Is it okay to report classmates cheating on exams? Is it acceptable or ok to report on students cheating?  Many times during a test or an exam, I have seen students in front of me either passing notes, or otherwise collaborating whenever the professor isn't looking.

I don't want to get into trouble, and I don't know if it's "alright" to rat on fellow classmates.  Part of me thinks they deserve being caught out, by virtue of trying to cheat their way through the course. However, I feel like I would get found out by other students if they were caught cheating.

What is the right course of action here? To be clear, I would never raise an accusation in the middle of an exam; it would only lead to me being ostracized by my peers.

As an instructor, I want to know if there is an environment that allows cheating. Even if the student can't provide proof or only told me afterwards or anonymously, I can take action on future exams by better proctoring, exam versioning, and seating charts.

So telling the teacher afterward would protect individual students but improve the quality of the course overall, which is a win-win.

Why would people think this is okay?
You talk about honor, but it is clearly an act of egoism.
You feel bad, because you did not get the same advantage, and therefore you hurt the person who received an advantage.

You should report that someone has cheated, but you should not tell the teacher/professor who it was. That way the security will improve, but you will not hurt your fellow classmates.
If the teacher does not believe you, ignore the fool. To be trustworthy is an important trait, if you report the person who did it, you are breaking his/her trust.
Why do you think you feel bad about it in the first place? Your mother thought you right.

Going around someones back and reporting them, making them receive a punishment, is in no case honorable. Please do not listen to these puny people. Faith in humanity is low these days...


Why is the CV needed for graduate application Why do graduate schools ask for a CV to be included in the application? Do they look for anything else besides publications and work experience?

A CV is the academic equivalent of a resume, providing all of the relevant details of your (academic) career to date.  Graduate schools ask for this information for the same reason that businesses ask for a resume when you apply for a job: it is a terse summary of your qualifications as a candidate.

In addition to publications and (research-related) positions held, a CV also should include your undergraduate and graduate degrees, service, any awards, and any other academic-relevant information about you.  A nice summary, with links to additional guide material can be found here.

We want to know who you are, who is the best fit as supervisor/advisor, what is the best fit as a topic?

A better question is why we ask for a proposal - you are not generally in a position to write a proper proposal till 6 to 12 months in once you've done a full lit.review.

What else do we look for beyond the formal education/publication part?

Work experience tells us about what you can do, and what discipline you've been experosed to. Also hobbies, languages, clubs, sports and community involvement are important to mention. Were you on the chess team, the debating team, the school paper? These also complete the picture of who you are, what you can do, and what you could do!

These days everything is interconnected - technology has applications, sport and art make use of technology, science studies both the inner world of mind/brain and society (social/life sciences) as well as the external world of physical entities and devices (physical/biological sciences) and the way everything relates to everything else (information/cognitive sciences).

From you community involvement I might get insight into your aims in life, you leadership ability, your willingness to work alongside other people and health.

I'm not interested in a statement of purpose or some other nonsense that sounds more like something out of a fortune cookie than the kind of evidential data that belongs in formal curriculum vitae.

From your interest in languages or writing, your experience in debating or the school paper, I will gain ideas about how you'll go writing a thesis or dissertation, whether you will understand the literature, whether you can work on particular interdisciplinary or application-oriented parts of the research.

From your interest in music or dance, sports or photography, I might find connections that relate to (say) projects in computer science or engineering, in signal processing, image processing, speech processing  - or extend them in new directions to song recognition or music transcription.


Detect cheating in Microsoft Excel submissions I have a homework assignment where I require students to create a set of pivot charts in Microsoft Excel. I know that I can reduce cheating by changing datasets or chart specifications around, but because of the complexity of the assignments and my practical constraints in not being able to mark more than five or so different versions, this does not prevent students from finding those who have the same specifications as themselves and copying among themselves. (I am coordinating a course with over 700 students, so I can only do so much as far as alternate versions go. The students are well connected to each other by Facebook, so communicating among each is quite feasible for those who want to cheat.)

On one hand, in my situation, creating alternate versions is difficult because of the complexity of the assignment, and its effectiveness is limited because hard-working cheaters can cheat anyways. On the other hand, I believe that if I can effectively detect cheating after the fact, then giving a strong warning to students about this could serve as an effective deterrent that should greatly reduce the incidence of cheating.

Are there features in Microsoft Excel that make it easy to detect cheating by copying between students? I don't expect to easily detect if a student copies elements like pivot tables from one file to another, but perhaps at least I might be able to detect if a student copied someone else's file altogether. I'm not necessarily looking for anything foolproof--I expect that the cheaters in this assignment would be those who don't even know basic things like how to manually change author information in an Excel file.

Speaking of which, unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Excel overwrites author information with the last person to save the file, so I couldn't even use that to tell if someone has copied a file created by someone else.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

EDIT:

Some answers have suggested asking students to submit a written explanation of their reasoning. Although I mentioned that there are over 700 students, let me be more explicit: I do not consider solutions that require reading and marking additional textual submissions to be feasible for my context. On one hand, there are multiple instructors, so any instructor would only have to mark a few dozen assignments. On the other hand, if there is cheating across sections, then reading text submissions is not a feasible verification technique. Thus, I was looking for a solution that could easily indicate that a student's submission contained undeniable traces of some other student's work.

Figure out a way to generate data sets and results programatically so you can uniquely verify each student's assignment separately.  This would imply lots of effort initially but may payoff for later courses.
Use a single dataset and a single result set.  Ask them for their reasoning behind for achieving the most complex tasks of the assignment.  Use this to check for cheating.  No one person thinks exactly the same or describes something complex in the same manner.

My recommendation is for the latter.  Most jobs that can be done with tools like Excel will be automated in the near future.  The best that your students can learn is to reason (and articulate this effectively) and choose the appropriate tool/technique for the job.

have you tried downloading all of the files into one folder and then sorting based on CRC number? I run a stats class with excel submissions and have caught a lot of students this way because crc will be identifical in most cases if the file is exact copy


Can I collect meta information on papers and put this online? For my thesis I have had to go through many different sources to find relevant literature. I want to share my reading list with others to make it easier for people who want to study the same topic to find relevant information. I have set up a little database with meta info (title / journal / author / date / abstract). My idea is to put this online so others can freely browse this. Is there any copyright issue (or otherwise important issue) to take into account? Can I put the abstracts online as well?

Each paper links to the journal's official website and I did not put any actual paper or PDF online.

With the hopefully obvious caveat that I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice: at least in the US, this is probably fine. Copyright law (17 USC § 102) applies to "original works of authorship," not to ideas, and I think everyone would agree the metadata of an article's publication (including journal name, author, and date) fall in the latter category, not the former. Otherwise the whole system of academic citation would be untenable!

The title and abstract, on the other hand, are content created by the articles' authors and are protected by copyright law, but I think it's quite likely that fair use (17 USC § 107) protects you from being held liable for using them in the manner you describe. With reference to the four conditions to be considered when determining fair use:

  (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

You say it's a free, noncommercial endeavor, so that works in your favor

  (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

It's an academic article; the whole purpose of its existence is to be widely disseminated

  (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

The title and abstract are a small part of the work

  (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

Using the title and abstract in a database like this will more likely increase the market for the original paper than decrease it (which is in fact the entire point of having an abstract)

In fact, you would hardly be the first person to do something like this. In high energy physics, INSPIRE already aggregates abstracts and metadata from nearly all published papers.

There's generally no copyright issue.  You're giving fair credit assignment.  Abstracts should be considered "marketing material" -- freely publishable (with proper references), as you're helping the author(s) as much as yourself.


Writing a recommendation letter for a student I reported for academic dishonesty A few years ago, I reported a student for academic dishonesty (in a graduate-level mathematics course, they were copying solutions off the internet, nearly verbatim). After acknowledging their wrong-doing with the Academic Integrity office on campus, they were allowed to drop the course.

The next year, the student re-enrolled in my course, and did reasonably well. I had no qualms about the originality of their work this time.

They recently asked me whether I would be willing to write them a recommendation letter for PhD programs in mathematics.

If I write a letter, am I obligated to write about the academic dishonesty incident? It appears to me that the student has already faced the consequences of their actions (they had to drop the course); however, this was a significant part of my interactions with the student and it seems dishonest to not mention it.

(I am aware that I could simply tell the student that I am not comfortable writing a letter, but I am curious to know what one should do in this situation if one did write a letter.)

Some facts: when the incident occured, the student was in their first semester of our masters program. They are also an international student, and this was their first semester in the US.

ETA: Look, I framed the question to be as general as possible so that it can be useful to the community as a whole. Since some commentors are choosing to attack my teaching practices, below are some more specifics, where once again I am trying to not reveal the identity of this student, myself, the course, the university, etc. I am actively trying to do what's best for the student here (note that I clearly state that I think the student has faced consequences for their actions; I am also not using my usual ac.se account to post this), and I don't understand where comments about "shutting down a student's career" are coming from.

I clearly state in my syllabus and on the first day of class that copying solutions off the internet (or any written source) is not allowed. I do this because I encountered this situation as a TA in graduate school. In particular, students are allowed to talk to anyone they like about problems, but I believe that when they just copy a solution, they are not learning. You are welcome to disagree with my policy, but it is my policy and my class, and it was clearly stated in two separate venues.

The copied solutions were virtually indistinguishable from the solutions online. This was not a matter of simply "being inspired". This was not isolated - three out of six solutions were copied, and those were just the ones I spotted. When I noticed this, I asked the student to come talk to me. I told them that I had noticed similarities between their work and solutions I had found online. I told them that I was not accusing them of anything, and they did not have to tell me anything; I reiterated that copying solutions from the internet was not permitted; I invited them to come to my office hours to talk about future problem sets; but that if I noticed such similarities again I would report them to Academic Integrity. They did it again on the next problem set (four out of six solutions).

Although they denied everything once via email, after talking with Academic Integrity (where they owned up to everything), they did find me and apologize. I was cordial to them throughout this event, and continued to be so afterward. We remain on good terms now. I consciously try to ensure that I do not let this incident color my interactions and behavior with them. They made a mistake once but people make mistakes and I am trying hard not to take it personally.

In summary, the incident itself was pretty blatant, the policy was clearly stated, and they had an opportunity to stop such that I would not have reported them if they had. I did not take reporting the student lightly. Nonetheless, I think academic dishonesty is a serious matter and it is our responsibility as faculty members to not turn a blind eye to it.

The best option is:  Don't write the letter.  In a case like this, I would outright refuse to provide a recommendation.

However, if you are not comfortable with a non-negotiable refusal, you might want to simply tell the student that you cannot provide a positive letter for them.  If the student insists, then you should write an honest letter that gives a balanced evaluation of their ability and personal traits.  The fact that you caught the student cheating is a critically important piece of information in this regard, and it needs to be included. The cheating will almost certainly be the most salient feature to anyone who reads the letter, which will make the net effect of the letter, regardless of whatever else you say in it, strongly negative.  And if the student insists on you writing the letter in this situation, that is basically what they deserve.

It is not unethical, if you do not mention the incident. Of course, this is under the obvious assumption that you truly recommend the student for the PhD position, since you decided to write a recommendation letter.

Moreover, I consider it unethical to include negative comments in a recommendation letter. My reasoning for this is that a recommendation letter is just that, a recommendation letter. If one's not recommending in a recommendation letter, one is not writing a recommendation letter, but just a letter, and one is failing to uphold the agreement that it made with the student to recommend him through a recommendation letter.

A recommendation letter should only include why you recommend someone, the fact that you recommend that person is already clear from the existence of the recommendation letter.

A recommendation letter is NOT:

a summary report on previous activity of the student
a letter in which one gossips random unrequested facts about a student

The moment one includes not recommending comments in a recommendation letter, you start being deceptive (by definition):

towards the person that you are recommending, by giving false hopes
towards the committee to which the letter is addressed, by recommending (hence the existing of the letter) someone you do not believe it should be recommended, since you include damaging aspects

Breaking an agreement and being deceptive is not ethical.

In conclusion, not only that not including the damaging story would be ethical, but the reverse, i.e. including the damaging story, is definitively unethical.


Will I destroy my career if I published a paper with a serious mistake? I'm an undergrad and kind of new to this whole research thing. I've been doing research for the past ~9 months as a requirement to graduate with my bachelor's (there's the research track and software development track, I chose research).

I was told to try and submit my paper to conferences/journals (depends on their deadlines) to see if it gets accepted. But, one thing my professor said really stressed me out. If my paper gets accepted, and people find a serious mistake in it (ones that could cause your conclusion to be wrong, etc), it would destroy my whole career before it even began.

Can anyone with more experience go into detail about what could really happen? Assume, that the paper really gets accepted. On one hand, I'm not entirely confident of myself, and on the other, I have found a passion in research and would love to continue on for a PhD in future and this might help boost my resume a little given it is my only research experience.

Congrats on your paper. No, it wouldn't destroy your career but it would be awkward and embarrassing. It could potentially hurt your career if the mistake was the result of obvious sloppiness, gross incompetence, and worst of all, outright dishonesty. But for the first two of those, the damage would very likely be containable and if you keep doing research, after publishing another paper or two that had no mistakes, no one would remember this minor incident.

With that said, your advisor is correct that it's best to avoid publishing papers with mistakes in them if at all possible, so do make a sincere effort to check everything to the best of your abilities before submitting the paper.

Nothing will happen if your conclusions are "wrong", but were appropriately drawn.

Researchers make wrong conclusions all the time.  Conclusions are based on the information available at the time.  In a research paper you describe what you did, how you did it, and the conclusions that you drew from what you did.  One task of peer review is to decide if your conclusions can be reasonably drawn from what you say you did and the results you got.

In your paper you should describe what you did and how you did it.  I can't comment on your specific field.  But you should describe what inputs you used and the settings and methods you used.  In my field it is fair to say I used a value of "x" for "alpha" based on the approach in "Smith and Jones, 2008" and a clarification like "we believe this value to be applicable to our situation because..." or "this is the only published value available".  And in the discussion you can talk about how different values of alpha or different approaches may affect the result and conclusions (providing an analysis of how a different approach affects your results is a bonus, and may be requested by peer review.)  You need to frame what you did in such a way so that if the conclusions aren't "true", what you did wasn't a "mistake" but was the logical conclusion drawn from a logical approach.  You will have to decide what is the equivalent in your field.

As an undergrad doing research, you should be practicing making logical conclusions from logical choices in method.  Research papers don't often have complete answers (the are often too narrow), they take a step in the direction to finding answers.

That being said, conclusions that are "right" (i.e. that are reproducible) are always better.


What courses should I count when calculating my GPA in major? When calculating my GPA in major, should/can I only count courses that are meeting the requirement for major or should I count any course on the same topic and from the same department as my major? For example, if my major is Physics, and I have completed my major with courses A through J, but have also taken the course K after completing all the requirements as an optional course (which does not even count for graduation; a completely optional course), should I count the grade for course K when calculating my major GPA for reporting it on my CV and in applications, or can I not count that one?

If no specific guidance is otherwise provided, I would include additional courses in the same department as the major. The reason for this is that anybody looking over your transcript will assume that, unless the course is clearly marked as a graduate course, it's probably a requirement for your major.

That said, we're also not likely to check your math unless there's a gross error, and we're not likely to sweat a few hundredths of a point difference.

My university calculated my GPA for me.  I did not bother to double check their arithmetic.

If your university does not calculate your GPA for you, then just imagine the GPA that you want.  No one cares.


Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed? For example, suppose you're writing an article about triangles, and you want to include a short proof of Pythagoras' theorem, but you can't quite remember how to derive it, so you pop over to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Algebraic_proofs and check the proof there. It works mathematically, makes sense and is as far as you can tell, correct, so you include it. Now the proof on Wikipedia doesn't have a citation because probably someone has been taught it and copied it over to Wikipedia, but it's still correct. The only thing you could cite for the proof would be Wikipedia, would a citation be ok or should it just be copied down without a citation?

Edit: Ok, there have been many responses. Most with a firm "no", but some giving the reason: "Just get the proof from a book" since it's so common, but suppose then it wasn't a common proof of something. Maybe it's not very well known or something but suppose there is a small Wikipedia page with the correct mathematical proof. How much effort are people going to go to to find a proof in a book when there's a (correct (which we know, becuase it's maths and we can check it)) proof on Wikipedia? Why is it so bad to say: "I found this proof on Wikipedia, and the maths checks out so it doesn't matter who wrote it, it is correct, but that's where I found it." Or if you do find it somewhere else why not say: "Proof taken from Wikipedia and verified by the proof shown in "Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc..."

Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?

I'm not going to try to answer the question of "is allowed" or "isn't allowed" but instead I'm going to try and answer if citing Wikipedia is, in general, a good idea or not for research papers.

Here's five points I can think of for and five points against.

Good idea:

If Wikipedia is your source, and you learn something from what Wikipedia's editors have provided, then citing Wikipedia is the Nice Thing To Do™.
Wikipedia is a convenient, well-known, easily and freely accessible source (vs. final-copy published papers that are pay-per-view if not out of your wallet, then indirectly out of your university's).
Content aims to be written in an accessible manner targeted at a wide audience (vs. arguably the bulk of technical articles published in journals and conferences). Plus there's clickable links for jargon! Sweet!
Notable or Featured Articles will probably have undergone more scrutiny from experts (w.r.t. bias, technical correctness, sources cited, etc.) than your average peer-reviewed article on a similar topic.
At least with Wikipedia, readers should know where they stand with such a citation. Compare this with the artifice of citing papers for claims made in poor-quality journals or conferences that can be considered authoritative solely on the basis of being "peer-reviewed".

Bad idea:

A Wikipedia article is subject to frequent editing and the content you cite it for may not be there when the reader goes looking for it (adding a date-accessed only partly addresses the issue since it will be difficult for the reader to start going through versions edit but as per the comments below, you can use a citing service within Wikipedia to cite a specific version of a page).
Relatedly, the content may have been correct at the time of citing but errors may be edited into the content at a later point, making you look bad by association (edit, again, citing a specific version could work around that)
There is no minimal guarantee of the quality for most Wikipedia articles (which peer-review, at least in theory, should provide, depending perhaps on the venue).
Wikipedia is not a first-party source: in theory, no new knowledge is "created" in Wikipedia. Where feasible, you should try to attribute knowledge to those who create it (and optionally thereafter add a reference to those who report it or better describe it in a book or survey)
Attribution for the content of a Wikipedia article is difficult: multiple editors may be involved in a certain piece of content, many editors are anonymous, etc. This means that there is no culpability for information (unlike peer-reviewed papers where authors have something to lose by publishing crap). This opens up further possibilities, such as authors anonymously adding content to Wikipedia that they can cite to support the claims in their paper.

Okay, back to academic convention and "isn't alloweds" and "is alloweds" ...

  Maybe it's not very well known or something but suppose there is a small Wikipedia page with the correct mathematical proof. How much effort are people going to go to to find a proof in a book when there's a (correct (which we know, because it's maths and we can check it)) proof on Wikipedia?

According to Wikipedia policies, it should have a reference to an original source. Cite that.

If it doesn't have a reference, or if you copy how the proof is expressed directly, I would recommend to add a footnote (rather than a formal citation) stating the Wikipedia article you found the proof on and how you verified it (and the CC-BY-SA licence if you copy the expression).

Generally avoid citing web-pages (unless they are normative online standards or something) if only to avoid getting your hand bitten off by a reviewer. Using footnotes is much safer in this regards and serves a similar-ish purpose (though it won't be counted as a formal citation).

In research, if enough reviewers believe something isn't allowed, then de facto it isn't allowed.

  Or if you do find it somewhere else why not say: "Proof taken from Wikipedia and verified by the proof shown in "Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc..."

Why not say "Proof sketched for me by Fred, the guy who sits next to me, who had previously read it in 'Triangles and their properties, Nature, 2014, p113 etc...'"?

In other words, what's important is the reference, not how you found.

Any time you cite something, you should consider whether or not the reader will accept it as an authority for the point you're trying to justify. That's just a basic principle of persuasion.

A well-known journal in the field you're writing for probably doesn't need much consideration. But just about everything else is possibly suspect. The New York Times is probably reliable for most facts, but for a fact that can't be sourced to a more authoritative scientific source, a New York Times citation could be questioned. A  blog post from a known expert? Maybe the expert isn't as "known" to your audience as you think. And maybe they made a mistake. Wikipedia is just one of many publications in this general category.

If you find it necessary to cite such a source, find a way to concisely make the case that your reader should accept its validity for the point it justifies. There are ways to do that in the text, or in a footnote. If you can't find a way to do it, your paper might be better off without it.


Why do so many PhDs choose to join academia instead of industry given the pay in academia is considerably lower and the workload is much heavier? In the computer science field, an entry-level software engineer in top-tier tech companies (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) could earn as much as a 20-year experience professor. And the workload in academia is way heavier.

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

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

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

In CS field, an entry-level software engineer in top-tier tech
  companies (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) could earn as much as a
  20-year experience professor....Why do so many PhDs still choose to be a professor while they have the choice to go to the industry?

First, your assumption is wrong. Most PhDs end up in industry. I don't have any source but I think this is from 90 - 99%.

If you limit your question to the 1% - 10% that become professors, they are all very successful, i.e. they have plenty of papers, promising research direction, strong network etc etc. And there is a reason for their success: they have passion, and when you have passion, money is likely not the most important thing in life.

Except for machine learning, in most areas in CS, you need to stay in academia to do research. And there are many benefits that you can only have when working in academia.

You take credit for what you have done. Products in industry are developed by a large team, and nobody can take full credit for it. But researchers can take full credit for what they do in their papers.
Reputation: you are invited to give talk, become program committee members, etc etc, and everybody will know you. I would be excited to meet an author whose paper I have read. I'm not excited at all to meet a Google employee. (I'm living in Mountain View, a small city with 80,000 residents, but more than 20,000 Google employees)
Do interesting jobs. You always work on new things in research, while the majority of tasks of a software engineer are maintenance, fix bugs etc.

(I'm a software engineer if you are curious)

The pay ain't that much lower in academia as compared to industry in all countries. In several places you can earn say 70-90% of what you would as a junior "newly baked" M.Sc.

And then spend perhaps 4 paid hours per day doing what you love most in the world instead of hmm what do I know..., fix someone elses bug (who quit for a long time ago) or writing soul-numbing requirements.


A free tool that is capable of selecting questions from a pool and shuffle them randomly? I will be conducting exams, and I need a tool that can let me shuffle and select random , small questions from a pre-defined question pool. My questions are typically matched and complete.

It would be ideal if I can export to word after that. Any idea or suggestion is appreciated.

I would recommend to use ClassMarker, which is a great tool for creating a quiz with random questions.

You can choose questions you select and randomize the order of the selected questions, randomize answer options or add randomly selected questions, so each time the quiz is taken, different questions will be pulled from your question pool.

Also, the option of exporting the tests to word is available.

Perhaps a bit orthogonal, but you could ask a colleague in Computer Science to have students build you such a tool as a class project. If you have the time to spend to specify exactly what you want, you could get the perfect tool. In addition, the students involved will get valuable programming experience as well as experience in working to the specifications of a client.

This isn't a massive undertaking, actually.

The downside is that you need to wait for it to be built, but in the meantime you can also think about what features you most desire. It may be possible for a group of students to build the core functionality quite quickly.


How to prevent students from using modified calculators to cheat on exams? Recently my faculty (mathematics and statistics) and I have been dealing with widespread cheating due to calculators that have been modified so as to have more functionality than is permitted.

At my university we have a standardized calculator that is to be used for tests. This brand of calculator has limited functionality however recently these calculators have been modified and sold so that students can cheat on tests. We have managed to get a hold of one of them and it appears that the electronics inside have been modified. We have managed to identify the group of individuals responsible for modifying and selling these calculators however we are not sure what to do about it.

Here are the options we have considered so far:

Check each calculator individually before tests to see if it has been modified.
This is impractical as they don't look any different on the exterior and are no different in weight. We would need to open them all up and look inside.
Provide our own calculators to the students.
This approach, although better than the last, has its drawbacks. It would be expensive for the department to purchase enough calculators initially and then they would over time break and be lost, resulting in more cost so we would prefer not to go this route for that reason. Additionally, students could still quite easily take a modified calculator of their own into exams and swap it out for the provided one.
Change the official calculator model.
We could move to a new model of calculator however I suspect this would only be a temporary fix as the group responsible for modifying and selling the calculators could easily switch to modifying the new model.
Stop having calculators all together.
We would prefer not to resort to this as we don't think forcing students to do lengthy arithmetic calculations is the best way to test them. We could try to avoid such things however sometimes it is simply necessary to ask such questions, for example, in an introductory stats class we would like to ask students to find the standard deviation of a set of data points. Asking them to do this without a calculator seems unfair however we can't simply avoid asking such questions if we want to test the students properly.
Taking action against the group responsible for making the calculators.
Fortunately this group has been identified, however they are not students at my university so we cannot take direct action against them for academic disintegrity. We would like to take legal action against them if possible however my faculty and I are unsure if there is precedent for such a thing. As far as I can tell they are not committing any crimes. If there is something we could do in this regard please let me know.
Simply ignore the problem.
This is obviously not ideal as using these calculators gives students a clear advantage over those without them. Additionally, students using them often don't need to learn how to perform various calculations and can instead just plug in the various values and have the answer come out.

Has anyone has this happen at their institution before? If you have any suggestions as to what we can do in this situation it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is some clarification on the exact nature of the modifications:
To enter into the modified "mode" you type in a sequence of numbers (eg: 1234567) then it enters into the new mode in which you can do many advanced calculations.
pressing the reset button on the back causes it to appear to reset without actually resetting. If you type the password in you will still get back to the modified mode. In this mode formulas can be saved for example.

I received my bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1970. I didn't own a calculator.

There were some adjustments that helped with no-calculator tests:

Many of my exams had ten points per question. 9 of the points were for clearly showing correct working. One point was for getting the right answer. A student who understood the material but was bad at arithmetic could get 90% without a single correct answer. A student who depended on a fancy calculator could miss more points for not showing all their work.
The exam booklet included, at the back, any trig and similar tables we were going to need. Answers only had to be to the rather low precision supported by those tables.
Questions were designed with easy numbers. For example, fractions would often simplify by just crossing out common factors.
Questions were structured to minimize difficult arithmetic. For example, ask for the variance rather than the standard deviation, but also ask what they would have done differently to get the standard deviation.

Given the problem of the modified calculators, you can go in one of two directions. The first is real world. Full Internet access, statistical calculators etc. The other is to go back to the 1960's, and design tests for no calculators.

There are a few more options not listed in other answers. They are a lot more devious but may be less successful.

Start modding and selling calculators yourselves. Obviously don't let the students know it is you. Program the forbidden functions to produce incorrect results when specific inputs are present. Then use those inputs only on tests. Don't use them for homework problems and such so the answers in those cases are correct. There might even be money to be made.
Examine some of the modded calculators. See if they were programmed well. If there are glitches with some inputs then craft the tests to trigger those glitches.
Calculations done in software have limitations. There are problems with rounding and loss of precision for example. Design exam questions that will put any calculator into problem areas but wouldn't cause problems for a student not using a calculator.
Start modding and selling calculators yourselves openly. Require that only your modded calculator can be used for some questions. Have the calculator produce encoded results or systematically altered results. Other calculators, modded or not, would not be able to produce those results. One example might be to produce the result and a check value.


Why do most people think it's a bad idea to read from slides? As many of you probably know, almost all advice regarding doing better academic talks includes universal advice to not put too many words in any one slide, and to not read straight from slides (this is always thought to be a sign of a bad talk).

I used to agree with all of this because it sounds reasonable, and anyway that's how I've written my own talks so far. But I went to a conference late last year where a speaker did exactly the opposite of this advice (my field is mathematics). He was literally reading his slides verbatim, and each of his slides was packed full with long sentences. And yet, it was one of my favorite talks of the conference, and for me (a Ph.D student) it was clean, clear, and easy to follow despite the fact that the material was completely new to me. I do think a large part of the reason I found it so clean and clear was precisely because of the talk's structure, and not despite of it.

That experience made me rethink my prejudice against speakers who read out of the slides. For some people, it may be a superior talk strategy to alternatives, especially in academic fields where the details really matter.

So, I am not convinced anymore that it is general (or even, usual) good advice to not read from the slides. Why do people think it's such a bad idea? And please don't say "it's lazy" or "could just read the slides instead of listening to the talk" because in practice, neither of these perspectives demonstrate why an alternative is better at communicating the information, which is what really matters.

Research in the field of multimedia learning suggests that in most cases, "people learn more deeply from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and onscreen text". This is known as the redundancy principle.

  Previous research has shown students learn better from multimedia
  lessons containing graphics and narration than from graphics,
  narration, and redundant on-screen text (Kalyuga, Chandler, &
  Sweller, 1999, 2000, 2004; Leahy, Chandler, & Sweller, 2003;
  Mayer, Heiser, & Lonn, 2001; Moreno & Mayer, 2002a, 2002b;
  Mousavi, Low, & Sweller, 1995). This finding is known as the
  redundancy effect (Mayer, 2001, 2005c). For example, in a study
  by Moreno and Mayer (2002b), participants viewed an animation
  about lightning formation. The first condition had narration accompany
  the animation, whereas a second condition received
  redundant on-screen text in addition to the animation and narration.
  The group that received the redundant on-screen text performed
  worse on subsequent retention and transfer questions than
  did the group that received animation and narration; thus, a redundancy
  effect was found.

(source: [1])

Why?

  Adding redundant on-screen text detracts from the learning
  processes highlighted in Figure 1 because it creates extraneous
  processing—such as inducing the learner to visually scan between
  the caption at the bottom of the screen and the graphic and to try
  to mentally reconcile the incoming spoken and verbal stream. If
  the learner has to waste limited cognitive capacity on extraneous
  processing, the learner will be less able to engage in the cognitive
  processing needed for learning—essential and generative processing.

(also from [1])

Are there times when it is good to include some of the narration in a slide? Yes. For example:

  The most straightforward contribution of this work is to add an important caveat to the redundancy principle “People learn more deeply from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and onscreen
  text” (Mayer, 2005c, p. 193). In revising this statement of
  the redundancy principle, we can add the following limitation:
  “except when the on-screen text is short, highlights the key action
  described in the narration, and is placed next to the portion of the
  graphic that it describes.”

(also: [1])

In a meta-analysis of the literature on the redundancy principle:

  [A]dvantages of spoken–written presentations over spoken-only presentations were found for low prior knowledge learners, system-paced learning materials, and picture-free materials. In comparison with verbatim, spoken–written presentations, presentations displaying
  key terms extracted from spoken narrations were associated with better learning outcomes and accounted for much of the advantage of spoken–written over spoken-only presentations.

(Source: [2])

You perceived the talk with redundant written and spoken text to be beneficial to you; this is consistent with the research as well:

  Research on metacognition has consistently demonstrated that learners fail to endorse instructional designs that produce benefits to memory, and often prefer designs that actually impair comprehension. Unlike previous studies in which learners were only exposed to a single multimedia design, the current study used a within–subjects approach to examine whether exposure to both redundant text and non-redundant text multimedia presentations improved learners' metacognitive judgments about presentation styles that promote better understanding. A redundant text multimedia presentation containing narration paired with verbatim on–screen text (Redundant) was contrasted with two non-redundant text multimedia presentations: (1) narration paired with images and minimal text (Complementary) or (2) narration paired with minimal text (Sparse). Learners watched presentation pairs of either Redundant + Complementary, or Redundant + Sparse. Results demonstrate that Complementary and Sparse presentations produced highest overall performance on the final comprehension assessment, but the Redundant presentation produced highest perceived understanding and engagement ratings. These findings suggest that learners misperceive the benefits of redundant text, even after direct exposure to a non-redundant, effective presentation.

(Source: [3])

Note that the results above refer to multimedia presentations, i.e. those that include graphics. Presentations that do not include graphics may benefit from redundant spoken-written text (see [4]). But presentations that do not use graphics violate the multimedia principle, which states that in general, "people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone".

For more information on principles of multimedia learning, see The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. If you're looking for something shorter, here is a brief summary of the major principles of multimedia learning, and here is a presentation by Richard Mayer.

References:

[1] Revising the redundancy principle in multimedia learning. Mayer, Richard E.; Johnson, Cheryl I.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 100(2), May 2008, 380-386. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.380

[2] Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning environments: A meta-analysis.
Adesope, Olusola O.; Nesbit, John C.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 104(1), Feb 2012, 250-263. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0026147

[3] Learners misperceive the benefits of redundant text in multimedia learning . Fenesi, Barbara; Kim, Joseph A. Frontiers in psychology 5, 2014. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4088922/

[4] Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning: When reading helps listening. Moreno, Roxana; Mayer, Richard E.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 94(1), Mar 2002, 156-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.94.1.156

It's about using the right tool for the job.

There are a variety of mediums and methods to convey information (written material, multi-media, human presenter, etc.).  Each has strengths and weaknesses for different kinds of information, and a role to play.

Highly technical information and tons of facts can be absorbed by the recipient looking at written  or visual materials at their own pace.  A human presenter can be helpful, but more so with "high level" information than extensive detail.  For example, relating the gist and concepts, or providing a framework the recipient can use to organize the information they subsequently read on their own.  (I'm referring to a presentation scenario rather than a highly interactive educational setting.)

If a human presenter is simply reading the slides to the audience, the slides become the presenter and the human just their A/V aid as an annoying soundtrack.  Why not just have an automated slide show, or even one with a recorded soundtrack if the recitation aloud is so important?  What is the human adding to the process?  The biggest value provided by a human presenter is the human interaction.

The recipient's ability to absorb and retain information is tied to emotion (their interest and desire to focus on it, the personal value of the information, the novelty of it, and the strength of emotions associated with it that affect retention); it's the role of the hippocampus in learning.

That applies to any information, including technical content.  The recipient needs to want to acquire the information (and have a framework for organizing it); it isn't useful to simply dispense it in their direction.  If the recipient is already interested and motivated, a human presenter can either add to, or detract from, the presentation's effectiveness.

The role in which a human presenter can uniquely contribute is to engage the audience, tapping into their attention, receptiveness, and emotions to get them involved and invested in the material.  That's done through the human connection, using rapport, conversational language, vocal cues, body language, movement, animation and excitement, adding tidbits of interest, etc.; focusing on and talking to the people comprising the audience, rather than reading and providing audio for the slides.  Conveying high-level information in this manner is the reason to have a human presenter, and the real value they can add.

The practice of someone present for the sole purpose of reciting material displayed on slides is even counter-productive.  It can make the audience less receptive to the information than just giving them the materials to read (for the reasons described in the answers by ff524, J. Fabian Meier, Hurkyl, Angew, Crowley, WGroleau, Robert Buchholz, and Superbest).


First-year PhD student with weak CV/Resume; how to stand out in fellowship competitions? I am a first year PhD in a large Social Sciences program at an American public institution. My CV is very weak as I am not yet published. I have research assistantship experience and teaching experience as well as a stint on a Fulbright. I'm applying to fellowships for the summer to gain more research experience.

I am working on a fellowship application and would like to stand out amongst the crowd. Other than my attributes above, I have nothing! My CV barely fills two pages. Will I be written off because I don't have much experience? I need fellowships like these in order to grow my tiny resume- but- I'm worried can't compete to get them without more.

Thank you for your help!

Everyone starts out with no publications.  Never mind starting a PhD in that condition:  I finished my PhD at a top-three program for my field without any publications, and I still got a good postdoctoral position.  How did I do this?  Because of my advisor's recommendation.  (And it was a sound recommendation: eventually I did get some publications...)

For graduate students -- and especially, early career graduate students --  recommendation letters are all-important.  Do you have a thesis advisor yet?  If so, go directly to her and tell her what fellowships you are thinking of applying for and asking whether that sounds reasonable and whether your application will be competitive.  If you do not have a thesis advisor, try out the same conversation with several faculty members in your department that know you through your coursework, research or TAing.  Emphasize that because you are young and unpublished, you think you will need strong recommendations from them to get serious consideration for summer research fellowships.  Select from among these the ones who sound most enthusiastic.

In general, faculty in your department should be very supportive of your endeavor.  On the one hand, such fellowships generally provide funding, and faculty are always very happy when graduate students can find external funding of any kind whatsoever, since internal funding is so limited and hard to come up with in these straitened economic times.  On the other hand, if you get the fellowship you will be getting funded for doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing in the summer as a graduate student: research.  So if you feel like the faculty you've spoken to are not helping you enough with this, it could be worthwhile to discuss this with someone like the graduate coordinator or department head: not in a way which casts any blame on the faculty members, but just to emphasize that you want to do this very desirable thing and you haven't yet found the right person to help you out.

Good luck.

It might be an idea to contact the career or academic advisory department of your university and ask for an appointment with them to discuss improving your CV and get their input on how you can improve it and what you should and should not put in.

As regards gaining experience and kudos could be to consider publishing some of the Undergrad work you feel proud of. There are lots of open source journals which might be a good starting point.

You can also network with researchers using resources like [researchgate][1] for ideas and to get experience peer reviewing articles so you can put your contributions onto your CV and maybe get some feedback on undergrad work you have already done to learn more about the whole process of peer review and network with other academics.

Ultimately getting ahead in academia is likely like everything else: more about who you know not what you know so putting yourself out there by banging on doors and networking is going to be the ticket to filling your CV with stuff. Ironically, it will probably mean you'll not need to show your CV to get the position you want the end, too perhaps.

Such is life.


Write 'According to Wikipedia' in a PhD thesis I am writing a PhD thesis in robotics and I was wondering if it sounds good to start a phrase with: 'According to Wikipedia ...'

Do you think I can do that or not?

"According to some unknown guy on the Internet, I can say that according to Wikipedia..."

No, you should avoid that. Wikipedia is open, so it can be changed by (almost) everyone and you have no guarantee that the given information there is correct. While many articles are very informative, it might be better to take the actual source (given on the Wikipedia page) and make sure that this source is credible (e.g. published in a good, peer reviewed journal).

hard to imagine someone not knowing the answer to this.
1) go to wikipedia
2) just cite whatever citation wikipedia gives you (hyperlink/bottom of page)

This has been hammered into my head since like 4th grade...


Math PhD application references from a postdoc Will a reference from a postdoc be considered less than a reference from a lecturer/professor?  This is assuming that I have done a dissertation under him/her and that the postdoc is in his/her (at least) third postdoc position.  It may be worth to note that he/she has graduated PhD for around 10 years.

Will a reference from a postdoc be considered less than a reference from a lecturer/professor?

As a general rule, yes, but it depends who the postdoc is, how strong (and effectively-written) their letter is, and what the letter is for. As an example, I am currently working with a smart undergraduate, and he got accepted to several very good graduate programs (US, mathematics) on the strength of his application, which included a reference letter from a postdoc he did a research project with last year. So such letters can certainly be effective and have value. It all depends on the context.

The main point is that the most important factor in how seriously a reference is considered is not so much the job title of the letter writer (although that is still a factor that has some significance), but their credibility and reputation in the research community. Certainly many postdocs already have high credibility and name-recognition, and a letter from them (at least for a grad school application and to a lesser extent for a postdoc application; less so for a tenure track job application) will be taken quite seriously.

According to my advisor, a reference from a non-faculty member is not worth much. (Field is mathematics.)


What does "Top 10%" mean in edge cases? Imagine you want to apply for a stipend. Only the top 10% of ones class are eligible. The final grade distribution (German grades) is like this

1.0 - 3%
1.1 - 2.5%
1.2 - 7%
...

The complete table comes as an official addendum to your transcript of records, which shows your own final grade.
Obviously the university screwed up the grading in the past years and gave out way too good grades, which led to a kind of inflation. In other fields at the same university it's more like

1.0 - 0.1%
1.1 - 0.3%
1.2 - 2 % ...

Imagine now one has a 1.2. Can he just say he is top 10% based on this table? IMO one has to be opportunistic here and not think much about it: Less than 10% have a better grade than you -> you are top 10%. People will probably not even check the table, as 1.2 is usually much better than top 10%.
But my friend in question has a bad feeling about it and is "scared" it will be conceived as cheating. What's your opinion on this? Is there any authoritative legal information on this?

Is there any authoritative legal information on this?

I am not aware of any jurisdiction in which applying for a stipend for which you are not eligible is illegal. For obvious reasons, eligibility is bindingly determined by the stipend giver, not by the applicants.
The rule "top 10%" does not seem to be stated clearly. If the students that got 1.2 in your class are included, then the statement

12.5% of the students in the class are in the top 10%

would be true, which seems to be a contradiction. If, as Nuclear Wang proposes, the students with 1.2 are not included in the 10%, then the statement

Only 5.5% of the students in the class are in the top 10%

would be true, which also seems a contradiction. As both plausible interpretations lead to apparent contradictions, it is reasonable to have doubts about the actual meaning of the rule. So if the rule is not stated more clearly, just apply and let the stipend givers decide. That is their job, not yours (or your friend's).

From the distribution given at the start of the question, 12.5% of the class got a score of 1.2 or better. Therefore, a score of 1.2 is not in the top 10% of the class. The score may be in the top 10% of scores nationally, but it is not in the top 10% of the class. The scholarship may purposefully use the "within class" measure in order to eliminate this school-specific effect - simply attending a school that inflates grades is not sufficient to be eligible, a student must outperform 90% of their peers in the same academic setting.
I'll also note that the notion that "if less than 10% of people have a better grade than you, you are in the top 10%" is not correct - if less than 10% of people have the same or better score than you, you are in the top 10%. Imagine a test with only 2 scores, 1 and 2, which are evenly split among the class. If you score a 1, there is nobody with a better score than you, but you are not in the top 0% of the class, you are in the top 50% of the class.
It would be disingenuous to describe this score as being in the top 10% of the class, even though it might have been in other years. While it's quite possible that no one will ever notice, the misrepresentation could be fairly easily spotted if the class' grade distribution is shown alongside an individual's score.


Is it possible to get a research grant without any degree as a person that has a self-learning mentality? With advancements in the internet and technology, I think that I can learn anything from internet with requirements of time and interest. I am very interested in quantum computing technology, but after finishing the learning process, I should do some research to find new things in that field. I am not aiming to get money or anything like that, I want only to get knowledge and have fun.
But in that stage, I guess that I will need a funding to build a lab and fulfill my needs to finish research. My writings above are my plan, I didn't mean any isolation,but I think that self-learning is the best way for me because I don't have enough money to get a degree and one of the reasons of plan is that. I also think that the internet can fulfill any needs for research except money.
Therefore,The aim of that question is asking you about your thoughts about my plans. Also,I want to ask about funding, is it possible to find research grant as a non-degree, self-taught person?

No.
Without a degree and a position at a university or research institute, it is highly unlikely you can get any kind of funding for research.
You can try to get a job at a company that does research in such topics (which requires who to have the background knowledge, not necessarily a degree), but this will also be hard to get.

I say Yes. I did something very similar when I was a teenager but on a smaller scale.
You don't say what country you are in. I live in Britain. Many years ago I was learning classical guitar. I discovered a comprehensive guide to guitar playing that was only published in Spanish. I decided that I should translate it into English. The problem was that I spoke no Spanish. I applied for and received a grant to spend eight weeks in Spain at a language school. In the end I did not translate the book but there was never any requirement that I report back to the grant-giving body. I can now play the guitar and speak Spanish.
If you are enterprising enough and convincing enough, pretty much anything is possible. You just have to be willing to find the right channels.
In your situation (but assuming you live in Britain) I would do the following:
Search for a charitable institution that provides funding for the advancement of individuals. There are surprisingly many.
Preferably find one that has some connection to the field you are interested in. If you can't, there are more general ones.
What are these charities? They are almost all a result of a very wealthy individual who has left a sizable trust fund in their will. Usually these are for funding "young" people but not all. Surprisingly some of these funds are underused - they have money sloshing around but they don't get enough applicants.
Note: If you fail with one, keep going - they don't keep in touch with each other.
Now comes the bootstrapping process. Firstly you must come up with plans for a feasibility study. This will require some work but you usually need to convince a committee not a panel of scientists (although sometimes one expert will be asked to look over the proposal). If successful, this limited grant will be enough to get you started on a small scale. When you have a very convincing and well-researched plan with preliminary results, you go back, declare your success and ask for further funds to progress to the next stage. The charity will be delighted that the money has been put to such good use and will likely fund you again for the next phase. At the end of this, if you are successful, there are a number of ways to go. If you want to get into academia rather than go it alone, then at this point you can go to a university and say, "Look I have self-funding for the next X years and I have all these original results, can you help me to publish my work, can I register as a student and make use of your facilities? Unis always like funding from outside, whatever the source and if your early results are really convincing, they are likely to find you a supervisor.(See note at end) If you don't want to be in academia then continue independently. Maybe you can sell a patent to a big company and/or work for them. Maybe you can form your own company.
There are plenty of millionaires and billionaires in the world who never had a degree. You just have to be made of the right stuff.
By doing it gradually this way, you discover whether you are actually any good and whether your enthusiasm is lasting. There is a heck of a lot of work going it alone, but exceptional individuals have done it throughout history.

Note: I personally got into music college without the necessary exams. I worked hard and got a teaching job at the end of it. After teaching guitar for 7 tears I got bored. I got into a postgraduate computer science course at Cambridge University without having a first degree. This was on the basis that I had taught myself to program and then got a job as a programmer. Experience counts - even with academics provided they can see beyond the ends of their noses. It is even possible to get huge exemptions from an undergraduate degree course and still be awarded the degree if you can demonstrate actual working experience.
If you (cliche coming) think outside the box and appear confident, it's surprising how many people will be generous enough to help you. If you don't get a grant then at least you have tried so what's to lose?


What is the principal investigator’s responsibility regarding data authenticity? Every now and then, you hear stories of data being fabricated by a graduate student (or post-doc) who felt the pressure to publish groundbreaking results was too much. This unethical behavior makes me wonder: What can a PhD advisor (or group leader, or project principal investigator) actually do to avoid that in her own group? What are her ethical duties in ensuring that all published data is genuine?

Please note: I'm not singling out graduate students or post-docs because I think they are statistically responsible for more ethical misconducts than others… only because it gives a good case of when the PI would have only indirect access to the data (meaning: she didn't actually do the experiments herself, but was only presented the data by others in her group).

We've talked about this at the institute where I'm doing my PhD, and the best solution seemed the following:

First, make a central database for all raw data, that can be accessed per request. Upload/copy data to it as soon as it's collected, including noisy data that might not enter the final analysis. This ensures that any excluded data has to be properly justified.

Second, let everybody know that every so often a random dataset will be pulled out and some basic checks run on it.

Third, run those basic checks. For this you need someone with knowledge of statistics who can tell you what is appropriate for your type of data. A lot of basic aspects of normal data are difficult to simulate without a lot of knowledge on statistics. To give an example, if you take data that have a normal distribution, split it into quintiles, then plot the mean against the variance in each quintile, they should roughly fall on an inverted U-shaped curve. I know of a case where this relationship was perfectly linear, which raised alarm bells. In any case, these checks should be simple and easy to run.

Fourth, decide who will do these checks, because it takes time and effort.

Fifth, make sure you have some idea of what types of mistakes are honest mistakes, and what constitutes actual fraud. Make sure you discuss mechanisms of dealing with these mistakes (and fraud) beforehand, i.e. don't leave this decision in the hands of the supervisor at the moment it happens.

Edit: I guess the main question was what's the PI's responsibility. My reply reflects my opinion that the responsibility should be more institutionalized, and not left just to the PI. On the other hand, the PI could run some of these steps internally if needed / if there is no other help available. But then it might be too elaborate, so perhaps you will get some better answers from other people.

It's a sad reality. That is why research group leaders should be so deeply involved in their post-graduate students' research that they can detect fabrication of data easily. It is unfortunate when research group leaders only sit in their room and expect the student to do everything for them and put their name for the paper. It is the duty of the leader to scrutinize and question the results and ask for repeats when necessary and go carry out a few experiments too to authenticate results before accepting them.


A published paper stole my unpublished results from a science fair I'm in junior high, and earlier this year, we had a science fair. My science project was mostly experimental pure math, and came in first overall in our grade.

Today, I was doing some research on a related topic, and came upon a published paper in a moderately respected journal. This paper had the same title as my science fair project, the layout was the same, the method was the same (down to the variable names), and the results were the same. The only thing that had changed was the wording, and the addition of an abstract. I have no idea how the author of this paper even came upon my project, presumably it was published on my school's website for some period of time or one of my teachers sent it out, but I really don't know what to do.

So, I really have two questions. Firstly, what can I do about this, and secondly, it had never occurred to me that my work may be of the quality to publish, so once I do get this situation sorted out, could I possibly think of publishing my results myself?

EDIT: Glad to finally be able to provide an update. Thank you all for the immense response this question received. I took Dr. Clark's advice and started at the level of my school. Apparently, my paper was shared with the local university's algebraic number theory professor, who shared it with his students. From there, even with that professor's help, I've been unable to trace it, but I'm almost sure that's how it got out.

A very long time ago I emailed the journal, simply making them aware of the situation and stating I have proof if it's needed, and got no reply. About two months ago, the paper mysteriously disappeared from the journal. And around that time, too, I got an opportunity to submit my paper to a state-wide high school competition. I just found out this Saturday that I won, and will be having my paper published in the state STEM journal. Again, thank you all for all the incredibly helpful advice. I would be lost without it.

The other answers don't seem to be taking into account that the OP is a 13-year-old junior high school student whose work was presented in a school science fair.  I think that treating the OP as a "very junior researcher" is a bit unrealistic and also may place too large a burden on him.  Every week on this site we see adult researchers placed in great distress and turmoil by issues of plagiarism and academic priority.  These are not easy matters to resolve, and they place a high level of burden on the individual academics because academia is essentially self-policing.  A junior high school student is not a professional academic, almost certainly has none of the procedural training and academic contacts that a professional academic would, and therefore does not have an ethical obligation to respond as a professional academic would.

The first thing I want to say is that I don't think the OP is obligated in any way to respond to this incident, as other answers seem to imply that he is.  He can do so if he wants to, but if so I would recommend getting help from someone else.

Another important issue here is that the OP doesn't even understand the mechanism by which his work was made public.  To me this seems to suggest that if he wants to pursue it, he should begin at the level of his own school.  Presumably there is some teacher / faculty advisor involved in the science fair.  I would contact them or have a parent contact them.  This really is (or could be) an issue in itself: a school should not be releasing a student's work
on the internet without the student's permission or awareness.

If the OP doesn't have a clear understanding of how his work got made public in the first place, then unfortunately it seems to me that he is in an unusually poor position to press a case of academic priority.  He could contact the editors of the journal, submit all the evidence of his work along with the chronology, and the authors could respond simply by saying "We don't know anything about this.  Actually our work was done [at some earlier date].  As far as we can tell, some kid stole our work for a junior high school science fair.  What should we do about this?" and I don't see what the editors of the journal could plausibly do to resolve the situation.

This sounds bad, but let me make a few more comments:

In my experience, outright theft of work by serious academic mathematicians is extremely rare.  One of the reasons for this is that the worldwide mathematical research community is relatively close-knit.  If you're working in area X, then you probably trained at a certain set of universities and have affiliation, direct or indirect, with very serious senior reputable workers in area X.  Having a senior worker in area X think you've stolen someone else's work is a penalty far beyond the reward of publishing the work, in most cases (contrary to what popular culture may lead one to believe, the vast majority of contemporary mathematicians build their reputation on a steadily accumulating body of work, not one miraculous theorem).  Most areas of modern mathematics are so technically intensive that there are very few to no real outsiders contributing.  However, a real outsider -- e.g. someone who has had no face-to-face interaction with any university faculty member -- who does do significant mathematical work is unfortunately in a much worse position.
As a consequence of the above, when a brilliant 13-year-old's work gets stolen, it's very likely that it gets stolen by people who are not serious academic mathematicians, and it gets published in a journal which is not really serious and reputable.  If this is the case, then the stakes may be too low to justify the time and effort of trying to resolve the situation.  I am a professional mathematician, and if someone republished my work as their own (this has never happened to me) I would probably be upset and try something to fix it, but there are some journals where I would give up rather quickly.

So as a summary answer to the first question:

  Firstly, what can I do about this,

Take it slow, starting in your own home and at your school.  See if you can get some help with pursuing your claim.  If the claim turns out to be more trouble than it's worth to press: you can choose not to press it.  Try to gain a clear understanding of how this happened, so that it will not happen again.

As to your second question:

  secondly, it had never occurred to me that my work may be of the quality to publish, so once I do get this situation sorted out, could I possibly think of publishing my results myself?

As I said in a comment, I would advise almost any junior high school student not to think about publishing their mathematical work.  Note that I did not say to stop or slow down in the learning and doing of mathematics in any way.  In fact, the point is that the publication process is something that is done by professionals largely for reasons of professional exigency and not because it is pleasant or educational in its own right.  When I work with PhD students to try to get their first paper published, there comes a point where they realize that the amount of effort to do so (even after all the theorems are proven) is something like 2-10 times as much as they expected.  It used to be that math PhD students could mostly just concentrate on the math and not worry about publishing anything until after they got their PhD, but unfortunately those days are largely gone.  (In my department, one of the required features of the postdoctoral application is the publication list.  An empty list is surmountable, but it certainly does not augur well.)  Moreover, undergraduates who do summer math research are now being much more pressured to write up their results -- even when they are not really significant, and even when they were largely put up to the results by their faculty mentors -- and this is very worrisome.  The OP is 13 years old.  It is widely recognized that children of this age should not be working: the Fair Labor Standards Act says that in the US one must be 14 to legally work at all.  This does not apply to mathematical research, and it is certainly legal for the OP to pursue publication, but it is almost as worryingly too-soon for the OP to try to pursue this as if he had a serious, difficult job.

Let me say finally that I looked at the OP's internet profile, and it is clear that he is remarkably talented and precocious.  I highly encourage him to continue his study of mathematics, so long as his motivations for doing so are his own.  Based on what I've seen of the OP, I do not discount the possibility that he has already done work that could get published in a reputable journal (although that is highly unusual for someone of his age).  What I would say to him instead is: keep doing what you're doing.  Think about where you are now compared to where you were a few years ago and try to imagine where you'll be a few years in the future (while still in high school!).  If you're still doing math 3,5,10 years from now, what would your future self advise your 13-year-old self to do?  Is the work that you're doing now going to be a shadow of your later work?

Look e.g. at Terence Tao, who is arguably the world's leading mathematical-prodigy-grown up.  According to wikipedia, he published "his first assistant paper" at the age of 15.  But I don't know what that means, and I can't find the paper.  His first that is catalogued in the standard places was published in 1996, the same year he got his PhD, at the "advanced age" of 21.

Note also that you should not hesitate to interact with the mathematical community, as you have been.  I see that you have a blog.  This gives you a great place to post your work, talk about it there, and get feedback from others.

The very last thing I'll say on the matter is that you said the project in question is on elliptic curves over finite fields.  In fact elliptic curves are
my leading research interest at the moment.  So I would be happy to see your work and give you some feedback on it.  Of course you should not send the work to me if (i) you are not ready or (ii) have any concerns about it being stolen by me!  For the latter, I might recommend putting it on your blog first and then sending me a link to the blog.  But I am aware of some contemporary research on this topic and would be happy to steer you in a good direction if I can.

Have you fully determined if any assignment of rights were made when you applied to present at the fair?

For example, if you participate in the Google science fair you agree:

Ownership of the Entry/Grant of Rights:
You will retain ownership to your Entry. However, by entering the Competition, and to the extent allowed by law, you personally, and through your parent or legal guardian, grant the Competition Entities and their respective affiliates, licensees, promotional partners, developers, legal representatives, assigns, agents and licensees (collectively, the “Licensed Parties”), a perpetual (or for the maximum extent permitted by law), worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sub licensable, unconditional and transferable license to edit, modify, cut, rearrange, add to, delete from, reproduce, encode, store, modify, copy, transmit, publish, post, broadcast, display, adapt, exhibit and/or otherwise use or reuse (without limitation as to when or to the number of times used), your (or your Team’s) Entry, name, address, image, voice, likeness, statements, background and biographical material including, but not limited to, all materials submitted in connection with the Competition, as well as any additional photographic images, video images, portraits, documents, interviews or other materials arising out of your participation in this Competition (with or without using your name) in any and all media, in any language, throughout the world, and in any manner,
for trade, advertising, promotional, commercial, or any other purposes without further review, notice, approval, consideration, or compensation to Entrant or any third party.

So it's quite possible they have the rights to publish your work now.


Can a failed research become the object of research? I am working on a paper on social conditions during the pandemic, and have been using mixed methods. Unfortunately, the qualitative data collection process has been a disaster as I was unable to conduct any interviews. The reasons given for declining interviews were mostly due to pandemic disruptions. As such, I am now wondering if it's possible to do a reflective analysis instead, by arguing that the failure to collect qualitative data is in fact an indication of the real-time state of affairs?
I haven't quite been able to find relevant precedence and am unsure if there's an established methodology for this sort of "reflective analysis"? If anyone could point me in the right direction, that would be greatly appreciated!

Meta-science/meta-research is the discipline that deals with studies that use the research methods to study research itself. Its currently quite en vogue, I don't know if you could make your study fit into this category.
Personally my two most successful papers are about what would have been quite mundane studies but anomalies in the analysis lead me to identify problems with the way data was commonly analysed across the whole field.


Does anyone know a good resource for statement of purpose critiques? I have been out of academia for about eight years and am looking to go back to graduate school. I would like to get some feedback on my statement of purpose, outside of the circle of friends and family I have available. Does anyone know a good resource I might be able to turn to. Thanks in advance!

One might believe that one of the best ways to assess a SoP, in view of technical affairs and coverage of the necessary cases, shall be:

Composing based on the best practices, have which been accessible within the web. Such advice-driven clarification will paves your way to consider the stuffs within your SoP, are which necessary in view of the target reader. A handful of typical resources could be tracked like this one, this one, this one and even this one. By taking such approach into account, your SoP will have been checked according to those guidelines, indirectly.
Presenting the SoP to the fellows, who have been already admitted to the competitive programs in your field. Obviously, That person had composed a decent SoP to become successful and the feedback from such person shall be, noticeably, constructive for you.

Best


Is it possible to have a healthy work-life balance as a professor? I am an MSc student and one future direction I have been thinking about is the potential of pursuing a professorship after I do a PhD. Why do I want to be a professor? I enjoy the back and forth of doing research - while at times it's frustrating to figure things out, I think it's a good proxy for workplace freedom (by my standards) and I know that I would enjoy teaching.

Where I don't think that I would entirely fit the mold of a professorship is that I am not so concerned with having the top publications or cranking out as many papers as I can, but that's not to say I anticipate producing one paper a year and then putting my feet up on my desk. Relative to others who are more concerned about having top publications or many papers, I would probably be the 'less preferred' candidate for the job - which is okay. I am in no hunt for accolades, awards, or praise.

But I think that approaching a professorship from a balanced and holistic approach where I can work on research, teach, and maintain a healthy work-life balance would be something that I could grow to love. However, my perspective and approach to a professorship might be naive, which would also be horrifying to find out when it's too late.

So do you think that it is possible to have a healthy work-life balance as a professor or is that approach to a professorship, at least early on, not realistic for the modern market place of academia?

To add to the existing answers:

  Can you be a (relatively) “lazy” professor and still hold a position?

Yes. Once you have a (tenured) position, you can probably be rather lazy and still hold onto it.

  So do you think that it is possible to have a healthy work-life balance as a professor or is that approach to a professorship, at least early on, not realistic for the modern market place of academia?

The part about "at least early on" is crucial here. While you can (and some do) gear back a bit once you have tenure, you don't generally get into this position by being lazy. Academia is very competitive (as other answers have indicated), and to end up on top of a hiring pile you will need to be considerably more accomplished than your peers. For most people, being more accomplished means that you will have to put in the hours (and even then there are no guarantees, of course).

Generally speaking, the description of how you envision the job indicates more interest in a teaching-focused, low-research position. This is perfectly appropriate. Competition for such jobs may be a bit lower than at the top research schools, but is (at least in most areas of the world) still high enough that a truly lazy person will not see any offers.

However, and this is important, it is my observation that professors at teaching-oriented schools do not actually work less than their counterparts at research schools. In teaching-oriented schools, the teaching load will evidently be (much) higher, and individual students may be weaker (meaning that they often need more time-consuming direct support). TAs are common in research schools, but often rare or completely unknown in teaching-oriented schools. All in all, from talking to colleagues at teaching-oriented schools, I got the impression that they are putting in at the very least comparable hours to me (often for lower status and salary). You should not fall into the trap of envisioning a teaching position as the same as a research-focused professorship, with the only difference being that nobody cares if you do research.

It is still possible to have a work-life balance (in both, research and teaching focused positions), but it will require some planning and working smart and dedicatedly. It is unlikely that you will manage to get tenure by actively being lazy.

It's hard for me to imagine any job that would have an easier time establishing a "work-life" balance than being a professor. You're only actually teaching maybe 12-15 hours a week and after you've done it a couple of times, you shouldn't need much prep for it. Office hours? Okay, maybe another 6 hours or so but you're mostly free to do whatever you want during that time. That's barely part-time and with 3 months off out of the year and the option to take a 6 month vacation and declare it as a sabbatical (on top of the 6 figure salary and ridiculous benefits package), I'm having a hard time seeing your point.

Maybe the real question is a "work-life" balance in general since if you con't do it as a professor, I don't see how you can do it anywhere.


Students using the same flawed online solution sheet as the grading TA I am in a small electricity and magnetism class, and I have recently become aware of other students using an online solution sheet (on slader.com).  On the most recent homework, I (who didn't use the online solution sheet) got a significantly worse grade than I expected.  When I read the TAs posted solutions, I realized that he had made all of the same mistakes (the primary one being assuming that the parallel impedance formula is 1/(Z_1)+1/(Z_2) when it is actually 1/(1/(Z_1)+1/(Z_2))) and all of the exact same approximations as the online solution sheet.  It is clear that he basically copied from the online solutions.  What's worse, he marked many of my solutions wrong: both the ones where I had different (more accurate) approximations and the ones that were correct, but different from his incorrect solutions (the professor confirmed that my solutions are correct).

I'm guessing it isn't against the rules for a TA to use an online solution sheet, but the fact that he has been using the same one that many of the students are using means that this entire semester I have been at a significant disadvantage.  I have done well, but the class is curved so there's that also.

What do I do about this?

If the online sheet is incorrect and you suffered because of it, and if you have proof that the TA used that sheet, then you should point out to the professor of the course what has happened.

But, ask for a a comparison between your answers and those that the TA suggests. This will make it clear. The other students may suffer or not, but that is up to others. You have a right to a correct evaluation of your work and the professor should be made aware of online solutions - especially if they are incorrect and misleading students.

One set of students getting credit when they've broken rules and other students suffering when they have done the correct thing is the worst outcome possible.

You don't need to accuse anyone. Point out the online sheet. Point out the (matching) solution rubric. Show your own work and ask for a fair evaluation.

I'm not sure about your local rules, but where I'm living and teaching, the assessments should go through a pre-marking moderation review. A part of this moderation is to check the source and accuracy of assessments. The institute will lose its credit if they don't follow that. The auditor is responsible for reviewing these and can raise the alarm if he/she notices such mistakes. If the institute doesn't pass these auditions, they are not going to be accredited.
What the TA is doing is not ethical, and based on the integrity rules, he (along with the unit coordinator and program/course coordinator) should be held responsible.
For the students who are copying answers from those (dodgy) resources, they should acknowledge the source; otherwise, it is a case of plagiarism.


Faculty leaving to get a second degree, see training, etc. Is it heard of in Academia? Is it possible for a faculty to take leave for 1 or 2 years to go and learn some new technologies in order to broaden their research area into a more interdisciplinary area?
Imagine you are working on statistical and computational modelling of cellular dynamics, now you want to go and learn experimental technologies in order to generate your data, validate your results, etc and basically turn into a dry lab/ wet lab instead of a totally computational lab. Is it possible to be funded by your university in order to go and do some self-improvement which would eventually lead to dramatically better research outputs in the future even though it may cause a hit in your short-term output? Something similar to sabbatical leave but not exactly that, as sabbatical leave policies are not funding your goals during the leave and might even stop you from your regular compensations.

I am especially interested in Canada and the US.

The most common way I have seen this occur is through collaboration.

Rather than starting from scratch learning like a student in another professor's lab, the faculty member would start a collaboration with someone at the same or another institution. As part of this collaboration, it is possible to trade and learn skills from each other.

Especially in the situation you describe, it sounds like you have skills that are directly useful to a potential collaborator who has the wet biology background without the computational side, and such a collaboration could increase rather than decrease your productivity.

Let me add to the advice of Bryan Krause that such a collaboration may not require a move at all. Lots of things can be done remotely these days.

But on the other hand, it is also possible to take a leave from one place and take a temporary paid position at another so as to make the collaboration more intense. The other position might be "visiting professor" or something with agreed upon duties.

If you can do this in conjunction with a  paid sabbatical leave from your home institution then you can actually wind up earning more than you would otherwise.

Lots of things are possible depending on your other obligations (grad students, etc). But the department head and probably the dean need to get involved.

None of that suggests an additional degree, however. Most people don't need such a thing except in some European places where the concept of a higher order doctorate exists.


What should I do if I believe my former advisor is alleging to journal editors that I have copied his study? I have been through many different things with my previous advisor.

He wrote publications with my research proposal with his former female student after forcing me to give up the topic.  Also, as soon as I completed the simulation study for a different study, he asked me to stop again and then gave it to her again (she published it as a single author).
He simply asked me a personal relationship. I told him no.  Then he did his best to kick me out of my program. Even my Dept. and graduate college forced me to leave without my degree for about 6 months.

Luckily, I completed my Ph.D. and I am now doing my post doc.  Recently my paper has been rejected in the 2nd round from a top journal.  I heard from a colleague that my previous advisor called the chief editor (who was his student) and asked him  not to accept my paper, alleging I copied his study (it cannot be true).

Despite my experiences as his advisee, I haven't ever talked about anything about him because I need a job.  He just made a lot of crazy rumors about me, but I have been quiet.  Should I be quiet again?

I would talk to the conciliation board on your university and to the editor . Ask your colleague, if he/she will confirms that information in front of the conciliation board. Furthermore, I would do some research (or hire someone) about code of conduct on your university valid this case. Last but not least I would write down every single accusing in a chronological form (kind of factual report).

Maybe you can prove by the timestamps of your files, that he copied ideas from you and not the other way.

Have you ever heard of Dr Ali's case "sex for pass mark?" (See https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/curtin-lecturer-implicated-in-sexformarks-scandal-with-students-20100902-14p4g.html). Even though your case is not quite similar to the above, because your previous advisor seriously violated academic protocol, he deserves to be sacked.
If what you said were true and that you had adequate evidence, I believe that you might have a chance to sue him through the media. Talk to the media first and then discuss the matter with the vice Chancellor.