Peng},
  title = {knitr: A Comprehensive Tool for Reproducible Research in {R}},
  author = {Yihui Xie},
  publisher = {Chapman and Hall/CRC},
  year = {2014},
  note = {ISBN 978-1466561595},
  url = {http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466561595},
}

As for importing bibtex files into Mendeley, I do not use Mendeley myself but this Q&A on TeX.se shows that one can simply use menu items "File > Import... > Bibtex (*.bib) " to do so.

For example, if I want to cite Data in Function reference
http://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/reference/#section-data, in this case, I will use web page to added to Mendeley manually as follow:

title = Data - Function reference - ggplot2
url = http://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/reference/#section-data
Date access = 2018-02-12


While teaching how should I give justice equally to both female and male students? I am 27 years old unmarried male teacher. I have been a teacher (lecturer) for the last 6 months in an Engineering institution. My students are 4 to 5 years younger than me.

The problem is that while teaching I have soft corner towards female students. I don't understand whether it is due to opposite gender attraction or due  to female students asking more doubts than male students. I help  female students more than male students.  I know that it is against moral ethics of teacher's profession. But I couldn't change my attitude. Now, I think that male students might have noticed this and they may make complaints against me to the principal.

So what changes can I make?
While teaching how should I give justice equally to both female and male students equally? Or should I quit teaching?

If you really can't change your actions, find a different profession.

You're aware of the issue - you admit you spend more time helping the females than the males.  Find a way to equalize that problem.  Be sure that you make your time available to all genders - use office hours, or clarify to all students how to get help from you.  Look for the patterns where you realize that you cut off help from the men and continued to help the women - there's like an unconscious bias that you may be able to over come with a pattern.

Changing a pattern like this may not be easy - but it's what's rightfully expected.

Also ponder - why - why do you give women more time?  Are you hoping for something more than a teacher/student relationship?  Is something more pleasing about them? What's causing the problem, and can you reduce the factors that lead up to it?

I suppose the other alternative is to find a place where you teach only one gender.  Then you don't treat your students unequally.  Personally, that seems like taking a short cut.

If you want to do justice to your profession then I would suggest a few tips:

Divert your attention to weaker male students and arrange sessions for them.
Always maintain direct eye contact with the male students and not with the female students (eventually you should, just avoid it for some time).
Motivate men and talk with them whenever you talk to women. (I.e. just devote equal time to both males and females.)
You can sometimes give favours to men instead women so that they are more inclined to you for any sort of help whenever it is required.
Remind yourself consciously that you have to pay equal attention to all.

Hope this helps.


Is it acceptable to use an acronym for a set of adjectives? In science, it is very common to shorten nouns with acronyms (e.g. deoxyribonucleic acid -> DNA). However, I am struggling to think of any examples of sets of adjectives that are written as an acronym.
I am writing a scientific document, in which I must describe my data in a specific way. For the sake of this question, let's say it's "high time resolution data". It is important to distinguish the data as high time resolution data, as it is a unique type of data in the field, and the document requires justification of the significance of analysis of this data. I do not think it is appropriate to drop the adjectives and simply describe it as "the data" due to the context of the document. Is it fine/acceptable to refer to it as "HTR data", in order to improve the brevity and readability of the text?
I should note that I would prefer to use "HTR data" instead of "HTRD" to allow for interchanging the word "data" for something else, like "measurements", where appropriate.

I think that in general it would be fine as long as you use it consistently and introduce it properly again in every chapter. For example, in a sentence you could write something like this:

The High Time Resolution (HTR) data was analyzed using tool ABC. We found that the HTR data has X-property among Y observations.

However, this might be cumbersome and become repetitive at some point. If this HTR data is the only type of data in your paper, it would be an option to refer simply to the data since no confusion can occur about the data being High Time Resolution instead of some other type.

In most cases acronyms are unhelpful.  It does not matter if they are nouns or verbs.  Is it clearer to a non-expert reader as an acronym or written out?  Nearly always written out is clearer.  The exceptions occur when the acronym is used in popular culture (DNA) or the accepted written out name is so poorly chosen it is just as confusing as the accepted acronym.
Acronyms that are new are the least helpful.


How to turn something negative to positive in SOP? I did not pass my PhD candidacy twice and planning to apply at other institutes to pursue my PhD dream. In that case, should I mention my failure in candidacy to my SOP? If yes, how can I convert that to something positive to make my application impactful. Please suggest. Thank you

Did you graduate with a master's degree? If yes, then one option is to avoid discussing this altogether. You can approach this (honestly) as "I earned my master's degree and now I want to get my PhD." They may guess what happened (or your letters of recommendation may spill the beans), but it still lets you avoid dwelling on a negative in your SOP.
Your other option (and only option, if you left without a degree) is to provide your own perspective on what happened. "Turning a negative into a positive" is probably too much to hope for, but you can take some of the sting out of the negative. I would suggest to: acknowledge the failure, explain what went wrong, and explain why things will be different next time. You can do this very concisely -- just a few sentences.


Is it normal to CC my professor when they introduced me to someone? Research student in Japan here.

Recently, my professor (Japanese but studied in the U.S. for  long) introduced me to his friend who was a guest lecturer. I got the guest’s contact information and communicated with him through e-mail. When I reported that at the next weekly meeting, my professor gently advised me that it is generally considered “rude” if I didn't CC my professor when I contacted someone he introduced me to.

But that confused me, because back in another university in the U.S,  when I CC’d my professor to contact another researcher, my American professor told me nicely,
“Let me give you a general advice. Professors don’t want the inbox clogged up. You generally always want to save your professor’s time. Simply report to me in our weekly meeting when there is a meaningful progress”

In both scenarios, I met the guest lecturer in person, and I was given their contact info directly from them, not through my professors.

While I will follow my current professor’s direction (to be safe), I was genuinely confused by what is the norm or standard in these situations.

Can anyone tell me what is the norm?
I assume it is safe to CC professors from now on?

Most faculty are curious and would like to know what their students are doing, therefore you should CC them. If you CC them, they don't have to ask you if you sent the email.  If you CC them, they have the opportunity to clarify what you have written.

Some faculty consider deleting an email to be an unpleasant chore.  If your supervisor is one of those people, do not CC them.

Otherwise it is a matter of individual preference.  Few people consider it rude to CC or rude to not CC.

I think you must act on the situation. If you meet your professor from university CC with him, but if it's another professor don't do this!


Is publishing runnable code instead of pseudo code shunned? In Computer Science is it preferable to describe algorithms using pseudo code rather than real code? If so, why?

I've talked to a few academics who think so but I can't understand why. Some of the arguments I've heard:

"Pseudo code is shorter."  Given a modern language like Clojure or Python, the real code is often not much longer. Even if it is, (electronic) paper is cheap.
"Not everyone can code in Python."  True, but well-written Python code isn't harder to read than pseudo code. Plus, Python is standardized - someone's personal pseudo code isn't.
"In CS, we focus on algorithms - not implementations."  True, but also showing implementations doesn't take away from that focus.
"It's favoring one language over another."  True, but that is a right I as an author have, isn't it?
"It looks amateurish."  That's subjective.

The main advantage with real code is that you can run it and see for yourself if it works or not. You don't have to wonder whether you have made a mistake in implementing the pseudo code.

So what are the arguments for pseudo code?

To make it clear what I mean by real and runnable code, see the code in the following articles:

An Effective Implementation of the Lin-Kernighan Traveling Salesman Heuristic
Fast Minimum Storage Ray/Triangle Intersection
Watertight Ray/Triangle Intersection

The first and second contains C code. Helsgaun claims it is "c-style pseudocode" but it is to my eyes almost indistinguishable from real C code. The difference I can see is that it uses α, β and ∞ as variable names. The third contains C++ code.

There are cases where real code is preferable, and cases where pseudocode is preferable. You shouldn't rely on a simple iron rule, but rather on judgement of what is appropriate to the situation.

Some things to consider:

Programming languages come and go. In the 60s, Fortran was considered a really nice and readable programming language, much easier to read than Assembly. But if you'd written an article using Fortran code samples instead of peudocode, it would be harder to read for us now. Right now, Python looks pretty good to us, but will it still look that good in the future? If I handed you a piece of Python code with the following code in it:

a = 3 / 2

What is the value of a? Is it 1 or 1.5? Because Python 2 and 3 handle integer division differently. Now, I've gone more or less native programming in Python 3, so I actually had to look up which of the division operations in Python 2 and 3 are different and which aren't. Just to show you, using real code in a paper may reduce the shelf life of your paper.

Pseudocode lets you abstract stuff away In pseudocode you can just state something like:

WHILE stopping criterion not reached DO
    (stuff)

And then later on in your paper you can argue about different possible stopping criteria for your algorithm. You could do that with actual Python code too, but the result would be basically that you're twisting your Python code to do what pseudocode does by nature.

You can be pretty standardized in pseudocode Just use the various algorithm typesetting options for LaTeX.

You can use mathematical notation in pseudocode Using mathematical set notation is a lot more universal than relying on all of your readers understanding Python set operations. Consider:

a = set([1, 2, 3])
b = set([1, 2])
c = 1 if b.issubset(a) else 0

versus

A ← {1, 2, 3}
B ← {1, 2}
C = 1 if B ⊆ A
    0 otherwise

Someone not familiar with Python looking at the first example will be wondering: is [1, 2, 3] a ... maybe a list? Well the list [1, 2, 3] isn't the same as the list [1, 2], so the set A and the set B contain different elements so B can't be a subset of A.

Algorithms vs. implementations Suppose in 2019 you write an interesting algorithm in Python 3 using some state of the art libraries. In 2025 I come up with an alternative algorithm for the same problem in Go and want to compare performance to prove that yours is better. To get a fair comparison, I'm going to have to implement my algorithm in Go or yours in Python. Suppose by then nobody uses Python for high performance stuff anymore because Go does it better. (It might, I dunno.) Now I have to go research the seven year old libraries you used to find out exactly what functions you used and which Go functions are equivalent to them. That's very hard. So quite likely, the Go implementation I make of your algorithm won't be all that good. And big surprise! My algorithm benchmarks better than yours!

Now instead if you'd used an implementation-independent description of your algorithm, things might turn out better for your publication.

So the two big disadvantages of using real code are: it limits the shelf life of your publication, and you reach a smaller audience.

So when should you use real code?

When the topic of your paper is not the algorithm, but the implementation or the programming language. Maybe you're trying to show that Python is a really good language in which to solve problem X because with libraries Y and Z you get an easy and efficient implementation.
It's absolutely encouraged to also publish your real code as an appendix or, better yet, in a repository where people can download your code and suggest improvements. A nontrivial algorithm is probably too big to copy by typing by hand or even copy-pasting out of a paper anyway. As soon as you start getting into something like a new Deep Learning algorithm, you're probably looking at multiple files or even nested packages.

For a time in the late sixties, CACM required that algorithms in articles should be written in Algol.  They dropped the requirement when it turned out that people were submitting algorithms developed in other languages, and not tested in Algol (because they happened not to have an Algol compiler installed at their sites.)  A consequence of this behavior was that almost none of the published algorithms were compilable, and many contained substantive errors caused by authors' misunderstanding of Algol semantics.

I think CACM editors were aware of the compiler situation when they set the requirement, but hoped that the existence of a clear standard would result in unambiguous pseudo-code.

At any rate, this example shows:
    * Even with a big standards document describing it, pseudo-code is hard to write
    * Quality control is easier with executable code.


What causes some students to be selectively impervious to supervision of their thesis writing? Background

In my academic surrounding, we follow the following approach for supervising the actual writing of a bachelor’s and master’s thesis:
Whenever the student has written something more than a page, they can give it to an advisor (PhD student, postdoc, or professor) and they will quickly receive extensive feedback. Later, they hand in entire chapters, and eventually their entire thesis will be criticised – before being submitted.

The idea of this is that the students can refine their writing step by step and learn by actually applying what they learnt from critique.
Also, they do not have to revise the entire thesis with respect to basic issues that can be spotted from one page of writing.
Finally, this process is less exhausting for the advisors, as they usually never have to read a mess of a thesis.

We make all of this clear to students in the very beginning of their thesis and usually later on.
Note that this is not compulsory: If a student does not wish to receive any feedback but just submit a thesis at the end, they are free to do so (though it usually doesn’t turn out well).

The problem

For nine out of ten students, the above works fine¹. The remainder follows the following scheme:

They hand in their writing as we suggest.
They listen to and seem to accept the critique and suggestions. In particular they get to keep their annotated writings and make notes themselves.
They do not amend their existing writing or change the way they write new material. Note that this includes very straightforward changes such as fixing typos.
They continue handing in revisions.
They seem to understand and accept it if we tell them that what they are doing is detrimental to them and annoying for us², but they still do not change anything.
They eventually hand in a mess of a thesis.

There are three striking aspects of this phenomenon:

If it happens, it is very consistent in the way it happens. The students in question do not deviate from the above scheme by stopping handing in their work or change their ways in light of criticism. I also have never observed an intermediate case between this and a normal supervision.
There is no apparent correlation (or anticorrelation) to the quality of the student’s scientific work, their work morale, language proficiency, or how well they respond to feedback on their scientific work. If it happens, it comes out of the blue. In particular, this also happened to students who were otherwise very motivated and delivered good scientific work.
This is independent of who is the student’s primary advisor, i.e., the person who first gets to criticise their writing.

These suggest to me that there is a common underlying cause of this problem that can be addressed.

Question

So far, we addressed the problem with typical procedures for badly performing students – i.e., we tell them that their behaviour is problematic and why, explain our general approach to supervising writing, ask them where the problem lies, etc. –, which has lead nowhere so far. Thus I am looking for alternative approaches.
While my ultimate goal is to prevent or mitigate the above problem, the first step to this is understanding it.
Thus I am asking:

What are possible reasons why students react like this?
Is this a known and ideally scientifically described phenomenon?

¹ or in rare cases doesn’t happen at all because of the student having general difficulties with supervision and working on a thesis project.
² in particular, if they make us read the same material with the same problems twice or have two advisors read the same material and tell them about the same problems, which they then ignore.

I recognize the problem from supervision (also at graduate level), and remember it from when I was a student myself - saw several fellow students who acted like this. I have no golden solution, but here is what I often find efficient.

Some people are poor at receiving criticism. There can be many reasons for that. One that is quite common is that the person receiving the criticism misunderstands criticism of their work as criticism of their person.

At some point we all needed to learn how to write a paper. Some people have a hard time understanding that they can't write a thesis, simply because they have not learned to yet, and that this is completely ok. This does not necessarily correlate with academic performance. You can have good students, who have simply not learned to write an understandable scientific text. And since they are used to acing everything, the fact that they get a lot of criticism, puts them in a place they are not used to. I must say, though, that I find this problem much more prevalent with students who are otherwise also not stellar. It is not surprising that there is a correlation between students who can't write a text, and students who are otherwise poor performers.

My (ours, I should say) attempt at a solution is to be very open with the students about this. Tell them that it is uncommon to have students who are good at writing from day one, and their first returned drafts will be red with ink. This does not mean that they are bad, it means that they are learning. Sometimes TA's needs to be reminded about this as well, in order to not take away the students' motivation.

One could speculate on all sorts of possible causes for this behaviour (see e.g., comments to the original post), and much as I would prefer not to answer a question that was not asked, I think the more important issue here is to establish the proper limits of responsibility over a student who does not wish to avail him/herself of expert advice.  With great respect to the questioner, who is obviously interested in helping, in my view it is pointless and counter-productive to embark on a speculative psychological exercise designed to understand the failure of a student to act on repeated expert advice about their work.  The job of academics is not to play amateur psychologist to their students --- it is to teach clearly, provide proper academic assistance, and assess work using appropriate objective standards.
This attitude of the nursery-school campus, where all responsibility is on the academics and none on the students, has been creeping deeper and deeper into academia for decades, and it seems to be currently at its apex.  How can we better motivate this student?  How can we make this class more "relevant"?  How can we encourage this student to follow advice and instructions?  What are the causes for this student not doing his work?  Etc., etc.  In the particular case at issue here we are not speaking of early undergraduates in their late teens (who might be expected to have some bad working habits as a hangover from high school), but in this case even some Masters students with their undergraduate education already under their belts.
If a student has been repeatedly advised of defects in their work, and declines to correct these, that is on the student.  If an inquiry is to be made into the deep psychological causes of this behaviour, it is for the student to undertake that inquiry.  Academics should not devolve into (untrained) psychologists for their students.