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32,755 |
<p>How long is the expiration date of GRE? For example, if I am going to sit for the GRE in January 2015, how long can I use the score for my graduate application? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32756,
"author": "user25164",
"author_id": 25164,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25164",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Your GRE score is valid for (approximately) 5 years since the <a href=\"http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/faq\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">taking of the test</a>.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>How long are GRE scores valid?</strong></p>\n<p>For tests taken on or after July 1, 2016, scores are reportable for five years following your test date. For example, scores for a test taken on July 3, 2018, are reportable through July 2, 2023.</p>\n<p>For tests taken prior to July 1, 2016, scores are reportable for five years following the testing year in which you tested (July 1–June 30). For example, scores for a test taken on May 15, 2016, are reportable through June 30, 2021.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32757,
"author": "Valentin",
"author_id": 10756,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10756",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's valid for 5 years, as stated on their official website.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/05
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32755",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18108/"
] |
32,760 |
<p>Should I attach my soon-to-be-published manuscript when submitting my CV?</p>
<p>I've just recently submitted my first paper to a scientific journal and want to apply for an internship at a certain institution. I'm pretty confident that my paper will be accepted but I know the review process is long. Should add it to my CV and write "under review" and attach the manuscript along with it? I feel as if them reading the manuscript will better my chances at my getting it.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32771,
"author": "CephBirk",
"author_id": 24711,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24711",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As others have said, it depends on the culture of the discipline you are in. </p>\n\n<p>I also think it is important where you are in your career. If you are an undergraduate, for example, with a manuscript on which you are an author, I would be impressed even without the acceptance yet. Most undergraduates in my field (biology) have not done much (or any) hands-on research so this would be a big CV booster! Since you say this is your first manuscript, I assume you are early in your career so it may help you stand out from your peers. I have seen graduate students and even professors include submitted manuscripts on CVs and personally have not found it tacky.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32825,
"author": "If you do not know- just GIS",
"author_id": 17209,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17209",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Post it on a preprint site such as arXiv for the physics / maths / Comp Sci folk or in Research Gate for us other mortals or even an institutional repository. Then list it is \"in review\", \"submitted\", \"in-press\" or whatever stage it is as in your CV. Link the item in your CV to the preprint at arXiv, RG, institution. This way you give them the choice. Visit the link or not. When published just change the link to the DOI in your CV.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32895,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When you submit an application, you will usually be told what to include. Follow those rules first. If there is room to submit other materials then, providing your manuscript seems like a good idea. The usefulness of providing the manuscript will of course vary depending on the role of the position you seek. Posting the manuscript somewhere can be useful for several reasons but when applying for a post, people evaluating an application (one of probably many) will not want to have to spend time gathering the materials themselves, they want it provided with the application (unless clearly stated otherwise).</p>\n\n<p>What you need to ask yourself if the manuscript will reflect well on you? From your answer, apparently so, but a poor manuscript should probably be avoided. An assessment of the future publishing of the manuscript is not something I generally would rely on. </p>\n\n<p>The person or committee evaluating applications will chose to judge your manuscript as they see fit. Usually, a written thesis or manuscript can help to assess important aspects of a person's capability. A person evaluating the application will of course also try to judge if you are the sole originator or if others have a large imprint on the work. It is therefore important to provide a good account for what is truly yours and what can be attribute to others, i.e. list the contributorship to the work. If you want to see discussions on such issues, please search the tag <a href=\"/questions/tagged/authorship\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged 'authorship'\" rel=\"tag\">authorship</a> on on <em>contributorship</em> here on academia.sx.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/05
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32760",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18330/"
] |
32,768 |
<p>I am asking this question because I've always had the impression that manuscripts submitted to a journal in my field (theoretical linguistics) take an <em>insanely long time</em> to get published, and sometimes I get the impression that this is because, most of the time, nobody other than the author cares about getting things done within a reasonable amount of time. Some examples from personal experience follow.</p>
<ul>
<li>For the last paper I submitted before getting my PhD, I had to wait nine months from the submission date to get reviews back from the referees.</li>
<li>Last week I got a review request from a journal I had never reviewed for previously. The review deadline is March 15 (almost four months).</li>
<li>In early October, I submitted a manuscript to a journal that I know asks reviewers to return reviews within 6 weeks. I checked the status of the manuscript online and it still says "with editor".</li>
<li>Earlier this year, I was about to start writing a review when my wife went into labor. By the time we came back from the hospital, I had forgotten about the review, so I missed the deadline. The editor didn't contact me to ask about the review until two months after the deadline.</li>
<li>Late in 2013, I was asked to write a survey chapter for a handbook. The expected publication date of the handbook is summer 2016.</li>
</ul>
<p>All of this is not me being unlucky with editors and referees. In private conversations through the years, many colleagues have confirmed that it is virtually unheard of to get reviews back within 3 months of submission; 5 or 6 months seems to be a good average, but in some cases it can take longer (see my first point above). In general, everybody seems to have accepted that the submission-to-printed-journal process is going to take a bare minimum of one year, and that's assuming that the manuscript is accepted without revisions. If revisions are required, two years is not out of the question. Also, it's not like our papers are ridiculously long. I've reviewed about 100 papers so far, and the longest one was about 50 single-space pages; 30-35 single-spaced pages is closer to average.</p>
<p>I remember that, when I was a postdoc, my astrophysics housemate mentioned that in his field the entire submission-to-printed-journal process took only three or four months. I really can't see a good reason why theoretical linguistics shouldn't operate on similar timeframes, other than the fact that everybody seems to have grown used to things taking way longer than they really need to. What are the wait times in other fields? How do you manage to get things done quickly?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32769,
"author": "Yuichiro Fujiwara",
"author_id": 7075,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7075",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>For mathematics, here's the latest survey done by American Mathematical Society:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1268.pdf\">http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1268.pdf</a></p>\n\n<p>You can find median times from submission/acceptance to acceptance/print/electronic print for various math journals as well as other statistics like the current estimate of waiting time for each journal. Not surprisingly, the median time from submission to acceptance in 2013 varies greatly; some take only a few months and others nearly a year and a half.</p>\n\n<p>They do this survey every year. For instance, here's the one published 2 years ago:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf\">http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001473p.pdf</a></p>\n\n<p>The worst offender that took the longest between submission and acceptance that year was Annals of Mathematics (which happens to be among the most prestigious math journals), and the median was 24 months.</p>\n\n<p>I don't know if there is data for other fields. But American Physical Society occasionally makes statistics for their journals available, e.g., pages 14-17 of this PDF slides:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.phys.nthu.edu.tw/~colloquium/2009F/T2.pdf\">http://www.phys.nthu.edu.tw/~colloquium/2009F/T2.pdf</a></p>\n\n<p>From my own experience as an author and reviewer as well as from what I hear, it appears that math journals typically take longer than physics journals. But probably things are drastically different across subfields even within one discipline (e.g., theoretical vs. experimental).</p>\n\n<p>In any case, as the fact that they publish statistics indicates, both disciplines seem to take turnaround time very seriously. But for some reason, it appears that review tends to take more time if a journal publishes more mathematical papers. This seems to hold true for electrical engineering, too; the journal I have published in most frequently belongs to electrical engineering but is known for being heavily mathematical, and, lo and be hold, it's notorious for its slow, slow, slooow review...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32774,
"author": "Bitwise",
"author_id": 6862,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6862",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In biology, things are much faster (although it can vary for different journals). From my experience, reviewers usually get a deadline of 2-3 weeks to submit their review, although many reviewers fail to meet this deadline. So the typical time of getting back the first review is around 1-2 months, depending on the journal.</p>\n\n<p>Since speed is often an important factor, some journals make a point of advertising their typical review/decision times. For example the journal <em>Genome Research</em> <a href=\"http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/ifora_overview.xhtml\" rel=\"noreferrer\">states</a> their average turnaround time for review is 30 days. The journal <em>eLife</em> <a href=\"http://elifesciences.org/about#process\" rel=\"noreferrer\">gives</a> the following median times: 3 days for initial decision (editorial decision whether to send the paper to review), 29 days to post-review decision, 90 days submission to acceptance.</p>\n\n<p>How this affects the quality of reviews, especially those of interdisciplinary work (e.g. combining math and biology), is a completely different matter...</p>\n\n<p>However, one way to explain the difference in speed from a theoretical field like math, is since biology is an experiment-based discipline, the reviewers basically evaluate what the authors report about their experiment - they cannot, and are not expected to, reproduce these experiments on their own. Once the paper is published, other labs will eventually try to reproduce its results. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32798,
"author": "Miguel",
"author_id": 14695,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14695",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I guess an important consideration here is how quickly a field evolves. </p>\n\n<p>My field is condensed matter, and usually the paper stays with the editor one week or less, with reviewers one month and depending on recommendation this will be cycled until acceptance, although subsequent reviews tend to be faster. Then you get proofs/the paper appears online in overall a month or less.</p>\n\n<p>I say that how fast the field evolves is important because for a hot topic many people will be working on the same problems simultaneously (think graphene a few years ago) and getting publication delayed by even as little of a couple of months might mean being the second, rather than first, to report a result.</p>\n\n<p>I would imagine fields like History, literature and so on evolve much slower than say molecular biology or materials science. Then fast publication of research is not equally critical in every field. This doesn't mean of course that times couldn't ideally be reduced across disciplines.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32799,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Contrary to what RanG reports in a comment, I have the feeling that (applied) CS is comparatively fast in terms of turnaround times. Reviewers typically get ~ 1 month of time for review (+ a few weeks of slack, realistically), and most journals aim to come back to authors for revisions in a time frame of 4 to 6 months.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, the time from initial submission to when a paper actually appears is usually still multiple years. A big contributor is that, at least in my community, there is a pattern that most (including very good!) submissions go through a lifecycle of Submission -> Major Revision -> [Major Revision] -> Minor Revision -> Accept -> Publication, with each step taking about half a year. That is, even very strong papers are often forced to \"go through the motions\" of some iterations of pseudo-revisions that don't really add anything substantial to the papers.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, in CS, we primarily publish in conferences anyway, so most people don't really mind so much.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 55708,
"author": "user6726",
"author_id": 28972,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28972",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a linguist and former editor, I would say that your problems are on the outer edges of experience, which may have something to do with the journals you are submitting to, but not beyond belief. No names, but there are a couple of well-regarded theory journals that are known to have this problem. The main explanation is that reviewers take forever, and editors only have a limited power and willingness to nag: they are willing to wait another 4 months rather than drop the reviewer and get someone else. This problem is somewhat ameloriated by submission software which is now popular that automatically nags reviewers. The ultimate solution, I'm afraid, is that authors need to email the editor with a status query with a week after the supposed deadline (if the journal says when they expect to return a decision). A significant contributing problem, IMO, is that there is nearly no infrastructural support for the editor.</p>\n\n<p>Handbooks and the like are another story. Expect a 4 year delay from invitation to appearance.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/05
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32768",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12314/"
] |
32,781 |
<p>Does anyone know the restrictions one might face if they are a graduate student in a computer science program (let's say doing theory) and they become interested in taking a course from the mathematics department or become interested in working on mathematics problems? Is this something where you need to full on change departments or is it generally more acceptable?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32785,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is frequently very easy: the boundary between mathematics and computer science is pretty blurry, especially for the more theoretical side of computer science. In many universities, you will even find classes that are shared between math and computer science departments. </p>\n\n<p>I suppose that If you are a masters' student, you might run into problems fitting in the classes that you want to take if there are a lot of other program requirements. For Ph.D. students, however, there are typically less constraints.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32786,
"author": "TCSGrad",
"author_id": 79,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It depends somewhat on your advisor, and less on departmental policies. If you can convince your advisor that you need to take some math courses to be more comfortable in your research, its unlikely you would be prevented from doing so by the dept.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, if your advisor wants you to focus on research and not take any additional courses, that may be an issue - but you can still take the class informally (non-credit). </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/05
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32781",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25195/"
] |
32,782 |
<p>I'm sort of foggy in general about how this works. If you are, say a a computer science graduate student, what kind of freedom do you have to pick a research topic that focuses more on something like cellular biology, swarms, or string theory? Do you need to change departments? Do you need to illustrate some connection back to CS techniques? Do you just have to pursuade your advisor to issue a blessing? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32784,
"author": "jpreed00",
"author_id": 25199,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25199",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This will vary based on your adviser, your level of study (i.e. what degree you're going for), your committee and your department. In almost all cases for computer science, you will be required to demonstrate mastery of the subject. Incorporating outside knowledge from another subject area, say, cell biology, where you re-implemented or improved a gene matching algorithm, for example, would probably be allowed.</p>\n\n<p>Simply doing an experiment from cell-biology with no tie-in to CS would almost certainly not be approved--but, this is where your adviser, et. al. come in. If you've got a smashing idea, a good adviser/committee will help you try and find a way to tie it into your degree and PhD students are typically given more leeway here than Masters students.</p>\n\n<p>Though, be prepared, in some cases, an adviser will play a big role in determining what your thesis will be. Also, if you are being funded by a particular grant under a PI (principal investigator--typically a research professor), it is traditional (at least at my University) to pursue research related to what the PI is doing. Though it's definitely easy just to ask to be exempt from this tradition.</p>\n\n<p>So, basically, the answer to your question is it depends. Almost certainly you will be required to do something Computer Science-y for a CS degree, but there can be a lot of leeway in determining what Computer Science-y means.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32789,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are a lot of factors. Generally, your research topic is whatever you and your advisor agree on. In principle, you often have a dissertation committee that must also agree, but typically that is mostly a formality unless someone is totally off the rails.</p>\n\n<p>So if you want to do something unusual, the hard part would be getting your advisor to agree. In deciding whether a topic is appropriate for a PhD dissertation, they should generally consider:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Is it significant?</strong> Is this a project that will be a genuine contribution to the field? Is it in an area that is generally recognized as important? Is it difficult enough to be worth a PhD? A project in a fringe area, or one that would advance the state of the art only infinitesimally even if successful, or one that is at too low a level, would likely not fly.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Is it original?</strong> The project should not primarily duplicate something that has already been done (unless you are trying to reproduce previous results, which in some situations would be considered valuable). Your advisor will have to be convinced that your literature search is thorough enough that you fully understand the context of your project and how it will extend previous work.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Is it feasible?</strong> Your advisor needs to be convinced that you have the necessary knowledge, expertise, resources, and funding, and that the project is of an appropriate difficulty and scale that you have a good chance of completing it within a reasonable period of time (some departments have firm limits on how long you can take to finish a PhD). </p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Are they qualified to advise you?</strong> Does the advisor have the necessary expertise to accurately evaluate the significance, originality and feasibility of the proposed project? Will they be able to help teach you some of the things you need to learn? Will they be able to judge your progress along the way? Will they be able to provide you with, or help you acquire, resources you may need?</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So in most cases, if you have a particular area in mind, in order to pass the fourth test you will need to choose an advisor who is an expert in that area or something closely related. If nobody in the department qualifies, or none of them are willing to be your advisor, then you probably cannot work on that project in that department. Sometimes it is possible to take on a co-advisor from another department who does have the appropriate expertise. Otherwise, you either need to change departments (often tantamount to reapplying), change institutions (which means actually reapplying) or work on something else.</p>\n\n<p>In many cases, the easiest way to meet all four criteria is to work on a project suggested by your advisor, even if it is something that you hadn't previously been interested in. This is particularly true in fields that are highly specialized, and where a beginning graduate student would not be expected to easily recognize interesting problems to study.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32791,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For students in the physical sciences and engineering, a major issue is getting funding to pay for required research equipment and supplies. This nearly always comes from a grant that has been awarded to the academic advisor. Thus students working in these disciplines are very constrained in their choice of projects- it has to be something that fits with the available funding. </p>\n\n<p>Even if the student's research doesn't require expensive equipment and supplies, if the student is working on a research assistantship then the student will normally be expected to do a thesis or disseration that is part of the research project that funds the assistantship. </p>\n\n<p>Some students work in areas where there isn't any need for expensive equipment or supplies and some students also have funding (a fellowship or a teaching assistantship) that isn't tied to a particular research grant. In such cases students can have a much greater say in what their thesis project will be. However, the project still must be acceptable to the advisor and the thesis or dissertation committee. It is not uncommon for advisors to simply say \"no\" to a student request to supervise a project that the advisor doesn't think is worthwhile. Even if the advisor says \"yes\", there are often other levels at which the project must be approved (e.g. by the thesis or dissertation committee, the department chair, or even a graduate dean.) </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32782",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25195/"
] |
32,795 |
<p>I wonder if there exists, at least in plans, a centralized system that examines editors' decisions in journals, a kind of "appellate court" in peer-review publishing.</p>
<p>Recently I have been trying to publish a paper which tends to support a hypothesis heavily counter to the prevailing view in the field. I had to try eight journals before it was accepted. In most of those trials the paper was rejected without going to peer-review, but editors didn't point out specific flaws. Instead, they used general statements like "your paper is certainly interesting, but we get so many even more interesting papers, so unfortunately we cannot publish yours". In one journal the editor simply replied that the paper is out of the journal's scope, which is plain-out false (the paper deals exactly with one of the major topics of the journal). In another journal the editor passed the paper to peer review. In two months it was rejected "in view of reviewers' comments". But - amazingly! - all reviewers recommended publication, with certain revisions. I tried to contact the editor, but he did not respond. Clearly, this is utterly unethical, with respect both to the author and reviewers (at least, the editors could reject it right away, why stealing two months?).</p>
<p>Now I am going to submit a follow-up paper, but I am sure I will face the same difficulties and lose a lot of time. Could anyone give any recommendations as to how to safeguard oneself against unethical situations like those described above?</p>
<p>UPD: I do not mean here any complaints or rants. If in one of those journals my paper had been rejected after peer-review in which reviewers did actually recommend rejection, there would be no this topic here.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32796,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You got your paper published and I am sure many others have had similar experiences with much more mundane topics (whatever your is) so I do not see the fact that your paper was rejected in journals a major issue as such. In fact, one could interpret your view as your paper should have been accepted by default, unfortunately that is not how things work.</p>\n\n<p>It is true that some papers may be unfairly treated by an individual journal or editor but that is the result of the fact that humans are involved and publishing is not a black and white yes or no business. You provide several different types of responses and judge them from your point of view, which may be correct but will be difficult for others to assess. </p>\n\n<p>So as a whole, I think your question is bordering on what is sometimes referred to as a rant on this site.</p>\n\n<p>Having said this, one can respond to the general issues you raise.</p>\n\n<p>Coming up with science indicating paradigm shifts (which is how I interpret your description) will always be met by scepticism. This is normal. If the process was such that everyone switched direction for every new idea that appeared chaos would ensue since no direction would be disseminated in detail. The back side of it is that ideas becomes so engrained that they approach a dogma. To add to this, many researchers may have put all their effort into developing an idea and having to change all thus is daunting, to say the least, and so the eagerness to accept and change is weak. This is human. Thus publishing something that goes against the stream will meet scepticism for both scientific and personal reasons and sometimes the latter are the most difficult to break through.</p>\n\n<p>The responses you have received all seem poor on the face of it but since we do not know the details at least some of them may be correct judgements from the side of the editor in view of what they perceive is publishable in their journal. </p>\n\n<p>Going completely against reviewer recommendations definitely seems like a step too far and too soon. Granted we do not know how good the reviews were but in the worst case of two really poor reviews an editor should try to get more opinions in. Yes, it appears to be a waste of time for all concerned which could have been avoided. But \"stealing\" and \"unethical\"? Not really. Unfortunate and perhaps unnecessary? Yes. </p>\n\n<p>Editors have the right to deem a manuscript unsuitable for a journal and reject it without review. If you think it is suitable, it is your opinion but the editor's opinion differs from yours.</p>\n\n<p>So you got your paper published and now you expect the same problem again. Probably yes, if you decide to go to the same journals. But, since you now have your basic publication out, the next paper has something peer reviewed to stand on. I am sure there will be continued resistance to change and this will only diminish with growing number of studies supporting your claim being published over time. How quickly this happens, if it happens, is beyond my possibility to judge.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32800,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I wonder if there exists, at least in plans, a centralized system that examines editors' decisions in journals, a kind of \"appellate court\" in peer-review publishing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In cases of unethical behavior, professional societies can investigate a journal, but your description includes nothing that appears unethical.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In most of those trials the paper was rejected without going to peer-review, but editors didn't point out specific flaws. Instead, they used general statements like \"your paper is certainly interesting, but we get so many even more interesting papers, so unfortunately we cannot publish yours\".</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This may be frustrating and reflect genuine bias against your ideas, but it's a reasonable and standard way to run a journal. Some sorts of bias are unethical (for example, discrimination based on the author's race, ethnicity, gender, etc.), but intellectual bias is almost unavoidable. There are a few journals, like <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/\">PLOS ONE</a>, with the mission of publishing anything that's new and not clearly defective, but most journals try to filter based on interest and importance. That necessarily involves judgment calls by the editors regarding what is likely to be satisfy these criteria. In particular, part of running a prestigious journal is favoring some topics and approaches over others, and the community judges the editors based on how well they manage to select interesting and important papers. To reject a paper without review, there's no need to identify a flaw. Instead, the editors can simply decide that it's not interesting or promising enough to justify the effort of formal reviewing, or that the chances of acceptance are low enough that sending it out for review would just waste the reviewers' and authors' time.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In one journal the editor simply replied that the paper is out of the journal's scope, which is plain-out false (the paper deals exactly with one of the major topics of the journal).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Scope can include both subject matter and approach. Some journals like to publish controversial papers that may well turn out to be wrong or misleading but will at least lead to interesting discussion and follow-up work. Other journals are more conservative and have no interest in going out on a limb with a risky theory that reexamines what the editors consider to be well-settled science. I don't think the editor in your case was lying to you about the subject matter scope, but rather indicating that your paper is outside the scope of the type of work they want to publish.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In another journal the editor passed the paper to peer review. In two months it was rejected \"in view of reviewers' comments\". But - amazingly! - all reviewers recommended publication, with certain revisions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is an awkward issue, and it would have been helpful if the editor had clarified. (E.g., \"While the reviewers' comments were largely positive, the editorial board felt that they did not make a strong enough case for publication in comparison with other recent submissions.\") But I can appreciate the editor's position. Sometimes you get a submission that is unusual and unconventional, one you know a lot of the community won't like. Who do you choose as reviewers? You can predict many people's opinions in advance, which introduces an intrinsically political aspect (if you want to kill the paper, it's easy to choose conservative reviewers, and vice versa). One approach is to ask sympathetic, open-minded reviewers but hold them to a high standard by seeing whether they can convince you to accept. The question isn't whether they recommend acceptance, and in fact the editor may know in advance that they have a soft spot for this topic. Instead, the question is how compelling and forceful a case they are able to make for this specific paper.</p>\n\n<p>Of course I have no proof that this is what was going on here, but I'd bet it was. If the editors were determined to kill the submission, they would have rejected it without review or deliberately assigned unsympathetic reviewers. Instead, I think this journal gave you more of a chance than any of the other six.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Could anyone give any recommendations as to how to safeguard oneself against unethical situations like those described above?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>As I explained above, I don't think these situations are unethical, but they are still worth avoiding. One factor to consider is how often a journal publishes unorthodox or unconventional work (even if it's not on your exact topic). If they sometimes do, then they are likely to give your paper a fair hearing. If they rarely or never do, then that's probably because they are reluctant to do so.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32802,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To add to the other answers already given: another approach that can be useful is to begin by publishing your work in a venue such as <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/\">PLoS ONE</a> that is credible but aims to select for only for validity and not \"significance\" or \"topic.\" Since it seems the main problem you've had is editors deciding that the paper is not of interest for their journal, this would nullify that problem. </p>\n\n<p>PLoS ONE is an entirely respectable place to publish, though not high prestige. It is thus a fine place to get a fair review for the early papers of an unconventional topic, and to build reputation of the work that will make it easier to get accepted in more community-specific venues later. If you have problems publishing in PLoS ONE, however, it is likely that your work has serious flaws in either substance or presentation that you are not aware of.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32795",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25216/"
] |
32,797 |
<p>When adding a reference to an image that is a screenshot, what is the proper way to cite in APA style?</p>
<p>Also, who is considered the artist in this case? The person who took the screenshot, the website where I've found the image or the creator of the software?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32796,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You got your paper published and I am sure many others have had similar experiences with much more mundane topics (whatever your is) so I do not see the fact that your paper was rejected in journals a major issue as such. In fact, one could interpret your view as your paper should have been accepted by default, unfortunately that is not how things work.</p>\n\n<p>It is true that some papers may be unfairly treated by an individual journal or editor but that is the result of the fact that humans are involved and publishing is not a black and white yes or no business. You provide several different types of responses and judge them from your point of view, which may be correct but will be difficult for others to assess. </p>\n\n<p>So as a whole, I think your question is bordering on what is sometimes referred to as a rant on this site.</p>\n\n<p>Having said this, one can respond to the general issues you raise.</p>\n\n<p>Coming up with science indicating paradigm shifts (which is how I interpret your description) will always be met by scepticism. This is normal. If the process was such that everyone switched direction for every new idea that appeared chaos would ensue since no direction would be disseminated in detail. The back side of it is that ideas becomes so engrained that they approach a dogma. To add to this, many researchers may have put all their effort into developing an idea and having to change all thus is daunting, to say the least, and so the eagerness to accept and change is weak. This is human. Thus publishing something that goes against the stream will meet scepticism for both scientific and personal reasons and sometimes the latter are the most difficult to break through.</p>\n\n<p>The responses you have received all seem poor on the face of it but since we do not know the details at least some of them may be correct judgements from the side of the editor in view of what they perceive is publishable in their journal. </p>\n\n<p>Going completely against reviewer recommendations definitely seems like a step too far and too soon. Granted we do not know how good the reviews were but in the worst case of two really poor reviews an editor should try to get more opinions in. Yes, it appears to be a waste of time for all concerned which could have been avoided. But \"stealing\" and \"unethical\"? Not really. Unfortunate and perhaps unnecessary? Yes. </p>\n\n<p>Editors have the right to deem a manuscript unsuitable for a journal and reject it without review. If you think it is suitable, it is your opinion but the editor's opinion differs from yours.</p>\n\n<p>So you got your paper published and now you expect the same problem again. Probably yes, if you decide to go to the same journals. But, since you now have your basic publication out, the next paper has something peer reviewed to stand on. I am sure there will be continued resistance to change and this will only diminish with growing number of studies supporting your claim being published over time. How quickly this happens, if it happens, is beyond my possibility to judge.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32800,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I wonder if there exists, at least in plans, a centralized system that examines editors' decisions in journals, a kind of \"appellate court\" in peer-review publishing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In cases of unethical behavior, professional societies can investigate a journal, but your description includes nothing that appears unethical.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In most of those trials the paper was rejected without going to peer-review, but editors didn't point out specific flaws. Instead, they used general statements like \"your paper is certainly interesting, but we get so many even more interesting papers, so unfortunately we cannot publish yours\".</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This may be frustrating and reflect genuine bias against your ideas, but it's a reasonable and standard way to run a journal. Some sorts of bias are unethical (for example, discrimination based on the author's race, ethnicity, gender, etc.), but intellectual bias is almost unavoidable. There are a few journals, like <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/\">PLOS ONE</a>, with the mission of publishing anything that's new and not clearly defective, but most journals try to filter based on interest and importance. That necessarily involves judgment calls by the editors regarding what is likely to be satisfy these criteria. In particular, part of running a prestigious journal is favoring some topics and approaches over others, and the community judges the editors based on how well they manage to select interesting and important papers. To reject a paper without review, there's no need to identify a flaw. Instead, the editors can simply decide that it's not interesting or promising enough to justify the effort of formal reviewing, or that the chances of acceptance are low enough that sending it out for review would just waste the reviewers' and authors' time.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In one journal the editor simply replied that the paper is out of the journal's scope, which is plain-out false (the paper deals exactly with one of the major topics of the journal).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Scope can include both subject matter and approach. Some journals like to publish controversial papers that may well turn out to be wrong or misleading but will at least lead to interesting discussion and follow-up work. Other journals are more conservative and have no interest in going out on a limb with a risky theory that reexamines what the editors consider to be well-settled science. I don't think the editor in your case was lying to you about the subject matter scope, but rather indicating that your paper is outside the scope of the type of work they want to publish.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In another journal the editor passed the paper to peer review. In two months it was rejected \"in view of reviewers' comments\". But - amazingly! - all reviewers recommended publication, with certain revisions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is an awkward issue, and it would have been helpful if the editor had clarified. (E.g., \"While the reviewers' comments were largely positive, the editorial board felt that they did not make a strong enough case for publication in comparison with other recent submissions.\") But I can appreciate the editor's position. Sometimes you get a submission that is unusual and unconventional, one you know a lot of the community won't like. Who do you choose as reviewers? You can predict many people's opinions in advance, which introduces an intrinsically political aspect (if you want to kill the paper, it's easy to choose conservative reviewers, and vice versa). One approach is to ask sympathetic, open-minded reviewers but hold them to a high standard by seeing whether they can convince you to accept. The question isn't whether they recommend acceptance, and in fact the editor may know in advance that they have a soft spot for this topic. Instead, the question is how compelling and forceful a case they are able to make for this specific paper.</p>\n\n<p>Of course I have no proof that this is what was going on here, but I'd bet it was. If the editors were determined to kill the submission, they would have rejected it without review or deliberately assigned unsympathetic reviewers. Instead, I think this journal gave you more of a chance than any of the other six.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Could anyone give any recommendations as to how to safeguard oneself against unethical situations like those described above?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>As I explained above, I don't think these situations are unethical, but they are still worth avoiding. One factor to consider is how often a journal publishes unorthodox or unconventional work (even if it's not on your exact topic). If they sometimes do, then they are likely to give your paper a fair hearing. If they rarely or never do, then that's probably because they are reluctant to do so.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32802,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To add to the other answers already given: another approach that can be useful is to begin by publishing your work in a venue such as <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/\">PLoS ONE</a> that is credible but aims to select for only for validity and not \"significance\" or \"topic.\" Since it seems the main problem you've had is editors deciding that the paper is not of interest for their journal, this would nullify that problem. </p>\n\n<p>PLoS ONE is an entirely respectable place to publish, though not high prestige. It is thus a fine place to get a fair review for the early papers of an unconventional topic, and to build reputation of the work that will make it easier to get accepted in more community-specific venues later. If you have problems publishing in PLoS ONE, however, it is likely that your work has serious flaws in either substance or presentation that you are not aware of.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32797",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11673/"
] |
32,804 |
<p>A couple of cover letter use: </p>
<ul>
<li>I believe that I could ..</li>
<li>I am confident </li>
<li>I am very interested </li>
</ul>
<p>What do you think about them? Should they be mentioned with evidences or avoid since they are feelings and may indicate uncertainty?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32807,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is nothing inherently wrong with expressing your feelings in a cover letter. Your feelings, however, are not generally useful information for the reader of your letter: they don't know you, and so what basis to they have for evaluating how your feelings relate to your likelihood of making a good addition to the department?</p>\n\n<p>As such, statements about feelings are generally low-value at best, and can be problematic if they are expressed in a way that causes people to have doubts about you. You <em>don't</em> have to pretend that you're a robot: it's fine to say something like \"I find the interdisciplinary opportunities of this position exciting.\" Just know that it's an inherently low-content statement, and that more value will come from the places where you show more concrete evidence of your connections and value for the position that you are applying for.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32808,
"author": "Sharadha Jayaraman",
"author_id": 25226,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25226",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The listed phrases don't necessarily convey uncertainty. Infact, if supported with evidence, they can become strong leading points into reading about your experiences and skills. </p>\n\n<p>For example, consider the following statements in your cover letter:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>I believe that I can</strong> give the a different dimension with my skill set because I have been awarded .</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>This interests the recruiter as (s)he would be interested in knowing how you can bring new dimension to the job and what special skills you possess that makes you stand out from the crowd.</p>\n\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>I am confident</strong> that I have which I believe is essential for the role as I have had (say) over 5 years of experience in this field with honours.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>This would again intrigue the recruiter to believe your confidence (if it is ofcourse supported with solid evidence!)</p>\n\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong>I am very interested</strong> in the because I believe that having already done , this role can help me develop my career in the field in the following ways and in turn I can help the organisation grow .</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>The recruiter would be interested in your past experience and look to understand how you can grow and make the business grow.</p>\n\n<p>I hope that the examples are adequately clear. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32813,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Personally, I think your sentence fragments all suggest both a lack of evidence and a lack of confidence. But more importantly, I think you're simply asking the wrong question.</p>\n\n<p>Instead of focusing on the detailed language of your cover letter, focus on the <strong>content</strong>. Who are you? What have you done? What makes you an asset to your target departments? Instead of expressing your interests, demonstrate your accomplishments and your vision. Instead of stating your beliefs or your confidence, show the reader clear evidence of your expertise and your impact. <strong>Show, don't tell.</strong></p>\n\n<p>The advice that I give my own students and colleagues when they apply for graduate school or for jobs or for tenure is to <strong>aim for the next target</strong>.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Graduate applications should not say \"Please admit me\" but rather \"I will become an independent researcher. Let me get on with it.\"</p></li>\n<li><p>Thesis proposals should not say \"Please let me pass\" but rather \"I will have a strong PhD thesis. Let me get on with it.\"</p></li>\n<li><p>Thesis defenses should not say \"Please let me graduate\" but rather \"I will get an academic job. Let me get on with it.\"</p></li>\n<li><p>Job talks should not say \"Please hire me\" but rather \"I will get tenure. Let me get on with it.\"</p></li>\n<li><p>Tenure packages should not say \"Please give me tenure\" but rather \"I will be a full professor. Let me get on with it.\"</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>And the way each application should \"say\" its message is not by stating your <em>interest</em> or <em>belief</em> or <em>intention</em> or <em>confidence</em> that you'll pass the next stage, but by presenting clear and compelling <strong>evidence</strong> that you'll pass the next stage. And of course you never want to actually suggest the impatience implicit in the phrase \"Let me get on with it\"; rather, you want to convince your audience to let you get on with it.</p>\n\n<p>Don't try to convince that reader that <em>you</em> believe that you'll be successful. Make the <em>reader</em> believe that you'll be successful. Show the reader that you will be successful.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32804",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24823/"
] |
32,816 |
<p>Do you suggest adding these to an academic CV?</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Review</strong> journals/conferences. Can adding such information creates negative issues or it would only have positive impression? </li>
<li><strong>Non-academic service</strong>: example, Unesco volunteer</li>
<li><strong>Hobbies</strong>. Many sites suggest to remove them <a href="http://www.academiccareer.manchester.ac.uk/applications/cvs/content/">http://www.academiccareer.manchester.ac.uk/applications/cvs/content/</a> , but isn't it important to show that the applicant is not a robot? Some suggest to include them wisely <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/30/how-to-get-tenure-at-a-major-research-university">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/30/how-to-get-tenure-at-a-major-research-university</a></li>
<li><strong>Languages</strong>. Can knowing a certain language be used as a discriminate against an applicant?!</li>
</ul>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32817,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>An academic CV is not intended to describe you as a whole person, but rather to describe your qualifications and accomplishments as an academic. The assumption is that of course you lead an ordinary human life (with hobbies, friends, family, religious beliefs or the lack thereof, etc.), but the people reading your CV are not trying to evaluate you as a human being and aren't interested in reading about the rest of your life.</p>\n\n<p>Anything academic is fair game for an academic CV, including reviewing. How much to emphasize it depends on how many more important things you have to list.</p>\n\n<p>Language skills are relevant to academia because they can assist with research, teaching, and public communication. You are right that this information could be used to discriminate, but I doubt this particular form of discrimination occurs often enough to be worth much worry.</p>\n\n<p>Hobbies and non-academic service are generally not relevant (although there could be exceptions). It's not necessary to discuss them at all, and nobody will assume you have no hobbies or service activities if you don't mention any. It's OK to mention them in a very short section at the end of the CV if you feel it's important, but you should definitely not emphasize them. There are at least two reasons for this:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>It could come across as cluelessness, like you think they are an important factor in hiring/tenure decisions. This certainly won't ruin your chances, but it could look silly.</p></li>\n<li><p>It could be viewed as a defiant statement, along the lines of \"I'm letting you know that my hobbies are particularly important to me and I intend to spend more time on them than you would like.\" If your CV is great otherwise you might be able to get away with this, but it will work against you. (I've seen this happen with graduate admissions, where someone devoted part of their personal statement to a favorite hobby and the committee worried that this hobby could be a distraction from research.)</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Hiring committees do care about hiring reasonable colleagues who aren't going to be jerks, so human qualities are relevant (and not just academic accomplishments). Interviews shed light on this issue, as do letters of recommendation, and the CV is not so relevant.</p>\n\n<p>Note that academic evaluation criteria are entirely different from undergraduate admissions in the United States. In that case, colleges are trying to assemble a self-contained community, and they really care about breadth, well-roundedness, leadership, personality, etc. Showing something about yourself as a human being is absolutely crucial. However, this is an anomaly of U.S. undergraduate admissions, and graduate admissions, faculty hiring, etc. are done completely differently. [I know your question never mentioned this comparison, but I decided to mention it for completeness since it's a common cause of confusion.]</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32819,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It probably varies with countries and institutions, but according to the <a href=\"http://cv.hms.harvard.edu/index.php?page=templates\" rel=\"nofollow\">standard CV recommended/requested by the Harvard Medical School</a>:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Reviews: <strong>Yes.</strong> Reviewing grants, list of journals for which you are <em>ad hoc</em> reviewer, editorial board memberships, etc.</li>\n<li>Non-academic service: <strong>Yes (to some extent).</strong> List services that have a tie to your area of expertise (if your field is medicine, list <em>pro bono</em> work for a medical NGO, etc.) </li>\n<li>Hobbies: <strong>No.</strong></li>\n<li>Languages: <strong>No (with some exceptions)</strong>. However, <em>if your mother language is neither English nor the local language</em>, indicate your proficiency in both, possibly with standard test scores. Excellent written English proficiency is obviously a major asset in academia, and a good knowledge of the local language can make you stand out.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 35143,
"author": "David M W Powers",
"author_id": 6390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6390",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, I want to see more than your publications and academic record. In particular hobbies, languages, clubs, sports and community involvement are important to mention. Were you on the chess team, the debating team, the school paper? Have you worked commercially, managed people, run a business?</p>\n\n<p>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).</p>\n\n<p>From your community/commercial involvement I might get insight into your aims in life, you leadership ability, your willingness to work alongside other people and health. Applications of mathematics, the sciences and the arts are now strongly driven to be commercially viable. World-wide universities are driven to non-traditional research and non-traditional funding, and to hire people with appropriate experience. </p>\n\n<p>I'm not interested in a statement of purpose or some other hype that sounds more like something out of a fortune cookie than the kind of evidential data that belongs in formal curriculum vitae.</p>\n\n<p>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/reviewing/marking/examining a thesis or a paper or a grant, how you will approach/understand the literature, whether you can work on particular interdisciplinary or application-oriented parts of the research.</p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n\n<p>When people are indistinguishable on paper in terms of formal criteria, it is often these extras that will tip the balance and tell me who is best for the job.</p>\n\n<p>The people who say to remove these things are the kind of people who want to fit other people neatly into boxes. I wouldn't employ any of them!</p>\n\n<p>I'm not exactly sure what OP means by \"review conferences/journals\", but published reviews and indeed all papers you have written should be included, and reviewing for conferences, journals and funding bodies is something that is worth mentioning for someone who is applying for a job early in their academic career. Later in your career, I'd be looking for membership of program committees and editorial boards, and there should be so many venues you've reviewed for it wouldn't be worth the dozen extra pages to list them all. I review dozens of papers a year for countless conferences and journals...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37655,
"author": "Sylvain Peyronnet",
"author_id": 43,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm adding here an answer for the \"languages\" part of the question.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Languages</strong>: <strong>Mandatory in some fields</strong></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>First, you have fields where knowing some languages is mandatory <em>per se</em>, this is mostly the case for ancient languages (akkadian, egyptian, ancient greek, etc.) and for history (you have to be able to read at least English, German and French if you want to do a great job at studying WW2 history).</p>\n\n<p>Second, in some fields, such as Egyptology for instance (I know that first hand, my wife being one them ;)), research papers can be written indifferently in English, French, German or Italian. If you know all four languages you can read the complete bibliography, otherwise you cannot, and not all scholars in the field can read or speak all four languages so this can be a huge advantage to have that in your CV if this is the case.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/06
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32816",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24823/"
] |
32,827 |
<p>I spent a year at a community college working in industry straight out of high school. I recently got into a top cs program and will be attending starting spring 2015. However, the school only gave me until spring 2017 to finish my degree, which means I will be at the 4-year university for 5 semesters. Will I be at a disadvantage when applying to top graduate schools in comparison to my peers, who have been at their university for 4 years? I am a CS major who will attend a top cs program.</p>
<p>Also, due to my transfer situation, I feel that I am severely disadvantaged in terms of research opportunities. This is because for most of the labs at my school, professors have formal requirements which often entail good grades in high-level electives specific to the research. Unfortunately, I probably won't have time to complete many of these electives, and even if I do, it will most likely be during my last year. I want to get started in research as soon as possible, but I also know that I don't have much specific experience for my fields of interest (which include AI, NLP, machine learning, and data mining). How should I reconcile these gaps, and what tips do you have for a new student getting engaged in research?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32834,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Some things you might consider:</p>\n\n<p>1) Doing a master's degree at a good CS program before applying for a PhD. This will give you an extra year or two to participate in research.</p>\n\n<p>2) Contacting professors outside your university for research opportunities.</p>\n\n<p>3) Doing unpaid independent studies with professors and later graduating to paid, formal research opportunities. (Many professors won't have time for this, but it's worth a try I think.)</p>\n\n<p>The usual advice for contacting professors holds (be enthusiastic and demonstrate a sincere interest in their work).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32838,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Simply having attended a community college earlier in your academic career is not going to hurt you if you have a degree, good grades, good letters of recommendation, etc. from a top program as well as all the other stuff that matters like good tests scores and research experience. Having attended a lower status school is not a permanent black mark and simply will not matter if your subsequent work proves that you are top-notch student and researcher.</p>\n\n<p>Having less research experience than your peers who are applying for the same graduate positions will put you at a disadvantage. Ben Bitdiddle's answer on how you might go about getting that given your relatively shorter period of time at a research university is good as are the answers to many other related questions on this site about getting research experience as an undergraduate.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32827",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25237/"
] |
32,828 |
<p>You would think that profs are living the high life when lectures are over and all they have to do is to hand out the exam (in a couple weeks) and grade them. But when I tried to get a hold of the profs, they seem to be busier than ever. One prof even stopped holding office hours all together and handed those duties to the TAs.</p>
<p>What do profs usually do after all lectures has stopped, and in general, when are profs most free in terms of their faculty duties during a semester?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32832,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The end of the semester particularly the period between the end of lectures and when students finally leave campus (which may be well after you've submitted grades) can be the busiest part of the semester because that's when you spend a lot of time dealing individually with students that have questions, complaints, or problems. The reason that this is so time consuming is that there are typically lots of these students, and each complaining student can easily take an hour out of your day. </p>\n\n<p>Meanwhile you may also be grading a lot of term papers or student projects and you're also busy writing, proctoring, and grading final exams. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32833,
"author": "J W",
"author_id": 12339,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12339",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It varies from university to university and from academic to academic, but here are some of the things that can keep professors/lecturers busy, apart from lectures and exams:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Doing research</li>\n<li>Serving on committees</li>\n<li>Preparing for the next course/semester</li>\n<li>Advising/supervising students</li>\n<li>Catching up on missed work</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Moreover, grading exams can be very time consuming in itself.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32841,
"author": "Patric Hartmann",
"author_id": 20449,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20449",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Oh, they are busy... Let me give you an insight to my professor's and my own schedule (I'm lecturer, not yet regular professor as I am still lacking the habilitation thesis).</p>\n\n<p>We have a short meeting every working day at 7.30 to organise the daily business and schedule big meetings for big issues.</p>\n\n<p>After that there is always enough to do: Those who lecture always have something to prepare: Writing or correcting scripts, correcting theseis and exams, preparing slides, organising participants for congresses (or participate themselves) and prepare talks for such events. Many professors and lecturers also hold talks outside of university, so there's also this stuff to prepare. </p>\n\n<p>Then there are commitees. Mine has to organise a major congress in March 2015, we are already very busy now: Contacting possible participants, reading through all the literature the participants wrote on the topic, preparing our own papers and talks in response to it, etc.</p>\n\n<p>My working day starts at 7.30 and normally doesn't end before 7 to 8PM. Just yesterday I attended a congress from another commitee and including the dinner (where you also keep discussing) I spend my saturday at university from 7 in the morning until 11pm...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32854,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Last year, Eszter Hargittai published an essay in Inside Higher Ed titled <a href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/10/02/essay-documenting-what-faculty-member-does-summer\" rel=\"nofollow\">\"How I spent Summer 'Vacation'\"</a> that provides a nearly comprehensive account of what professors do during their non-teaching time.</p>\n\n<p>A very incomplete list of things that Professor Hargittai mentions that she did over a single summer \"vacation\" include:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Teaching and Mentoring</strong>: syllabus design; assignment and exam preparation; reading recently published materials in an area to be covered by a class; advising students on independent work; reading and commenting on drafts of papers, dissertations, etc; converting student from incomplete; discussing graduate school with potential applications; designing and conducting general examinations; conducting dissertation proposal defenses; conducting dissertation defenses; preparing for any/all of the above.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Research</strong>: IRB proposal creation and revision; catching up on the literature in one's field; collecting data; analyzing data; writing up papers; responding to reviews; writing book proposals; courting editors at presses; recommending reviewers; traveling to and attending conferences; organizing logistics for travel to conferences; preparing presentations for conferences; designing and writing grant proposals; reviewing grant proposals; interviewing and hiring research staff.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Service</strong>: researching or writing letters of recommendation; writing tenure letters; preparing tenure/promotion files; writing reviews; acting as an editor or associate editor for a journal or conference; miscellaneous work on committees including reading graduate applications, designing department wide curriculum, creating job descriptions for new faculty positions.</p>\n\n<p>All of these things are much harder, or even impossible, to do when classes are in session.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32876,
"author": "Superbest",
"author_id": 244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<ul>\n<li>Not before the exams, because they will be busy preparing exam questions.</li>\n<li>Not during the exams, because they will be dealing with exam logistics such as finding an exam room and students who ask last minute questions.</li>\n<li>Not after the exams, because they will need to grade the exams.</li>\n<li>Not after grades are announced, because many students will be trying to complain about their grade.</li>\n<li>Not before the end of the semester, since they will be assigning letter grades and responding to students who want to get a better grade.</li>\n<li>Not at the beginning of the school year or other times when prospective graduate students are looking for an advisor.</li>\n<li>Not on holiday breaks, since they will likely be busy with the holiday.</li>\n<li>Not in the middle of summer, since they may have decided to use the free time to get a lot of traveling to conferences done.</li>\n<li>Not in fall since that's when a lot of grant deadlines are due.</li>\n<li>Not in late spring/early summer/late summer, since that's the most common time thesis defenses are done.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Generally, I don't think you can expect to find any specific time that professors are reliably found to be more available. There are usually many, many people competing for a professor's time, and together they comprise a very efficient market. If it is ever noticed that a given professor tends to be free around a certain time, everyone will immediately prioritize that time, hoping to catch the professor free, and thereby destroying the availability.</p>\n\n<p>Many professors have brief, transient periods of being less busy than usual, but these are chaotically distributed in time and impossible to easily predict without careful analysis of the professor in question. Unless you regularly interact with a professor, your best bet is to just ask them when they are free.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32828",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20070/"
] |
32,835 |
<p>My supervisor has already invited formally the professor to be my examiner.
Do I need to invite the professor personally as he may learn more about my work?
Is there any conflict of interest to do so?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32837,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The way in which doctoral examiners are selected will differ between countries, between universities within countries, and within schools. Ask your supervisor for advice on what you should do here and follow their instructions.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32846,
"author": "David Richerby",
"author_id": 10685,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ask your supervisor but I've never heard of PhD students being expected to invite people to examine them. You're right to worry about conflicts of interest and appearing to try to influence your examiner by contacting them.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32835",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25242/"
] |
32,844 |
<p>I've recently typed up a mathematics research paper, but I would like to make it appear more formal when I submit it to be peer-reviewed.</p>
<p>Also, how would I be able to incorporate LATEX into my paper?</p>
<p>Are there any templates out there that follow formats similar (maybe even exact) to examples such as <a href="http://www.math.umbc.edu/~gobbert/latex/template.pdf" rel="nofollow">this</a> and <a href="http://www.ams.jhu.edu/~ers/learn-latex/paper.pdf" rel="nofollow">this one</a>.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32845,
"author": "Aru Ray",
"author_id": 948,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/948",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would recommend using the amsart LaTeX format: <a href=\"http://www.ctan.org/pkg/amsart\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.ctan.org/pkg/amsart</a></p>\n\n<p>If you would like an intro to LaTeX itself, consider going through the wikibook: <a href=\"http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32847,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Often, the journal you want to submit to will provide a LaTeX template. Look at its \"Guide for Authors\" section.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32849,
"author": "Yuichiro Fujiwara",
"author_id": 7075,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7075",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You can download the latex sources of the vast majority of (actually almost all) math preprints posted to arXiv. Just go to the abstract page of your favorite math paper and click on \"Other formats\" under \"Download.\" There you can find the link to the source file in latex as long as the author(s) uploaded it and complied by arXiv's latex engine (which pretty much everyone does).</p>\n\n<p>I think reading the actual sources of nicely typeset papers you like is a very effective way to learn how to latex.</p>\n\n<p>For example, here's the abstract page of my latest preprint:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.2559\">http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.2559</a></p>\n\n<p>and its source is here:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://arxiv.org/format/1409.2559v4\">http://arxiv.org/format/1409.2559v4</a></p>\n\n<p>To get the latex file I submitted, click \"Download source\" near the bottom right.</p>\n\n<p>The file is in compressed format. But as the arXiv page says, your browser may uncompress the file. My Google Chrome for Mac does this, so what I actually get by clicking the download link is a latex file, which is named \"1409.2559v4\" with no extension. If your browser behaves the same way, you can simply rename the file to attach \".tex\" at the end if the extension is important.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 35155,
"author": "David Richerby",
"author_id": 10685,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The question is based on something of a misunderstanding. On Stack Exchange, it is possible to incorporate LaTeX into a post by using dollar signs. However, when you're writing a stand-alone document, you don't \"incorporate\" LaTeX: rather, you write the whole document in LaTeX. (An analogy would be asking \"How do I incorporate MS Word into a document?\" You dont – you write the whole document that way.)</p>\n\n<p>As such, you'll have to re-typeset the whole document using LaTeX, if that's the route you want to go down. The good news is that a LaTeX document looks a lot like a Stack Exchange post when you're editing it. It's mostly just a text file, with ordinary text as text and mathematics in dollar signs. (Plus a \"preamble\" of initialization commands at the top, and a few commands within the document, such as to start a new section.) So you can mostly copy-paste from your Word document (or whatever it is you used for the first version), put dollar signs around short pieces of maths that appear in the main text (e.g., <code>Pythagoras proved that $a^2+b^2=c^2$.</code>) You will have to re-work the displayed equations and any more complex pieces of inline mathematics.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32844",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14306/"
] |
32,848 |
<p>My supervisor encouraged me to apply for a conference presentation, as he had funding for me to go. The problem was that I had no results at the time, since the conference date was six months after the abstract deadline. At the time I thought I would have results in time so I wrote an abstract (stating what I plan to do and why it is important, but posted no results) and got accepted for a poster presentation.</p>
<p>Now it is 1 week before the conference and I have very poor results. I was able to complete the experiment, but the the results are much too poor to present. Unfortunately I have no time to redo anything and do not have any previous research (am a masters student). Which one of these is worse?:</p>
<ol>
<li>Presenting meaningless results just so you can present</li>
<li>Presenting a vague poster (show the theory, methodology, importance, but no tangible results) to get around poor data.</li>
<li>Not showing up to the conference and get a partial refund.</li>
</ol>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32850,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would recommend another option: present the current truth of your work and results. You can get feedback on the methods and approach and somebody may even be able to point out adjustments to your approach that may help the work. Even just talking to people outside of your lab can be an important part of developing as a researcher. Don't try to hide the state of your work or pretend you have more than you have: people will be able to tell and it will not help you. Instead present yourself as you are: an early student looking for interaction around these ideas.</p>\n\n<p>Note, of course, that this is all subject to your professor's approval: they know your community better than random strangers on the internet.</p>\n\n<p>Finally: let this be a lesson for the future. Don't give in to pressure to claim results that you may not get. It is always better to say \"And here are some new results not mentioned in the abstract...\" than to explain why you can't deliver what you promised.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32866,
"author": "O. R. Mapper",
"author_id": 14017,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14017",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As so often, this may be field-specific, so I'm giving a CS perspective:</p>\n\n<p>Posters are not full papers. Often, it is totally acceptable that a poster presents work in progress, or preliminary results. While a paper adds some vague hints to separate future steps in continuing the research after presenting a finished contribution, on a poster, that can well be the other way round.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore: Use the opportunity to show what you have done so far and where you want to go from there on your poster. Reconsider what the gist of the poster is - you may have to give up the plan that the poster is about your results, and switch the focus of your poster to talking about your research process. That way, you can present the goal of your poster to collect comments and suggestions on how to retrieve some meaningful results in the direction you're interested in.</p>\n\n<p>Like this, you are not presenting just so you can present, you are presenting because it is the best way to get concrete comments by other researchers.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, it depends on what exactly you have written in your poster abstract. If you explicitly said there that the poster will focus on results, the situation may be more problematic.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32848",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25251/"
] |
32,855 |
<p>Currently, in my CV, the first section is the <em>About me</em> section. It goes like this (I'll reserve the format of the text):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Broad knowledge,</strong> is why my friends are proud of me.<br>
<strong>Never stops asking questions,</strong> is what my advisor values in me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I wonder if writing like this gives makes me look bad. Will the recruiters see me as a confident person, get a better picture of me (which is the impression I want to convey), or will they see me as just arrogant, lacking self-esteem and paranoid?</p>
<p>Next sections are <em>Education</em>, <em>Research Experience</em> and <em>Activities</em>. They are about one page and a half long.</p>
<p>What do you think? Please be frank. Thank you so much.</p>
<hr>
<p>Thanks to the many people who answered my question, I get that I should save it for the SOP. However, there are some occasions where I'm only asked to send my CV and not a cover letter with it. Should I still keep the "About me" section as a mini SOP in such cases? If it sounds like "platitudes, clichés, and self-compliments" (thanks for being frank, I do need it), how about this idea I just came up with?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I chose science because I want to know everything. I chose physics because I think it is the buttress of other disciplines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I can make it better later.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32856,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My sense is that broad platitudes, clichés, and self-compliments like the ones you've included are not going to be particularly helpful. I would skip them.</p>\n\n<p>Stick to the basics. There are many websites and templates online that will help give you a sense for what is appropriate and expected. In general, the risk of trying to be creative, especially when you don't have a good sense of your audience or what is expecting, will probably outweigh the potential benefits. If the problem is that your CV is short and weak, there are other questions like <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19099/5962\">this one</a> that might be of some help.</p>\n\n<p>Most importantly, make sure that you have your CV carefully proofread by a native speaker. <em>Both of your two examples sentences are written in poor English</em>. If you put those sentences at the top of your CV, you're going to be sending a message that you probably would rather not.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32857,
"author": "Formagella",
"author_id": 24716,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24716",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In a résumé, you want to list facts and what you achieved. </p>\n\n<p>I do not think anybody cares about what your friends think of you. </p>\n\n<p>Those sentences look extremely cheesy because of their structure, in addition to being grammatically wrong. If you write that, you WILL scare whoever reads your CV. \nThey are also useless as they do not mean anything specific and are not verifiable, they do not contain any HR-drone buzzwords either. </p>\n\n<p>I would skip the About Me section, you can list any meaningful hobbies you have under Activities or whatever that means. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to, you can add a \"Profile\" section at the top, but just do a brief sum up of your professional profile. </p>\n\n<p>Remember that you can write about yourself and how your characteristics would make you a good fit in the cover letter. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32859,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>1) This is nonstandard, so people are likely to view you as odd, or at the very least unfamiliar with academic norms.</p>\n\n<p>2) On a CV, you should prioritize specific, tangible achievements over things that literally anyone could say about themselves. You say you have broad knowledge, but will anyone believe you? It doesn't do anything to differentiate you from people who could also claim to have broad knowledge. Save that for your letters of reference.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32884,
"author": "Rob Kinyon",
"author_id": 25278,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25278",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When I read a CV, I'm looking for why I should hire you. In particular, I'm looking for two things - how useful you're going to be in the first 90 days (how relevant is your experience right now!) and how easy you will learn things for the next 3 years (how broad is your experience, implying you can learn things as this field changes). I'm in computer programming, but I've found this holds for most fields.</p>\n\n<p>I don't care about what your friends say about you. I care about what you have done. So, skills, experience, then education/other (in that order).</p>\n\n<p>Remember - this is a sales pitch. You are marketing and selling yourself. Anyone who tells you a CV is anything else is wrong.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32896,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This answer will be somewhat U.S. centric. In the U.S., almost everyone <em>except</em> academics makes something they call a \"résumé\". But people applying for academic jobs make something else that they call a \"vita\" (a curriculum vitae). There is a significant distinction between the two documents, so if you speak with people in the U.S. you have to be clear which one you mean. And, if someone asks for a vita, you need to get a sense of what they are looking for. </p>\n\n<p>Quoting briefly from Wikipedia's article \"<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae\">curriculum vitae</a>\":</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"In the United Kingdom, most Commonwealth countries, and Ireland, a C.V. is short (usually a maximum of two sides of A4 paper), and therefore contains only a summary of the job seeker's employment history, qualifications, education, and some personal information. ... In the United States a C.V. is used in academic circles and medical careers as a \"replacement\" for a résumé and is far more comprehensive; the term résumé (a French word which literally means \"summary\") is used for most recruitment campaigns. \"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>A U.S. academic vita is essentially just an objective list of the things you have done in your career. For example, here are vitas for <a href=\"http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html\">Terence Tao</a> (math) and <a href=\"https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jclee/cv/julia_cv.pdf\">Julia C. Lee</a> (physics). There is no direct \"sell\", and the vita is not customized much (if at all) for specific applications. It's just a summary of your life. Sometimes, well-established people make a \"summary\" vita, which is just a shorter vita that omits less important information. There is very little \"personal opinion\", and very little to no commentary. \"Just the facts.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32948,
"author": "Charles Stewart",
"author_id": 24914,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24914",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You should not have just one CV, but you should tailor your CV based on the recipient. The distinction Veblen makes <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/32896/24914\">in his answer</a> between resume and vitae is useful to bear in mind (although I do not make this distinction in what follows), and it is also important to bear in mind that expectations about what should appear in a CV vary between countries and industries. For example, CVs in Germany tend to be very long (e.g., I have just edited a German CV that is nine dense pages long), exhaustively documenting every post held, with every committee you served on at each post, every professional society attended, every journal for whom you have refereed, etc; and furthermore there is a strong expectation in Germany that the CV contains only objective information. In the UK, by contrast, CVs are expected to be short, most typically two pages, and it is quite acceptable to list only your most significant places of employment, and to add subjective information, such as what you consider to be your biggest achievement during the period you held a post.</p>\n\n<p>In general, testimonials may be valuable in some applications, but they should be attributed, it should be clear why the testimonial is credible, and they are probably better in your cover letter than a CV, and if you do put them in your CV, I recommend that you have a testimonial section in your CV. They are more acceptable in the US than in Europe.</p>\n\n<p>You ask about <em>occasions where I'm only asked to send my CV and not a cover letter with it</em> - this is a place where putting more and more subjective information into a CV may be useful. It is common for recruiters to want just your CV: be aware that the standard of ethics in the recruiting business is not high and you should not be too dependent on their services.</p>\n\n<p>If in doubt, <em>contact the human resources department</em> of the institution to whom you apply before sending anything. Doing so demonstrates initiative, often will yield useful tips on an unofficial basis, might give you insight into what and how many applications there are for the post, and may help you avoid what the intitution regards as mistakes in a CV.</p>\n\n<p>It is possible to provide supplementary information about your career if you have a page on a website, and provide the URL to this page at the top of your CV. It's common to link to Linked In pages, although bespoke pages offer more flexibility for you to tailor your presentation, include more subjective information, and probably will have higher information density and attractiveness than these networking websites can offer. I do not recommend putting exhaustive information about your career online: this material can be abused.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 54290,
"author": "gaborous",
"author_id": 3971,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3971",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To me, it seems you are trying to include in your CV the content that belongs to your <strong>cover letter</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>As previous answers highlighted, a CV is mainly to present <strong>actual past achievements</strong>. This should be a document that looks as <strong>objective, removed of feelings and subjective opinions</strong> as possible.</p>\n\n<p>That's why the <strong>cover letter</strong> is a natural complement to the CV: this is where you present your achievements and yourself in a more <strong>human aspect</strong>: you describe not only your achievements, but also <strong>why and how</strong> you did them, how do you work in a team, etc. However, you still have to be, or at least sound like, as <strong>factual and professional</strong> as possible: the interviewer is not your pal, he/she doesn't want to know what your friends think of you, but how you will handle your work and <strong>how you will fit in the professional setting</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>This is not to say that you cannot put a bit of subjective info in your CV, for example some people put at the head of the first page (just below the name and contact details) a short description of their academic education and their short-term and long-term goals (eg, \"I have a PhD from the Amazing University, and I intend to work in the field of subquantic fields for panoptic pathologies.\" -- this is total gibberish, but you see the point).</p>\n\n<p>So the bottom line is that <strong>if you want to give some insight about you, you should provide a cover letter, do not add this info inside your CV</strong>.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32855",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14341/"
] |
32,860 |
<p>I'm interested in going to grad school for a master's in computer science (I'm also applying to a MS/MBA program at a few schools). I have a 3.8 GPA from a highly regarded school, 99th percentile GRE scores, and not much else. I have no publications or research, minimal connections with professors, and my references will likely be only average. I do have some internship experience though. Should I bother?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32865,
"author": "user59419",
"author_id": 20608,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20608",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, you should know that GPA is mostly used as a negative factor. This means good GPA does not guarantee your spot in graduate school but bad GPA will definitely hurt your chance. GRE is the same but it has lower weight than GPA. In order to be accepted to top schools in US for PhD program you must have strong letter of recommendation and at least some quarters/semesters of research experiences. \nYou mentioned you GPA but you did not specify what GPA you mean? is that your overall GPA or major GPA? \nregarding the question\"Should I bother\"? Yes. you should apply and you might have a good chance of being accepted to top schools in US for MS program since MS admission is handled different from PhD admission. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32875,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I'm interested in going to grad school for a master's in computer science</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There are two distinct types of masters degrees in computer science, at least in the US.</p>\n\n<p>One is the professional masters degree, which is entirely course-based. Professional masters are considered terminal degrees; by pursuing such a degree you are cutting off (or at least drastically reducing) any future opportunity to join a PhD program. Also, professional masters students are rarely funded. You pay tuition, you take classes, you get your degree, and you leave, with a higher salary. High grades and test scores can <em>definitely</em> get you into these programs, even in top departments.</p>\n\n<p>The other is the research masters degree, which requires some courses, but also includes a research component ending in a thesis. Research masters programs are often used as preparation for, or even soft entry into, PhD programs. Thanks to an explosion of undegraduate CS majors, it's become much more common for research masters students to be funded. Gaining admission to such a program, at least in top departments, usually requires more than just high grades and high test scores. You also need some evidence of research potential (which doesn't necessarily mean actual research experience).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32922,
"author": "Rob",
"author_id": 21446,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21446",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is not clear what you want to do - research or industry. If the former, then you have no research experience in your degree program, which is a concern. You don't know if you like it, the grad school doesn't know if you like it or are at all good at it.. Maybe take a year and get a 'real job' while sorting this out. You can hire on at your school maybe as a tech, or as a saleried position for research programming type positions.</p>\n\n<p>I am not sure you really need a MS to get into IT though, maybe you want to try the working world for a while before you change your mind?</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32860",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24433/"
] |
32,861 |
<p>I am currently writing my statement of purpose (SOP) for top graduate schools in engineering majors in US. I am wondering should I include name of my potential advisor on my SOP (Is it a good idea to do that)? The problem is I am thinking if I do not include name of advisor it might be the sign I did not look at his/her research page and I am not very specific about my plan. On the other side, if I include name of potential advisor and my application is not competitive or he/she is not accepting any graduate student this might cause others not to look at my application since they might think I am not interested in their research.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32862,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Faculty at a top-10 school in aerospace engineering gave a former student of mine the advice of indicating <em>several</em> professors whose research he was interested in, for exactly the reasons you suggest: by showing too narrow a scope, it makes it harder for other researchers to gain interest, and by just submitting a \"generic\" SOP, you run the risk of looking like you're not doing your homework. Showing an interest in several faculty makes it easier for <em>someone</em> to advocate for you in the admissions committee.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32863,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think it's standard to list some potential advisors. It shows you know what you want and you have a good reason to be interested in the school. And if none of the advisors you want are taking students, do you really want to attend the school in the first place?</p>\n\n<p>(In the long run I think it's better to get rejected from a school than to go there and realize there's no one there who wants to work with you who you would also be willing to work with.)</p>\n\n<p>I would also go into some detail about the area of research you are interested in. This is a good chance to display your familiarity with the topic/maturity as a researcher, and it will help them assess whether they have spots for you.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32861",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20608/"
] |
32,867 |
<p>I have some questions regarding graduate admission (PHD) in us university. The guidelines stated on the maximum university websites are that they require academic transcripts. My question is that, are the Bachelor of Science (BSc) and Masters of Science (MSc ) transcripts only?
or I will have to send all the academic records(verified) from the childhoods?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32868,
"author": "user18244",
"author_id": 18244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18244",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It refers only to BSc and MSc scores. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32871,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Most of the time—and definitely in the United States and Canada—it refers to only the transcripts from post-secondary schools. In some European countries (such as Germany), they may want to see the secondary school transcripts (or at least proof of graduation from a secondary school). However, in such cases, they will usually state so explicitly.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32867",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
32,870 |
<p>On the one hand, I'd like to produce a few graphs every week so my project can move forward. Taking a month off to learn a new programming language, do a literature review, or work through a relevant textbook would hurt the pace of my research, and my advisor would wonder why I haven't done anything for a month.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if I take time off to learn a new skill, it may make my research faster and more efficient in the future.</p>
<p>What is the best way to balance these competing demands?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32872,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think this is an instance of a more general problem, of trading off short-term efforts to hit particular milestones vs. longer-term investments. Those longer-term investments might be learning a new skill, but might as easily be organizing your thoughts, refactoring a code base, improving your work environment, hunting through the literature, etc.</p>\n\n<p>When you can do both at once, it's ideal, but often that's not the case. If you focus on the short term, you end up in danger of neglecting the forest for the trees. If you go for the long term, you might end up engaged in some serious <a href=\"http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving\">yak shaving</a>.</p>\n\n<p>I personally struggle with this quite a bit, especially when you also consider the additional responsibilities of writing papers and pursuing grants. The best solution that I have found so far is essentially duty cycling. On any given day, I will decide which task is my primary goal for the day, and just keep switching to make sure that neither short-term nor long-term is getting unduly neglected.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32873,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>A common fallacy I observe in students I supervise is that they think they need to spend some time \"learning X\" <em>before</em> they can use X productively in their research.</p>\n\n<p>If you are doing research, the most efficient way to \"learn X\" (where X is a programming language, methodology, or subject area, that may be of use in your research) is almost always to learn it by immediately applying it directly to your research.</p>\n\n<p>In other words, I tell my students that if they are \"taking time off\" to learn something before starting to use it in their work, they are doing it wrong. </p>\n\n<p>I would give the same advice to you: instead of taking time off to learn a new skill, start applying it to your research <em>right now</em>. You might be a little slower than usual for a couple of weeks (because you aren't comfortable with the new skill yet), but you'll still be making forward progress on your research, while learning the new thing.</p>\n\n<p>Edit: This applies even <em>more</em> if the thing you are learning is a fundamental skill, and not an \"extra\" technique. Fundamental skills include things like writing readable code, scientific writing, keeping good notes, etc. The best way to learn these things is to actively and consciously work on them <em>as you do research.</em> It's not generally effective to take \"time off\" to read some books, <em>then</em> go back to doing research and start practicing the things you read about.</p>\n\n<p>If it's a new skill that can't be directly applied to your research, then you definitely shouldn't take time off to learn it. But you might consider spending time on it <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28336/what-productive-academic-work-can-you-do-with-minimal-attention-in-a-small-30\">during intervals of downtime</a>. You can't spend 100% of your working time on your primary research anyways (mental fatigue sets in at some point), so spend time learning the new skill when you need a break.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32888,
"author": "Niru",
"author_id": 25282,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25282",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is something I think about a lot as well. Even if you learn new things while doing research, you will still be slower and there are always things you want to learn that aren't directly connected to your ongoing projects.</p>\n\n<p>I asked my advisor about this trade-off once and his recommendation was to do enough work to get to the next stage (ie do enough as a grad student to get a good post-doc, enough as a post-doc to get a faculty job) and then spend the rest of your time learning and thinking about new things. I'm actually quite fond of that answer, but the key is in knowing how much is enough! </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32935,
"author": "candied_orange",
"author_id": 15375,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15375",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Have other people review what you produce. </p>\n\n<p>Learn by doing is wonderful when it works but if you don't show your work to others you're trusting the judgment of someone who actually doesn't know what they're doing aren't you? :)</p>\n\n<p>In the agile world of software development the typical time box is two weeks. Produce something (in your case a graph) in two weeks then subject it to review by other people. If it fails you go back and fix it. Otherwise move on to the next graph. Learn what you need to know to make each thing as you go. Sure, your first few graphs will suck compared to your later ones but worry about that when you're sure you can do better AND you have time.</p>\n\n<p>You can fiddle with the two week time box but keep in mind that the more time you have between reviews the more rope you've got to hang yourself with. It really stinks to spend two months making something only to be told its worthless or already exists. You can try to make the time box smaller. The risk there is that your reviewer will get sick of helping you if you ask for reviews to often. </p>\n\n<p>Neat trick here is that almost everyone can be effective as a reviewer even when they aren't an expert in what you are doing. So you can take your work before many people to get feedback so long as you can get them interested.</p>\n\n<p>This way you get results and learn as you go. You will learn mostly what you need to know to finish that project. If you are feeling the need to take time off to learn new skills then what you're really asking for isn't time off. It's another project. One that needs those skills.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes a project runs you into an area where your skill set is weak. That's bound to happen eventually. You can respond by panicking and putting everything on hold while you fill in your skill set or you can get some help from someone and create a plan to learn and create just what you need to get back to your project. </p>\n\n<p>If, say, you want to learn something (that helps you make graphs) then great, what are you going to make while you learn it? If you can't produce a graph in two weeks what can you produce? Break the problem down until the first chunk is something you're confident you can do in two weeks. Whatever it is you should also find a way to test it. If it's a language, and you've made something that works, you can get it peer reviewed at <a href=\"https://codereview.stackexchange.com/\">https://codereview.stackexchange.com/</a>. So yeah, you're right back into that two week time box. When times up you darn well should have made something to show someone.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes you just need some more freedom to explore. A long demanding project can become a tyrant in your life. It will force you to learn what it needs, not necessarily what you find interesting. Taking time away from it and working on something related can be good to help you refresh but don't fool yourself into thinking you're accomplishing something while doing this. At most you're just learning something.</p>\n\n<p>I've been programming professionally in Java for about 4 years now. You might think I'd be done learning it by now, but no, I haven't. I've been programming in some language or another for decades. You might think there is some language that I'm done learning, but no, there isn't.</p>\n\n<p>I'd hate to think what would have happened if I waited to be done learning a language before producing something in it. Probably not a career.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/07
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32870",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384/"
] |
32,890 |
<p>When I was doing literature review, I came across a <a href="https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CBwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmaxwellsci.com%2Fprint%2Frjaset%2Fv5-3015-3020.pdf&ei=7X6FVM3wDImIuATrooBQ&usg=AFQjCNFojANCyhn4EZAL_SkL5ljblDhtPA&bvm=bv.80642063,d.c2E">paper</a> published in a journal <a href="http://maxwellsci.com/jp/j2p.php?jid=RJASET">Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology</a>. </p>
<p>Now, I can't find this paper anywhere else, no citations, or anything. Just the pdf that I linked above. Also, the journal website looks shady as links don't work and it just does not have the make or look of an academic journal. Additionally, I couldn't even find anything about the authors.</p>
<p>What should be done in such cases? Should the paper be completely ignored or put in the review section? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32899,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The reasons these journals are called predatory is because they prey on unwary researchers looking for places to publish their work, tricking them into publishing with them rather than in legitimate places. So just because a paper is in a predatory journal does not mean that it is necessarily bad work.</p>\n\n<p>However, this paper still needs to be treated with greatly heightened suspicion: it should be assumed that it has not had any peer review, and that the authors are unfamiliar enough with the area and with the normal practices of science that they could be tricked by a predatory journal. Alternately, they may have sent the work to the journal intentionally because they needed another line on their CV and knew the paper was not going to survive real peer review.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, although such a paper <em>might</em> be legitimate, it is also very likely to be of low quality and may well even be fraudulent or <a href=\"http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts-profanity-laced-anti-spam-paper/\" rel=\"nofollow\">simply nonsense</a>. It can also cause trouble for <em>you</em> if you cite it, as readers may think that you are not informed enough to tell the difference between real research and predatory crap.</p>\n\n<p>I would thus suggest treating the paper like a random PDF found on the web: it might be usable as a primary source (e.g., like a newspaper opinion piece or a personal essay), or to point you for looking for similar information elsewhere. If this information has only ever been published in this one paper in a fake journal, however, it should be considered to effectively not be published at all: the context in which it has been found casts so much doubt on its likelihood of being legitimate, and anything substantive will likely develop multiple real publications over time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32914,
"author": "Akka Demic",
"author_id": 23986,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23986",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The question of whether to cite should be based on whether the work provides relevant context, whether you have been informed by the work, or if you have built off of the work.</p>\n\n<p>The question of whether the work appears in a fraudulent journal is a red herring.</p>\n\n<p>Was the work useful to you? If yes, cite it.</p>\n\n<p>Did you build off of this work? If yes, cite it.</p>\n\n<p>Does it provide useful context related to the problem that you're trying to solve? If yes, cite it.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32890",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15029/"
] |
32,897 |
<p>I have received a letter of recommendation which clearly has been written by my referee's assistant, rather than himself. That in itself wouldn't be a problem if it didn't contain phrases such as <em>what's more...</em> and <em>like event study etc</em>.</p>
<p>What should I do about this? Do I just forget about the reference? Do I very carefully suggest to the assistant to make some minor changes (this letter is based on a previous draft I was asked to submit)?</p>
<p>It may also be worth noting that the referee is the first supervisor for my thesis and I do not want to seem ungrateful by requesting changes to my letter of recommendation.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the use of the phrase <em>what's more</em> in a letter of recommendation is per se unacceptable, but my native language is German, so any comments by native speakers of English in this regard is appreciated.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32898,
"author": "user3209815",
"author_id": 14133,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I would certainly request a corrected version. Like you said, in a careful measure, I would keep the tone of the message somewhere along the lines \"some minor mistakes, happens to all of us, but these little changes go a long way in credibility of the letter\". In other words, don't criticize, put together a list of things you want corrected and send them to the referee. I deduce from your question that the letter was proxy-written, i.e. you haven't been told that it was the assistant who wrote it. That's why I'm recommending to contact the referee and not the assistant. However, if that is not the case, include both of them.</p>\n\n<p>I can't see why someone other than an extreme ego-maniac would choose not to correct their own grammar mistakes. Even it they for whatever reason do, it's still better than just to \"forget about the reference\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32908,
"author": "Lan",
"author_id": 23220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23220",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Start in an e-mail to the referencer \"Dear Dr. X, Thank-you ever so much for the reference letter.\" If there was something nice brought up in it like \"Constantin was an excellent student\", thank them for the kind words while citing the letter. Then, after you say your thanks, bring up the minor errors (don't list them exhaustively) asking if they could correct them, please. Thank them for their time in reading your e-mail.</p>\n\n<p>If they can't correct it, say thanks. If they can correct it, say thanks and that you really appreciate them taking time out of their busy day.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32897",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25093/"
] |
32,902 |
<p>When writing a PhD thesis on mathematics one needs to quote many results by others, such as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The following theorem was proved by ABC in [1].</p>
<p><strong>Theorem</strong>. Bla, bla, bla...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My question is when should one include a proof of the result in his/her PhD thesis, if it is basically the same as in the reference? I do not quite see the point of copy-pasting the proof by others. Of course if one has a completely different proof of the same result, it is probably suitable to include it.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32904,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Generally, you should only need to reproduce the proof verbatim in cases where you need to dissect it, call out one part of the proof in particular, or you intend to extend it directly using similar arguments, otherwise, stating the theorem and citing a work where it is proved should be sufficient. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32905,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a general rule, you can cite other people's theorems without explaining their proofs, and omitting a proof is a good idea if it would be a lengthy distraction. However, there are several reasons why including such a proof could be helpful:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Including it may be convenient for the reader if the proof is short. It's annoying to look up another paper and discover that you only needed a short argument that could easily have been explained in the original paper. Extracting information from a reference can be cumbersome (you have to locate exactly what you're looking for, figure out what it depends on, sort out the notation, etc.), while giving your own explanation can help readers avoid some of these difficulties.</p></li>\n<li><p>Even if the proof is not particularly short, it may serve as a warm-up for new applications of the same techniques. Reminding the reader how they work may make your paper much easier to read than if you just dive into the newest and most complicated case.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Ph.D. dissertations are something of a special case, because your advisor may encourage you to include extra details in the background sections (beyond what you might include in a published paper). This is partly a matter of demonstrating your mastery of the area and partly a matter of writing a useful survey for others. Advisors differ in how they approach this: some think it's a waste of time and it's best just to focus on writing a published paper, while others think writing a more extensive dissertation is a valuable learning exercise. This is an issue you should discuss with your advisor.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32913,
"author": "student",
"author_id": 25306,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25306",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't see any reason to copy a proof found somewhere else. I think its fine to say that this result and its proof can be found on this article. In my opinion, the proofs in a dissertation should be your own.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32916,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a good question, and as Anonymous Mathematician indicates, it is well worth discussing with your advisor.</p>\n<p>Essentially what you are asking is whether and when to include <em>exposition</em> in your PhD thesis. The answer is that it is rarely strictly required, but it is often expected, in many cases encouraged, and in some cases not necessary. There are a lot of nuances here and I don't foresee a comprehensive general answer being possible. (Anonymous Mathematician's answer is excellent, and I am essentially corroborating it.)</p>\n<p>Mathematics has a proud tradition of PhD theses having significant expository content. (In <a href=\"http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/thesis.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">my thesis</a>, Chapter 0 is expository. It occupies about half of the thesis. This is a bit on the lengthy side, but not so unusual.)</p>\n<p>One reason that this is done is because a PhD thesis is usually the last chance that your mentors get to lean on you and require that you show your mastery of highly difficult, technical concepts. When I am a committee member on a math PhD thesis, I generally want to see at least enough exposition to convince me that the writer has mastered the concepts, definitions and objects used in the thesis. Especially, I want to see key definitions in a lot of detail, even if they are long and taken from other sources.</p>\n<p>Another reason this is done is that the cultural standard in mathematics is that PhD theses can be significantly more discursive than published papers. When a PhD thesis gets converted to a paper, often there is a compression of 2:1 or more in terms of the page count, and often the results that appear in the paper are stronger than what appear in the thesis. (In mathematics, I gather unlike some other fields, one most often publishes the lion's share of one's thesis work <em>after</em> completing the thesis, not before.) Something's gotta give, and often math papers published in the strongest journals are written so that every single page contains an important new idea or truly difficult calculation. This density of content is a point of pride of the top journals, but it can make the papers awfully difficult to read. A lot of theses are famous for being the best sources of exposition for the topics they contain.</p>\n<p>Having said all this, it seems clear that little value is added by "copy-pasting". Taken literally: copying lengthy proofs verbatim from other sources would be plagiarism if carried too far. Most exposition in a PhD thesis is filling a gap in the literature, not reproducing it. Good exposition synthesizes several sources, offers new perspectives (including a bridge to the novel results, as <strong>AM</strong> mentions), chooses notation and hypotheses in a globally appropriate way, and so forth.</p>\n<p>Finally: formal proof is often the least important part of good mathematical exposition. Getting the definitions and statements just right and putting them in context is more important. Most contemporary math PhD theses build on significant technical foundations, <em>not all of which the student is expected to be personally conversant with</em>. A PhD thesis is not supposed to be "logically self-contained" in any formal sense, only to demonstrate mastery in the eyes of the committee members and to be a useful document for the reader in the eyes of the advisor and (most importantly) the writer. If you are thinking of more or less copying a proof "for completeness", that may not be the way to go.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32902",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24832/"
] |
32,929 |
<p>The phobia of flying is discouraging me to travel for conferences, although quite a number of them are very good opportunities for me to "market" the researches of our lab and of mine. Apparently, I can't overcome this phobia even with the help of therapists. I almost passed out due to panic attacks on the airplanes, and after the flights, I always felt too exhausted to do anything for an entire week. </p>
<p>I think it's time to let my supervisor know that I can't to go to any conferences that I have to fly there. How can I do it in the most professional way?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32930,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Since it doesn't sound like it's likely that you will be able able to work around it in the immediate future, I think you should schedule a meeting and just have the conversation. Explain your phobia, explain the effects, and explain that you have worked with therapists and that the problem is unresolved.</p>\n\n<p>Treat it like any other health or mental health disability that will affect your ability to carry out the tasks graduate students normally do and make it clear that you will attend conferences by train or bus where possible. There are many questions about health and disability on this site and the consensus generally is that if it will impact your performance, you should bring it up with your supervisor and colleagues as soon as possible. Since this has already become an issue, you should do that now.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32936,
"author": "gerrit",
"author_id": 1033,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you live in Europe or the United States, a severe phobia of flying should not invalidate an academic career. Some conferences will be excluded. You won't attend that conference in Hawaii, do field work in the (Ant)arctic, or visit the institute on the other continent (although moving there for a longer time is still possible — search Travel Stack Exchange for \"freighter travel\"). When you talk to your supervisor, I would bring up the alternative.</p>\n\n<p>It is possible to travel overland to conferences on the same continent. That has two issues:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>It might take 48 hours or longer to get there. You might have to leave Friday night for a conference that starts on Monday. Europe (still) has excellent intercity trains and one can get from northern Sweden to southern Italy in 48 hours. American trains are much less developed, but even if you are one one coast and need to get to the other, you can get there. Maybe 3 days on trains and buses. Are you willing to spend that time? Is your supervisor willing to let you spend that time?</p></li>\n<li><p>The cost. Even if the time is fine, it might cost significantly more to take train and bus, in particular if you request a bed on the train, so you can sleep. It doesn't have to cost more, but sometimes it does.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>During my PhD and postdoc, I've attended conferences regularly, but I've only flown twice — once for a California conference when I was based in Sweden, and once for a Korea conference when I was based in Canada. All other times, I've taken the train. Longest was 48 hours each way, for a 2-week conference. For me, it was not the fear of flying. I prefer the train, want to limit my impact on the environment, and found a line in my university's travel policy that sustainable transportation solutions should be preferred. My supervisor bought that and let me take the train.</p>\n\n<p>I don't know where you are. If you're in Australia, New Zealand, or another relatively remote corner, it's going to be a lot more difficult. If you're in Europe and in the future want to go to North America for a post-doc, or vice versa, you can <em>still</em> get there through <a href=\"https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Freighter_travel\">freighter travel</a> — although you probably don't want to do that for any visit shorter than six months. Even east Asia might work. Be creative — a life without flying is possible, and in fact, some people choose such a life for a variety of reasons. And yes, some are in academia too.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>P.S. If your circumstances allows it, you might want to try to be at a relatively central university. For example, Germany or France if you're in Europe, Chicago area if you're in the USA. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32961,
"author": "jamesqf",
"author_id": 25355,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25355",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Do you need to be the one to present papers at conferences, or could it be done by those co-authors who actually enjoy airline travel?</p>\n\n<p>I'm in a somewhat similar circumstance: I don't fly commercial, not because of a phobia (I have my own light plane), but because I'm not willing to put up with TSA BS and the discomfort of economy class, and have other life circumstances that make travel difficult. But there are other people in the lab who do like travelling, so they do the presenting of papers. Though for some reason, the lab director always manages to do the ones in Hawaii :-)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32974,
"author": "Michael Martinez",
"author_id": 14023,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14023",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just simply tell your supervisor that you are scared of flying and you don't fly for this reason. Most people are sympathetic and will understand.</p>\n\n<p>On a different note, let me offer a helpful suggestion. Of all the types of psychological problems, phobias are actually the easiest to cure. The best treatment for phobia is \"exposure therapy\". If you haven't already, seek out a \"cognitive behavior therapist\" and they will know what to do to help you. </p>\n\n<p>Additionally, things like Valium and Xanax are excellent ways to help you deal with panic situations. In fact, the exposure therapy combined with Xanax is a very good way to help you learn to deal with panic, so that eventually over time you are retrained not to panic in those situations and you no longer need any medicine to help you get through it. In addition to a small dose of Xanax you can add a small dose of a beta-blocker. Beta-blockers prevent adrenaline. As the \"adrenaline feedback loop\" is one of the defining characteristics of a panic attack, the beta-blocker can help mitigate it as well. </p>\n\n<p>If you end up using medication, you need to combine it with the cognitive behavior therapy because you don't want to get <em>dependent</em> on medication to deal with panic. Instead, your goal is to use the medication only as a temporary way of helping you analyze yourself and deal rationally with the panic situation, so that eventually you realize you don't actually need the medication. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to talk more about this, message me privately, I'll be happy to discuss what I know.</p>\n\n<p>Another thing to think about: a panic attack is a \"fight or flight\" response, which is your evolutionary response to <em>protect yourself</em>. Think about this. It's your body's own way of helping itself. Although, it happens to be misdirected at an inappropriate target (a plane, or whatever situation causes you to panic.) Everybody who has a panic attack thinks they're going to go crazy, pass out, die, etc., but it never happens. Nobody has died from a panic attack. How are you going to die from something that is actually your body's attempt to protect itself? You don't. What happens is you get into an adrenaline cycle: the adrenaline peaks, it tapers off, it peaks again 10-15 minutes later, tapers off again.... These are natural things designed to get you out of danger. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32977,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I'm going to take a different tract to the other answers and tell you that you need to address your fear of flying because it <em>will</em> continue to impact your work.</p>\n\n<p>Conferences are excellent ways to network, learn from your peers formally and informally, learn of new opportunities and advertise your work.</p>\n\n<p>By not flying, you are limiting your exposure dramatically and this may make your career much more difficult or fragmented, as you will be limited to geographically close events, regardless of topic, or alternatively just only attend topic-applicable events when (or if) they come near to you.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>As for how to talk with your supervisor, I'd suggest speaking with them about it formally as it is a major limitation with your work, but only <em>after you've determined how you are going to resolve the situation</em>. <strong>Coming to your supervisor with a potential solution will be much more well received than coming to them with just a problem.</strong> </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32996,
"author": "Cobbles",
"author_id": 25390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Joined just to post this answer:</p>\n\n<p>G.H. Hardy had a fear of travelling over sea; so he sent messages to his colleagues telling them that he had solved the Riemann Hypothesis. </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/37494/who-was-the-mathematician-who-thought-god-was-out-to-get-him\">Who was the mathematician who thought “god” was out to get him?</a></p>\n\n<p>So maybe tell your supervisor that you have solved a big problem in your field and God won't let anything bad happen to you.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/08
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32929",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7401/"
] |
32,931 |
<p>Does posting papers on websites such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate count as "publishing" for the sake of future journal submission? That is, if I have uploaded my paper to Academia.edu, can I later submit it to a journal that wants only "previously unpublished" work?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32932,
"author": "user18244",
"author_id": 18244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18244",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I wouldn't publish my papers on a website that everyone can see before it is actually published in a journal or a conference. Someone else may claim ownership and there is nothing you can do about it </p>\n\n<p>In any case, assuming you did publish it on either website, you can still publish it in any journal or conference as long as you honor any copyright rules or guidelines. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34138,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Since nobody wrote it in an answer, I'll do it: the answer to your question depends on the journal, but in each field most journal would have about the same policy.</p>\n\n<p>In some fields (e.g. mathematics, high energy physics), the answer is 'no': posting a preprint in Academia.edu, the arXiv, or on your web page does not prevent you to have your work published by a journal. Many publishers will even allow you to update your public preprint according to the referee's comments, only keeping the publisher-formated version behind a paywall (not all of them though: Oxford University Press has a very damaging policy in this regard).</p>\n\n<p>In other fields (e.g. some humanities at least in some countries, chemistry) the answer is often 'yes': many journal would reject your paper right away on the ground that it already has been \"published\" in the sense of being made public. Even if they don't check, they may ask you to pledge that you did not published the material previously in that broad sense, and lying on these kind of issue may be devastating to a career.</p>\n\n<p>In other circumstances, the answer may be more subtle. Some very prestigious magazines as Nature, Science, PNAS may ask for some publications that the authors keep them secret until the journals communicates about the work. This is to ensure maximum media coverage, but of course it concerns only the very small portion of academic works that is considered both as very important for the field, and of great interest of a general audience.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32931",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25319/"
] |
32,933 |
<p>Given how many college courses are taught every academic semester in the world (or even just in the U.S.), it simply must be the case that some portion of the instructors badly goof up their courses, to the point where it is not really able to be recovered from--in essence, the course is ruined. This could be things like:</p>
<ul>
<li>Provably unfair or wildly too strict (or too lenient?) grading.</li>
<li>Losing exam scores (this has to be particularly common) for some or all of the students/exams.</li>
<li>Missing a large number of class sessions, or somehow leaving mid-course.</li>
<li>Etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>I taught for a while and luckily never had such a catastrophe, nor did I know of any from my colleagues. But what typically happens when this sort of thing does occur? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32952,
"author": "user25345",
"author_id": 25345,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25345",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have a personal story, where something like this happened in one of my classes. I was taking CS at a Canadian university in my third year and I have a course on Databases. Its our prof's first year at the school and even in the first class I remember some weirdness like how much cared about people being late. This goes on until the first assignment which was literally just the practice problems from the book, then instead of getting us to hand them in she goes through the answers in class except she cannot complete even a single question without help from the students. The midterm rolls around soon enough after this and the exam is questions from the book printed out, and half the class fails badly and the other half does rather well depending on how much of the book you memorized. After this most of the people in the class complained because she didn't know her material and apparently this happened in her other classes as well. She ended up being fired halfway through a semester and was replaced with the chair of my program, as he was the only one who could teach the class. I'm not sure how common of a response this is but it is the only time I've ever seen a professor get fired. </p>\n\n<p>Normally I'd but I don't have enough points yet and I know this isn't a real answer as I have no data.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32954,
"author": "Compass",
"author_id": 22013,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22013",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can't explain for all of these answers, having never been an instructor, nor experienced them. However, one of my professors in college <strong>lost my exam</strong>. Neither of us know where it went, and both of us knew I took the exam and submitted it. We had tests every 2 weeks, and this was towards the end of the semester. In addition, I showed up to class all the time, so it would have been really out of character for me to pull a fast one anyways.</p>\n\n<p>So, this being a calculus course, and neither of us wanting to have to sit through another hour of me re-taking an exam, came up with a compromise:</p>\n\n<p>She'd assign me a grade. I would get a floored borderline grade of my test average.</p>\n\n<p>My test average ended up being an A, so I was assigned a borderline A (90%) as the score for that exam.</p>\n\n<p>In the end, it was also my lowest test grade for the semester, so both me and the professor were satisfied with the outcome.</p>\n\n<p>However, the benefit of the outcome, at the very least, should be favorable to the student if it is not the student's fault. Not automatic 100% benefit, but the student should not leave at a disadvantage as a result of a mistake outside his control.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32955,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>By and large, ff524 as usual has it right: if there is a problem (even a serious one), the responsible people deal with the problem and its immediate consequences, and then life goes on. Smart people will learn from their goof-up, and it will not happen again. Less smart people do the same crap all over again until a higher-up steps in (in the worst case, this may mean getting fired). I am not sure if there is anything much more general to say about this topic.</p>\n\n<p>Some examples from my personal experience:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Losing exam scores</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In the university where I did my PhD, a young professor once lost track of 400 final lab exams in a programming course (that means multiple large stacks of paper - not exactly easy to lose). Apparently, he locked them in for the weekend, and on Monday they were nowhere to be found. As there were no traces of a break-in, the theory was that the cleaning lady has thrown them out for whatever reason (as she was the only one with access to the room besides the prof). Following, an entire lab was digging through garbage for one morning, without success. </p>\n\n<p>The prof. sent out a very embarrassing apology, announced a make-up test, and gave students the chance to just get their mid-term grades if they could not / did not want to participate in the make-up test. Following, all people in this lab were extremely paranoid with ungraded test sheets.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Missing a large number of class sessions, or somehow leaving mid-course.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In another course in my old alma mater, an external lecturer apparently entirely lost interest in his course and basically stopped going to his own lecture after the second or third week. He was kicked out fast and unceremoniously. As nobody was available who could teach this course in his stead (it was very specialised), the course was cancelled mid-flight with the promise of a make-up course in the next term, leaving behind a number of understandably pissed students. A policy was put into place that external lecturers should not be allowed to give classes for which no replacement person was available, should something similar happen again.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Provably unfair or wildly too strict grading.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Sadly, the common way to deal with this problem is \"better luck next time\". That is, in my university, the best one can hope for in case of a very difficult or unfair exam is that the dean talks to the lecturer in private and asks him to make the test easier next time. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32991,
"author": "mort",
"author_id": 13427,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13427",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I fully agree with xLeitix, especially with </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>[...] if there is a problem (even a serious one), the responsible people deal with the problem and its immediate consequences, and then life goes on.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>However, I would like to add that it might help to take such a situation with a bit of humor. I once took an exam (together with 400 other students) where the exam questions were on a doubly-sided print out. Unfortunately, the assistant responsible for copying the exam sheets messed up and copied only one side, which was only discovered when the exam was handed out. So the professor had to find a photo-copier (the exam was taken in a room quite far away from her office) and make 400 copies. In the meantime, so that the students did not get bored, some assistant provided the current standings of a world championship soccer game to us by writing noteworthy events onto the blackboard.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 82941,
"author": "David",
"author_id": 62652,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/62652",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Since a number of up-voted answers are just personal experiences, I can share one of my own (though it's not really a goof, it's a similar situation). </p>\n\n<p>In undergrad I was in an intro to ethics course. About halfway through the semester the professor was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive cancer, and the oncologist told him his only hope was to drop everything and hop a plane to Johns Hopkins. He finished that week of classes, and his last day he explained what had happened, apologizing profusely. The department had found a medical ethicist from the local hospital to come in and take over. He was a nice guy, but unfortunately not nearly as good as the first guy who had been a cornerstone of the department.</p>\n\n<p>The students complained that, although the grading was fair by both people, the course style and expectations had totally changed mid-way through. Technically they had a point- the original syllabus was not followed too closely, and we didn't cover all the material we had been promised. Those who complained were told that we were all expected to cope with the unforeseen and truly exceptional circumstances. </p>\n\n<p>Nobody I talked to had actually argued themselves into a higher grade. However, myself and a few compatriots suspected we were graded extremely leniently. I remember being very dissapointed because the grading outline in the syllabus said I should get a middle-B, but I ended up with an A minus. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32933",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4209/"
] |
32,947 |
<p>I am defending my PhD thesis soon and have been told to practice some questions that I should expect, one of which is:</p>
<p>What are the ethical implications of your work?</p>
<p>How should I go about answering this?</p>
<p>My field is ocean physics, and my thesis has focused on investigating the causes of high temporal resolution variability in ocean temperature. How could I tackle this question in the defense? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32957,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My knowledge of Oceanography stops at \"there is an awful lot of water\", so I don't know for sure, but if I was asked this question, I will flatly say there are none. Maybe you would like to justify it a bit, but don't get lost; if asked, it is a mean question.</p>\n\n<p>On a related note, I do have an answer in case someone, specially when talking to a general audience, tries to make political comments.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Stars [or proteins, oceans, particles...] don't care about politics.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And move on. I only had to use it once during a class, but having it in the reserve did gave me peace of mind when I was interviewed by a politically loaded radio station.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32958,
"author": "Compass",
"author_id": 22013,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22013",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I'm not an ocean physicist, or anywhere qualified in oceanography, nor do I have a slight idea of what your topic is on.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, research involving water, and any political ramifications that may impact it, typically will impact commerce related to the oceans.</p>\n\n<p>In this case, theoretical commercial impacts:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Fishing. Your research may potentially result in a ban on fishing, or make it harder to obtain fishing licenses.</li>\n<li>Trade commerce. Ships are still used to transport goods around the world, including oil. As above, any sort of research that indicates that the oceans may be unsafe or bars certain trade routes will result in economical impacts down the line.</li>\n<li>National borders. Traditionally, countries own a specific amount of shoreline before international waters. A shifting shoreline may result in a changing border and or possible border disputes.</li>\n<li>Tourism. Obviously, effects of the water, even perceived, may impact tourism.</li>\n<li>Insurance. Rising tides = rising premiums.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Whether or not these apply to your topic, I can't really tell, but it's better to start with a list of things and then check them off as irrelevant gives the <em>no ethical impact</em> argument more weight.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32947",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25341/"
] |
32,959 |
<p>In one of <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32855/should-i-start-my-cv-by-telling-about-myself/32859?noredirect=1#comment73910_32859">Ben Bitdiddle's comment</a>, he confirms that quoting famous scientists in the SOP is generally bad. But I don't know why. Isn't SOP the place to tell our stories, our inspirations, our motivations, our goals, etc? We scientists, who incur ourselves to solve the hardest problems of the world, are inspired by giant scientists, don't we? So I don't know why...</p>
<hr>
<p>Thank you for answering my question. I get that a SOP "is forward-looking, not about your childhood". But the quote is not necessary to be something like: "The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.". I hereby have two questions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Does that mean we should definitely get rid all things from our past? Not even a paragraph? I have read some samples, many of them start with <a href="http://www.statementofpurpose.com/essayuncq_compsci.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"I remember the day as if it were yesterday..."</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Also, what if the quote I'm about to use is <strong>not</strong> relevant to any specific field, for example when I want to write down this quote because I want to change field? "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change". (I can say that I'm not intelligent, but I really want to change the field - this is just an example). This kind of quote is the results of real scientific activities, it applies for every aspect of life, not an inspiration from pop science books. </p></li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>I know what makes me confuse now. I was mistaken the SOP to the applicant essay. When I search for the sample SOP in my native language, someone has put the 50 best Harvard applicant essays with the title 50 best SOP. After searching it again by English, I acknowledge where I'm wrong. Thank you so much for helping me.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32962,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>A statement of purpose is <strong>forward-looking.</strong> It is not meant to be, <a href=\"http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html\">to paraphrase Wordsworth</a>, \"recollections of early childhood.\" I don't really care why you decided to study mathematics when you were seven years old, nor do I care about some generic quote from a scientist that inspired you. I want to know what you might want to study as a PhD student, and why you are motivated to study <em>that specific project.</em></p>\n\n<p>If a famous scientist said something relevant about <em>your proposed project</em>, that's a different story, because it's actually significant to what you want to do in the future. Otherwise, leave it out—it just annoys most of the referees who will eventually read it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32964,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Because the people who worship famous scientists usually aren't the ones who've done actual science. Generally their main scientific experience comes from books marketed to a general audience. You do not want to be lumped with that crowd, because it shows you don't know what you're getting into.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32959",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14341/"
] |
32,963 |
<p>I worked in the industry for a few years before starting my PhD and learned many do's and don'ts in the workplace for how you guide subordinates to attend meetings and do things you want them to do. I'm having trouble finding the right mix of transparency/professionalism/availability that I can expect to have with my advisor. Some examples that seem to be ok with my advisor related to availability include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Advisor tells me I should work and come in over academic breaks</li>
<li>When I'm late for a meeting, sends me an email that says "you're late, get here". Advisor is often late for their own meetings.</li>
<li>On a flight back from a conference, holds a research meeting. </li>
<li>When scheduling a meeting, advisor asks for conflicts, then judges the importance of my conflict vs the meeting. Tells me the meeting is more important.</li>
<li>Advisor schedules recurring meeting over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me I should eat during the meeting</li>
<li>Urges that I come to weekend/post-5pm informal meetups, if I say I cannot attend, asks why my conflict is more important?</li>
</ul>
<p>Other oddities include:</p>
<ul>
<li>During research meeting with 15 students, the meeting table is crowded. I grab a chair 5 feet away. Advisor tells me to stand for the meeting (with a laptop).</li>
<li>Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel</li>
</ul>
<p>I can't help but feel demeaned by items on this list. I'm a bit older than other students and have a family, so my conflicts are more frequent. Is this advisor-advisee treatment common in academia? I'm trying to seek out the norms of this community.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32968,
"author": "Vietnhi Phuvan",
"author_id": 25233,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25233",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You're a grad student. This means you're a slave to your advisor. I was a grad student once and I found the conceit that grad students are human beings and that they are to be treated with dignity beyond comical. Don't talk about professionalism as a grad student - this is not the time and the place, you are off-topic and unfortunately, you are making yourself look ridiculous. If your advisor pulls your chain, you go along quietly, with your tail wagging.</p>\n\n<p>My little brother and I found a preventive cure for this kind of treatment: get a full-time job and go for your graduate degree in the evening. Your adviser is a lot less likely to give you lip if he knows that you, as a grad student, are also a senior engineer at Google :) As they used to say on 42nd Street in New York City in the 1970's: \"Money talks and b.s. walks\" :)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32969,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Right now, there are 3 close votes, one \"unclear what you're asking\", two \"too broad\". I'd lean more towards \"opinion-based\".</p>\n\n<p>In some academic groups, this is the normal <em>modus operandi</em>, and people are routinely expected to be available at ungodly times. The one other environment where I have observed this (\"let's discuss this over lunch, since we both will likely be working until 10pm, and the presentation needs to be done today\") is management consultancies. One element that is common to both environments is that most people working there are young, and that it's an up-or-out culture. In academia, you'll either leave with your degree and go into industry, or you end up as a professor - and in management consultancies, you either again leave, or end up at the top of the pile as a partner.</p>\n\n<p>In both environments, there is much less emphasis on work-life balance, and much more emphasis on getting the job done. Young people are inherently more resilient than middle-aged ones, and of course it helps that the typical junior consultant or Ph.D. student does not have a spouse and family - that makes 60 hour-weeks over extended periods of time much more feasible.</p>\n\n<p>Now, all this is very much opinion-based, and I'm sure there are working groups where professors actually respect your outside commitments. However, you seem to have entered a group where the professor has been conditioned by Ph.D. students who don't, like you, have family to attend to. <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27638/is-a-phd-right-for-you-if-you-hate-doing-research-in-your-free-time-but-love-doi/27643#27643\">This older answer of mine may be helpful in understanding what I mean.</a></p>\n\n<p>Right now, I'd suggest you sit down with your professor and have an open discussion with him. Explain that you understand that many of your colleagues can bring youthful energy and few outside commitments to the table - but that <em>you</em> offer more life experience, and that your current situation with a family means that you have commitments you simply can't cancel on short notice, since you may need to pick your kids up at daycare.</p>\n\n<p>Then again, you will likely need to accept a few things that may jar with your previous workplace experiences, like working through lunch, which really isn't all that bad, or working with your professor in judging whether conflicts in scheduling can't sometimes be resolved in favor of the professor's meeting.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32970,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As with most things, tone matters. All the items on your list don't scream terrible unprofessionalism to me, if done in the right tone and in moderation (ok, the \"tells me to stand\" one is a bit weird). For instance, I would not force a student to blow off their anniversary dinner for a standard meeting, but I have certainly asked them to cancel some other weekend appointments because of an important deadline on Monday. Further, you mention meetings after 5PM - given that much of my research is done in international cooperation, Skype calls at terrible times are unfortunately not unheard of in my group as well.</p>\n\n<p>I can't help but notice that (as ff524 already mentions), the majority of your items are not so much about professionalism than about time planning. Indeed, in academia, you may need to get used to the fact that most professors require students to be flexible, maybe more so than in larger corporations (but not unlike startup companies, for instance). Nine-to-five workers are typically not popular in academic environments.</p>\n\n<p>You added:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The exact same thing happened to me as an employee of a large, international company. Not usual, but yeah - happens if funds for travel are low for some reason.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32971,
"author": "choener",
"author_id": 8826,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8826",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An answer to your 'question' (?) will depend on what you want.</p>\n\n<p>Taken explicitly, the only really idiotic thing is the table. I have trouble imagining a situation where in a 15-people discussion everybody <em>can</em> cluster within 5 ft.</p>\n\n<p>The other stuff: mostly harmless, you should consider that the Prof's time is more valuable than yours -- at least to him; and the Prof. probably needs to juggle more things than you have to. The conference room-sharing thing is actually <em>really usual</em>, conferences cost money, hence it makes sense to reduce costs by sharing [assuming, of course, the usual boundaries].</p>\n\n<p>A better question might be how to handle expectations from your Prof. that you are not willing to say yes to. That depends on how willing the Prof. is to accomodate you. Especially since you have not said what happens if you do not, say, show up for meeting that doesn't fit in your schedule.</p>\n\n<p>None of this means that you are a slave of some kind, but you have to accept that you are subordinate in certain matters. If you can't come to meeting I schedule at 5pm your excuse should be 'Doctors appointment', not 'I want to go home and watch TV'; I probably <em>only</em> have time at 5pm.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32972,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here are my thoughts on each of the scenarios in the question. Most of these things are pretty normal and common in academia. For the scheduling things, they shouldn't become <em>habit</em>, but everyone is generally expected to be flexible, especially when deadlines are coming up.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>During research meeting with 15 students, the meeting table is\n crowded. I grab a chair 5 feet away. Advisor tells me to stand for the\n meeting (with a laptop).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That's weird. Crowded meetings happen. But I can't see anything wrong with sitting in a chair away from the table.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the\n conference hotel.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That's normal. Is sharing a room that bad, really? It saves money, so I'm happy to oblige. If you have a legitimate reason to have your own room, it shouldn't be an unreasonable request. Though when there are limited travel funds, you might have to pay the extra yourself or forego a future opportunity.</p>\n\n<p>A fun thing to do when travelling is to rent a short-stay apartment, rather than a hotel. It's usually cheaper (so maybe you can afford your own room), and you have a lounge and cooking facilities for dinner parties.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When I'm late for a meeting, sends me an email that says \"you're late,\n get here\".</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Fair enough. Don't be late.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Advisor is often late for their own meetings.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That <em>can be</em> normal. Meetings between my supervisor and myself are scheduled \"after the coffee break\" - we have an understanding that that time is pretty flexible. Chronic lateness to rigidly scheduled group meetings really is an inconvenience, and I don't think that is acceptable.</p>\n\n<p>If your advisor is late, you can always send him or her an email asking <em>\"we have a meeting now, where are you?\"</em>.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On a flight back from a conference, holds a research meeting.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'd say that's a useful use of downtime.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When scheduling a meeting, advisor asks for conflicts, then judges the\n importance of my conflict vs the meeting. Tells me the meeting is more\n important.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I don't think it's reasonable to ask for such details. You should (politely!) say that you dislike re-arranging your schedule and ask to find a mutually agreeable time. Try scheduling meetings with your advisor further in advance -- he or she will have more gaps in their schedule.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Advisor schedules meetings over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me\n I should eat during the meeting</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think this is a cultural thing. If it's the culture of the department where everyone actually has a proper lunch break, then you can insist on keeping your lunch break. If everyone tends to work over lunch and eat at their desk, that insistence is less likely to go down well (though you should by all means still have the <em>right</em> to said lunch break).</p>\n\n<p>If your advisor is unusually busy, or there is a looming deadline, just roll with it.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Urges that I come to weekend/post-5pm informal meetups, if I say I\n cannot attend, asks why my conflict is more important?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Post-5pm? Maybe that's a reasonable request, especially if you don't keep regular 9-5 hours. Weekends should be off limits, though, unless something important is coming up.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32973,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Some of the concerns that you have are reasonable, some are not.</p>\n\n<p>However, I think the basic issue is that your advisor probably has not had practice and training in being a competent manager. He may be a brilliant researcher, but that doesn't mean he's a good advisor and mentor. It sounds like he may also be following what I've dubbed the <em>academic golden rule</em>: \"Do unto others as you had done unto you.\"</p>\n\n<p>My general advice to you is the following:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Where possible, take an active role in your relationship with your advisor.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What I mean by this is that where you see conflicts arising, head them off by trying to be the one to deal with them first. For instance, if you don't like the way your advisor is scheduling your appointments, try to schedule a regular meeting time with him so that there isn't a reason to schedule appointments at odd times.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Advisor tells me I should work and come in over academic breaks</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This may be entirely reasonable depending upon which breaks your advisor is referring to, and the vacation policy at your institution. The typical standard in US schools is only two or three weeks of leave per year. Given that there is typically substantially more academic leave than personal vacation time, your advisor can expect that you be at work. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When I'm late for a meeting, sends me an email that says \"you're late, get here\". Advisor is often late for their own meetings.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is a simple matter of brusqueness.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On a flight back from a conference, holds a research meeting.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is unusual—but I would chalk this up to the eccentricity of the advisor. My undergraduate advisor once did that with a colleague on a plane—nearly got himself into trouble over it!</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When scheduling a meeting, advisor asks for conflicts, then judges the importance of my conflict vs the meeting. Tells me the meeting is more important.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is baffling, but I think reinforces the notion I've laid out above.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Advisor schedules meetings over the time I have to eat lunch, tells me I should eat during the meeting</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This confuses me—I would think this would be somewhat flexible. Advisors don't normally assign lunch hours for their graduate students! If there's some specific reason that you need to eat lunch at a certain time, that's something you should discuss with your advisor (and perhaps the graduate officer of your department).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Urges that I come to weekend/post-5pm informal meetups, if I say I cannot attend, asks why my conflict is more important?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Except in unusual circumstances, <strong>this is unacceptable.</strong> Your advisor should not expect that you come into work during the weekend. If you personally feel the need to work to meet a deadline, that's a different issue. If the advisor is willing to give you a few days off in exchange for working over the weekend, that might be an acceptable tradeoff. But the pressure should not come directly from the advisor.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>During research meeting with 15 students, the meeting table is crowded. I grab a chair 5 feet away. Advisor tells me to stand for the meeting (with a laptop).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is rather ridiculous on your advisor's part. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Advisor tells me I must share a room with another student at the conference hotel</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>As a graduate student, unless you have your own budget and resources for travel (e.g., you're on a fellowship that provides a travel allowance), then you probably should not expect to have your own room at a hotel. It's fairly standard practice for advisors to ask their students to \"double up\" at a hotel.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32963",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12227/"
] |
32,965 |
<p>I'm writing my master thesis. I need to quote a cited quote from another paper. So the scenario is that I'm reading a paper and this paper has a quote which is cited from another paper. Now I want to quote this quote, how should I cite this?</p>
<p>Is it correct to just write the text of the quote and then cite the paper I'm reading? Or should I cite the original paper? The thing is that if I cite the original paper then I will be considered that I read that paper, however i don't want to read that paper. So what is the correct thing to do here?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32966,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Unless it is the fact that paper A quotes paper B that you intend to highlight in your thesis and not the content of the quote from paper B itself, you need to read paper B. If you reproduce the quote by itself, you should cite the original. If you need to refer to paper A's reference to B, then you need to cite both.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32989,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is a potentially serious problem with taking quotes or interpretations of other's work from an intermediate source. You have no control over the correctness of what you are quoting or referencing. There are many examples where errors propagate through scientific literature just because someone actually did not check the original source. This does not mean that everything is wrong or that most people are careless but it is your responsibility to check the information you use. You therefore need to make a serious effort to locate the original before you resort to quoting a quote made by someone else or citing a citation in another publication.</p>\n\n<p>In the event you have to resort to using an indirect source you should clearly state that the quote is not from the original. You can do this by adding, for example, \"stated by Y (yyyy) as quoted by X (yyyy)\" (or whatever format of citation you need to use). At least in this way the reader will clearly see that the quote is not taken directly from the original source.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/09
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32965",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10497/"
] |
32,980 |
<p>I am a math PhD student in my last year, and I've been on mathjobs.org looking for jobs.</p>
<p>I see a lot of jobs for instructor positions, or jobs titled "assistant professor", where the main work load seems to be teaching undergraduates and no research. </p>
<p>It seems that the main qualifications are a PhD. I am confused on what kind of applicant is qualified to apply. It seems that I am qualified enough to apply, assuming I receive my PhD by the time the job starts, but I am worried I am being naive. I do realize that someone that has already had an instructing position, or "assistant professor" position previously, or experience as a postdoc, would look better than a fresh PhD.</p>
<p>Are these jobs typically given to PhD's that have been through a few postdocs, or do PhDs straight out of grad school have a fair enough chance at getting the job? </p>
<p>To be blunt, am I wasting my time applying for these positions?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32985,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>No, you are not wasting your time. For assistant professorships at colleges with little or no research component, you should feel free to apply in your last year of a PhD program.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I do realize that someone that has already had an instructing position, or \"assistant professor\" position previously, or experience as a postdoc, would look better than a fresh PhD.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In my experience that is not necessarily the case. In my PhD program, probably more graduates go on to this type of job than any other career trajectory. Many of our graduates do get tenure track jobs straight out of graduate school. Getting such jobs later after doing a temporary position is still possible, but it seems to me that the chance goes down. Even top twenty liberal arts colleges still hire many assistant professors straight out of grad school. Obviously they could select candidates with postdoctoral / visiting faculty experience. They often choose not to. I would go so far as to say that in many teaching jobs, <strong>postdoctoral experience</strong> could be viewed as a bit of a mismatch.</p>\n\n<p>(An old friend of mine has written <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ams.org%2Fnotices%2F200911%2Frtx091101451p.pdf&ei=TOOHVN78O4qnNsnogIgL&usg=AFQjCNFPcsFroWicdj1BYUPXfUgtxWETRw&sig2=MYDxWtvUBtvKNSMh2Aa_Yw&bvm=bv.81456516,d.eXY\">an article</a> about the pleasures of being a visiting faculty member. To a certain degree it contradicts what I said above. But I think he is more looking on the bright side of taking multiple visiting positions than suggesting that they are necessary.)</p>\n\n<p>Three more comments:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>You should know that an \"instructor\" position is typically very different from an \"assistant professor\" position. Suffice it to say that if you want an assistant professor position, you probably do not want an instructor position. In many math departments, there are recently hired instructors with PhDs teaching alongside of instructors without PhDs who have had the job for a longer period of time. This is not saying good things about the current job market. In my opinion, having a PhD makes you <strong>overqualified</strong> (and certainly, underpaid) for most instructorships, but of course it's up to you to decide on what's worth your while.</p></li>\n<li><p>Rather than further academic training, what you want to have in order to get these jobs are a strong teaching record and excellent teaching abilities in an interview / model classroom situation. Many PhD programs nowadays provide opportunities for their students to display these credentials. If you are looking for a primarily teaching job post-PhD, I hope you have been doing everything in your power to acquire these credentials during your graduate career: in many cases, this provides the best opportunity to do so. (If you are not sure where you want to go on the teaching/research perspective, I hope that you have erred on the side of acquiring more of these credentials than you will necessarily need.)</p></li>\n<li><p>When it comes to individual departments, Nate Eldredge made a good suggestion: you can look through CVs of recent (and less recent) hires to see what their credentials are. However, a small department may have a small sample size. Nowadays many (most?) people on the academic job market apply to on the order of a hundred jobs; necessarily this includes many jobs for whom the goodness of fit is unknown to them. Not applying to jobs because you are worried that you might not be competitive does not seem like a good strategy when so many other strong candidates are applying for everything in sight. You don't have to stuff envelopes anymore (like I did when I was applying for jobs less than ten years ago!), so the differential amount of work in applying to some positions that you fear might be a stretch but don't know is small. When in doubt, apply. I say this as someone who reads through hundreds of applications a year. If we're not interested, then we're not interested, but it's no problem.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 32994,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>From my perspective at a regional university: most of our hires in math are new PhDs or have just a few years after PhD. But <strong>the application you need to be competitive for teaching-focused schools and positions is quite different than what you need for research-first positions.</strong></p>\n\n<p>For postdocs and tenure-track jobs at R-1 schools, you want to emphasize your research, while showing that your teaching is decent and not likely to cause complaints among the students. Bland teaching, to some degree, is a good thing - if you focus \"too much\" about teaching, it may cause people to worry about your research productivity. </p>\n\n<p>For tenure-track jobs at teaching-oriented schools, you want to demonstrate that you will be <strong>excellent</strong> at teaching, not just unobjectionable. As much as possible, you want to demonstrate a history of teaching excellence as a graduate student (and after graduation, if applicable). If you focus \"too much\" on research, it may cause people to worry about your teaching quality. </p>\n\n<p>Many schools \"in the middle\", including mine, are looking to increase their research profile, so we require much more in the area of research than we did 20 years ago. But we still look for teaching excellence, not just competence. </p>\n\n<p>One common mistake (particularly among people who are sending out hundreds of applications) is sending the same application everywhere. If you send a research-focused application to a school where teaching is the primary criterion, you are not likely to make it past the first round of cuts. With hundreds of applications for the position, there will almost certainly be other candidates who have similar research accomplishments <em>and</em> demonstrated teaching excellence. </p>\n\n<p>My advice for graduate students in general is to keep in mind the type of position you'd like to have 10 years after getting your PhD, and begin to groom your vita during graduate school to be competitive for that type of position. This may be easier said than done, of course. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32980",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22503/"
] |
32,981 |
<p>I'm an undergrad studying mathematics right now. I have a very big interest in mathematical applications of physics, and I have been debating whether or not I should change my degree to a dual major (math/physics), because of this annoying little fear that only the math degree won't prepare me for a career in physics research later down the road, at the graduate level. However, the Mathematics is the degree I want (I believe there are more opportunities - I'd also enjoy going into a [bandwagon?] research field like Artificial Intelligence)..</p>
<p>Would a BS (and of course grad school) in Mathematics alone be enough to prepare me for a decent graduate school future, if I decided to pursue research in theoretical/mathematical physics? Or would it be better for me to tack on the dual major in physics? I would rather not stay in school an extra year and a half (it's already taking long enough after the A.S. in computer science!), but if it's necessary, I could do that.</p>
<p>I found <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7733/math-majors-into-physics">another thread on ASE about this</a>, with someone recommending that of course a mathematics major take physics courses - and I have. </p>
<p><strong>My specific question is if it would behoove me to pursue a <em>dual</em> major as opposed to just taking extra physics courses (or a minor).</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/kZZOYMl.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">This is essentially the bare minimum</a> I have to do for just the mathematics major.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/nZgxhAE.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">These would be the physics courses</a> I could tack on. The darker colors are required for the dual major, the lighter ones are electives.</p>
<p>The grad program I'm looking at, by the way, has a Master's program in Math that offers courses like Riemannian Geometry, Riemann surfaces, Group Theory, etc, which I think are useful in theoretical/mathematical physics at the graduate research level. Here's a picture</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/VWRvp.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34037,
"author": "Anonymous Physicist",
"author_id": 13240,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13240",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My answer is specific to the course lists you have linked to, and written from a US point of view.</p>\n\n<p>I recommend taking </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Modern </li>\n<li>Electromagnetism (at least a whole year)</li>\n<li>Quantum (also whole year)</li>\n<li>Mechanics</li>\n<li>Some kind of statistical mechanics. 2311 may or may not be sufficient.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Electronics lab is for experimentalists. Since you say you want to do mathematical physics, I don't see any point in that (unless it causes you to change your goals). Take those electives that interest you.</p>\n\n<p>Also, check the admissions requirements of graduate programs you are interested in.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34996,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>(Speaking from the perspective of a US grad student who did double major, but who has no direct experience working on a grad admissions committee.)</em></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>if it would behoove me to pursue a dual major as opposed to just taking extra physics courses</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In general, the extra degree itself probably isn't much added value for what you want to do. You have your statement of purpose and the rest of your application to show what specific knowledge, skills, and interest you have. Grad schools will look at your transcript, seeing every course you took anyway. <strong>If you take enough physics courses, it shouldn't really matter what your diploma says.</strong> And by the time you finish grad school, your undergrad major will be even less important to people.</p>\n\n<p>The question is <strong>how much is enough physics?</strong> I don't have any course descriptions to work with, but \"Principles of Physics\" <em>sounds</em> like a survey course for non-physicists, the kind of thing you won't learn anything useful from. If you want to do research in physics, you'll need a graduate-level understanding of physics, and for that you'll need plenty of undergraduate-level physics. You should have <em>at least</em> a core foundation of</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>special relativity,</li>\n<li>classical mechanics (Lagrangians and Hamiltonians),</li>\n<li>electromagnetism,</li>\n<li>statistical mechanics, and</li>\n<li>quantum mechanics</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>by the time you finish undergrad. Now since you are planning to do primarily math for the PhD there might be some flexibility in that you can hold off on some of this until grad school, but note you will still need even more physics knowledge to do research. If you don't know any physics discovered in the last 100 years, there's no way you can discover anything new, and all the subjects I listed are at least 100 years old.</p>\n\n<p>To be sure, <em>some</em> math is very useful for physics. But just knowing differential geometry doesn't mean you know general relativity, and particle physics is more than just the pure group theory you'll see in a math course.</p>\n\n<p><strong>On the topic of labs:</strong> I've met a fair number of student mathematicians-interested-in-physics who say labs aren't important for what they want to do. That <em>might</em> be true for what <a href=\"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/56293/difference-between-theoretical-physics-and-mathematical-physics/56309#56309\">I would call a mathematical physicist</a>, but I don't believe it for theoretical physics. <em>Some</em> exposure to a laboratory setting is important for knowing what physics really is. This is based on my own experiences, as well as advice I got from my (Nobel-prize-winning, theoretical physicist) undergrad adviser. The thing is, undergrad physics courses are unfortunately largely doable with blind symbol manipulation. Those who are good at it (and mathematicians usually are) often end up thinking physics is just easier, less abstract math. But physics is an <em>empirical science</em>, which math most certainly isn't. A (well-organized) lab will show you how much more there is to <em>thinking like a physicist</em> than solving the Schrödinger equation with yet another potential. And if it turns out thinking like a physicist isn't your cup of tea, it's better to find that out earlier.</p>\n\n<p><strong>In summary:</strong> Decide what classes you want to take, keeping in mind that you'll need a number of actual physics courses, taught by physicists, if you want to do <em>physics</em> proper (rather than, say, prove pure math theorems deemed important by those with more of a connection to physics). If that list of classes is a superset of the physics requirements, sure, do the extra major -- if nothing else it might impress an industry recruiter should your career go in that direction. If it isn't a superset, just take the physics courses of interest and skip the extra major.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32981",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25375/"
] |
32,983 |
<p>I noticed that some professors and instructors have their teaching statement available on their webpages, and others don't. </p>
<p>I thought teaching statements were used mainly for applying for jobs, so since these professors and instructors have jobs, what is the purpose of having their teaching statement available to the public?</p>
<p><strong>Is there an advantage to posting the teaching statement publicly?</strong></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32984,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It can be advantageous to post your application materials publicly while you are searching for a job (because it alerts a broader audience to your job search and lets them quickly find out more). Once your search is over, I see no career advantage to keeping these materials on the web. I think the main reason to do so is as a service to others. It's useful for graduate students to see a wide range of research and teaching statements, so that they have a clearer idea of what they typically look like. This if possible only if some people make theirs available.</p>\n\n<p>There are also several other reasons someone's teaching statement may remain available. One is that they forgot to take it down, and another is that they feel it provides students with useful information about their approach to teaching. However, I'd bet that keeping it online as a public service is the most common reason.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33003,
"author": "dionys",
"author_id": 22520,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22520",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think posting a teaching statement that details your own pedagogical goals and insights as well as your teaching experience is an excellent way to:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>help students and colleagues get to know you.</p></li>\n<li><p>challenge yourself to improve and work towards your teaching goals.</p></li>\n<li><p>challenge yourself to reflect on your teaching.</p></li>\n<li><p>get feedback on your approaches to teaching and relating to students.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In short, I think there are plenty of real advantages in clearly expressing your teaching philosophy and sharing your views with others that aren't directly related to securing a position or \"getting ahead\" in terms of career advancement.</p>\n\n<p>Everyone can be cynical once in awhile, especially when they're being put through the wringer by the frustrating and very competitive application process.\nHowever, most people working in academia take pride in their work and a teaching statement is generally a lot more than a bit of puffery for a job application.\nIn my own experience as an undergraduate student, many of the best instructors I encountered in my coursework had public teaching statements and were very open about how and why they did things in their classes.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32983",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22503/"
] |
32,988 |
<p>There are many situations in academia where an entity is entrusted with confidential data belonging to a researcher. A very obvious one is the publication process: the journals are required to keep submitted papers confidential until they are published. But there are also other situations. For example, biologists can submit newly discovered nucleotide sequences to the EMBL database, and they have the option to request the new sequences to be kept confidential until publication. I guess that other disciplines can have similar arrangements. </p>
<p>In these cases, the entity has the responsibility of keeping the data confidential, and a leak can have highly negative consequences for the scientist who entrusted them with their not-yet-published results. </p>
<p>My question is: are there known cases of such leaks? I don't mean just a reviewer mentioning to his colleagues "I have a very interesting paper by X, if the results are confirmed, we may be looking at a cure for [type of cancer]" without further details. I mean high-profile cases where an institution or its employee is more or less "officially" accused of either willful wrongdoing, or of insufficient protection of the information so that e.g. a database was hacked and the information read out. </p>
<p>If there are such cases, what happened? How were they discovered, and what were the consequences for the scientist whose data was made public, and for the institution which should have kept it secret? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34080,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a little bit different than your question, but I think fits the spirit: there have been a number of high-profile cases of scientists being held in a position of trust and being accused of leaking confidential information. Two notorious such cases in the United States:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Phil Zimmerman was <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#History\" rel=\"nofollow\">accused of leaking his PGP encryption algorithm</a>, which at that time (1991) was considered illegal to export from the United States. He has claimed that the initial dissemination was accidental, which might or might not be credible, given the early stage of development of the internet. Once he was formally accused and facing potential jail time, he published the source code in a book, turning it into a question of free speech.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Postol\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ted Postol</a> has claimed that various US anti-missile systems do not perform as claimed, leading, among other things to several misconduct investigations against a number of other researchers and also Postol himself. Notably, Postol ended up being accused of violating confidentiality rules with regard to other researchers. He has never formally been sanctioned, but remains a center of controversy.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34136,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Academic publications are sometimes subject to an <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_embargo\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">embargo</a>, in which information about the publication is shared with the media, but they are restricted from publishing a news article using this information before a certain date.</p>\n\n<p>In this context, leaks are not uncommon. Sometimes the author of the paper is responsible for the leak; on other occasions, the publisher or a news agency may be responsible.</p>\n\n<p>Here are two examples in which the Associated Press broke an embargo:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/ap-technical-glitch-unintentionally-breaks-jama-avastin-study-embargo/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">AP technical glitch unintentionally breaks JAMA Avastin study embargo</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/ap-breaks-abortion-data-embargo/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">AP breaks abortion data embargo</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In both of these cases, there were no serious consequences for anybody involved.</p>\n\n<p>In a case that <em>did</em> involve consequences, a researcher published a paper using data that was made available through the NIH, but was subject to a data embargo. The paper was retracted (see the <a href=\"https://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/journals-can-break-embargoes-too-a-data-breach-at-pnas-with-consequences/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">story on RetractionWatch</a>), and the researcher's access to the shared data was suspended: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Upon learning of the violation, the investigator’s access to dbGaP [database of Genotypes and Phenotypes] was immediately suspended pending an investigation by the NIH Data Access Committee with responsibility for the dataset involved and a review by the GWAS Senior Oversight Committee (SOC). Information pertaining to the incident was requested from the investigator’s home institution through the Institutional Signing Official that approved the investigator’s original request to the NIH. After a thorough review of the circumstances pertaining to the violation, the SOC revoked access to all dbGaP data for a period of six months.</p>\n \n <p>All work with data downloaded before the date of the access suspension was expected to cease during the ban. This ban included the Primary Investigator as well as those individuals working with the individual-level GWAS data under his Data Access Request, because they also agreed to abide by the terms and conditions for data use within the Data Use Certification agreement. The period of the ban passed on March 4, 2010, and Dr. Zhang may now submit new requests for access to dbGaP data.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Another data leak scenario was mentioned by Stephan Kolassa in a <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32988/are-there-known-cases-of-leaks-in-academia#comment74071_32988\">comment</a>: when a researcher uses private data that is leaked. <a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/24/cftc-cme-research-idUSL2N0D91IT20130424\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Here</a> is an example of a case where</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>the world's largest futures exchange has accused the top U.S. derivatives regulator of illegally sharing sensitive market data with outside researchers who then used the information to publish academic papers about high-frequency trading</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Possibly the most high-profile case of data leakage in the very recent past is <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Climategate</a>, but that turned out to be more of a \"hack\" than a leak by someone who had legitimate access to the data. In 2009, a server at the University of East Anglia (UEA) was compromised, and material was leaked including more than 1,000 emails, 2,000 documents, and source code, pertaining to climate change research. Many of the emails concerned technical aspects of climate research, such as data analysis. In this case, climate change skeptics argued that the leaked materials showed that scientists engaged in a conspiracy to manipulate climate data. However, various investigative committees reported no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct on the part of the scientists.</p>\n\n<p>The individuals responsible for the breach were not identified. Police said said, however, that despite rumors to the contrary, the attack had been carried out \"remotely via the internet\" and that there was \"no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime.\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32988",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15266/"
] |
32,997 |
<p>The class was scheduled to take the final next week. I wanted to take the test this week, because there's some place I was planning to be on the day of the final. My teacher said that doesn't count as an extenuating circumstance, and that his dean wouldn't like it. His dean isn't even administering the exam, so why would she even care?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 32999,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If there is a scheduled time when exams are given, the dean is often the person who receives complaints about exams that are given at the wrong time (e.g. if the professor unilaterally moves the exam). The dean cares because he or she has to deal with the complaints!</p>\n\n<p>To keep things organized, the dean may have told the faculty (perhaps through their department chairs) only to reschedule exams if there are extenuating circumstances. That would not be an unreasonable or surprising request, in my experience.</p>\n\n<p>The professor might (depending on the institution, their tenure status, and their own sense of agency) be able to move your exam anyway. But the answer you received should be viewed as a polite \"no\".</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I am only sometimes able to move the exams in that way. It depends, for me, on whether I have the exam written, what day and time the student wants to take the exam, how many students I anticipate will want an alternate time, etc. Of course, if there is a serious circumstance I will schedule a make up. But just wanting to be somewhere else is not much of an extenuating circumstance - taking the final is an expected part of taking the class. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33002,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Allowing students to take finals at other than the scheduled time could cause the following problems:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Complaints from other students (in other courses under other professors) that they weren't allowed to take their final exam at a nonstandard time. \"My friend Johnny got to take Professor Smith's final early, why can't I take Prof Jones's final early.\"</p></li>\n<li><p>If the same final exam is used for all students, then students who take the exam early can leak information about the questions to other students.</p></li>\n<li><p>To avoid the problem in point 2, we often give a different final exam to students who must take the exam at a non-standard time. However, this can lead to complaints that the alternate exam is unfair. At the very least, it means extra work for the professor in writing the exam.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>There are certainly circumstances where a student can't take a final exam at the scheduled time. For example, a student in one of my classes is ill, so we've arranged for a makeup final exam to be given in January at the start of the spring semester.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33010,
"author": "Dan",
"author_id": 25396,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25396",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here is a perspective people don't usually consider...accreditation. Each student is required to meet a certain amount of instructional hours per class. The accreditation committee sets the required hours and audits school records to make sure these requirements are being met.</p>\n\n<p>If a student takes the final early, it implies they are going to miss a class. By allowing this, the teacher has tacitly agreed to violate the accreditation requirements of the class.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33020,
"author": "Tom Au",
"author_id": 755,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/755",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"Someplace where I was planning to be\" doesn't tell the full story. By itself, that's a reason for denying a request for a different test time.</p>\n\n<p>\"Someplace\" (at a particular time) is a lot more excusable for an emergency. If there is an illness or potential death in the family, and you need to get there before, say, one of your parents die, or for a scheduled funeral, that would be an adequate reason for rescheduling your test. So might a (legal) \"court\" date; possibly even another \"court date\" at the invitation, of say, Queen Elizabeth II.</p>\n\n<p>But barring a \"good reason,\" professors and deans are supposed to deny requests for rescheduling a test.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 108050,
"author": "Sussan",
"author_id": 91322,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/91322",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I now have 2 students who want to reschedule their final exams - both for valid reasons, but both in reasonably high level courses - calc 2 and a programming class. The final for Calc 2 requires significant preparation time, and time setting the rubric. The programming exam is easier to write but harder to grade when there is just one person taking it. Both require an addition of about 8 hours (each) to write, proctor and grade these finals. I don't want to stand in the way of my students who have excellent opportunities - but I have a policy in place that requires exams to be taken at exam time - barring extreme (i.e. hospitalized emergencies). Part of the problem is the schedule of the college I teach at - spring semester runs into June. The other problem is guilt - other professors are doing it so I should to... peer pressure maybe. There should be one clear campus wide policy requiring students to take the final on the day scheduled. I shouldn't be spending any time worrying about this. :-/ </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32997",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25392/"
] |
33,000 |
<p>My literature professor pronounces the name of a very famous novelist incorrectly (I've searched quite a bit and I'm sure of it). I'll have an oral examination soon, and I'm not entirely sure whether I should adapt and pronounce it like she does, or correctly. I'm afraid that if I choose the last option she will tell me I'm wrong, and I'd have to explain she is, which might embarrass her. </p>
<p>What's the best thing to do? If the second, what would be the most polite way to explain I'm right?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 33004,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just pronounce the name the best way you can. If you think pronouncing it correctly differs so much from the way you have heard it from your teacher then using something close to their pronunciation can help stop confusion so in this case you roll with the punches. The fact that names are sometimes pronounced weird, wrong or even butchered is just a reality. In some cases it is a lack of exposure to unusual names or forms of spelling. This is a very common experience for anyone visiting a country with a different language.</p>\n\n<p>So, in general, don't worry too much about it. Sometimes to avoid confusion if the \"true\" pronunciation and the way you have heard it differ to the extent it can be seen as two different words, you may have to adopt a stance closer to that which find wrong. But the worst that can happen is that you will be corrected.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33033,
"author": "keshlam",
"author_id": 10225,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10225",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Ideally, find your professor during office hours, and say something like \"Hey, this has been confusing me... I'm seeing all these references to one pronunciation and you've been using another. Is there a disagreement in the academic community, or are both pronunciations valid, or did the author use a less-common pronunciation, or are these other references simply wrong?\" </p>\n\n<p>In other words, don't tell her that she's making a mistake; ask her to help you learn. Much more polite, much harder to take offense at, and much less likely to embarass <em>you</em> if she says either \"Well, this is how [author] always pronounced his name when I spoke to him\" or \"I have a slight speech impediment that I'm a bit embarrassed about; thanks for not bringing this up in public.\"</p>\n\n<p>The fact that she's outvoted does not necessarily mean she's wrong. For that matter, she may not be aware that there is a difference, or not be able to reproduce that difference accurately, if her accent isn't the same as the others you've spoken to (or your own)... or you may be having the same problem in the other direction.</p>\n\n<p>You have an interesting question. Ask it. In private, and <em>as</em> a question, and you'll probably get an interesting answer and maybe a bit of an uptick on your grade for having made additional effort. If you <em>tell</em> her that she's wrong, and/or do so in the middle of class, it's likely to go less well for either of you.</p>\n\n<p>If you really can't meet with her before the exam, despite your best efforts, you have to decide whether you're going to pronounce it her way, pronounce it your way and -- if challenged -- say \"I've been meaning to ask about that; this is how I've always heard it...\", or try for a compromise between them with the \"I've been meaning to ask\" as a fallback.</p>\n\n<p>But I really doubt you're going to get dinged for getting this wrong if you get the rest of the exam right. So maybe you should focus on aceing the exam, rather than on this nitpicky point.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33000",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25393/"
] |
33,006 |
<p>I just finished my first semester teaching (I lead two recitation sections for pre-calculus twice a week). It went well, but I've noticed a sizable callus has formed on my right middle finger on the left side between the nail and first knuckle. This is from how I hold the chalk, I believe. The callus is rubbing against my finger when I write now and causing a bit of pain.</p>
<p>How do I prevent this callus? I don't have much experience with writing on the chalkboard so I imagine this is from holding the chalk incorrectly. Maybe someone knows secrets to the chalkboard that I am not aware of?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 33008,
"author": "J. Zimmerman",
"author_id": 7921,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7921",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Simple prevention would be to wrap a small bandage or piece of adhesive tape around your finger before each recitation session. (Or, as @Cape_Code suggested, use rock-climbing tape.)This will also help to mitigate the pain you are experiencing now, and may even hasten the disappearance of the callus. </p>\n\n<p>As for your question on holding the chalk correctly/incorrectly, I can't help you there. This is the same spot in which I always develop a callus from writing, no matter which writing instrument I am using. AFAIK, I also <em>am</em> holding my chalk/pen/pencil correctly! I believe this is simply your skin's natural defense against friction, and the only remedy may be to find an alternative teaching method which does not rely so heavily on chalkboard use. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33009,
"author": "Penguin_Knight",
"author_id": 6450,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6450",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A couple ways. You may consider products called \"chalk clip\" or \"chalk holder\" like this one:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/3i3c7.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>They make the girth larger and less likely to produce a small pressure point on your finger, which causes callus.</p>\n\n<p>Another option is to get some \"foam tubing\" from general hardware stores. They are cheap and in different sizes, thicknesses, and even colors. Cut a 2 to 2.5 inches long segment and put it over your middle finger. To improve comfort when bending your finger you can make a small vertical incision on the tube (palm side) so that you can bend the finger more freely.</p>\n\n<p>Volleyball players also have elastic finger guards like these:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/iuJRH.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>You can get a set of them from sports stores. Just pull it down a bit to protect your last joint rather than the middle joint. My experience (as a volleyball player not chalk writer) is that the ones with nylon outside and a thin foam layer inside work are the most comfortable.</p>\n\n<p>If technology permits, you can also consider projecting your hand writing using a projector, computer tablet, or even interactive screen. Those methods allow you to write with a lighter grip.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33013,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Well, this condition depends on many factors:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>Time.</strong> If you don't mind having a rougher skin on your hands, then give it some time. However, if it doesn't get better over time, then something has to be done.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Dry hands.</strong> IMHO a big issue for many people: chalk dries your hand skin. Seriously. You should have some good cream in your office and apply it before and after each lecture. This can significantly help with the skin condition, and together with the previous point, it may be enough.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Chalk holding.</strong> There are several ways how to hold a chalk. Some people prefer this or that. I suggest trying couple of them:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Hold it like a pen -- however, this presses the chalk against the nail base on your middle finger, not quite good.</p></li>\n<li><p>Hold it like a dining knife in high society -- you get a long chalk and touch it by thumb tip from one side and by all fingertips from the other side. This requires a chalk that writes without much pressure</p></li>\n<li><p>Take small piece and hold it between the tips of your thumb, point finger and middle finger. (My personal favourite)</p></li>\n<li><p>With longer chalks, you can press it against the palm, and then do as above.</p></li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p><strong>Type of chalk.</strong> I know three basic types of chalk: soft square-profile chalks that leave trace on everything they touch, hard rounded chalks that leave thinner traces and last forever; and something in between -- square profile but quite hard. There are surely others. You may try different types of chalk if you can, to see which one do you like.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As for the special chalk holders and stuff: I have never used them, which doesn't mean they are bad. Just a remark: With the softy things, remember to wash them well since chalk tends to accumulate in these.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33014,
"author": "Rex Kerr",
"author_id": 669,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/669",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you have board space, use larger diameter chalk and grip it with your whole hand as you would a flashlight. You don't generally need to make the tiny motions for which the pen-writing variant of the precision grip is good for. If you still want a precision grip, get larger diameter chalk and hold it between your first four fingertips (or three if you must use narrow pieces and you have wide fingers).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33037,
"author": "Alexander Gruber",
"author_id": 4545,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4545",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My method is to hold the chalk like a magic wand (or, less excitingly, like a <a href=\"http://drawingacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/how-to-hold-a-pencil.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\">drawing</a> <a href=\"http://www.artforhomeschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/hold-pencil.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\">pencil</a>). This keeping the chalk resting in my palm, where the skin is thicker, and allows me to grip with many different parts of my fingers. It's also helps me to think of board work as drawing, rather than writing, as a reminder to keep the letters large, neat, and readable.</p>\n\n<p>Another thing you may want to try is using Hagomoro chalk, which has a wax coating on the grip part. It costs a little to have a box imported, but I thought it was worth it.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33006",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14667/"
] |
33,021 |
<p>I have made the experience that even the most excellent academics are often didactically mediocre lecturers. I also watched some of last years Nobel lectures and realised many laureates are actually not particularly good at teaching.</p>
<p>What is it that makes some lectures didactically effective and others not, regardless of how knowledgable the lecturer is?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 33025,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Unless you put a lot of thought into your lectures, it's hard to adopt the mindset of a student who knows much less than you. You may take certain concepts for granted, and you've long forgotten how you learned them, or what originally confused you. At the time you learned them you were probably much more well-prepared than the average student, so common stumbling blocks for students were never issues for you.</p>\n\n<p>This means there are a lot of professors who are good at giving talks (to people well-versed in their field), but poor at giving lectures (to people with little or no background).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33027,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>What is it that makes delivering a good, clear, informative lecture so challenging?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It is challenging because learning is challenging. The things that one could easily convey to a very general audience simply by being clear and informative are by and large not the things (or certainly, not all the things) that one learns in university-level courses.</p>\n\n<p>What makes a good lecturer is a great question, but a bit broad for a site like this. If you have a group of students / faculty colleagues, I highly recommend throwing this out to the group: break the question up into some directed subquestions, give everyone the questions, and then after a week or so meet to discuss their answers. I actually did something like this recently (the topic was \"successful math talks\"), and what ensued was entertaining and enlightening. </p>\n\n<p>Here let me (still very superficially) try to address your observation that even Nobel Laureates need not be good lecturers. Again I will break this up into a few subquestions.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1) Do you expect a Nobel Laureate to be a better lecturer than a faculty member with a less exceptional research profile? Why or why not?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><b></b></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>2) Do you think that Nobel Laureates would be especially good or bad at giving certain kinds of lectures, or lectures to certain kinds of audiences? Why?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think everyone can get a turn at answering these questions. (Probably not here: the site is not designed for that.) Let me take a crack at the first one:</p>\n\n<p>One can argue that Nobelists ought to be on average very good lecturers. First of all (contrary to what some people would like to think), intelligence and acumen in one domain is positively correlated with intelligence and acumen in another domain, and the correlation increases to perfect as the two domains converge. If you are a professor of X, then researching X and teaching X are your two main duties. They are different, but I can isolate a common variable. The best way to be a bad teacher is to have a poor understanding of your subject, and Nobelists must be the least at risk for that. The people who have not thoroughly mastered their field, especially at the level of coursework, are in my experience essentially never the people who are making the cutting edge breakthroughs. </p>\n\n<p>Is it possible that when a true luminary gives a lecture, we evaluate them with that high standard in mind? I often tell the story of a colloquium I saw given by a Fields Medalist (\"the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize\"). By chance I had read about his work, relatively casually, about a month before his lecture. I was profoundly disappointed by his lecture because it was merely clear and informative. The information he conveyed was almost exactly the information that I had read before. However, when I read about I found it incredibly exciting and impressive. In person he did not convey any of this: it was just a recitation of \"In 1982, I proved this theorem; two years later I proved the following improvement\". I felt afterwards that if for some (totally counterfactual) reason I had given the talk instead, I would have done a better job, because I would have been so enthusiastic. Mine is a sincere reaction, but you see that I was coming in with very high standards, and the idea that I could have done better ought to be construed as a description of the psychology of my reaction: taken literally, it seems rather unlikely.</p>\n\n<p>One can also argue that it is not so surprising if Nobelists give lectures that are merely okay or actually not as good as what other faculty are doing. (Again it depends a lot on <em>what kind of lecture</em> we're talking about, which I am omitting for now.) Let's go back to what I said before: being a professor of X involves researching X and teaching X. Yes, these skills are positively correlated. But they also compete for our time. If you are a subject area expert with some teaching experience, then you can probably deliver a decent lecture on X with a moderate amount of preparation. But maybe moderate is more preparation than you want or feel that you can spare. If you don't prepare at all, then no matter how brilliant you are you are probably going to give a lecture which the audience will regard as being rough -- maybe too rough. If you want to give a better lecture then you probably have to prepare more. Now there are a lot of people in university environments who are spending much more time and thought preparing their lectures. It is not a zero-sum phenomenon because no one tells you exactly how many hours you should spend total in any given week. There are a lot of leading researchers who are clearly putting substantial time into their lectures. However, Nobelists are the extreme case: you are selecting people for which the community as a whole feels that their research is much more valuable than their teaching. </p>\n\n<p>Taking these two things together: I would expect a Nobelist to give lectures that are excellent in some ways and below average in others. By the way, what makes a good lecture is a many-dimensional space, and many is the time that a friend and I have walked out of the same talk and discovered that one of us loved it and the other hated it. But if you're judging a talk by the types of things that go into undergraduate student evaluations: I think you're mixing together a lot of highs and lows and thus one should expect the results to be pretty much all over the place.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34058,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What makes giving a clear lecture so difficult? There are two components to giving an interesting and engaging lecture: content and delivery.</p>\n<h3>Delivery</h3>\n<p>Does the speaker project, or mumble? Confidently walk about the room, or stay locked behind a lectern? Make eye contact, or spend more time looking at a white board than the audience? Read from a set of PowerPoint slides, or supplement them with pertinent material? Pepper their speech with <em>ums</em> and <em>ahs</em>, or speak as though the talk was more reheased? Presentation style is imporant. Two speakers can speak from the same script, with one keeping the audience riveted while the other puts them to sleep.</p>\n<p>Most doctoral programs don't require a public speaking course – maybe they should? – and public speaking isn't taught in the physics lab, your advisor's office, or the department conference room. If you want to hone these skills, you'll need to do it on your own, join an outside organization such as Toastmasters, or participate in whatever faculty development opportunities are afforded at your institution.</p>\n<h3>Content</h3>\n<p>This one is difficult for the lecturer, because much of the content is dictated by the course curriculum. We don't get to choose our topic, and speak about <em>The Day I Was Rescued from the Well</em>, or <em>Three Secrets to Research Success</em>. Instead, we are required to talk about Maxwell's equations, or orbital mechanics, or the logistics problems at the Battle of Wellington.</p>\n<p>In the case of a Nobel laureate, this problem is compounded, because the speaker is often speaking about the culmination research to a general audience with little or no experience in the field. It can be challenging for a subject matter expert to distill vast knowledge and expertise into nuggets comprehensible for the layman; it's difficult to convey excitement to people with insufficient background knowledge to share that emotion. Advances in the field are made after years of study with tedious experimentation and observation. How long would you be able to retain interest talking about your dissertation research at a New Year's Eve party? Winning a Nobel Prize wouldn't make that any easier.</p>\n<h3>Other Challenges in Academia</h3>\n<p>Whether it's a professor in front of the classroom, or a Nobel laureate in a university lecture hall, most talks seem to be about 50 minutes to an hour long: double the length of most sermons, and quadruple the length of most TED talks. That's a long time to hold the attention of an audience! Even accomplished speakers would find it difficult to engage an audience that long. That's why playwrights pen tales of love triangles, not mathematical proofs.</p>\n<p>The classroom professor has an additional challenge in that the "audience" (i.e., the enrolled students) may not be all that motivated to learn, making it especially difficult to give a memorable performance while also ensuring valuable learning took place.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34062,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is large field of research dedicated to pedagogy, and the idea that you just <em>are</em> a good lecturer or not is as unfounded as saying that you are a good researcher or not. Everybody has some predispositions, but there is also a lot to learn from the existing literature, from colleagues, from past past experience, etc. </p>\n\n<p>In the UK, the <a href=\"https://www.heacademy.ac.uk\" rel=\"nofollow\">Higher Education Academy</a> has developed the <a href=\"https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/professional-recognition/uk-professional-standards-framework-ukpsf\" rel=\"nofollow\">UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF)</a>, which is <em>\"a comprehensive set of professional standards and guidelines for HE providers and leaders\"</em>. The rest of my answer is basically copied from the UKPSF. </p>\n\n<p>The UKPSF defines three dimensions: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Areas of Activity</strong></p>\n \n <p>A1 Design and plan learning activities and/or programmes of study</p>\n \n <p>A2 Teach and/or support learning</p>\n \n <p>A3 Assess and give feedback to learners</p>\n \n <p>A4 Develop effective learning environments and approaches to\n student support and guidance</p>\n \n <p>A5 Engage in continuing professional development in subjects/disciplines\n and their pedagogy, incorporating research, scholarship and the evaluation of professional practices</p>\n \n <p><strong>Core Knowledge</strong></p>\n \n <p>K1 The subject material</p>\n \n <p>K2 Appropriate methods for teaching, learning and assessing in the subject\n area and at the level of the academic programme</p>\n \n <p>K3 How students learn, both generally and within their subject/ disciplinary area(s)</p>\n \n <p>K4 The use and value of appropriate learning technologies</p>\n \n <p>K5 Methods for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching</p>\n \n <p>K6 The implications of quality assurance and quality enhancement for\n academic and professional practice with a particular focus on teaching</p>\n \n <p><strong>Professional Values</strong></p>\n \n <p>V1 Respect individual learners and diverse learning communities</p>\n \n <p>V2 Promote participation in higher education and equality of\n opportunity for learners</p>\n \n <p>V3 Use evidence-informed approaches and the outcomes from research,\n scholarship and continuing professional development</p>\n \n <p>V4 Acknowledge the wider context in which higher education operates\n recognising the implications for professional practice</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>A lecturer is, in general, expected to meet the requirements to be a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Descriptor 2), which means: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Demonstrates a broad understanding\n of effective approaches to teaching and learning support as key contributions to high quality student learning. Individuals should be able to provide evidence of:</p>\n \n <p>I. Successful engagement across all five Areas of Activity</p>\n \n <p>II. Appropriate knowledge and understanding across all aspects of\n Core Knowledge</p>\n \n <p>III. A commitment to all the Professional Values</p>\n \n <p>IV. Successful engagement in appropriate teaching practices\n related to the Areas of Activity</p>\n \n <p>V. Successful incorporation of subject and pedagogic research and/\n or scholarship within the above activities, as part of an integrated approach to academic practice</p>\n \n <p>VI. Successful engagement in continuing professional\n development in relation to teaching, learning, assessment and, where appropriate, related professional practices</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>EDIT: Note that the key point here is <strong>demonstrate</strong>. For each of the points above, there are clear ways to demonstrate that one understands them. For instance, <em>\"methods for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching\"</em> include asking feedback from students, performing comparative analysis from one year to another, engage in a reflective process, etc, so demonstrating this point is not just about saying \"oh yes, I care that my teaching is effective\". </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34090,
"author": "Peter Bloem",
"author_id": 6936,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6936",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think these are the most important properties:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Understanding your audience</strong> I you can empathize with your audience and understand at what level they are mentally, and how accessible the material is for them, you can tailor the lecture or talk to make it most accessible. My most successful lectures were when I remembered exactly what it was like when I learnt the material. The most difficult ones are when the material is too familiar to me and I can't understand why it would be difficult. A good lecturer will go through great trouble to understand his audience and tailor the material.</li>\n<li><strong>Repetition</strong> Isolating the key points, and repeating them at different points in different ways. If everything you say has a 20 percent chance of sticking, you need to double up on the important elements, for the sake of redundancy.</li>\n<li><strong>Putting in the time</strong> I've never heard of a good lecturer who could just wing it. Most of them make it look easy, but all of them slave over it. You can't be a good lecturer if you don't care. The audience will notice if the i's aren't dotted.</li>\n<li><strong>Telling a good story</strong> Firstly, this means both finding a throughline in the material, where every step follows from the last and the listener has a structure to hold on to. Making it more that just an enumeration of facts and subjects. Secondly, it means creating tension. Using the same techniques that storytellers do. It's more difficult if you don't have spaceships, dragons and romantic situations to talk about, but you can still set up expectations and statisfy them and you can still have little jokes and you can still vary between action scenes and gentle dialog.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34116,
"author": "Andreas Blass",
"author_id": 14506,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've heard the following story, which seems relevant, but I can't find a source for it now. Someone asked Stanislaw Ulam for the rules for giving a good lecture. Ulam at first denied that such rules could exist, but the questioner persisted, and Ulam finally came up with the following two rules. (1) Have something to say. (2) If, by good fortune, you have two things to say, then say first the one and then the other, not both at once.</p>\n\n<p>Violations of Ulam's rules account for surprisingly many of the occasions when I've left a lecture wishing I hadn't gone to it.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33021",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25093/"
] |
33,022 |
<p>At the secondary school I went there was an implicit sense that all students were expected to go to university. For example councillors would come into our English classes to give presentations on how to make smooth transition to a university. I guess I always had the assumption that a university degree is necessary to a) make a living and b) make a living doing something you enjoy. Now that I'm a little older and a little more experienced I know this is not always the case. There are plenty of people (especially in business) who did not complete a university program. How do you decide if university is right for you? Is the correct approach to decide on the job you want and then, if university is required, get the degree for it?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 33030,
"author": "keshlam",
"author_id": 10225,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10225",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>What do you want to do with your life? University is one way of getting to some of the answers. Trade school or apprenticing is another, if you think that's closer to what you want to spend your life doing. </p>\n\n<p>It's also legitimate to say you don't know yet -- in which case you need to decide whether starting classes would help you decide what interests you, or if doing something else for a year makes more sense.</p>\n\n<p>I knew what I wanted to study (or thought I did; turns out I was close but not on the mark), but even so I decided to take a year off before college; I needed a bit of maturation time, and to switch from being the youngest in the class to being one of the older kids, for my own comfort. Spent the year doing volunteer work in a hospital (electronic repair, \"biomedical engineering\"), which was certainly educational in the general sense, helped build my self confidence, and may actually have helped my college application stand out from others.</p>\n\n<p>\"... There are nine and sixty ways / of constructing tribal lays, / And every single one of them is right!\" -- Kipling</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34095,
"author": "Telastyn",
"author_id": 23976,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23976",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>There are plenty of people (especially in business) who did not complete a university program.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Make no mistake, university is still required for the vast majority of jobs at the vast majority of employers. There are certainly plenty of outliers, but they are a small percentage of professionals.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is the correct approach to decide on the job you want and then, if university is required, get the degree for it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>No</strong>. University isn't job training, it's education. An education provides you with the tools necessary to be a better person. A better employee for sure, but also a better entrepreneur, a better wife/husband, a better father/mother, a better solider, a better scientist... whatever. </p>\n\n<p>The degree itself will open all sorts of professional doors, but it's the <em>education</em> that is valuable. The only reason to not get one is if you think you can get a better education doing something else. All things being equal though, attending an institution specializing in educating you is most likely to actually provide you with a worthwhile education.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33022",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23316/"
] |
33,023 |
<p>Browsing various PhD admissions programs, I consistently find that there is a higher expectation of international students on the physics GRE for admission. For example, at <a href="https://ph.utexas.edu/prospective-graduate-students/admissions">UT Austin</a>, the average score on the physics GRE for students accepted for Fall 2011 was 907 for international students and 777 for US students. </p>
<p>Why is there such a difference in expectations? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 33024,
"author": "cduston",
"author_id": 25406,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25406",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First answer: education systems in the rest of the world include physics earlier in the curriculum than in the US, so one would naturally expect a student with more experience to score higher.</p>\n\n<p>Second answer: Some countries have explicit \"GRE training\" to get their students into the highly-regarded US higher-education system (grad school). (this is an editorial answer - I have heard of such things but not in an official capacity).</p>\n\n<p>Third answer: Before you get to graduate school, science/math education in the United States is terrible (googleable fact). If you held students to the same requirements, there would be zero US citizen graduate students in US graduate programs.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33026,
"author": "Aru Ray",
"author_id": 948,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/948",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>(Some) US departments seek to maintain a critical mass of US students. (I expect that) such departments accept a critical mass of US students - the best that they can get - and then accept some number of international students to fill up their ranks - the best that they can get. Since international students generally score higher on standardized tests such as the GRE general/subject test (for all sorts of reasons), this leads to the accepted international students having higher test scores than the accepted US students. </p>\n\n<p>A more general point, I believe, is that international students are often 'unknown quantities'. While a US student might have recommendation letters, research experience, etc. that gives an admissions committee a well-rounded perspective on them and could potentially make up for less-than-stellar test scores, this is not always possible for international students. So in some sense an international applicant has to have exceptional test scores to make up for being an unknown quantity in other respects. I believe this partly because international students who have been undergraduates in the US seem to fall into the `domestic students' box more so than the 'international students' box. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 33029,
"author": "Matt Reece",
"author_id": 6108,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6108",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The physics GRE is not a very good test of one's knowledge of physics or ability to solve physics problems. Most physics homework questions students will encounter are quite a bit lengthier and more involved than the sort of question that appears on the GRE. What the GRE tests is the ability to solve lots of very simple problems very quickly. Students who haven't specifically practiced for that will often do poorly even if they know the material well. Physics departments in the US typically don't give students this sort of practice. In some other countries, it's much more standard for departments to encourage such practice and provide assistance with it (e.g. students might train on lots of old exams). So it's a mistake to interpret this statistic as implying that international students are better educated than US students.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34086,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Another issue that may play a role is that it is much harder for faculty to accurately evaluate international students than US students. The recommenders and their institutions are less likely to be known to the people evaluating, and there is generally less of a good match between expectations in the different systems. </p>\n\n<p>Thus, it is often the case that an international student needs to be much more obviously excellent than a US student, in order to obtain admission to the same program, and this would be expected to be reflected in GRE scores as well.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/10
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33023",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23138/"
] |
33,032 |
<p>So thing aren't going well for me with my PhD and I sort of think I'm not going to get there (hard deadline is September and frankly I think I'm fairly close to having a breakdown). I'm in the UK and the hard deadline is university policy. </p>
<p><strong>How soon should I start looking for work outside academia? How should I go about explaining my (likely) failure?</strong></p>
<p>I'm not sure I know what to do from here.</p>
<p>I don't feel confident about bringing this up with my supervisor. If I did, he would brush it off (he doesn't really get me, I don't think) with something along the lines of "What else are you going to do? Just get on with it.". He has expressed concern about my progress before now. Also, part of the motivation for asking this question is feeling well-researched on this topic prior to having a conversation, which I'm hoping will show my supervisor that I'm serious about it.</p>
<p>If this information is useful I'm based in the UK, I have a pass at Master's level already and a 2:1 BSc in physics and I am in an allied field at the moment.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 33039,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your situation sounds tough. It is also very hard to specifically advise, but let me try to be at least vaguely helpful. </p>\n\n<p>The natural person to talk to about this is indeed your supervisor. You say that he \"would brush it off\". That doesn't sound like a fully rational way of evaluating the situation to me. Either he will brush it off or he won't: you can't proceed further until you know which it is. Moreover, if you tell a PhD supervisor that you think you will have to drop out of the program and by the way you're fairly close to a breakdown and he brushes you off, then he's in worse shape than you by far. From my safe distance of total ignorance of your situation I am going to guess that if you bring things to him in a sincere and serious way, he is not likely to completely brush you off.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How should I go about explaining my (likely) failure? </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'm sorry, I don't really know. I think explaining why you feel that your failure is likely is plenty for one conversation. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How soon should I start looking for work outside academia?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think you should process the \"likely failure\" part before you seriously start looking for work: first find out whether you can still get out with a PhD. (Unless you no longer even want to get a PhD, in which case you should also bring that up with your supervisor and should start working on an immediate exit strategy.)</p>\n\n<p>If you and your supervisor -- or someone who can function as your supervisor if he is really incapable of stepping up to the task -- agree that your failure really is a likely outcome, then at that point you should start looking for outside work. If there is really little or no hope of success, you should start applying for jobs right away and feel free to take a job as soon as it is offered: you have a master's degree, so if you can't get a PhD then there's nothing keeping you there except the financial support you have.</p>\n\n<p>A lot of people drop out of PhD programs for lots of reasons. (In many programs the overall completion rate is less than 50%.) You should speak in terms of leaving the program, not in terms of \"failing\" it. All that any prospective employer needs to know is that you are deciding to leave the program and the academic track. Try to have the positive spin on that originate in your own mind: if your present path is so unpleasant that continuing on it feels like heading towards a breakdown, won't it be an immensely pleasant relief to do something else? I am not a psychologist, but in my experience the real root of unhappiness is not so much the bad things that you have but the good things that you want and don't have. If you really want to be in a PhD program, you could try starting again somewhere else (maybe someplace where there isn't a hard deadline: that sucks). But it seems more likely that you really want to do something else. What is that something else? Identifying it and experiencing the sensation of moving towards it could make you feel much better.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34056,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To Pete's brilliant answer I want to add that there is a chance that you are not as bad as you think. There is a lot of people suffering from the \"impostor syndrome\", and if your supervisor <em>brushes if off</em> it is very possible he has a different perspective, and thinks that you have done enough; but he is not conveying it effectively.</p>\n\n<p>September is ten months away, more than a quarter of your PhD is left. Keep a cool head and don't rush to conclusions.</p>\n\n<p>In case it helps: a friend of mine, also PhD student in the UK, was panicking because he had only six months left and no results. He is now a successful postdoc where he wanted.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34083,
"author": "Eric",
"author_id": 20424,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20424",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Usually, there is considerable motivation for your adviser to get you successfully through the program. At my university in the Netherlands, a research group would get something like 80,000 euro from the University for each successful PhD candidate. Also, a professor's career will partly be judged on his or her ability to successfully graduate PhD students. So your professor has every reason to take your concerns seriously.</p>\n\n<p>Second, it's important to understand what a hard deadline really means. Again, my experience in the Netherlands was that a PhD student got a 4 year contract at the University. After that you had to either: start as a Post-doc with the understanding you would finish up very soon or move on to a professional career and try to wrap up final papers and the thesis while working. I think less than 50% of PhD students finished within the 4 years. The rest used one of the other two options, including myself. I work with someone who got a PhD in the UK and had a similar experience there, so it seems likely to me that there will be a way for you to get a PhD even if your official time at the university is up. It will be more difficult, but then it will be down to whether you really want it or not. Again, though, it will be in your superviser's interest that you finish your PhD at some point rather than walk away.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34084,
"author": "user1284631",
"author_id": 26438,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26438",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I did subscribe in order to answer your question. The usual thing that you'll hear is that \"it's not that bad, you'll have your Ph. D.\". And, might you believe it or not, this is both true and the right ting to hear.</p>\n\n<p>Your advisor has better grasp of what's in the field and the scientific contributions of your work. Trust him. Maybe your thesis won't win you a Nobel prize, but if he's confident it will win you a Ph. D. degree, then this is almost a sure thing.</p>\n\n<p>You tend to compare your work with your own standards or maybe with the wrong people's work (e.g. experienced researchers etc.). Take a broader view of the topic and maybe read some really bad Ph. D. thesis. This will boost your confidence level.</p>\n\n<p>This is not to say that you should lower your own standards, but to get over hopelessness. Then, trust people more experienced than you are (the Ph. D. advisor). And finally, remember that a Ph. D. degree is not there to prove that you are a researcher. It only proves that you are fit to become a researcher. Much more work will be needed.</p>\n\n<p>And... a Ph. D. student is just that: a student. You have your doubts, the name \"Ph. D.\" is quite frightening, but you should keep calm, organize your work, and commit to an effort without desperation.</p>\n\n<p>Stopping the Ph. D. right now, on these grounds, looks for me like a \"fuite en avant\" (that's French. The best English translation that I did find on the Internet is \"unconscious mechanism that causes a person to throw himself/herself into a dreaded danger\".) Avoid that and only focus on getting things done.</p>\n\n<p>You are also at a moment of your Ph. D. when much of your work is not yet organized and results might seem inexistent. This is because the work that you did was precisely that: a research work. You did explore many spots, contributions seems lost in the bigger picture, but when you start organizing all those, things will become clearer.</p>\n\n<p>My advice: start writing your results in a document, let's say a draft of your thesis and of your Powerpoint (or LATEX) presentation.</p>\n\n<p>This is of double usefulness:</p>\n\n<p>1) will be helpful to you later, in writing the final version of your thesis\n2) the strengths and weaknesses of your work will appear much clearer once you try to integrate your work in an organized presentation. The strengths that you'll see will boost your confidence. The weaknesses are the things you have to address.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34088,
"author": "Peter Bloem",
"author_id": 6936,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6936",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Building on the other answers, I'd like to offer the following advice:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Focus on publishing papers, as soon and as well as possible</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Let me break down the reasoning:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you don't finish the PhD, but you do have a publication record, you have a better chance of being taken seriously academically. It depends on your location, but there are situations where you will be able to graduate later if you just add to your publications in later jobs. You may not get a postdoc position, but a job as a technician might be enough.</li>\n<li>In the end nobody will care about the thesis. The publications are what people actually read.</li>\n<li>As noted before, you are feeling pessimistic. Pessimism is great way to kill your productivity. If your only goal is the big one, you'll be depressed until you actually make it. By setting up smaller, intermediate goals (such as publications), you will rebuild your confidence and positivity step by step.</li>\n<li>Finally, if you do make the switch to industry, you'll have something to show for your work. You worked as a researcher for four years, and you produced publications. The PhD didn't quite come together, but I don't think you'll need to explain it beyond that. Most likely the interviewer won't know much about academic life, and if you give him a brief, honest answer, they won't really care.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34089,
"author": "Patricia Shanahan",
"author_id": 10220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I am going to answer from a rather different perspective, that of someone who has been involved in technical hiring, the sort of person who is going to be looking at your job application and possibly interviewing you if you go into industry. I'm a retired computer programmer and computer architect, and have spent many hours trying to pick the right people to hire.</p>\n\n<p>I had a colleague who started on a PhD. and decided after a few months that he was not suited to that path, and would do better in industry. That was absolutely no problem.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, quitting at this point, or later, in a 4 year project is a potential red flag. It would make me worry that you may throw up your hands and quit a few months before a deadline if the going gets tough, rather than rising to the challenge. That would be a serious negative for most technical jobs. Moreover, even if you think you know what went wrong, why you did not complete the PhD., you would have nothing to show that would give me confidence in your analysis.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, suppose you continue with the PhD. through September, putting together the best thesis you can in that time. If it is accepted, great, carry on with the academic path. </p>\n\n<p>If it is rejected, you still have something to show a potential employer. You would need to analyze what went wrong, and understand your strengths and weaknesses. You either need to correct weak areas, or pick a job that plays to your strengths and does not need your weak areas. For example, if your thesis has insufficient original results but is well written and presented, you could apply for jobs where original research is not required, but organizing and presenting technical information is important. There are plenty of those.</p>\n\n<p>In a comment on another answer, you say \"my supervisor has had a lot of successful PhD candidates\". That means he is both good at picking students, and good at shepherding them through the thesis process.</p>\n\n<p>I think the time to start looking for industry jobs is after the very best thesis you can write by the deadline, taking full advantage of your supervisor's advice and shepherding skills, has been rejected.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34093,
"author": "Chris H",
"author_id": 8494,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8494",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Do check your university's policy on extensions. It should have one, though financially you may be in a difficult place if you get one. Now is a good time to start thinking about it, though you might not need to apply just yet. Get in touch with the postgrad officer in the student union if there is one - they may have a realistic idea of when extensions are granted.</p>\n\n<p>Within your department/faculty there should be someone with responsibility for graduate students. They may well be more suited to this discussion than your supervisor, and will be well placed to see the big picture.</p>\n\n<p>During my PhD each student was assessed annually by 2 academics who weren't their supervisor. This was a very useful process (though preparing for it felt like a waste of time sometimes). These assessors were similarly able to advise informally on progress. You may not have such a system, and even if you do, it may not work so well for you as it did for me.</p>\n\n<p>It's a little later than typical in your PhD but everyone hits a stage like this, sometimes more than once. You will at some point need to involve your supervisor. Those great results that both you and your supervisor were hoping for after your early successes were always unlikely really -- but the majority of supervisors would have let you know by now if you were well short of the necessary progress.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34223,
"author": "Norman Gray",
"author_id": 10983,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10983",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Short version: <em>This is perfectly normal; don't panic; hold on tight.</em></p>\n\n<p>As Patricia said, this would be the worst time to drop out, so don't do that.</p>\n\n<p>Your question refers to ‘my probable PhD flop’, but who says ‘probable’? If it's you, I doubt you're the best judge at this point. Many/most PhD students go through something like this, at around this stage, and you're in excellent company. <em>[long list of sample late-PhD worries deleted, in retrospect, on the grounds it's too depressing]</em>.</p>\n\n<p>You say your supervisor ‘would brush it off’, not ‘brushed it off’. Try talking to him about how you feel: since you say he's had a lot of successful PhD students, he'll also have had a lot of them having the screaming hab-dabs at about the same stage. This is your first PhD, but it's his <em>n</em>-th, and he's probably OK at spotting any <em>real</em> warning signs. He may or may not be good at being reassuring, but if he's not worried, then you perhaps shouldn't be worried either (and I agree that's easier said than done). No-one doesn't care about whether their PhD students fail. A lot can, and usually does, happen in the last 6–12 months of a PhD, and there are strategies for dealing with problems.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34257,
"author": "user2979790",
"author_id": 26548,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26548",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'd like to offer a completely different perspective. We are about a week away from the winter solstice. Dec 21 will be the shortest day and longest night of the year. Many people, myself included, are strongly influenced by the shortened photoperiod. You've probably heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which can cause depression and disturbances to the sleep cycle. Do you find that you are a lot more energetic and confident in the spring and summer months? If so, then you might wish to read a few articles about SAD.</p>\n\n<p>I have personally found it very helpful to bathe my office in light throughout the day. Using a photographic light meter, I determined that my previously preferred office illumination level was about 100 lux at the surface of my desk. By switching on all of the lights and keeping the window blind open, I was able to increase that to 700-1000 lux, depending upon the weather. I am now keeping my office fully illuminated all day, and I find that my mood and energy level are elevated. I have read that it is equally important to have reduced illumination in the evening hours to ensure a good night's rest.</p>\n\n<p>A very simplistic explanation is that light (and exercise) increase serotonin, which lifts the mood and increases energy levels, while darkness increases melatonin which causes drowsiness. So get as much light as possible in the morning and throughout the day. Take an outdoor walk at midday if possible. And then dim the lights in the evening. Give it a week or two and see if you feel any better.</p>\n\n<p>Also, if you want an easy, economical way to increase your office illumination, purchase a T5 high-output fluorescent light fixture. Each 46\" high-output T5 tube emits 5000 lumens. One of those fixtures would probably double the illumination of your office. Three of them would turn your office into an operating theater!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34272,
"author": "Faheem Mitha",
"author_id": 285,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/285",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just to be clear, you are talking about a deadline of Sep 2015, right? Perhaps you can elaborate on your current status. What is your situation with your work, do you have a thesis draft? If not, start writing one immediately. If it helps, I spent the last year of my PhD basically freaking out, though I don't think it was obvious to anyone else. I think I did a lot of smiling out of sheer nervousness. I did eventually get a PhD, though. I know other people (friends, acquaintances) who also had a bad time.</p>\n\n<p>Bottom line; lots of people have a rough time in the closing stages of a PhD. Try to stay calm and relaxed. Definitely talk to your adviser. Also, talk to your fellow students. Try doing something else at least part time. You can't work the whole time, and if you try to, you'll spend the time you can't work panicking. I recommend going dancing. Excellent exercise, and as good as anything I've found for taking your mind off things.</p>\n\n<p>For what it is worth, I agree with what the majority are saying here - try to get your PhD if you can. For one thing, you have already spent all this time on it. Second, it seems you are interested in doing research. Maybe it won't work out eventually - nobody can see the future. But the time to give up is not now. Getting a PhD is only the beginning of a research career, unless you are already 70. :-)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34302,
"author": "Nathaniel J. Smith",
"author_id": 17605,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17605",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to the other answers, it's very likely that your university has some sort of system for providing free counselling/therapy for students. (Try googling for \" student counselling\".) A counsellor can help you understand to what extent your feelings of failure are based in reality versus (extremely common and normal!) PhD-induced depression, help you find ways to cope with stress/breakdown/feelings of failure, and help you figure out what path is best for you. Helping you cope with these kinds of situations is literally their job -- please take advantage of them!</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33032",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22723/"
] |
33,038 |
<p>I have graduated this year with a second class first division. In addition, I ranked sixth. However, the problem is that I scored a D+ in my undergrad research project. Now I am aiming to pursue a masters degree at UK. My supervisor did not show up regularly plus he was 2 hours far away from my place. </p>
<p>I am really worried if this is going to ruin my chances into getting accepted in a good university such as Glasgow, Sheffield, Bristol or Bath. Do you think I have a chance?</p>
<p>BTW: I am an international student majored in engineering.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34069,
"author": "Phil",
"author_id": 19988,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19988",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Do you think I have a chance?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>Yes.</strong> </p>\n\n<p>I was accepted to a masters program with some bad grades on my undergraduate transcript, some courses with less then 40% marks. In graduate school I got a distinction and now I'm a postdoc.</p>\n\n<p>Doing poorly in a single course won't ostracize you from all graduate schools.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34505,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Except at a handful of schools, taught MSc course in the UK are generally unfunded and not selective. Full fee paying international students are essentially the holy grail of students in the UK. With a 2.1 and 5-10k for fees you should have a large choice of good schools.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33038",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25412/"
] |
33,040 |
<p>We are thinking about buying new textbooks for our students. Is there an established practice of buying digital copies of books for students? I expect that e-books should generally be cheaper and we might also be able to save money on delivery.</p>
<p>If the school were to purchase 10 copies of some particular title (e.g., this <a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005C74HXC">condensed matter physics book</a>), would it be possible to loan these e-books to one set of students for some period of time (2 years), and later use the same licensed e-books for the next set of students?</p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong></p>
<p>I'm asking is it <em>legal</em> to give the same e-book file to multiple student generations, given that the particular licensed copy is only used by one student at a time.</p>
<p>If it is legal, I'm interesting in the established procedure for doing so. Are there any special considerations for different vendors or for different e-book formats?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 33042,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Generally speaking, when you purchase digital content, you are usually purchasing a <em>license</em> for said content. You will have to read the license to find out what the terms are. For example, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201014950\">here</a> is the general license agreement for the Kindle store. It states that as a general rule:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense, or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle Content or any portion of it to any third party</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>which would prohibit the scheme you suggest in the general case (\"unless specifically indicated otherwise\").</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, for books sold in the Google Play store, the license terms <a href=\"https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1062968?hl=en\">include the following</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You may not lend or co-own any of your Books on Google Play purchases with another person.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The specific license terms can vary by content distributor, publisher, and individual book. </p>\n\n<p>In cases where lending is permitted (e.g. <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200549320\">some Kindle books</a>), it's usually very restricted - for ordinary customers. Libraries can purchase licenses for some books that are more permissive for lending purposes. You should consult with your university librarians about what options are available to them.</p>\n\n<p>You <em>may</em> be able to find an appropriate book for your purposes with a permissive license that allows lending (maybe even some open educational resources, if you're really lucky), but this will probably take some work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34048,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>One of the problems with how software is licensed, is it is not always clear when you are violating the EULA. After consultations with our library and IT department, we bought a large number of iPads that students can borrow from the school. We have loaded these iPads with a number of useful books, including our core textbooks. The IT and the library felt the issues with iPads were less than with lending the ebook directly or using laptops. The issue with laptops is that each user would generally have a separate and private account while for an iPad there is only one account. Your best bet is to talk to someone else and get them to sign off on it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34061,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My guess is that your best chance is to do this via your library (not as institute).</p>\n\n<p>Here's is a localized answer for ebooks and libraries for <strong>Germany</strong>:</p>\n\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http://www.bibliotheksportal.de/themen/digitale-bibliothek/e-books-in-bibliotheken.html\">http://www.bibliotheksportal.de/themen/digitale-bibliothek/e-books-in-bibliotheken.html</a></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The UrhG (German copyright law) has explicit rules for content on physical media. Besides printed books this also covers CDs and DVDs.<br>\nRoughly speaking the idea is that a library is allowed to lend out books on physical media. The loss of the publisher because of a larger number of readers for the book is compensated by a so-called \"Bibliothekstantieme\" (\"library royalty\").</p></li>\n<li><p>The problem with ebooks is that they are not covered by those \"physical\" library rules. This means that libraries negotiate individual licensing contracts with the publishers. </p></li>\n<li><p>The university library ebooks I've used so far were restricted to reading from university IPs, some even to computers at the library. Look&feel of the procedure were similar to electronic journal access.<br>\nTalk to your university library, I'm sure they know how to deal with that. They'll probably also be able to give rough guesstimates about the costs.</p></li>\n<li><p>There exist public e-libraries, e.g. <a href=\"http://www.onleihe.net\">Onleihe</a> is an network for ebooks of public libraries mainly in the German speaking countries. They know for sure how to deal with this, and something the like probably also exists in your country.</p>\n\n<p>The mode of this is described (I haven't tried it personally) as very similar to traditional library use: there is a number of copies available, if they are all lent out you have to wait until one is \"returned\". You get access for a restricted time and then the reading license is returned and you cannot open the book any longer. </p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 145945,
"author": "Amber",
"author_id": 120965,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/120965",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To know whether the device workaround is legal, you need to figure out if the ebook license is owned by the individual or the account.</p>\n\n<p>If it is owned by the individual making the purchase, it should be able to be transferred to a different account. If losing access to an account (on Amazon or Kindle or whatever) also loses you access to a license that is purchased and owned, then it belongs to the account. Not you. Giving the account to someone else to use should not count as distribution as long as the written material isn't copied, emailed, printed, etc.)\nHowever, you would need a lawyer regardless of what you do. Laws are just chess pieces businesses use to play for the most amount of money possible. You need your own chess player to protect your interests.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 145947,
"author": "Buffy",
"author_id": 75368,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75368",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The situation may have changed in the last five or so years since the question was asked. But, currently, in the US, libraries are able to make agreements with some publishers for just this purpose. There are limits in the agreements, as you would expect. I don't know if the limits would make it hard to lend a title for a complete term. Most library lending is for a couple of weeks, but there are exceptions. </p>\n\n<p>Have a local library explore this with publishers. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33040",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9099/"
] |
33,041 |
<p>I teach various undergraduate courses. I make the cheating policies clear on the first day of lectures, check the student's understanding of this with an on-line quiz, and remind students of the policy almost weekly in class. I try hard to detect cheating, but cannot catch everyone.</p>
<p>Sometimes I discover cheating mid-way through the semester. For example, I caught some students submitting duplicate assignments. After making the discovery, I looked back to past work that they submitted to the course Web site, and found the students sent identical papers for all past assignments, but I already awarded them A's.</p>
<p>Is it unfair of me to go back and regrade prior assignments when students cheated?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34036,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"Unfair\" is a pretty slippery concept. As I have quipped several times on this site already, I feel very confident that by writing down even some of the things that students insist must be done in the name of fairness, we could logically deduce that the only fair thing to do is to give them all A's. More seriously: let's talk ethics instead of fairness. I don't find regrading homework in lieu of information gained to be unethical in the slightest. If you graded a problem incorrectly and later noticed that it was wrong, then on the contrary the ethical thing to do would be to change the grade. However a lot of instructors would think twice about doing this because students may <s>find it unfair</s> not be happy about it. (Sometimes they regrade the problem and say \"I'll give you the credit anyway\", but isn't that <em>truly</em> unfair to the other students??)</p>\n\n<p>(<b>Added</b>: I agree with Anonymous Mathematician's answer that revisiting <em>subjective grading issues</em> after the fact is less defensible. What I had in mind above was noticing that you added up 20 and 30 and 20 and got 90 and similarly clearcut matters.) </p>\n\n<p>I don't think a lack of detecting cheating is a grading error, so regrading when you detect cheating ought to be more defensible than the in principle correct practice of fixing incorrectly high grades. However, I predict that the students may <s>find it unfair</s> not be happy about it. A regrade may encourage the students to contest the cheating, which is of course their right. So, as usual, when you accuse students of cheating you can't do so lightly. </p>\n\n<p>But hold on a minute: is the nickel-and-dime approach of regrading necessary in this case? You say that you have already caught the students cheating on other assignments. You don't build a case of academic dishonesty piecemeal: you look at all the incriminating evidence at once. The students' <em>past</em> duplicate assignments can certainly be used as evidence in your <em>present</em> allegations of academic dishonesty. If they are found guilty of cheating, then the penalty should not be localized to precisely the problem sets in which cheating was observed (especially if the cheating takes place across multiple problem sets). In the circles I travel in, having their homework grade for the entire course reduced to zero would be one of the <strong>lightest</strong> punishments on the table in this case. No worry about regrades if that happens.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34039,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Looking over previous assignments after detecting cheating is perfectly reasonable. In fact, I'd advise that you <em>should</em> do it if you can.</p>\n\n<p>Revising previous judgment calls about the quality of a student's work could be unfair, or at least extremely upsetting to the student. For example, it wouldn't be reasonable to say \"Remember that paper I gave you an A- on? After thinking about it a little more, I've decided that I was too generous and your work deserved a B+ instead, so I'm changing your grade.\"</p>\n\n<p>However, looking for evidence of cheating is different from reconsidering your grading standards. You aren't changing your opinion of the grade the work would deserve if it was properly done. Instead, you are trying to figure out whether it was in fact properly done. If not, then the student never earned the grade in the first place and has no cause to complain about unfairness.</p>\n\n<p>In other words, there's no statute of limitations for cheating. Just because a grade has already been assigned, it doesn't mean you can't be found guilty of cheating, in which case the previous grade becomes irrelevant.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34040,
"author": "dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten",
"author_id": 440,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/440",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You have detected a willful and on-going pattern of cheating. </p>\n\n<p>I don't know about your school, but many including mine have an explicit policy on academic misconduct. Indeed, we're required to copy the policy into our course syllabus every semester. Ours reads in part:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Penalties for academic misconduct in any course may include a failing grade on the assignment, <strong>a failing grade in the course</strong>, or any other course-related sanction the instructor determines to be appropriate.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(Emphasis added.)</p>\n\n<p>One option is to preserve and document the evidence and simply inform your department head that you are summarily failing the students. Once he or she is on board you tell the students (in private, of course) and move on.</p>\n\n<p>That way the question of re-grading doesn't come up.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34043,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You should consult your institution's policies; there may be due-process requirements.</p>\n\n<p>At one institution where I have worked, as I recall, university regulations required that before an instructor could impose a grade penalty for cheating, they first had to meet with the student, present the evidence, and allow the student to respond. The instructor could then make a determination as to whether cheating had occurred, but the student had the right to demand a hearing before a university panel set up for that purpose, whose decision could overrule the instructor. Further appeals were possible beyond that point. Until the student either accepted the charge, or exhausted their appeals, the instructor had to grade the assignment under the assumption that it was completed honestly.</p>\n\n<p>So under such a policy, you could certainly go back and look at the past assignments to see if you thought there was evidence of cheating; but you could not actually change the grade until the hearing process was duly completed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34055,
"author": "Shayban",
"author_id": 10540,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10540",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Cheating is an Academic crime that should be punished by academic death.\nGrade change has nothing to do with it.\nIt is the academic institute's policy to contain such crime by expulsion.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34092,
"author": "Steffan Perry",
"author_id": 26441,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26441",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In all fairness, I think cheating is just the same as answering correctly.</p>\n\n<p>In real life, you are graded on the result of you work. If you are asked to deliver X and deliver X, that is acceptable regardless of the means (unless illegal).</p>\n\n<p>What really is the difference between cheating or studying? in the long run, I would argue that cheating is actually a much more beneficial skill to lean. For example if you know how to cheat, you can cheat at any subject, if you study for math, you wont necessarily pass science.</p>\n\n<p>School is suppose to prepare you for life, And thus should take into account things like technology. Never in life will a boss tell a co-worker to find a solution to a problem but they can not use the internet or their mobile phone to find the answer. Before starting my own business, I have worked for a few larger companies and the mentality of most of the young out of college employees seem to be if you are tasked with an assignment, do it on your own and don't ask anyone for help even if you don't know the answer or else you will seem incapable, probably because they have this mindset coming out of school that asking peers for the answer to a problem is not the way things are done.</p>\n\n<p>If you student(s) have found a way to receive a positive result with less work, I think that deserves and A...</p>\n\n<p>The exception I would give is plagiarism.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/33041",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/600/"
] |
34,038 |
<p>I am curious as to how mathematicians conduct research. I hope some of you can help me solve this little mystery.</p>
<p>To me, mathematics is a branch where you either get it or you don't. If you see the solution, then you've solved the problem, otherwise you will have to tackle it bit by bit. Exactly how this is done is elusive to me.</p>
<p>Unlike physicists, chemists, engineers or even sociologists, I can't see where a mathematician (other than statisticians) gather their data from. Also, unlike the other professions mentioned above, it is not apparent that mathematicians perform any experiments. </p>
<p>Additionally, a huge amount of work has already been laid down by other mathematicians, I wonder if there is a lot of "copy and pasting" as we see in software engineering (think of using other people's code)</p>
<p>So my question is, where do mathematicians get their research topics from and how do they go about conducting research? What is considered acceptable progress in mathematics?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34045,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 8,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As far as pure mathematics, you are quite right: there are neither data nor experiments.</p>\n\n<p>Drastically oversimplified, a mathematics research project goes like this:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Develop, or select from the existing literature, a mathematical statement (\"conjecture\") that you think will be of interest to other mathematicians, and whose truth or falsity is not known. (For example, \"There are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by 2.\") This is your <em>problem</em>.</p></li>\n<li><p>Construct a mathematical proof (or disproof) of this statement. See below. This is the <em>solution</em> of the problem.</p></li>\n<li><p>Write a paper explaining your proof, and submit it to a journal. Peer reviewers will decide whether your problem is interesting and whether your solution is logically correct. If so, it can be published, and the conjecture is now a theorem.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>The following discussion will make much more sense to anyone who has tried to write mathematical proofs at any level, but I'll try an analogy. A mathematical proof is often described as a chain of logical deductions, starting from something that is known (or generally agreed) to be true, and ending with the statement you are trying to prove. Each link must be a logical consequence of the one before it. </p>\n\n<p>For a very simple problem, a proof might have only one link: in that case one can often see the solution immediately. This would normally not be interesting enough to publish on its own, though mathematics papers typically contain several such results (\"lemmas\") used as intermediate steps on the way to something more interesting.</p>\n\n<p>So one is left to, as you say, \"tackle it bit by bit\". You construct the chain a link at a time. Maybe you start at the beginning (something that is already known to be true) and try to build toward the statement you want to prove. Maybe you go the other way: from the desired statement, work backward toward something that is known. Maybe you try to build free-standing lengths of chain in the middle and hope that you will later manage to link them together. You need a certain amount of experience and intuition to guess which direction you should direct your chain to eventually get it where it needs to go. There are generally lots of false starts and dead ends before you complete the chain. (If, indeed, you ever do. Maybe you just get completely stuck, abandon the project, and find a new one to work on. I suspect this happens to the vast majority of mathematics research projects that are ever started.)</p>\n\n<p>Of course, you want to take advantage of work already done by other people: using their theorems to justify steps in your proof. In an abstract sense, you are taking their chain and splicing it into your own. But in mathematics, as in software design, copy-and-paste is a poor methodology for code reuse. You don't repeat their proof; you just cite their paper and use their theorem. In the software analogy, you link your program against their library.</p>\n\n<p>You might also find a published theorem that doesn't prove exactly the piece you need, but whose proof can be adapted. So this sometimes turns into the equivalent of copying and pasting someone else's code (giving them due credit, of course) but changing a few lines where needed. More often the changes are more extensive and your version ends up looking like a reimplementation from scratch, which now supports the necessary extra features.</p>\n\n<p>\"Acceptable progress\" is quite subjective and usually based on how interesting or useful your theorem is, compared to the existing body of knowledge. In some cases, a theorem that looks like a very slight improvement on something previously known can be a huge breakthrough. In other cases, a theorem could have all sorts of new results, but maybe they are not useful for proving further theorems that anyone finds interesting, and so nobody cares. </p>\n\n<p>Now, through this whole process, here is what an outside observer actually sees you doing:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Search for books and papers.</p></li>\n<li><p>Read them.</p></li>\n<li><p>Stare into space for a while.</p></li>\n<li><p>Scribble inscrutable symbols on a chalkboard. (The symbols themselves are usually meaningful to other mathematicians, but at any given moment, the context in which they make sense may exist only in your head.)</p></li>\n<li><p>Scribble similar inscrutable symbols on paper.</p></li>\n<li><p>Use LaTeX to produce beautifully-typeset inscrutable symbols interspersed with incomprehensible technical terms, connected by lots of \"therefore\"s and \"hence\"s.</p></li>\n<li><p>Loop until done.</p></li>\n<li><p>Submit said beautifully-typeset gibberish to a journal.</p></li>\n<li><p>Apply for funding.</p></li>\n<li><p>Attend a conference, where you speak unintelligibly about your gibberish, and listen to others do the same about theirs. </p></li>\n<li><p>Loop until emeritus, or perhaps until dead (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Personality\">in the sense of Erdős</a>).</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34047,
"author": "Jessica B",
"author_id": 20036,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20036",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One point to note is that, for some questions, it is possible to do experiments to get data. Certain questions are things we now have computer programs to generate, and previously they could have been done on a far more limited scale by hand. So in some cases mathematicians do work more like experimental scientists. On the other hand, once they've found what seems to be a pattern, they change approach. Gathering further examples isn't much use (unless you then find a counter-example, but it can be encouraging) - you need to find an actual proof.</p>\n\n<p>More generally, nearly every big result will come from some 'experiments': you try special cases, cases with more hypotheses, extreme cases that might result in failures...</p>\n\n<p>On the 'copy-and-paste' point, mathematicians do use a lot of what other people have done (generally they must), but whereas you might copy someone's code to use it, when you cite a theorem you don't need to copy out the proof. So in terms of written space in a paper, the 'copied' section is very small. There are (fairly large) exceptions to this: fairly often a proof someone has given is very close to what you need, but not quite good enough, because you want to use it for something different to what they did. So you may end up writing out something very similar, but with your own subtle tweaks. I guess you could see this as like adjusting someone else's machine (we call things machines too, but here I mean a physical one). The difference is that generally in order to do this sort of thing you must completely understand what the machine does. Another big reason for 'copying' is that you may need (for actual theoretical reasons or for expositional ones) to build on the actual workings of the machine, not just on the output it gives.</p>\n\n<p>More to the point of the question:\nAs a mathematician, you generally read, and aim to understand, what other people have done. That gives you a bank of tools you can use - results (which you may or may or may not be completely able to prove yourself), and methods that have worked in the past. You build up an idea of things that tend to work, and how to adapt things slightly to work in similar situations. You do a fair amount of trial and error - you try something, but realise you get stuck at some point. Then you try and understand why you are stuck, and if there's a way round. You try proving the opposite to what you want, and see where you get stuck (or don't!).</p>\n\n<p>Once you have a working proof, you see whether there are closely related things you can/can't prove. What happens if you remove/change a hypothesis? Also, does the reverse statement hold? If not entirely, are there some cases in which it does? Can you give examples to show your result is as good as possible? Can you combine it with other things you know about?</p>\n\n<p>Another source of questions is what other people are interested in. Sometimes you know how to do something they want doing, but you didn't think of it until they asked.</p>\n\n<p>One more point I'd like to make in the 'methods of proof category' is that, for me at least, there's a degree to which I work by 'feel'. You know those puzzles where all the pieces seem to be jammed in place but you're meant to take them apart (and put them back together again)? You sort of play around until you feel a bit that's looser than the rest, right? Sometimes proofs are a bit like that. When you understand something well, you can 'feel' where things are wedged tight and where they are looser.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes you also hope that lightning (inspiration) will strike. Occasionally it does.</p>\n\n<p>(All of this may not exactly answer the question, but hopefully it gives some insight.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34060,
"author": "David Richerby",
"author_id": 10685,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Actually, even in pure mathematics, it very often is possible to do experiments of a sort.</p>\n\n<p>It's very common to come up with a hypothesis that seems plausible but you're not sure if it's true or not. If it's true, proving that is probably quite a lot of work; if it's false, proving that could be quite a lot of work, too. But, if it's true, trying to prove that it's false is a <em>huge</em> amount of work! Before you invest a lot of effort into trying to prove the wrong direction, it's good to gain some intuition about the situation and whether the statement seems more likely to be true or to be false. Computers can be very useful for this kind of thing: you can generate lots of examples and see if they satisfy your hypothesis. If they do, you might try to prove your hypothesis is true; if they don't, you might try to refine your hypothesis by adding more conditions to it.</p>\n\n<p>See also <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/34119/10685\">Oswald Veblen's answer</a> which talks about doing similar \"experiments\" by hand.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34119,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Unlike physicists, chemists, engineers or even sociologists, I can't see where a mathematician (other than statisticians) gather their data from. Also, unlike the other professions mentioned above, it is not apparent that mathematicians perform any experiments.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I \"gather data\" and perform experiments\" by working out my conjectures in the context of specific examples. If the conjecture works out in several examples, that makes me more confident that it may be true in general.</p>\n\n<p>For example, suppose that I think that every topological space of a certain form has a particular property. I will start by looking at some \"simple\" spaces, like the real line, and see if they have the property. If they do, I may look at some more complicated space. Often, when I look at what specific attributes of the examples were necessary to show they had the property in question, it tells me what hypotheses I need to add to make my conjecture into a theorem.</p>\n\n<p>This is not the same as scientific experimentation, nor the same as computer experimentation, which is also important in various areas of mathematics. But it is its own form of experimentation, nevertheless.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34038",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20070/"
] |
34,052 |
<p>Many research groups are international. While I hope that academics are in general open-minded and tolerant, there might still be a potential for conflicts when researchers from different ethnic groups, which are hostile towards each other or are even at war, work together in the same group.</p>
<p>As a head of the research group, what measures can I take to prevent such conflicts from affecting the work of the group?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34066,
"author": "dionys",
"author_id": 22520,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22520",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>One of the advantages of being the head of a research group is that your position should give you a great opportunity to set the tone of the working environment for the group.</p>\n\n<p>The first key to establishing a healthy research group is setting a good example. Try to be open about your views and encourage good interactions, and be careful not to implicitly support bad behavior by appearing to condone poor treatment or opposition to ideas based on who they come from rather than their merits. Your group will take cues from your behavior, which to some degree will implicitly define what is and isn't acceptable in your group.</p>\n\n<p>Try to be proactive about including everyone.</p>\n\n<p>Make sure your students and researchers are aware that one of the minimum requirements for participation in the group is that people treat each other with courtesy and respect. Unless it's a political science research group, politics and conflicts between ethnic groups should be tabled. It's understandable for people to have differences, but you should try to make it clear that your group is not the place to hash out wider conflicts.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34082,
"author": "Dieter05",
"author_id": 26437,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26437",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Try to mix up your groups with different ethnics, don't let subgroups consist just of the same ethnic. give out the target to check for possible different approaches to the problem based on an ethnic background. if there is more than one approach to the problem, based on ethnics (or maybe just any other reason) have the whole group vote on which approach would be most effective and should be used. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34052",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3890/"
] |
34,064 |
<p>Eventually I grew tired of having to explain over and over why <em>all</em> my class material is in English. It's a mandatory course in Art History. I want to put some warning in my syllabus to minimize any arguments. The problem is how to do it politely, yet clearly. </p>
<p>The reasons are clear: there is no material in their native language for the courses I teach; obviously I cannot and will not translate the material; and it is their duty to read in English. I guess I cannot tell them straight that if they do not read English well they will not even understand classes well and will get low grades. I don't want to sound rude. </p>
<p>Is there a way to explain the situation, or is it better not to include such a written statement in a syllabus and keep things as they are?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34067,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I agree that it makes sense to set expectations as early as possible.</p>\n\n<p>I'd just put</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Note that all XXX for this course are in English.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>in the syllabus. You should of course be <em>specific</em> as to what XXX is:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Class slides</li>\n<li>Required reading</li>\n<li>Supplemental reading</li>\n<li>Lectures (you could have slides in English but speak the local language during the actual lecture)</li>\n<li>Quizzes</li>\n<li>Exams</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If quizzes/exams are in English, you should also note whether students would be expected to <em>answer</em> in English.</p>\n\n<p>Whether or not you also want to include the reasons for this is really up to how much space you have in the syllabus and whether there isn't anything more important to put there. I'd say that a warning might be a better use for the space:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If your English is not up to reading/understanding/writing technical documents, this course likely is not a good fit for you.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34072,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In many fields, you cannot be considered educated as an effective practitioner unless you know a particular language, because communications in that field are done in that language.</p>\n\n<p>For example, once it was the case that one could not be a chemist without reading German, because all of the most critical work in chemistry was published in German.\nCurrently, it is extremely difficult to be a computer programmer without reading English: although interfaces and user documentation is often translated, the actual code and APIs for most programs is written in English.\nLikewise, around the world all air traffic controllers are required to be proficient in English, as that is the agreed-upon fall-back language for air traffic control.</p>\n\n<p>If the course you are teaching is in such a field, then explaining this fact can help students understand why it is important for them to read texts in English. They may not be happy with this fact (and there may be good reasons to be unhappy about it), but understanding how language plays into their ability to put the material to use may be useful for getting them to accept its importance.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34081,
"author": "Name",
"author_id": 12871,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12871",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think you can simply mention the main references and course materials at the beginning of the class.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, I believe, it is the job of an instructor, to present the material in the official language of his/her institution is such a way that without additional materials, the students can well follow the course and to be able to successfully pass the exams. </p>\n\n<p>André Weil once said</p>\n\n<pre><code>The student's note-book should be his principal text-book. \n</code></pre>\n\n<p>In Mathematics (and I believe in many other domains) there are still some domains in which one cannot really be an expert without knowing French and German. But just because the materials of my domain is not in the official language of my institution (for example they are in French or German), doesn't mean I can force the students to learn them. It is my job to teach them and present them in the official language of my institution. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34094,
"author": "o.m.",
"author_id": 26446,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26446",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Could you clarify where you are teaching and at what level?</p>\n\n<p>A young undergraduate student might consider it \"unfair\" if he or she fails your course because of insufficient English skills. A more mature student will understand that you're offering preparation for real life. </p>\n\n<p>A professor of mine once told us halfway through the class that \"the remainder would be held in the international language of science, broken American English.\" He expected us to get the technical terms right and the rest of our sentences understandable. Proper pronounciation was optional. </p>\n\n<p>Back to your question, tell your students that you expect reading comprehension of technical literature. They don't have to speak English, and they don't have to write beautiful sentences. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34096,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think you certainly need to make crystal clear at the very beginning of the class that a reading knowledge of English is required. If possible, it should be clear even earlier than that - perhaps mentioned in the course description that students read when deciding to register for the class. That way, students who do not have the necessary skills can sign up for some other class instead. By the time the class starts, it may be more difficult for them to do so.</p>\n\n<p>Another option may be to require an appropriate English class as a prerequisite (which can be waived for students who already have sufficient fluency). </p>\n\n<p>If this is a mandatory course, then you need to have a discussion with your department as to whether your use of English materials is reasonable. They have an interest in running a program which students can actually pass. If your colleagues decide that this is not reasonable, then either you will have to change the way you teach it, or someone else will have to teach it instead of you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34099,
"author": "Patricia Shanahan",
"author_id": 10220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If the course is mandatory I think, in fairness to the students, you should go one of two routes:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Make the English reading requirement formal and written. It should be included in the prospectus for any program that requires your course. There should be a suitable English course that can be taken before your course, and that course, or equivalent skill, should be a stated prerequisite.</li>\n<li>Make it possible to get the top grade in your course without reading any English. That would mean including in the course notes material that an English-reading student could get from text books. The text books would be at the most optional extras for students who want to go beyond your course, not required material. Given the additional information that the subject is Art History, you could still require the text books for their illustrations, but write notes that tell the students what they are looking at.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Whether English-reading is required for the program seems to be a policy decision that should be made by the faculty as a whole.</p>\n\n<p>=======================================================================</p>\n\n<p>There is a third, intermediate, option. Campaign to make the course an option rather than mandatory. In that case, the English requirement would only need to be documented in materials the students use to make their optional course selections. It does not need to be part of the requirements for the program as a whole.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34103,
"author": "Adam Davis",
"author_id": 11901,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11901",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Try something similar to the following:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This course, and all required reading, will be presented in English. If you need assistance understanding any course materials, please see your counselor or [other university resources for ESL students].</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This makes it clear that everything will be presented in a specific language, and indicates that the class and teacher are not the appropriate people to work with students lacking English proficiency. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34203,
"author": "Relaxed",
"author_id": 11596,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11596",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Depending on the country/culture in which you teach, it might simply not be possible. It's easy to assume the “everybody speaks English” or that “students will need it anyway” to make your life easier but often it's not true.</p>\n\n<p>Without starting a debate on language planning, it's not obvious to me why it should be impossible to learn art history and enter a career in teaching, become a museum curator or whatever it is your students could do after taking your course, certainly if they speak another major European language.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I speak several languages and would certainly recommend learning English to anybody who asks but I also know people doing decent work without knowing it, even in supposedly internationalized and English-dominated fields like computer science. It's useful and common to be sure but outside of academic research it's not vital and I don't think it would be fair for me to deny people an education and career (or, from another perspective, to limit the talent pool in the country) on that basis alone.</p>\n\n<p>If you teach in a country where English is not a general requirement in higher education or there is an expectation that lecturers provide their own teaching material, then it is in fact your job to enable learning in the local language and there might be no way to prevent students from perceiving your not doing so as unfair, rude and lazy.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34258,
"author": "DA.",
"author_id": 12869,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12869",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are asking how to explain things politely. I don't think it's that complicated. Simply state:</p>\n\n<p>\"All required reading for this course will be in English.\"</p>\n\n<p>There's nothing rude about that in terms of voice. </p>\n\n<p>However, you don't give us enough background information to understand the context. If this college doesn't teach all courses in English, and doesn't require proficiency in English, or anything similar, then no matter what your voice, students are going to see this as a rather rude obstruction in their curriculum. This would be a failing of the particular school you are teaching in. They need to make it clear to students that there may be classes requiring all reading in English prior to them committing to the program. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34281,
"author": "Blaisorblade",
"author_id": 8966,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8966",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can't judge your colleagues just from your observations, but maybe I agree with you. Nonetheless, students are suffering (though not terribly) from this.</p>\n\n<p>Since you wrote that you can't really discuss this with the faculty, I think the possible solutions are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>List the requirement anyway, if your colleagues won't bother you for that. Some students will be annoyed <em>and</em> in their right to be annoyed (at the situation, if not necessarily at you).</li>\n<li><p>To improve things for students, if you can, get faculty to make your course optional, and possibly to accept at least an optional English course for credit in the degree.</p>\n\n<p>That still implies discussion with colleagues, but it doesn't require\nthem to do extra work (say, learn English), so they might be more\nwilling to accept. Moreover, it's the easiest solution which is\nactually fair to students. That might reduce your studentship to\npeople who care and accept the requirement. For you, that might be good (you'd get more motivated students) or not (if too few students pick your course and colleagues get nervous about it).</p></li>\n<li>I don't know really enough to say this, but if it's reasonable for you, you might want to change to another department where you can work with your colleagues rather than against them. From your tone, it sounds like it would avoid you quite some annoyance <em>and</em> make both departments better for students. I've seen or suffered, as a students, enough departments where communication between professors was visibly dysfunctional. Of course, I don't think anybody can demand such an extreme solution from you.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34393,
"author": "Daniel Wessel",
"author_id": 26614,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26614",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I second o.m.'s remark about the language of science being broken English -- and I would stress the <strong>advantage</strong> of this fact to the students (at least in the first lesson). Science isn't something that is done only in and for one country, e.g., German Science, or US Science, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Sure, there are national organizations and differences in universities between countries, but the findings themselves are usually applicable and discussed internationally (with all intercultural differences, at least most of the work in psychology is widely applicable, probably all of the 'hard sciences', and I'm guessing that even if local art history is discussed, theories are probably internationally applicable).</p>\n\n<p>So, being able to (at least) understand English allows a student to listen into that discussion.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34064",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
34,071 |
<p>Does it worth to add IEEE membership to my CV? It seems every body can pay a fee and become an IEEE member. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34074,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Many CVs have a section for professional society memberships. Mere membership doesn't necessarily convey a significant distinction, but it does say which groups you have chosen to invest in affiliating with and which judge you to qualify.</p>\n\n<p>For the IEEE in particular, it actually does have fairly strict <a href=\"http://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/join/qualifications.html\">membership qualifications</a>. Most people cannot qualify for IEEE membership, but pretty much any practitioner of the field can, because that is what it is designed to select for. Thus, putting an IEEE membership in your professional society memberships section of your CV is entirely appropriate.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34104,
"author": "Tommy",
"author_id": 23107,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23107",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I do/would not. The IEEE membership is a paid for membership, which academics, like myself, often buy simply for the benefit of obtaining reduced conference fees. I am sure that there are more legitimate uses of it, but in most cases, it's for attending conferences or registering with a journal. Unless you are an IEEE fellow or one of their other distinctions, all it requires is an academic email address and 25$/year to join, so I would not list it. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 44514,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I do put my academic affiliations at the very, very end of my CV. It is not there to prove my worth in any way, but rather to show which academic associations I affiliate most closely with and where I have been active in contributing to. </p>\n\n<p>You could also get that through looking at the Conference Presentations portion of my cv, but I've presented at conferences where I'm not a member. </p>\n\n<p>This is particularly important in interdisciplinary fields where it's not clear which conference / disciplinary borders one occupies.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34071",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1070/"
] |
34,075 |
<p>What is general rule regarding the number of reviewers? Date under manuscript status "under review" has now changed for third time within two months. What could this implicate?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34079,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is very common to use two reviewers although other numbers occur as well. The process of getting reviewers to accept to do a review can be a long and hard process. In your case the delay may well be the result of an editor receiving negative answers to requests which means the editor will contact further persons. whether or not the date change in the manuscript handling system reflects this is hard to say without knowing what system is used and how it may be set up for the specific journal. My bet would, however, be that you see the editors multiple attempts to find reviewers to accept. At some point in the process, you can e-mail the editor to ask about the progress of your manuscript but you need to assess when the time is becoming too long and this will differ between disciplines and journals within that discipline. As an editor, it can be very annoying when people start sending such mails prematurely when one is in the middle of trying to line up good reviewers. But, as stated, it is a judgement call.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34604,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my field (biology) most of journals use two reviewers, but the third reviewer is normally called if the first two significantly disagree. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34614,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The number of reviewers can vary. In my experience, it is normal for a paper to be by two anonymous referees (in double blind review, also blind to the authors) and the final decision will be made by an editor or associate chair who, generally, is not blind to the identities of the authors of the reviewers.</p>\n\n<p>In situations where this is significant disagreement, additional reviewers can be added.</p>\n\n<p>This can even vary within journals. For example, PLOSONE assigns an editor who can reach out to as many reviewers as they like or accept papers outright. Last I checked, the median number of external reviews at that journal was 2.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34075",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22440/"
] |
34,097 |
<p>Is it advisable (in terms of the benefit for the students and the work it causes) to make the grading completely transparent to students? I think for instance of publishing the sample solutions for the exam or the distribution of the grades given. Would those measures be suitable to convince the students that the grading is fair or would it rather make worse students feel treated in an unfair way and trigger many complaints? As far as I understand the University now normally lets the students only see their individual grades. Of course they will always compare themselves in smaller groups.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34098,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Transparency is great, when you can do it. Many of my large undergraduate classes would show a score histogram for every major quiz or exam, and some would explicitly give the grading rubric. This was generally very much appreciated by the students for exactly the reasons you give: better understanding of how they stand and why they got the scores they got, letting them judge fairness and know <em>when</em> to reasonably object (which sometimes happened).</p>\n\n<p>From the TA side, my experience was that transparency actually <em>decreased</em> my work, because it meant that I didn't need to deal with many spurious complaints, and that many of the complaints could be resolved directly through reference to the rubric.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 160463,
"author": "user133192",
"author_id": 133192,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/133192",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I always made my grading as transparent as possible. It makes it fairer for the students and if they complain and gather points where they should not get them, it helps me improve the grading in the next exam.\nFrom my point of view, tutors/teachers/examiners that do not make their grading transparent are not professional and seem to be weak at grading, otherwise they would not fear to make their process transparent.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34097",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22212/"
] |
34,106 |
<p>Just curious as to the effects of publishing a mediocre PHD thesis:</p>
<p>After sitting down and taking a cold, detached, look at my thesis topic, I realized I was given a pair of coobook-style problems, i.e., in order to answer the questions I was given to answer, I just need to go over a list of requirements and see if the general results apply to my specific problems. Instead of research level, the problems I was given look more like exercises at the end of a book; a graduate-level book, but still, cookbook.</p>
<p>Question: Once I am done with this, which shouldn't take more than a few months, how will this look to anyone going over the thesis? Since I will be having some extra time, I am considering doing some extra research and tacking it into the thesis. Is there something else I can do?</p>
<p>I suspect my advisor may not have a very high opinion of me and thought I could not likely handle anything more complicated. This itself brings issues as to the recommendations I may receive when someone asks my advisor for a recommendation.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34098,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Transparency is great, when you can do it. Many of my large undergraduate classes would show a score histogram for every major quiz or exam, and some would explicitly give the grading rubric. This was generally very much appreciated by the students for exactly the reasons you give: better understanding of how they stand and why they got the scores they got, letting them judge fairness and know <em>when</em> to reasonably object (which sometimes happened).</p>\n\n<p>From the TA side, my experience was that transparency actually <em>decreased</em> my work, because it meant that I didn't need to deal with many spurious complaints, and that many of the complaints could be resolved directly through reference to the rubric.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 160463,
"author": "user133192",
"author_id": 133192,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/133192",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I always made my grading as transparent as possible. It makes it fairer for the students and if they complain and gather points where they should not get them, it helps me improve the grading in the next exam.\nFrom my point of view, tutors/teachers/examiners that do not make their grading transparent are not professional and seem to be weak at grading, otherwise they would not fear to make their process transparent.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34106",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26450/"
] |
34,117 |
<p>In the abstract of a scientific report, when comparing an experimentally measured value to a current accepted value, should you provide a citation for it?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34120,
"author": "dtrihinas",
"author_id": 25403,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25403",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As Nate says, check the guidelines for this. </p>\n\n<p>From, some experience i had in a paper that got published a few months back, I was told to leave the cite to the intro and not the abstract.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34158,
"author": "Massimo Ortolano",
"author_id": 20058,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20058",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is typically not necessary to report the currently accepted value of a quantity in the abstract, but, indeed, you should report it in the scientific report (with citation). In the report you should also discuss the compatibility between your result and the currently accepted value. </p>\n\n<p>However, if there is a significant discrepancy between the accepted value and your result, and the main aim of your report is to discuss the cause of this discrepancy, then it can be useful to report the accepted value also in the abstract. In this case, the citation is needed, but take into account that, frequently, citations in abstracts follow different style conventions from those of the main text.</p>\n\n<p>Pay particular attention to the source of the accepted value. For example, for fundamental physical constants, the <em>Committee on Data for Science and Technology</em> (CODATA) publishes around every 4 years a new \"adjustment\" of the recommended values (<a href=\"http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a> you can find the values of the latest adjustment with references). These recommended values are calculated on the basis of the best available measurements. The CODATA adjustment should be considered the only reliable source for the accepted values of fundamental physical constants (values reported in books are typically outdated). Other official sources exist for values of quantities related to other fields. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/11
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34117",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26454/"
] |
34,123 |
<p>I'm studying Computer Science with a double major in Math at a public university. I hope to attend a private school like Vanderbilt (Nashville, USA) to pursue an MS or PhD. My GPA is still above a 3.0, however:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>I have received a <strong>U</strong> (unsatisfied, incorrectly submitted work) as a final grade in a single credit course that is part of an honors college program during my first semester in college.</p></li>
<li><p>I also had one terrible score (<strong>D</strong>) in a 200 level maths course during the same semester.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>Will these early blemishes on my transcript affect my chances of getting into graduate school?</em></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34305,
"author": "Anonymous Physicist",
"author_id": 13240,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13240",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If a student did poorly in their first semester of college, but did well afterwards, admissions committees will conclude that the student learned from what ever problems they had the first semester, and will be unlikely to perform poorly again. However, if they can choose a student with a perfect record, they will. On the whole, first semester grades are of little importance except at the most selective institutions.</p>\n\n<p>If you explain in your application what went wrong, why it will never happen again, and how it made you a better applicant, it may strengthen your application.</p>\n\n<p>(us perspective)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 101320,
"author": "crops crops crops oh my",
"author_id": 85195,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/85195",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Wow. Congrats on pursuing such a challenging major\nHow relevant is that math course to your major? Is it one of the requirements? A lot of good advisors/faculty members understand that freshman year is only a summer from high school (think about it) so hopefully the graduate school will be understanding. Nobody is rarely ever perfect from the start- college is a learning process! </p>\n\n<p>I'll be honest. I got straight C's my freshman and sophomore year. But I got lucky, went to classes, and got my sh*t together! My professors recognized that even though I did poorly early on, that I had potential, and gave me research projects (she pulled me out at the end of class- thought I was in trouble)\nEventually, I got a project with NASA and it proved to graduate school that I was ready for research by the time I was applying.</p>\n\n<p>So from my experience, no, it does not matter too much your freshman year. But make sure you have something to prove that you are academically strong enough now!</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34123",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26457/"
] |
34,125 |
<p>I am currently applying to Ph.D. programs at several universities. Since I was a transfer student in my undergraduate years, and I have great relationships with my professors at community college, I asked them to be my letter writers for letter of recommendations. </p>
<p>Today I received an email from one of the schools I am applying to asking for a LOR from a professor from the school that I got my bachelor's degree (or else they are likely to reject my application). They give me time until mid January to turn that in. </p>
<p>My problems now are:
1. I graduated five years ago and have not contacted my professors there
2. I contacted their departments today to find out their office hours but they are gone for winter breaks already. </p>
<p>It seems like that my only option is to just email them. And my thoughts are that the worse case scenario is just a "no" from them. And as long as I am being polite, I would not be blacklisted (please correct me if I am wrong on this).</p>
<p>If that is the case,should I be straight forward in my email explaining my situation honestly and ask them if they could write me a LOR or since I have until mid January, just ask them for a LOR as I would normally do it?</p>
<p>I drafted the two versions. Any comments or feedback will be helpful and greatly appreciated. Or if none of my solutions is a good one, I would really appreciate any other ideas. </p>
<p>Thank you very much!</p>
<hr>
<p>First version:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Dr. Smith, </p>
<p>This is Mary, I took your XYZ class back in 2010. I apologize for my presumptuous email. I was on campus today but found out there is no class this week. I was hoping to ask you in person to see if you would be willing to write me a letter of recommendation. </p>
<p>I was majoring in ABC and I am currently applying to CDF. (and I plan to give some more background info) </p>
<p>You are the best person to write me a letter because not only did I gotten an A+ in your XYZ class and you made great comments about my group project on WHATEVER, your class was also the class that raised my awareness in XXX. I have my statement of purpose, transcripts, curriculum vita ready, which I will be able to provide. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>2nd version:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Dr. Smith, </p>
<p>This is Mary, I took your XYZ class back in 2010. I apologize for my presumptuous email. I was on campus today but found out there is no class this week. I was hoping to ask you in person to see if you would be willing to write me a letter of recommendation. </p>
<p>I was majoring in ABC and I am currently applying to CDF programs. I have submitted my application to University of 123. They said they need a letter of recommendation from my University 321 professor. If not they will likely to reject my application. They gave me a deadline to turn in this letter of recommendation by January 10th, 2015. Would you be willing to write me a letter of recommendation? I have my statement of purpose, transcripts, curriculum vita ready that I will be able to provide. </p>
<p>You are the best person to write me a letter because not only did I gotten an A+ in your XYZ class and you made great comments about my group project on WHATEVER, your class was also the class that raised my awareness in XXX. I have my statement of purpose, transcripts, curriculum vita ready, which I will be able to provide. </p>
</blockquote>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34128,
"author": "Mark",
"author_id": 26460,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26460",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think either version will be fine. The professor will understand that grad school wants a letter from the institution you graduated from. One month notice is plenty. Throw in that you really enjoyed their class and apologize for the fact that you need the letter over break.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34130,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is totally fine, don't worry about it. I wouldn't \"apologize for your presumptuous e-mail\". You might apologize for the fact that you are asking them to write on short notice; I'd simply explain that you had solicited references from people who had interacted with you more recently, and schools to which you had applied had requested a reference from your undergraduate institution. </p>\n\n<p>Also I think it's fine to ask by e-mail instead of in person.</p>\n\n<p>I'm unclear about what your relationship is to your recommenders -- you say that you finished a bachelor's degree earlier; are you a student or an instructor at this community college? In any case, you want to get letters from the people who can attest to your ability to do demanding academic work in your chosen discipline. It sounds like you might have chosen your recommenders poorly (i.e., you have chosen people who will say in generic terms that you are a \"good person and a hard worker\", or perhaps you taught you easier classes than you took as an undergrad). I speculate that your file is very positive but lacks credible evidence that you will succeed in a graduate program. If this is the case, then the school that contacted you is doing you a big favor (they could have simply rejected you).</p>\n\n<p>You should ask someone who, in addition to thinking highly of you, will know what it takes to succeed in a Ph.D. program and will be able to communicate this in his or her letter.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34125",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24855/"
] |
34,132 |
<p>I am confused in a lot of applications for academic jobs, such as assistant professor, lecturer, instructor, at academic institutions. Many of them ask for a "copy of transcript," but I am unsure about what this means. Does this mean I need to get my official sealed transcript, open it, and copy it, or does it mean I can use the unofficial transcript?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34133,
"author": "W88",
"author_id": 25405,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25405",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>May I ask what you mean when you say official and unofficial?</p>\n\n<p>If it helps, the copies issued from the institution where you graduated are all considered official. The original document you receive is also a copy called the original copy. You can also have multiple original copies.</p>\n\n<p>So when they ask for an official copy of your transcript, as long as it has the signature of your registrar or equivalent, it is official; whether it is the original or the photocopy is a different matter.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34240,
"author": "BrenBarn",
"author_id": 9041,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9041",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>To know for sure, the easiest thing is to email the application contact person for a given job and ask.</p>\n\n<p>My impression is that in many cases, the committee reviewing the transcripts does not really care whether they are official or unofficial, photocopied or not, whatever. All contain the same information. If you reach a later stage of the application process, they may require an official transcript to satisfy bureaucratic requirements.</p>\n\n<p>As W88's answer says, every printed version of your transcript is \"a copy of your transcript\". \"A copy of your transcript\" doesn't necessarily mean a photocopy, it just means \"a piece of paper with your transcript printed on it\". If you receive a sealed transcript from your school, that is \"a copy of your transcript\" and you can send it in as-is.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34132",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22503/"
] |
34,134 |
<p>While using github for source code is generally something I love to encourage, if a student puts their (computer science) homework there, it's generally easy for others to find and copy - which creates a temptation to use it as a "baseline" for their own (identical in most cases) homework - while I understand the benefits of using github (versioning, transitioning across machines easily, teamwork-capabilities), and the individual student who is using it has verified that it is indeed their account and can explain the code well, I still feel uncomfortable with it.</p>
<p>Has anyone else dealt with this issue? how did you handle it? does the university have some sort of policy around publishing student-created work openly? (even if it is part of an assignment)? </p>
<p>As a side-note, my general policy regarding "very similar" assignments is that whomever submitted it first gets the points, and the other submissions do not receive any points, however I tend to ask the students to explain their code and how it works, why they chose X over Y, etc. in such cases first. </p>
<p>edit: I have been informed that there does exist a free version of github that students can use to host private repositories, and this is likely the course of action I will go with for the near future, however, there are several drawbacks:</p>
<ol>
<li>The student will be unable to showcase their work (i.e. a link to their github on their resume)</li>
<li>The student will not be a student forever, and thus the repository won't be able to be private for free indefinitely</li>
<li>I have very little control (and interest in policing it) once the class is over, so the student could decide to make the repository public once the class is over.</li>
</ol>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34191,
"author": "Anonymous Physicist",
"author_id": 13240,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13240",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Give students assignments where their work must address one of their personal interests. For example, instead of having every student program pizza maker, have each student program a machine to make their favorite food. This will make copy-and-paste cheating more difficult. It will also make students more interested and make your grading more interesting.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34241,
"author": "BrenBarn",
"author_id": 9041,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9041",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think your point 1 is fundamentally at odds with preventing homework sharing/copying. If someone can showcase their work, they can showcase it to their fellow students. Your points 2 and 3 suggest you want to re-use the same assignment over and over when teaching the class again, which makes this conflict even more inevitable. There's no way to allow students to share their work publically with anyone who might want to employ them, while also keeping it secret from their fellow students.</p>\n\n<p>There's nothing you can do to keep everything a student does in your class hidden forever. I think the best solution is to require students to keep their work private <em>during</em> the class (using a Github edu account, Bitbucket, local git repo, whatever), then let them do whatever they want later. That means you will have to make new assignments every time you teach the class, but I think that is good practice anyway.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 148935,
"author": "Owen",
"author_id": 32169,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32169",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are many things to balance here, and the \"best\" solution is somewhat subjective.</p>\n\n<p>However, in my opinion, the educational benefit of allowing students to learn version control early <strong>far outweigh</strong> the increased risk of exposing their code to others who would cheat. If your students are planning to go on to work as programmers in industry, being skilled with version control is almost as valuable as being skilled with coding. Programming is not a solitary task these days, after all.</p>\n\n<p>Another thing to consider: at my undergraduate university, there was no department-wide policy on public version control (and I don't remember any professors having such a policy). However, I remember hearing it suggested that posting code on a public GitHub violated the general policy against plagiarism. This sort of ambiguity is bad for everyone. Whatever you decide is the right way to go, I would recommend stating your expectations explicitly with respect to public version control.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 148948,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It seems one point that is missing in this discussion is that at least in USA students own the copyright of their (nontrivial) work. As copyright holders they can reproduce, distribute, and display their works. Of course they can also create derivative works. So restriction on students' right may not even be legal.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 148979,
"author": "R. Ding",
"author_id": 105854,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/105854",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You may try automated plagiarism detection, such as <a href=\"https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">MOSS</a> developed by Stanford. It detects similarities among code files, somewhat regardless of how the variables are named, the order of execution, etc. Then a human could manually look at the similarities and judge whether it is a case of plagiarism. Moreover, as I recall, MOSS allows input of shared codebase, meaning that the \"starter code\" provided to all students would not count towards similarity.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 148992,
"author": "Debora Weber-Wulff",
"author_id": 32489,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32489",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My focus on programming assignments has moved to having students copy all they want from all the GitHub repositories in the world, but to reference them in a report about the <strong>process</strong> by which they solved the problem, written in complete sentences. This is seen as cruel and unusual punishment by first-year students, but when former students meet me in town after graduation that is what they thank me for, that I taught them to write reports. And that their reports make a great reference for themselves.</p>\n\n<p>We can't police this behavior, so we have to try and educate people. We teach them to value other people's work by citing it or giving credit, and we insist that they reflect on what they did. So it is fine to say: I got this code from Nancy, and then I asked Steve how to put widgets on this, and as a result I finally got this to work. That makes it easier for me to judge what the contribution of the student is. </p>\n\n<p>It is more work for me, so I have gone to having the students do pair programming, assigning them random partners each week. That's a good exercise for them as well, and they get to know each other better. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 151223,
"author": "Erel Segal-Halevi",
"author_id": 787,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/787",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The optimal solution is to accompany the automatic code grading with a human face-to-face code-review, where the students must explain their code to you, and you can also ask them to make minor changes onlile to verify that they know what they did. If you do this, you do not have to worry about copying since the code-review will tell you how well they know the material.</p>\n<p>The problem is that this solution requires a lot of work - at least 15 minutes per student per week. I do not have enough budget for this, so I use a sub-optimal solution: I make the weekly assignments only 10%-20% of the final grade, so that the incentive to copy is minimal. Meanwhile, I make sure that the final exam contains questions that are very similar to the assignments. Thus, students who have made the homework by themselves will have a higher grade in the final exam than copiers.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 151227,
"author": "allo",
"author_id": 79727,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79727",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ignore it.</p>\n<p>It is homework and not an exam. The students who just use it without understanding it risk to fail the exam and that's their problem not yours. They are all grownups and need to decide themself if they want to learn something or just to copy something.</p>\n<p>As homework usually does not influence the final grade but only the admission to the exam, it is not worth to try to prevent it.</p>\n<p>And github is one thing, but students have internal fileservers and wikis and other ways to organize how to exchange current homework or even a complete set of assignments from last year.</p>\n<p>Make sure that everything that gets an actually relevant grade is not done without supervision and be a bit more relaxed about homework that should just help the students to learn and is not used to document their skill like a graded exam.</p>\n<p>If you actually see that the code is copied between two students, you may not accept it. But this should be done by comparing their solutions not by monitoring github. They may copy in private or they may have worked together and you need to decide it based on the submission of their work.</p>\n<p>When they are actually able to re-use code from the previous year, you may consider changing the assigments in a way that the code cannot be used without at least understanding it.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34134",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19914/"
] |
34,146 |
<p>I am dealing with one very mercurial professor and I had a bit of an incident with him. I think I might have offended him slightly (I told him about the deadline to submit a letter of recommendation (LOR) in the nicest possible way and yet he flared up on me). My seniors tell me that he has the habit of extracting revenge on people who ask him for a LOR if they irritate him. I am afraid I might have offended him; he kinda scares me. But he is a very good researcher in computer networks and I performed well in his class. I don't want to drop him and choose another faculty.</p>
<p>Now I know very well that the other two lecturers are going to rate me well, but if this lecturer gives me a bad rating will it harm my chances of getting admitted?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34147,
"author": "Bob Brown",
"author_id": 16183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16183",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Pick someone else if it isn't already too late.</p>\n\n<p>The actual answer to your question is this: It is far better to have a good letter from a faculty member who is relatively unknown than a bad letter from someone they recognize and respect. In fact, the latter is probably the <em>worst</em> thing that could happen.</p>\n\n<p>If it is already too late, <em>i.e.</em> you have asked Professor X, he's agreed, and you've sent him the material (which is probably an online link these days) then work hard to make writing the letter easy. Put together the following information and send it <em>fast:</em></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Include your student number.</li>\n<li>Remind him which of his classes you have taken, and when.</li>\n<li>How did you distinguish yourself in those classes?</li>\n<li>How would you describe yourself? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? He is going to have to answer those questions when he writes your reference, so the more details the better; but these must be things your referee knows himself.</li>\n<li>What are some of your academic and nonacademic accomplishments that he may not remember?</li>\n<li>What makes him particularly qualified to write a letter for you? That is, why should the recipient of the letter value it over a letter from someone else?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This goes in an email that says, \"Thank you very much for agreeing to write a reference for me on very short notice. I hope the following will be of use to you when you write it.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34162,
"author": "Max",
"author_id": 2744,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2744",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Yes.</strong></p>\n\n<p>A bad recommendation can ruin your chances. If a letter writer were to write that you had committed some grave academic dishonesty, for example, that would look extremely bad for you, even if the others were generally positive.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/32031/2744\">An answer to another question</a> says that even a \"good but not great\" letter could keep you out of some departments.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34146",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17282/"
] |
34,152 |
<p>In situations where one teaches purely undergraduate students (20 hours per week, 16 weeks per semester, 2 semesters per year) how many hours per week, and how many weeks per year, are people normally in their offices? Does this number change after the main teaching semesters complete?</p>
<p>I have just finished my fall semester and I find my normal office hours cannot handle the demand from the students. I'm a bit torn. On one hand, I want to support my students as much as they care to be supported but I must balance my own needs. I have plenty of other things to do besides teach (I have to prepare for the spring semester and that will take me significant time, I have marking to do, etc.). More office hours means less time (thus less quality) for prep (and other various tasks).</p>
<p>When I consider what my peers do, I see they often do less than the school requires of them (I am not interested in following their example). With > 300 students, it seems the only way to really satisfy the demand is to be there 20 hours per week...which leave me little (no) time for my other tasks.</p>
<p>My goal here is to try to identify what is fair to all involved.</p>
<p><strong>Edit:</strong> I've posted a <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/34428/2692">follow-up question</a> to this one.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34157,
"author": "Moriarty",
"author_id": 8562,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8562",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My undergrad university held regular \"helpdesks\" in a classroom - where one or more teaching assistants and sometimes the lecturer were present. They essentially functioned like an extra (and optional) tutorial class, and the more proactive students would come in and work on their assignments, discussing among themselves and asking questions.</p>\n\n<p>This allows you to spread time a bit more fairly among students than at an office hour, where one student might take up a lot of time and leave others waiting at the door. Answer one question, and then move on to someone else.</p>\n\n<p>Perhaps you could try a similar strategy? </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34160,
"author": "Chris Pfohl",
"author_id": 26480,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26480",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You might consider assigning more of the \"real\" learning to the students outside of lecture.</p>\n\n<p>Save class-time for particularly tricky topics, interesting examples, etc. Make sure to leave plenty of time for questions. Encouraging your students to interact in class can be tricky in a large classroom (you'll always have the student who just <strong>must</strong> ask a burning question, that turns out to be a restatement of what you just said in an incredulous tone of voice). I'm not sure where in Asia you work, but it's my understanding that in many Asian cultures there can be reticence to look like you don't understand in class. Perhaps to discourage that attitude you could consistently remind your students that if they already understood the topic they wouldn't need to be there.</p>\n\n<p>If the above works you'll have a lower volume of students in office hours.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34161,
"author": "smci",
"author_id": 12050,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12050",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Office hours for 300 students with no TA is clearly not going to work; certainly not if you try to give 30min to each.</p>\n\n<p>You didn't say what sort of class you're teaching (quantitative? qualitative? creative?). But for most courses, <strong>writing a set of problem sets/ FAQs/ lessons learned</strong>/ whatever is a far more efficient use of your time.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 59521,
"author": "Daniel R. Collins",
"author_id": 43544,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43544",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>How many “office hours” are common (or standard) for full-time\n lecturers?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Since no one's given a direct answer the title question, here is mine: 3 hours per week is what's required as a full-time lecturer at my large, urban, community college in the U.S. This holds true throughout our 12-week semesters, and no office hours are required outside teaching semesters.</p>\n\n<p>Personally I feel that office hours should be a resource of last resort (I teach mathematics). I feel that students coming to office hours is a sign of something having gone wrong in the process; I try to arrange it so that all necessary material is available outside of personal meetings; and generally very few students come to my office hours (most days: none). Office hours should represent slack in the system to solve outstanding problems, not an overtaxed resource. </p>\n\n<p>Presumably your institution also has some minimum specification for office hours? I would definitely take this as advice for how much time they expect on that task, and try to align it with that minimum as closely as possible. Back-calculate from there what assignments and time with students are possible per person. Possibly institute some kind of peer-review of the papers between students as feedback before you get them on your desk for grading.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 59524,
"author": "Bob Brown",
"author_id": 16183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16183",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You say that the majority of your time is used to \"give them guidance on what they've written in their assignment so far.\"</p>\n\n<p>For each assignment, give your students a copy of the rubric you will use to evaluate their final work. Require students who want guidance to have applied the rubric to their work so far before coming to see you. Students will be able to answer many of their own questions, and you will be able to focus on the areas where they really need help.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, that wasn't the question you asked. At my institution in the U.S., we are required to hold office hours for at least five hours per week during regular semesters and not at all during the time between semesters. (Those who teach in summer must hold summer office hours.)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34152",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692/"
] |
34,164 |
<p>I want to know whether is it ethical to express thanks and gratitude to a reviewer
in the reply to review text. I feel we should express thanks to reviewers who spent valuable time to review our work.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34165,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, how could it possibly be unethical to thank someone? This is very common. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34182,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It is not a question of ethics, it is a question about being courteous. Reviewers spend time to read and comment on your manuscript. Regardless of the type of comments you receive there will be significant voluntary work involved. It is only fair to show some gratitude. One way to think about this is that it is no different from any other type of professional correspondence.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34229,
"author": "Rannasha",
"author_id": 26528,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26528",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's very common and standard courtesy. Correctly reviewing a manuscript takes quite a lot of time and is no small effort. And in most cases, a thorough review will help make your manuscript better, so it's not strange to thank someone for helping you improve your work.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34164",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/897/"
] |
34,170 |
<p>This question is mostly out of curiosity (at least for the moment). I have never taught full courses but I have had to substitute many times, usually for graduate level courses. Preparing for a one hour lecture took me 2-6 hours.</p>
<p>I understand that full-time lecturers may be expected to teach 20 hours per week. I cannot imagine how one could find the time to prepare. How do they manage?</p>
<p>Also, what about a freshly hired lecturer? Teaching a course for the first time should take considerably more preparation, creating an extreme workload with 16-20 hours teaching per week.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34171,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Two points:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Preparing for a lower division course takes much less time than preparing than preparing for a graduate level course for several reasons. First, you presumably have much better knowledge of the material in the lower level course. Second, you tend to present material at a slower rate in a lower level course. Third, you should be using more active learning strategies (having the students do work in class) in a lower level course. I've found that although it takes an hour or two to prepare for an hour long class in one of my graduate courses, when I've needed to substitute in a lower division course (e.g. calculus) for an instructor who is out sick, I can typically prepare for the class in about a half hour. </p></li>\n<li><p>it's much easier to teach a class if you have taught the course in previous semesters, and its particularly easy if you're teaching multiple sections of the same course in a semester. So, an instructor with a four course teaching load might actually be teaching three sections of one course and one section of a second course. This is described as \"four sections, with two preps.\" </p></li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34173,
"author": "gerrit",
"author_id": 1033,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Lectures that are 20 hours/week are not year-round. A new lecturer who is supposed to start lecturing in a new topic in September might need all summer to prepare. If it takes 5 hours of preparation to do 1 hour of lecturing, 100 hours of lecturing takes 500 hours to prepare, or around 12–13 working weeks. That should give a decent head start. But even with a little bit of lecturing experience, it's going to take considerably less than 5 hours of preparation to lecture for 1 hour — and/or a new lecturer may need to spend more than 40 hours per week initially.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34176,
"author": "thomij",
"author_id": 20865,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20865",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Brian makes good points - lower level courses take less time to prepare for than upper division courses, and there is an economy of scale - teaching multiple sections of the same course greatly reduces the overhead of preparation.</p>\n\n<p>That said, the first time a lecturer teaches a course, the workload <strong>is</strong> very high - depending on the course content, between 1-3 hours of prep for each hour of lecture (for the first section) is normal (this is an average over a whole semester). So if you had 20 contact hours per week, and that was (for example) two sections each of two new courses, then your prep workload might be something like:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Course 1, Section 1 - 5 contact, 5-15 prep, 1 grading</li>\n<li>Course 1, Section 2 - 5 contact, 0 prep, 1 grading</li>\n<li>Course 2, Section 1 - 5 contact, 5-15 prep, 1 grading</li>\n<li>Course 2, Section 2 - 5 contact, 0 prep, 1 grading</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This would work out to 34-54 hours per week for the first semester. In subsequent semesters, the prep time decreases greatly. You might need a minimum of 2 hours per week total using the example above, and if you spend more, that time can go into improving the quality of the lectures. So maybe you would spend 30-40 hours per week in subsequent semesters.</p>\n\n<p>In short, the workload for the first semester is very high, but as you continue to teach the same courses, it decreases a lot. In my personal experience, after several semesters of teaching the same course, I can almost teach it from memory - so my prep time instead becomes \"improvement\" time. In the same respect, preparing one course makes preparing for other courses easier - you learn how to organize material more effectively, you find ways to re-use content and learning materials, and you develop teaching patterns that can be applied to multiple classes.</p>\n\n<p>For all of these reasons, teaching is not really a profession that can be easily characterized by weekly workload. Some weeks you might put in 50-60 hours, some weeks maybe it would be only 20. But in general, for a full-time position the average should work out to somewhere around 40 hours per week.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34170",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25084/"
] |
34,172 |
<p>Like the title says, I have a friend who is a post-doc and her professor is asking her and another post-doc to baby-sit for him. He does not pay them, he simply expects them to baby-sit for free because they work for him. It is not clear whether this happens during the day or in the evening, though by my understanding it makes little difference in academia. It is also not clear just how common it is for him to ask, but apparently it is at least semi-regular. To me this seems like an abuse of power and there should be rules against it. Is this kind of thing normal?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34177,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your friend's advisor has made a very <strong>unethical</strong> request because, as a supervisor, it makes it harder for the postdocs to feel like they can say no. And they should feel free to say no, since the request is not normally part of any university employment contract I've seen. </p>\n\n<p>Now, if the request were at the workplace, incidental and of brief duration (something like \"Could you watch her while I take this call from the doctor's office?\", for instance), then it wouldn't be so problematic (although still less than ideal). But anything more than that—anything that involved a regular arrangement, or was of extended duration—should be handled as a separate business transaction, so as to avoid exactly the coercion problem that you've raised.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34178,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>It's completely inappropriate.</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If a postdoc is an employee, there most certainly is a contract with a <em>job description</em> that, for sure, does not include babysitting. </li>\n<li>If a postdoc is funded with a personal grant (sometimes called 'soft money'), the <em>grant proposal</em> describes the work for which the money is to be used, and that, for sure, does not include babysitting.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Even though postdocs are often in an administrative gray area, expecting them to do non-research work for the convenience of their professor is wrong, regardless of the type of employment they have.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34179,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I have a friend who is a post-doc and her professor is asking her and another post-doc to baby-sit for him. He does not pay them, he simply expects them to baby-sit for free because they work for him.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>Oh <em>hell</em> no.</h2>\n\n<p>This is neither normal nor remotely appropriate. Postdocs are first and foremost <em>professional colleagues</em>. Just <em>asking</em> postdocs to babysit is insulting, even if the PI offered to pay them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34193,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Time to get in touch with the campus ombudsman. They can help your friend protect their status by acting as an advocate. It really helps that there are two students being so negatively affected as it will improve their case and protect them. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34243,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"professor asks post-doc to baby-sit\" can mean a huge range of things, from totally inappropriate (as outlined by other answers, no need to reiterate that) to totally appropriate. I find it very difficult to judge the situation from scarce second-hand information.</p>\n\n<p>I'll try to delineate in which situations I consider it appropriate.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Professor asks post-doc to baby-sit can range from baby-sit as in go to their home and look after the kid (inappropriate unless under very, very special circumstances - no question there) or as in \"emergencies\" happen so that the kid has to be at the workplace, and then the postdoc is asked to look after the kid while the parent is e.g. in a meeting or has to talk to someone in a lab where the kid should not go for safety reasons. </p>\n\n<p>Let me give examples of situations where I think it appropriate:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>When I was a kid, it would happen that I had to be at my parents' workplace. I think I spent a fair amount of my first months sleeping in my mother's office. I'm sure she asked someone to look (or rather listen) after me when she had to do something outside the office (parental leave was not yet invented). \nLater on, it has happened that neither babysitter nor grandma were available and both parents had to be at work/meetings at the same time (including late afternoon/evening). Even later, school closing early lead to a few occasions when I was told to come to the work place. </p></li>\n<li><p>I seem to remember that the kid of one of our elementary school teachers joining the class because the kindergarden was closed for whatever reason. </p></li>\n<li><p>I have a colleague with a 6-months-old kid (working part time). But she is a group leader so she has to attend meetings. Usually the dad (also working at our institute) takes the kid, or graddad comes. However, it happens that someone is needed to look after the kid for a while. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>All these situations have in common that unless you seriously ask that one parent should quit their job as soon as there is a kid, these are \"emergencies\" that will just happen, and they need to be dealt with in a practical fashion. A solution is needed and that's IMHO all - no need to make a fuss. </p>\n\n<p>Depending on the actual circumstances like meetings are often sheduled at short notice, school closing early whenever holidays start, no relations/close enough friends in the city to guard against babysitter being sick (the professor may have moved with their family to a distant city in order to become professor) this may happen \"semi-regularly\". </p>\n\n<p>There are obviously also here situations thinkable that are inappropriate (professor is saving the hassle and money of getting a baby-sitter). I think the line is between the professor openly and mainly trying to benefit and the professor being awkward because they are in a situation where they need to rely on help from the postdoc. (\"It is not what you say, it is the way you say it.\")</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Offering payment would be really weird. A more normal way in my experience to \"pay\" for unusual favors in general would be to bring, say, a cake. However, in the \"nice\" scenario the parents are probably under so much stress (e.g. by the baby-sitter they really rely on being sick) that they are at the limit of barely managing to catch up with absolute necessities (and may not even think of buying cake even if they'd usually do something the like).</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I'd also like to add that there is a huge difference between baby-sitting as in the postdoc's time being completey taken up playing with the kid and baby-sitting as in having a sleeping baby in the office, or as in making sure that a kindergarden/elementary school kid is drawing mainly on the supplied paper while going on with office-type work. Or with having the kid running alongside while the postdoc does all the burocratic errands that anyways need to be done. </p>\n\n<p>There's also a huge range in what the asking of the professor actually means: it may be as harmless as the postdocs <em>offered</em> to look after the kid and the professor taking this offer by <em>asking</em> one of the postdocs to babysit. </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Last but not least, I think a postdoc should be grown up enough to know when to point out limits to their supervisor. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34244,
"author": "galois",
"author_id": 25375,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25375",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The professor is acting incredibly inappropriate by asking that. Really, what makes it that way is because of the reasoning, which sounds much like that of the manager of a retail store asking an employee to stay late off the clock and help do inventory - \"because you work for me\".</p>\n\n<p>If the professor is just 'offering', or perhaps they have a close relationship and the professor is simply being sarcastic, that's another story, but I'll not assume.</p>\n\n<p>Simple solution - two one-syllable words, \"no thanks\". </p>\n\n<p>If this is a recurring situation, and especially if the 'because you work for me' reasoning gets pulled out of the holster on more than this occasion - your friend may be dealing with an ethical situation, in which I'd recommend first of all for your friend to simply try to sit down with the professor and attempt to clear things up (such as reminding the professor of the nature of their relationship and the duties of her work under him - do they include babysitting?). If that doesn't work, there's always a board you can talk to (another user mentioned an ombudsman).</p>\n\n<p>Of course, your friend <em>could</em> always just tell her professor she'd love to watch the kids - for a fee, of course.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34290,
"author": "Annalise Attard",
"author_id": 26576,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26576",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It could be normal because some people abuse other people because they think they are more superior than them. However, it is not fair. At least he could have properly asked in where he shows that a 'no' could also be an answer. Moreover, if this is to be more than once, then he is to offer some kind of compensation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34323,
"author": "Twinkles",
"author_id": 26608,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26608",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>On a not-quite-serious sidenote, the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath\" rel=\"noreferrer\">hippocratic oath</a> contains this passage:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I will reverence my master who taught me the art. Equally with my parents, will I allow him things necessary for his support, and will consider his sons as brothers. I will teach them my art without reward or agreement; and I will impart all my acquirement, instructions, and whatever I know, to my master's children, as to my own.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This could cover babysitting (as long as the children are male). But mostly it shows how what is considered appropriate changes over the centuries.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 95714,
"author": "kukushkin",
"author_id": 79513,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79513",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The simple answer is <strong>\"no, it is not acceptable if the relationship between the two are strictly work related\"</strong>. </p>\n\n<p>For example, my advisor and our old postdoc were family friends, their wives were in same social circle etc. So they were doing favors for each other, professor to postdoc, postdoc to professor. </p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, I and my advisor are strictly work related. He once asked me whether I can drive his daughter to a nearby school on Sunday morning for an event where she presents a high school poster; and he or his wife could not take her due to family emergency and being out of state. I did it, and made no big deal out of it. Yet he apologized me for inconvenience and offered me to pay for gas, food and all that I spent. </p>\n\n<p>Another example, I live in a townhouse owned by a professor at the university. Whenever something is wrong with the house, let me give simple examples I've encountered here:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Kitchen incinerator is broken.</li>\n<li>Lawn should be mowed.</li>\n<li>The outer door should be painted because homeowner's association said so.</li>\n<li>There is a wasp nest to be removed in the backyard.</li>\n<li>Showers upstairs drip water to the one downstairs.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>These are a few problems we had, and the professor never called a professional to solve the problem. Whenever we email to the landlord/professor, he ccs me and my roommate, sends it to his students to go and fix. Most times the necessary tools to fix are also bought by the students. Funny thing is that those PhD students and one postdoc are our friends. </p>\n\n<p>We asked them whether they get paid, they said no. And we were like why do you do that? Simply tell him you won't do. All answered that they would like to keep a good relationship because the professor implied that there may be consequences regarding their stipends, funding resources, and graduation status. This is clearly an integrity and ethics problem, and should be dealt with accordingly.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34172",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13301/"
] |
34,187 |
<p>(I wish to remain anonymous, so I've omitted many details here. If those
details make this question unanswerable, please don't hesitate to vote it
down or close it.)</p>
<p>I've been a PhD student in mathematics for about two years. Whenever I am at a
conference, summer school, or a small seminar talk in our university, I
usually don't understand anything about the talk after the first two minutes.
Sometimes the speaker goes quickly through some basic concepts about group
theory, finite fields, or similar, that I'm able to follow because I know the
stuff already. But when the new stuff starts, most of the time I get so lost
that I can't even answer the simple question "What was the talk about?" when
my friends ask. So I just sit there with an open notebook, and after the
first few minutes of each talk, I start scribbling some unrelated things to
kill time before the next talk. If I see an interesting formula or similar on
the slides, even if I don't know what the speaker is talking about, I
sometimes try to see if I can figure out what that formula means, just because
simple mathematics is still fun - what I do still does not help me understand
the topic of the talk.</p>
<p>The problem might be partly about being able to focus, but I guess it's mostly
about the actual scientific content. When taking courses as an undergrad, I
never had problems of this magnitude while attending lectures because I had
time and material for studying the topic before and after the lectures,
and the lecturers had a decent estimate of what the students know before the
lecture.</p>
<p>Do you have similar experience? Is there something I can do to actually
benefit from listening to conference presentations? I hope this is not the
impostor syndrome - if everyone in the audience feels like this, conferences
are horrible waste of money, time, and natural resources.</p>
<p>I came up with a few ideas but they don't seem practical.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>"You're not really supposed to understand anything as a PhD student.
Just sit there and wait for a familiar term, theorem, concept, whatever to
appear. Conference by conference, talk by talk, you'll probably encounter more and
familiar stuff, and before you know it, you don't have this problem any
more." If I had to decide, I'd never fund a learning process this slow. Or probably it is much quicker than I can imagine.</p></li>
<li><p>"Go to conferences with topics closer to your research." Well, they don't exist, unless I organize a conference about my research. And the point of going to conferences is to learn about things in your field that are not exactly your research (of course in addition to telling others about your research).</p></li>
<li><p>"When the conference schedule is published, pick one interesting
presentation title for each day and try to learn something about that topic before
conference." It might take a few days of focused study for each talk, so some weeks before the conference. I guess that time would be better used doing research.</p></li>
</ul>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34188,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In brief: conscientious study and engagement with mathematics, perhaps more broadly than one imagines one's specialty requires, eventually makes most conference talks intelligible. The process takes some years, to say the least. At the same time, many conference talks, even the better-quality ones, are very specialized, maybe not of terribly great interest even to the immediate specialists, but are \"novel\" in a sense that makes them publishable and thus evidence (to deans and department heads and funding agencies) that one is doing one's job. But their extreme <em>particularness</em> is easy to misunderstand, if one is hoping for persuasive, enlightening reports, rather than CV padding.</p>\n\n<p>And, almost surely, the much-less-senior people in the room, and many of the more-senior, have no real idea what's going on, almost all the time. The chief trick of relatively-senior people is to know that what they're missing is not terribly valuable, to say the least, except as CV padding for the speaker.</p>\n\n<p>At the same time, trying to stay engaged, to become accustomed to a great variety of terminology and apparent goals, is a very good enterprise. For one thing, many \"programmes\" of course inflate their own importance enormously, whatever their actual, perhaps great, importance may be. In particular, they are presented in a fashion so as to be impressive, rather than \"easy\", all the more insidiously when the presentation pretends to give a shortcut, but doesn't really quite do so. But/and, especially in the face of hype, mere acclimatization to the buzz-words is psychologically reassuring, and eventually one will notice the repetition, and realize what the game is.</p>\n\n<p>That is, for example, an array of ideas and definitions and notation that is impressive and baffling the first 5 or 10 times is much less so around 20th or 30th, especially when one notices that the scary/impressive/baffling part is 95% of all the talks in a given genre, and that the new stuff is small and innocent by comparison.</p>\n\n<p>And, somewhat more subtly, by paying attention, one can eventually discover the discrepancy between the impressive hype and \"how it's done in practice\".</p>\n\n<p>But there're few \"textbook-style\" approaches to reaching any good level of sophistication, for various understandable-but-also-complicated human-nature-based reasons.</p>\n\n<p>In summary: (1) don't presume (impostor syndrome...) that everyone else is understanding, although a few might be, and the more senior people have learned to not worry about it. (2) Don't presume that what you're not understanding is incredibly valuable, magical stuff. Probably is not. (3) Do try to make yourself stay engaged, so that your brain can process things a bit, and not be so baffled next time you hear essentially the same things again... or maybe 5-10 times later.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34227,
"author": "Rannasha",
"author_id": 26528,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26528",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are definitely not alone in not understanding most of the presentations at a conference. Especially if you're new to a field, you tend to be very much focused on your particular research, and you don't have a wider view just yet. This is especially true if your work is highly specialized (and therefore is just a small subset of the material covered in a conference).</p>\n\n<p>Additionally, most speakers are there to present their work and latest results, not to give an introduction to the field. Especially in smaller fields, you see the same faces at each conference, so the speakers will tend to focus on the latest and greatest rather than making a lengthy introduction for newcomers. The fact that unless you're a keynote speaker you probably only have around 20 minutes to speak further reinforces the issue. Every minute spent on the introduction is a minute less for the work you've actually done (as introductions typically tend to consist mostly of literature research and old results).</p>\n\n<p>The understanding of conference talks will improve with time as you learn more about the wider field and the work of the conference-regulars. In the mean time, if you want to speed up the process you can go and talk to one or more presenters after their presentation and ask them to fill in the blanks. Almost every researcher will be happy to explain their work to a colleague from an adjacent field, because colleagues tend to have a sufficient level of thinking and plenty of general background knowledge (compared to a layman) to allow the researcher to quickly get to a decent level of conversation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34231,
"author": "Ruben Verborgh",
"author_id": 7206,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7206",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<h2>It's not your fault if you don't understand a talk</h2>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, many speakers at scientific conferences do a poor job. Most speakers I've seen talk more for themselves than for an actual audience. Unwittingly, they focus more on exhibiting knowledge than on being actually helpful towards the people sitting in front of them.</p>\n\n<p><strong>This mostly happens because people don't know.</strong> They see bad examples, which they assume must be good <em>because everybody does it</em> and just do what other people do.</p>\n\n<p><strong>So if you did not understand, don't blame yourself.</strong> It's the speaker's job to make you understand something. It's quite a paradox that many speakers thank the audience for their attention (!) after a talk—as if the audience did them a <em>favor</em> by paying attention. Instead, good speakers should be thanked by the audience, because they made things understandable.</p>\n\n<h2>Become a better presenter yourself</h2>\n\n<p>What I recommend to understand other's presentations better is to <strong>start giving better presentations yourself</strong>. Effective scientific communication cannot be explained in a simple post, but here are some basic principles:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Before starting to introduce yourself or reading the title of your talk (which is unnecessary anyway), <strong>draw the audience's attention</strong>. Explain to them <em>in a way they can relate to</em> why your problem domain is relevant.</li>\n<li>Then, <strong>explain the problem</strong> you are addressing (and why it is a problem).</li>\n<li>Next, <strong>immediately state your conclusion</strong>. Don't make your presentation a cliffhanger. Tell people the main point upfront; this helps them (decide to) focus on the remainder of the presentation.</li>\n<li>Continue with a <strong>preview of your main points</strong> that support the conclusion. This is a mental map for the rest of your talk.</li>\n<li><strong>Elaborate</strong> on your points as necessary.</li>\n<li>Close the story by putting <strong>your points and the conclusion</strong> into perspective.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Many speakers fail to do one of the points above; especially postponing the conclusion towards the end is a common mistake that makes it hard for the audience to follow.</p>\n\n<h2>Why should you do this with your own talks?</h2>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>You <strong>become part of the solution</strong>. Other PhD students will now finally see a presentation they understand.</p></li>\n<li><p>You will <strong>inspire people to give better talks</strong>, which you will understand more easily.</p></li>\n<li><p>Doing the exercise for your own material, will eventually <strong>help you do it for others.</strong> If you see a poorly structured presentation, you will mentally start rearranging it into a better talk—helping you finally understand what others do more clearly.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<h2>Why is the above presentation structure relevant?</h2>\n\n<p>By stating the conclusion first, you give people a mental map. <strong>If they get lost during elaboration (like you often do), it's not a disaster: they know the most important thing already.</strong> Furthermore, the preview will help them get back on track if they get lost during one of the subpoints.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34235,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The standard conference talk format is simply too short to give a presentation that can be thoroughly understood at a deep technical level. As such, I generally see people falling into one of two modes for conference talks:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Attempt to present everything and make a horrible unintelligible mess that nobody can follow. This is especially true for mathematical talks, where few people can actually digest a complex set of symbolic manipulations in the minute or two that a slide is shown, let alone do it while their linguistic centers are being jammed by the speaker talking.</li>\n<li>Treat the talk as an advertisement for the associated paper(s), presenting a lot of intuition and motivation, but omitting most of the technical details.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>When I am listening to a dense mathematical talk, I simply do not try to follow the math at all. I look at the motivation, I look at the results, and I look at any intuitions the person has presented. If it seems interesting, then afterwards I will go and read the paper to actually understand the material.</p>\n\n<p>If the person doesn't give a motivation or concrete results... I'm not going to bother to try to understand.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34252,
"author": "Wrzlprmft",
"author_id": 7734,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7734",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My personal attitude to conference talks is that I attend them for those 10 % to 40 % that I either understand since I am very familiar with the topic or that are not utterly horrible. I have found many people, including experienced scientists agree with me. As those numbers heavily depend on the field and scope of the conference (the conferences I attended range from medicine to applied mathematics) and given my experience with talks going in that direction, I find it easy to belief that conferences on pure mathematics have an even lower turnout rate. And yes, this is sad and mainly due to bad presenting skills.</p>\n\n<p>Also, at least in my field, it’s quite common for senior researchers (and everybody else) to plan to use half of the time alloted to talks at conferences for other activities such as planning and discussing collaborations, sleeping, touristic activities, preparing their own talks or doing regular work. I would wager that the main thing that experience gives you is the capability to better predict which talks are a waste of time rather than understanding more talks.</p>\n\n<p>So, as long as you understand some of the talks, this may be perfectly normal. And even if you don’t, this is not necessarily something to worry about: People approach and learn about new stuff in different ways. For example, if you prefer assessing new mathematics in small steps but with understanding these steps rather thoroughly, conferences may just not be made for you. (I once heard about a theory that there are two general ways to understand mathematics and similar, but I cannot find it right now.) So, if you do well with understanding papers and similar (still keeping in mind the impostor syndrome), I would not see any reasons to worry.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34315,
"author": "Tobias Kildetoft",
"author_id": 12592,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12592",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At the end of this answer I will try to give some advise on what you can do to understand a larger part of the talks at conferences and seminars (and this advice will be fairly specific to mathematics). But first, I would like to mention some things that influence how much of the talk you can reasonably be expected to understand. This is both because it is useful to have a good idea of this to see if you are doing enough to understand talks, but also because some of the advise is related to these points.</p>\n\n<p>Factors that determine how much you should understand:</p>\n\n<p><strong>1. The topic of the talk.</strong><br>\nThis one should seem obvious, but the closer the topic is to your own specialty, the more you should understand.</p>\n\n<p><strong>2. The purpose of the talk.</strong><br>\nThere are various types of talks, with various purposes. The most common talk is the \"by experts for experts\" talk, where the purpose is to explain the speakers latest research for others who do work in the same or related areas (most seminars and conference talks are of this type). This type of talk generally sets a fairly high bar for the prerequisites needed to understand the talk, since usually the speaker will have at most an hour (often only 45 minutes), and they want to actually present their own research rather than just give an introduction to a topic a large part of the audience will already be fully familiar with. </p>\n\n<p>In the other end of the spectrum are the talks specifically aimed at students, which generally do not present any new research but gives an introduction to some topic. Foe these, one should be able to understand most of the talk as long as it is not a topic too far from ones own specialty (note that these should not be confused with seminars or conference talks given by PhD students or early postdocs, which can often be even harder to follow since the new results obtained by people early in their career are often of a much more technical nature than for those with more experience).</p>\n\n<p><strong>3. How far you are in your studies.</strong><br>\nAgain a fairly obvious one, but the earlier you are in your studies (or your academic career), the less you should expect to understand of any give talk.</p>\n\n<p><strong>4. The speaker.</strong><br>\nThis has already been mentioned by others, but it bears being reiterated: There are some really awful speakers out there. If the talk is given by one of them, even those who are intimately familiar with the topic (or even the results presented) will not understand the talk.<br>\nOn the other hand, there are also some amazing speakers out there who can make you understand a talk on a topic you really should not have been able to.</p>\n\n<p>Figuring out where on this spectrum the speaker lies can be tough, but often one can tell by trying to get a feel for how much attention those in the room, who ought to understand the talk, are paying. If they seem to lose interest (even though the talk does not seem to be about something elementary), then probably the speaker is not doing a good job.</p>\n\n<p><strong>What can you do?</strong></p>\n\n<p>So, what can you do to understand as much as possible of a talk, relative to what you ought to understand, given the above? These will be some generic pieces of advise on how to get the most of a conference (I will mention single-talk seminars at the end).</p>\n\n<p>Before the conference, make sure you get abstracts for all the talks (if possible). From these, single out a reasonable number of talks that seem the most interesting, or where you know the speaker tends to be really good. Look more closely at these abstracts, and do some reading prior to the talks, but not by necessarily looking at the relevant papers (unless the talk is on a topic very close to your own). Instead, you should look up all those terms in the abstract you are not familiar with (or which you are not familiar with in the context). This will give you a better idea of what the talk is about.<br>\nNext, see if you can find some of the main results about the objects mentioned in the abstract (often one gets a better understanding of an object if one known the \"rules\" it obeys rather than just knowing the definition). It can also be good to find some of the main conjectures about these objects, since this gives an idea of what sort of questions are considered the most interesting (not because it is likely that the talk will present a proof of such a conjecture, though it can happen, as I have experienced myself).</p>\n\n<p>Further, one of the things that often causes a lack of understanding of a talk at a conference is simply being tired from seeing too many talks. To alleviate this as much as possible, I suggest you bring something to the talks that you can entertain yourself with in a non-obvious way once you get to a point in the talk where you have no chance of understanding more.<br>\nThis might sound a bit rude to the speaker, but this is why I mentioned that it should be non-obvious. It should preferably be such that if the speaker looks at you, you will just seem to be taking notes (unless you are way at the front, you can often have your phone lying in front of you without the speaker being able to see this for example).</p>\n\n<p>Along with the above it should be mentioned that it can also be quite alright to not see every single talk at a conference (though you should probably check with your adviser what the culture is at the specific conference to be sure). Which talks to skip can then be based on which abstracts seem to suggest that you will understand the least (or if you happen to know that some specific speaker always gives terrible talks, you can also skip that).</p>\n\n<p>As a final note on this, I would advise that you try to see as many talks as you can. As long as the speaker is not completely awful, you will actually learn more than you notice as long as you pay attention.</p>\n\n<p>In case of single-talk seminars, most of the above of course does not apply. I would say that for single-talk seminars, you can better afford to spend some more time on getting acquainted with the subject of the talk beforehand, so you should treat it like you would a conference talk that you have deemed to be of high interest to you (and don't bring anything to entertain yourself, but really try to pay attention all the way through).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34326,
"author": "Kate Gregory",
"author_id": 12693,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12693",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Are sessions from previous conferences ever filmed and made available online? If not, are particular presenters (those who sessions you thought you might want to see) putting any talks of theirs online ever?</p>\n\n<p>If so, try watching one of these, from some previous year, very slowly. Pause, copy things down from the slide, look things up. Rewind when the presenter connects what they're saying to something they said before. Try doing some of it yourself by hand or with the appropriate tool to \"follow along.\" Work out how much effort it takes to figure out how the title of the talk connects to what is actually presented. This may be easier if you have access to the actual paper of the same title. </p>\n\n<p>Once you've \"deconstructed\" one talk like this, you will know a lot more about the issues in the talks you attend. For example, perhaps the structure and organization of the talk is terrible, and you could now give the presentation in a way that would make sense to people who don't already understand the material. Perhaps there's a simple visual aid (diagram, graph, table) that would illuminate the topic tremendously. Or perhaps it's just insanely difficult and requires hours of work to even begin to understand. In some fields, that would make it ineligible as a topic for a one-hour talk, but apparently not in mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>In my industry it's normal to leave talks that turn out not to be right for me. If I'm not sure a talk is going to work well for me, I sit towards the back so I can slip out. For the sake of the speaker's ego, I will usually pack up quietly, everything except my phone, then wait for a moment when the speaker is not talking (eg the pause right before/after a slide change) and stand up, holding and looking at my phone, frown, and run out of the room apologizing to those I go past. This allows everyone to tell themselves that I had to deal with an urgent call or email or something. I find that staying in a talk half listening while trying to do something else just wears me out and leaves me with nothing accomplished. Who knows, you might even have a great hallway conversation with someone else who couldn't follow the talk and left!</p>\n\n<p>If you manage to \"crack the nut\" of presenting complex topics in a way that can be understood by those without the background, you'll surely have a long and successful career. Even if all you manage to solve is the shorthand and assumed background that these presenters are drawing on, you'll understand more talks in the future. And if you career depends on understanding talks, then it's a skill you should learn. Just keep in mind you're almost certainly not expected to understand every single talk at conferences you attend.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34331,
"author": "David Hill",
"author_id": 11258,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11258",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, it is not overly surprising that you are having trouble understanding research talks as a 2nd year PhD student. When I was at that level, I found talks to be completely incomprehensible. That being said, I do think attending them is worthwhile.</p>\n\n<p>I wouldn't recommend randomly writing down formulas in an attempt to decode them. Instead, a useful exercise might be to to keep track of terminology that appears in various talks. If the same terminology appears in different presentations, this is a good indication that it is important. After the conference, you can follow up on what the term is all about, where it comes from, and why it is important. Ask your adviser.</p>\n\n<p>The key is to look for recurring themes in talks. Say, in one talk, the speaker defines \"hefelumps\" and goes on to state three (incomprehensible) properties that hefelumps have. In another talk, the speaker defines \"woozles\" and goes on to list a very similar list of properties. It may well be that this list of properties are part of a standard argument in your field that gets a certain theory going, and knowing this will cue you into what the speakers are planning to do next. When you see these patterns, it's worth asking your advisor what the relevance is.</p>\n\n<p>This has been said before, but I don't think it can be emphasized enough--many talks are \"for experts, by experts\". In particular, it is entirely possible that there are two or three people in the audience that the talk is directed to. These are potentially not going to be very useful. To recognized these, you need to know who is who in the field and what they are working on. It may be helpful to go over the conference schedule with your adviser before you attend. Maybe s/he can clue you in to some of the politics.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, the expert-to-expert talks can also be some of the more amusing, especially if the experts involved are rivals. I was recently at a conference where three different groups were jockeying for the credit for a certain result. The interactions were priceless. With that in mind, I'll finish by saying that not everything you learn from a math talk involves mathematics.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/12
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34187",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26497/"
] |
34,202 |
<p>Financial terms, content quality, etc, is not a problem. The author has a contribution that will significantly impact the advancement of human knowledge about a particular topic.</p>
<p>Can anyone submit a paper? Or does it require some affiliation with a larger group such as an educational/governmental/corporate institution?</p>
<p>I am talking about journals of such clout as the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, etc.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34205,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Anyone can submit a manuscript to a peer reviewed journal. The challenge that face persons without training in scientific writing through, for example, a PhD, is that the manuscript is probably far more likely to be rejected because of poor writing or other mistakes. The key issues for authoring a good paper is to have a good grip on the literature in the field, knowing the sources that should be referenced to provide the basis for the own work, to know how to write clearly, concisely and precisely, and to understand any specific publishing aspects of the field. </p>\n\n<p>It is not rocket science but usually requires both good coaching and training. Approaching the authoring with care is therefore a good strategy.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34214,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Anybody can submit to almost any journal (there are some out there where some sort of existing membership is a pre-requisite, but they are rare exceptions). </p>\n\n<p>There is, however, an additional barrier that an author has to overcome if they are not known and/or they are not affiliated with some reputable institution. In essence, peer review of a journal submission is attempting to evaluate <em>credibility</em> of the arguments presented in the paper. Authors who are known in the community that they are submitting to or who are coming from highly reputed institutions have an inherent advantage in that they already have some credibility simply through their reputation or affiliation. An author who does not have these advantages will naturally be faced with more skepticism about their statements, particularly when dealing with an experimental work where the paper cannot contain every relevant fragment of information about the work being reported.</p>\n\n<p>What this means, in practice, is that when a submitted paper has flaws, an unknown and/or unaffiliated author is more likely to get rejected whereas a author drawing on prior credibility is more likely to get asked to make revisions. This might not be ideal, but pragmatically it is fairly reasonable: there is a lot of really bad stuff submitted to journals, and the quality of a submission is typically fairly well correlated with author and institution.</p>\n\n<p>So how should an unknown and/or unaffiliated author go about publishing? First off, it's very useful to get feedback on pre-submission drafts from trusted colleagues, so that the initial submission can be as good as possible. Second, it's rare that any major development is contained within a single paper. Rather than trying to publish \"the one big paper,\" one can build up credibility by publishing a sequence of manuscripts, starting in still-credible but less prestigious journals. </p>\n\n<p>For example, if the work is about a general new principle, there could first be a paper proposing the principle and analyzing its implications, followed by another paper making experimental tests of some of those implications, followed by a bigger paper pulling it all together an demonstrating the general power of the principle with more diverse experiments. These are all perfectly reasonable papers---no <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit\">LPU dishonesty</a> needed, just an understanding that most significant ideas usually result in more than one journal paper worth of work, and some idea of how to segment the work sensibly.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34221,
"author": "Andreas Blass",
"author_id": 14506,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My initial reaction to this question was that the only requirement for submitting a paper to a typical journal is that one has to be a human being. But then I remembered Shalosh B. Ekhad, which, in addition to numerous papers with human co-authors, also has a few solo papers.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34255,
"author": "Matt",
"author_id": 26547,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26547",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Anyone can submit a paper to a journal. Author institutional affiliation rarely if ever plays a role in the peer-review and acceptance/rejection of a paper. The gold standard for high-quality research is that the paper makes a significant contribution to the field, advances theory or practice, has a high degree of rigor, and is written using formal, scientific, though accessible language.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 85983,
"author": "Nikey Mike",
"author_id": 51566,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51566",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As other has pointed out, the affiliation is not mandatory, although it might help. I have recently found a paper in a leading top-tier journal in physics, <a href=\"http://journals.aps.org/prd/about\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Physical review D</a>, a leading journal in elementary particle physics, field theory, gravitation, and cosmology, which appears monthly. The impact factor for PRD is high, 4.5, with Article Influence® Score: 1.105. There it can be seen a recent paper titled \"Comment on \"Fermion production in a magnetic field in a de Sitter universe\"\", by Nistor Nicolaevici, Attila Farkas. The second author is currently unaffilitiated, as you can see from <a href=\"https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.07951\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">arxiv version of the paper</a>, or the <a href=\"http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.048501\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">published version</a>:\n\"Attila Farkas unaffiliated, Alte Strasse 42, 89081 Ulm, Germany\".</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34202",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8719/"
] |
34,211 |
<p>I am planning to apply for a PhD program and would like to request a letter of recommendation from a professor. However, I am quite hesitant about which way is better for me to make the initial request: asking the professor during the break of the class or just sending him an email? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34212,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My recommendation is definitely in person \"after class\". There are several reasons to do so. First, it is personal and you can iron out any details there and then. Second, the person you approach will have a face to go with any future e-mail conversations. Third, it is less likely a person will dismiss you in a direct approach than in an (impersonal) e-mail approach.</p>\n\n<p>There are of course ways in which you can blow your hopes with a personal approach as well. Just be brief and to the point, try to be professional about it. If the person appears not to have time, ask if you can meet during an office hour or if an E-mail would be better. After all, you have just presented yourself and is now \"a face\".</p>\n\n<p>There is of course nothing wrong with just sending an E-mail but I know from personal experience that I sometimes get mails from students who apparently have attended my classes but made no impression so I ask myself, who the ... is this? Not a great basis for a letter of recommendation. I personally also think that a personal approach shows more initiative and drive. All this is of course from the perspective that you actually can meet with the person without engaging in long distance travelling etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34224,
"author": "Formagella",
"author_id": 24716,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24716",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An e-mail from someone you can't even remember is easy to reject, there's almost no emotions involved. Plus if he says yes, you still have to meet to talk about the details and write them down, or risk misunderstandings via e-mail. It's better in person. </p>\n\n<p>During a break or after class there may be other students waiting to ask questions, or the professor may be in a rush, or any other such disturbance, it doesn't feel serious to me and you risk getting only half an answer or him telling you to set up an appointment. </p>\n\n<p>Just go find him during the official office/consultation hours (whatever they're called in your country), or if he said you have to take an appointment first, then take an appointment but go discuss it in person. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34238,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You could try doing both - first talk to him after class, and if he expresses interest, send a packet of materials by email (your resume, things you'd like him to include, maybe your transcript if it's good). It's good for him to have these things electronically because then the materials are harder to lose and he has a written reminder of your request.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 123795,
"author": "Seub",
"author_id": 8268,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8268",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Don't agree with other answers! I'd 100% prefer students to ask me by email. It gives more time to think about how to phrase the request properly, motivate it, and give details; and it gives more time to the professor to think about his/her answer.</p>\n\n<p>The other answers say it's more personal to ask face to face and the professor may forget who you are unless they see you, that's a strange argument. If your professor doesn't remember you by name, don't bother ask him/her for a letter.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34211",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24065/"
] |
34,215 |
<p>I got a series of emails from a student. At first, I thought she was being over-polite. But now things are making me very uncomfortable. For instance, at every email she thanks me for giving her good grades; it gave her motivation, encouragement etc. (this makes me very uncomfortable since it might imply I'm giving her preferential treatment) and I am the best TA she has ever seen. Her emails bear a tone which can be interpreted as either overly polite or very subtly flirtatious e.g. using emoticons, signing emails with only "Yours", "have a good night", "lovely day".</p>
<p>I am willing to give the student the benefit of doubt. English may not be her first language, so she may not know some phrases in emails are only appropriate with your closed ones. I want to tell her that she should avoid these phrases in formal emails not so directly. How can I convey this to the student?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34217,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is an extremely common problem for some teachers. </p>\n\n<p>It may be difficult for her to control. Some cultures have extremely high regard for teachers. This puts you in a natural position as a target of infatuation.</p>\n\n<p>If it can be interpreted in multiple ways, try to ignore it.</p>\n\n<p>If it continues to get stronger, then explain that what she is doing is inappropriate considering your relationship (I'm referring here to the power dynamic between teacher and student).</p>\n\n<p>If you are really uncomfortable and you cannot let it slide, then explain to her that she should not use certain phrases because it implies something that will never be there.</p>\n\n<p>If you're too gentle with it may encourage her to try even harder. So, be clear (not mean, but clear).</p>\n\n<p>One last, very important, thing is to make sure that you are not accidentally doing something which, in her culture, indicates some (romantic) openness on your part. In some cultures smiling at a stranger is just a nice way of saying hi. In other cultures that same exact smile is saying, \"Hey, I would be very interested in dating you.\"</p>\n\n<p>People see what they want to see, so look at yourself and see what you do that might be indicating to her that she has a shot. Then change.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34218,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You should keep your replies short, polite and professional. Do not respond to what you see as flirtatious. Try also to interpret what you see as flirtatious in a different light, as you say, it could be due to language issues. It would be bad if you started to respond in a manner that assumed something that was not intended.</p>\n\n<p>In the end it is very important to not fuel any behaviour that you think is \"suspect\" but at the same time you cannot avoid responding altogether. Acknowledge praise briefly but do not return praise since that could appear as favouring a student before others. Turn the focus of a response quickly from any polite exchange to focus on the course material. You may also take opportunities to point out that information given is also given to others to at least subtly impress the fact that there is no \"special treatment\".</p>\n\n<p>In short, act as if nothing special is going on, be brief to the point and professional in your response. Do not try to be anything other than yourself or treat any student differently from others. Keep records of your mail or other exchanges.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34220,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would try to <em>ignore it</em> as long as that is practicable. As in Peter Jansson's answer, just reply professionally, as if you didn't notice the tone of the email. </p>\n\n<p>Unless the emails become overtly flirtatious, or unless the student begins to say inappropriate things in person or in other settings, you may be able to just avoid responding to the tone you perceive in the emails. Each class ends in a few months, after all. </p>\n\n<p>If you feel you cannot ignore it, I would show the emails to another faculty member you trust, and ask for their opinion. Don't tell them what to look for - just ask them to read the emails and tell you if they see anything unusual. This is a good test, in general, to see whether you might be misinterpreting an email.</p>\n\n<p>If the other faculty member agrees the emails have crossed the line from friendly to flirtatious, I would first try a <em>non-confrontational</em> way of resolving the situation. Two easy options include:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Make an announcement to the entire class about how to write a professional email. Of course, the announcement may be intended for a particular student, but it is less confrontational to announce it to everyone at once. Don't focus just on the flirtation issue, but make sure to emphasize that the student/professor professional relationship should be respected.</p></li>\n<li><p>Send an email to the entire class about professional communications, similar to the announcement above. Again, the goal is for the one student to get the message without realizing the email is really intended for him or her. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Only if that sort of non-confrontational technique does not work would I move on to any sort of direct intervention. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34313,
"author": "Denisa Dalila",
"author_id": 26595,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26595",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is a delicate matter as it can't really be pinned down as flirtatious but it does not seem very professional either. For example, even if I get quite familiar with some collaborators or colleagues, I do not add emoticons or texts that I normally use when talking to my family. </p>\n\n<p>I would keep the answers as professional as possible, keep the tone quite \"dry\", and keep a very good track of all mails that go back and forth (just in case any problems later arise). </p>\n\n<p>I would also approach as soon as possible, as part of the lecture course, the way that communication between teacher and students should take place - as @Oswald Veblen wrote above, or new routines in communication... you can eventually come with some reason for it. If the mails from the student continue in the same tone after bringing it up to the class, I would approach the subject directly with the student, at school, in an open space (if her intention is to flirt, you can never know how she will react when you will bring up the subject - better to have things as transparent and as clear as possible). </p>\n\n<p>I would not start to change myself and be on a 24/7 stakeout, analyzing each and every move and grimace I make. I would make sure though that I behave in the same way with everyone. </p>\n\n<p>A last thing, if it helps, maybe not :). Last time I was in a similar situation, only that it went to a not so subtle communication, I approached the person and told him that - probably I have misinterpreted the whole situation but I'd rather make a fool of myself than leaving things unclear. I told him I appreciated our collaboration but I was not interested in taking things further than just professionally. </p>\n\n<p>Hope it was all just a misunderstanding! All the best!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34345,
"author": "supercat",
"author_id": 21086,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21086",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A general way of responding to behavior that might appear flirtatious or unprofessional is to politely inform the student that while you appreciate her efforts to be polite, other people might possibly misconstrue her language or actions as meaning something she didn't intend. Don't imply that <em>you</em> perceived her actions as being flirtatious or in any way dishonorable, but rather that--whether or not she is aware of it--some people are very sensitive to such things.</p>\n\n<p>Such an approach will effectively request that she avoid acting flirtatiously toward you, but at the same time avoid any aspersions on her actions to date. A statement that a person's actions could be misconstrued is not an accusation of impropriety, since it could be true even of some actions which were 100% proper. Someone who welcomed a person's flirtations and expected to continue doing so would be unlikely to make such a statement, but a person who thought continued flirtations might become annoying might make such a statement even if they hadn't yet. Consequently, the act of making such a statement is not a claim that one has been offended.</p>\n\n<p>Ignoring a person's attempts at flirting may sometimes be effective, but some people may escalate their efforts until they get some sort of response. Since there's often no good way to respond to acknowledged attempts at flirting, it may be better to respond to an attempt at flirting which is subtle enough that one can claim to believe it wasn't deliberate, than to wait until increasingly-overt attempts can no longer be denied. The sooner flirtation can be discouraged, the easier it will be for everyone involved to save face.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34215",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23165/"
] |
34,222 |
<p>Two years ago I enrolled in a very high-ranked program in field X. Partway through the program, I developed severe health problems which affected my memory and cognitive function, and which made it difficult to learn the required material. In addition, I also found I was not that interested in the research itself (although the aforementioned memory/cognitive problems were far more damaging to my learning than the lack of interest).</p>
<p>Due to the combination of these two factors, I sought medical leave to deal with the health problems, which was granted in March. Around July/August, the problem was partially alleviated, and I have mostly been feeling better, and have decided to switch to another field of study Y. I talked with my adviser about my situation and explained the health problems, and he asked me if I was still planning on re-entering the program, and I told him that I felt that I might perform better working in field Y; we mutually agreed to terminate the leave, and I am currently applying to a second round of graduate schools.</p>
<p>This is where things get slightly more complicated. The health insurance I had under the medical leave was far better than my ordinary health insurance, and my mother has (since August) been trying to persuade me to extend my leave as long as legally possible, potentially up until Fall 2015 enrollment. According to doctors I talked to at the previous institution, it is not uncommon for students to take up to three years on medical leave, so this is AFAIK legally possible. In the interim time, she wants me to tell my adviser that I am still dealing with medical issues, and am not yet able to decide on re-entering the institute's program in field X, during which I can apply to other schools in field Y and enroll in one of them for Fall 2015. I have not yet told her that I have previously spoken with my adviser and agreed to end the leave.</p>
<p>My question is:</p>
<ul>
<li>Under this set of circumstances, was I right in contacting my adviser and terminating leave, instead of extending it up until Fall 2015 enrollment at another institution?</li>
</ul>
<p>Personally, my gut instinct towards my mother's proposal is that it is effectively financial blackmail, arguably dishonest, and would sour post-leave relations with my adviser. However, I am generally bad at gauging these sort of questions, and seek advice here as to what the correct course of action would have been. My mother has told me that the institute legally has to extend my medical leave as long as I am otherwise in good standing and still expressing desire to eventually re-enroll, and that by doing otherwise, I am potentially burning academic bridges behind me and making it more difficult for me to find a new graduate position. In any case, I hope that this question is sufficiently generalizable that it can help people who find themselves in similar circumstances regarding the handling of academic medical leave.</p>
<h3>Edit</h3>
<p>To clarify, I was not paid a stipend during leave, and the insurance premium was paid for by the institution.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34226,
"author": "Bob Brown",
"author_id": 16183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16183",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You made the correct decision, and the only ethical decision. Your leave was granted on the premise that you would return. When that ceased to be true, you correctly terminated your relationship with the program, ending your medical leave benefit.</p>\n\n<p>As far as burning academic bridges, you'd do a far more effective job of bridge-burning if you flim-flammed your old program into paying for more leave, then told them you wouldn't be returning. Although that sort of information should be confidential, I guarantee you it'd get around unofficially, perhaps not as a statement of the facts, but as, \"this is someone you do not need and do not want.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34234,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Assuming that you are in the United States, the ethics of the situation are not clear-cut, because the health care system is such a mess. It may not be clear to either you or your former advisor who is actually paying for the health care. For example, the school may have outsourced responsibility to a third-party insurance solution, or it might be covered by some unusual provision of the new health law, or the FMLA, or who knows what. Honestly, I have no idea, and probably you can't find out without detailed interactions with HR, and even they might not be in compliance with laws and regulations and might not even know it.</p>\n\n<p>It's also the case that, while there is a clear conservative ethical solution of \"better safe than sorry,\" it's not actually clear that it is the right thing to do, given the amount of financial and/or medical problems that can be caused by a short period uncovered in the US. A colleague of mine, for example, who was actually continually covered with a good plan, had problems getting critical medical care for a child because her plan was late in handling paperwork on a year-to-year transition. On the flip side, I kept using some of my university's medical services for years after I had left, because I asked about it and was told that my alumni status meant it was still OK: it turned out that I wasn't supposed to, but nobody including me knew that.</p>\n\n<p>So it's a pretty mess to sort through. How should you deal with it?\nLet's lay out some principles:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>You really don't want to burn bridges. This means that if you decide that it is important to try to stay on the same plan, then you should make sure that your advisor is OK with it. Some professors I know would tell you to do it, and some would be uncomfortable. What you <em>don't</em> want to do is have the professor be uncomfortable and only find out later.</p></li>\n<li><p>Second, how critical is the difference between the plans? Are you potentially facing many thousands of dollars in extra cost or being forced to go untreated for your medical conditions? If the difference is relatively small, then let it go. If the difference could destroy your health or life, then it's appropriate to try to use the options that are available.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>None of this is ethically squeaky clean, unfortunately, and I wish that it were so. Unfortunately, because health care coverage is so tightly linked to employment in the United States, we have a system that sometimes forces people to choose between problematic options.</p>\n\n<p>In sum: if you can afford to drop down a grade in health care, that's the ethically best choice. If you can't, make sure your professor is OK with you taking advantage of something that is permissible under the system but ethically questionable.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34222",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11263/"
] |
34,230 |
<p>I have submitted my manuscript to one of the top-tier journal in my field. The reviewers' feedback was positive in the first round of revision; one reviewer favoured the paper and asked for revisions while the second reviewer did not read it because I did not adhere to the target word count of the journal. The editor then asked me to make an R&R. I submitted my revision and 5 days after the resubmission the dashboard was converted into "awaiting EIC decision". The editor discussed the decision with one of his associates and then asked me to wait for a couple of days to render a final decision. He did not tell me that it would be sent out for a third review.</p>
<p>My question is that why the need for days to render a decision after discussing the reviewers' reports with the associate editor? Can anyone from the journal's editors explain this case?</p>
<p>Edit: The problem is that the status "awaiting for EIC decision" took around 15 days till I received an email from the editor that he was out of the disk and once he received on X day he would render a decision. At that day or the following day, he told me to have patience and waited for couple of days as he was discussing the reviewers' reports with his associate. My question is whether there was disagreement between the reviewers then he may assign another reviewer or what?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34233,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general the editor makes choices as to how to best get a manuscript evaluated. If one reviewer did not return a review, it is only natural to ask for a new reviewer's opinion. The fact that the editor-in-Chief confers with another editor could mean that they confer whether or not the existing single review is sufficient.</p>\n\n<p>As for time, I am not sure why you question a few days for a decision. Most editors do their work outside of normal departmental duties so finding time for discussing a particular manuscript can take some time and surely five days is not anything remarkable?</p>\n\n<p>So from my view point, as Editor-in-Chief (of another journal), you seem to be very impatient and lacking insight in the everyday editorial business of a journal. I do not see anything strange about what has happened and I particularly do not see any reason for the editor to let you in to the internal work of the journal editorship.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34262,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your edit contains the answer to your question: editors are people too, and sometimes delays happen because of that fact. This is less true for a \"professionally edited\" journal like Nature or Science, where there is likely to be a formal handoff of responsibilities between editors when one is unavailable. Most journals, however, are run by faculty volunteering their time as part of their service to their scientific community. If an editor is unavailable for a week or two, it is likely that everything in their queue will just wait until they return. And that's generally OK, because a week or two doesn't make a big difference in a multi-month process.</p>\n\n<p>In your case, your edit states that the editor had a slipped disk. This is an incredibly painful medical condition that is probably screwing up their whole life while they get it dealt with. Compared to this, you and your paper are not a high priority, and you need to have some patience.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34230",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26530/"
] |
34,239 |
<p>What are the factors that are considered when granting a PhD degree. For example, if a person has published excellent papers, but their dissertation is not perfect i.e. omissions and typos, would the committee consider it?
Also, what happens if they have good papers published, but the oral defense is not great.
People generally believe that if the dissertation advisors says OK, then everything works out. How true is that?
P.S. I am asking in the U.S.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34245,
"author": "Rannasha",
"author_id": 26528,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26528",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It greatly depends on the country and less so on the university. In general, it is true that a supervisor will not approve a thesis to be sent to the committee that he/she doesn't feel has a good chance of being accepted. Because doing so would not only reflect poorly on the supervisor, it also means more work for everyone involved.</p>\n\n<p>In general, things like language errors are not cause for rejection unless you make it really bad. The thesis is judged primarily on its scientific content. Note that in some fields, you can create a thesis by simply making each published paper into a chapter and adding an introduction and conclusion. This allows for all of the critical parts of the thesis to be completed and reviewed beforehand.</p>\n\n<p>The importance of the oral defense depends on the country. In my country, the Netherlands, the oral defense is practically irrelevant for most people. While in theory you can fail, as long as you keep talking, you will pass. It's mostly a show for friends and family. But in other countries the oral defense has more weight</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34250,
"author": "Patric Hartmann",
"author_id": 20449,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20449",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It mostly depends on the university policy. Normally typoes are accepted to a certain extent as especially foreign students are not expected to manage the language perfectly.</p>\n\n<p>Omissions on the other hand are a totally different thing. You have to omit many things anyway as they would not fit into the frame of your thesis. On the other handm if you omit something which is part of the area you are doing research on, then chances are high, that you are rejected - at least you will never get more than a \"cum rite\" and if you're satisfied with that, then I'd reconsider the whole doctorate-thing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34263,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Although the exact process varies from university to university, the general form of the process in the United States is typically as follows:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The student needs to do work that makes a novel contribution to the sum of all human knowledge. This is the universal part of the process, and the key thing that a Ph.D. really certifies that you are capable of.</li>\n<li>The student, with guidance from the advisor writes up this work in a thesis document. In some areas this is not-yet-published work, in others it is a summation of things already published. In either case, it should be a complete and thorough presentation of the ideas and work.</li>\n<li>Eventually the advisor and student are both satisfied, and the advisor judges that the student's work will pass external review.</li>\n<li>External review is obtained from some combination of oral or public defense and input from other committee members. Sometimes the defense is a serious part of the process, sometimes it is not; in either case, an advisor should never allow a student to stand for a defense unless they will pass.</li>\n<li>The student satisfies any additional requirements imposed through the external review. Sometimes this is just correcting typos, sometimes this is a lengthy period of additional research. If it is the latter, then the advisor has generally screwed up.</li>\n<li>Submit the final document for archive, and graduate.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Note that this process assumes some flexibility in the length of a Ph.D., which is typically the case in the US. I know that in some other places, such as many institutions in Europe, there is often a shorter and fixed schedule. I'm not sure how one deals with not being ready on time in that case...</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34239",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25092/"
] |
34,246 |
<p>What to do if somebody is suspicious after reading the review report of a research paper that one of the reviewers may be his ex-coworker, who is not an expert in the subject of the paper?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34247,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First, I doubt any editor would appoint a reviewer by \"mistake\". Editors look for persons who are deemed to provide in-depth reviews on the manuscript or in some cases part of it. As editor it is of course difficult to keep track of co-workers so it is probably not uncommon that co-workers become assigned. If a reviewers feels they cannot provide a fair review, and one such instance can be if they feel to close to the author, they have a responsibility to decline the review. It is possible an editor appoints somebody relatively familiar with your work in the belief that they have insights that may be useful. This would be a poor assumption on the part of the editor and one I would deem as slightly lazy.</p>\n\n<p>Despite these and other safety-measures reviewers that for one or another reason are unsuitable become appointed. Many journals therefore have opportunities for authors to signal non-preferred reviewers. It is also possible to add names of non-wanted reviewers in the submission letters. Such persons usually are ones with whom a personal conflict exists.</p>\n\n<p>With all that in mind, it is not clear that the editor has made any mistake despite the fact that you look unfavourable on the choice and <em>suspect</em> that you know one of the reviewers. If you feel a review is off in some respect, you are free to signal this to the editor when you return a revised manuscript (assuming you received a revisions \"verdict\"). If your manuscript is rejected and the rejection is due to the reviewer you would see as non-preferable, you should contact the editor to see if you can discuss a \"second chance\". The problem here is that you need to have sound arguments for the problem arising from the reviewer. The fact that no indication of the non-preferred status of the reviewer is, form the view of the editor, a complicating factor; how is the editor to know? Suspecting you know the reviewer is not a very solid ground for changing the opinion.</p>\n\n<p>So, the best you can do is to work with the reviews to improve the manuscript and provide good arguments for not following points where you believe reviewers do not have a strong point. So take the reviews in stride and simply argue for what you think are reasonable constructive changes to your manuscript.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34253,
"author": "Rafael Max Wayld",
"author_id": 26545,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26545",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, it is perfectly alright to review a coworker's article, unless they were involved in the research or provided assistance of some sort - in other words, they shouldn't be biased. If, as your question's title suggests, the reviewer is not an expert in the field, and the editor made the mistake of appointing him with this task, you could contact the editor asking why he did so. Mention that he is just your coworker and not an expert in this area. Instead of making quick judgments, wait for the review and go through it to see if it is acceptable by your own standards. It is very unlikely, I believe, that it would be worthless to a point were you might want to ask your editor to reject it, nevertheless you could always make a request to exclude that review from being published.</p>\n\n<p>NOTE: Contact your editor and ask for advice.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34256,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The question seems to be predicated on two assumptions:</p>\n\n<p>1) If the review was not blind and the OP knew that the reviewer was his <strong>F</strong>ormer <strong>C</strong>oworker, he could make a convincing case to the editor that <strong>FC</strong> was not qualified to review the paper.</p>\n\n<p>2) Thus, because he <em>suspects</em> that the reviewer was <strong>FC</strong>, he wants to contact the editor to find out if this was the case.</p>\n\n<p>The second assumption is really a mistaken one, I think: according to the principles of blind review, you shouldn't know the identity of the reviewer. If you think you do, you should nevertheless act as if you don't, and if you have partial information, you should definitely not go around sleuthing to see if you can solve the case. This is one of the basic cultural assumptions of peer review. I think that if the author goes down this road, it is very likely that he will be told that his actions are inappropriate and will burn bridges with the editor and the journal.</p>\n\n<p>I find the first assumption problematic too, in a more subtle way. The reason that reviews are anonymous is that you should not be engaging in an <em>ad hominem</em> discussion of the reviewer. Just because you know someone's identity doesn't mean that you are an authority on their academic and intellectual qualifications. Maybe <strong>FC</strong> didn't know your subject well back when you knew him, <em>in your opinion</em>. How do you know what he knows now? </p>\n\n<p>Choosing a suitable person to be the referee is the editor's call, not the author's. Calling attention to someone's identity -- even hypothetically, as in \"I don't know who the reviewer was, but <em>if</em> it was <strong>FC</strong>...\" -- as a strike against the referee report will be regarded by many as obnoxious. If you have anything to say to the editor, it is about the referee report itself. If the referee report contains a comment that through its specific brand of inexpertise suggests to you that it was made by <strong>FC</strong>, forget about the <strong>FC</strong> part and explain why the comment is <em>definitively</em> incorrect. If you can point out clear errors in the referee report that are in the serious to egregious range -- i.e., a reasonable person would worry that they compromise the integrity of the verdict -- then you have a case for getting the report thrown out and/or getting an additional independent report. More likely the situation is not so clearcut, and in my opinion you should still compose a polite response to the editor if you feel that a lack of expertise played a factor in the report, but you fully expect to resubmit your paper elsewhere. </p>\n\n<p>Getting a bad (as in, less than skilled) referee report and having to resubmit elsewhere is quite a common feature of peer review. Luckily there is a lot more than one journal, so you can just start fresh elsewhere, and doing so is usually a much better idea than trying to extract reparations from the editor and/or the referee.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/13
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34246",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26541/"
] |
34,271 |
<p>I come from a developing country and I got admitted to a UK university in MSC, Computer Science. As I am not financially strong, I am also applying for a fully funded scholarship. There is an online form I need to submit for the consideration of this scholarship. </p>
<p>There are some questions that I can't answer them in the way the needs to be answered and convenes the scholarship organization. One of them is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What will be your objectives during the award?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If I answer this question it would be simple like the following: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My main objective during the period is to get more and more knowledge and to learn new technologies that will give boost to my career.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm guessing this answer isn't viewed positively from by a scholarship committee.</p>
<p><em>What content do scholarship committees expect to see in the "Objectives" section of an application?</em></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34312,
"author": "Gary Baley",
"author_id": 22830,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22830",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"During the award\" sounds a bit strange to me; I guess it means during the period covered by the scholarship. First, I'd be sure to answer the question with specifics, not generalities. Something like \"During the award period, my objectives are: 1) to complete the first year with an A average grade, 2) to master programming skills in Java (or whatever) such that I can independently program a controller for quad-power drone aircraft, and 3) ... etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34324,
"author": "Alee",
"author_id": 26560,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26560",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I tried my best to answer the question. Please review it. If you find something missing or inappropriate let me know.</p>\n\n<p>\"In my Masters program my goal is to expand my mental horizons, detailed understanding of latest tools and technologies adopted by engineering, with the time. I also want to learn technical, managerial as well as behavioral aspects of the field to work in higher positions. I strongly feel that master’s program will inculcate a strong quality assurance and testing component in my knowledge, so as to raise the level of excellence in my work. I came to know that an academic experience is must-to-have component for growth in global field of Computer Science, as well as to make a mark in professional career. From use of sophisticated tools to advanced theories, MS teaches me all that I need to know to enhance my academic experience and qualification.\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34271",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26560/"
] |
34,275 |
<p>I've noticed a majority of professors that I have had will tell students something along the lines of, the exam covers Chapters 1, 2, 3, or the exam covers topics X, Y, Z. Sometimes this is ends up being so broad that it is unlikely that students will even see all the material that is fair game on the exam. It also likely ends up with some material being more prominent than other material which means playing the guessing game.</p>
<p>Why are professors hesitant to tell students more precisely what they expect them to know? </p>
<p>I do realize that not all (perhaps even most?) professors have not written the exam at the point of informing students what is covered. However, given that undergraduate course material is fairly static, would not the professor be expecting the students to have the same knowledge as the previous students? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34277,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Due to time constraints, most exams directly ask about only a small fraction of the course material. If a professor explicitly tells students exactly what parts of the material are going to be directly tested on the exam, many students would only bother to learn that material.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, professors often include anything they want students to learn/study in the exam coverage. </p>\n\n<p>(There are obviously tradeoffs involved: include too much and students won't be able to study the really important things at a sufficient level of depth, include too little and the students won't get enough breadth.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34280,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There are at least four worries, in my experience:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The students may be trying not to study any more than they absolutely have to study. So if the professor says something isn't on the exam, they won't study it. </p></li>\n<li><p>If the professor says what is on the exam, but doesn't explicitly mention something, and then that thing comes up (even as a minor part of another problem), the students may complain that \"you said that wasn't on the test!\". This can happen even if the professor really made a good faith effort to say what was on the test, and the students simply misunderstood.</p></li>\n<li><p>The professor may not have written the exam yet, and so she doesn't know the exact topics that will be included.</p></li>\n<li><p>Someone else may write the exam, if there are many sections of the course taking the same exam. In that case, the professor may not be permitted to say what is on the exam. When I was a postdoc, they didn't even show us the common calculus exam until just before it was administered. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There are various strategies to cope with these worries. A common one, as described in the question, is to just say that the exam can include everything from the class, which is not very informative but is otherwise harmless. </p>\n\n<p>There are other strategies, as well, such as making an exam review packet that includes more than the exam possibly could, and then selecting exam problems based on the review packet. But these don't help with the issue of common exams written by someone else.</p>\n\n<p>By the way, if turnaround is fair play: we professors often ask the dual question: why do students so often ask what will be on the exam, when they have just had a class on the same material that will be on the exam? As you can imagine, we may feel that we have already told the students what we want them to know, by designing the course to include it!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34288,
"author": "Patric Hartmann",
"author_id": 20449,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20449",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are several aspects to this:</p>\n\n<p>First of all: I don't know what questions I will use in the exam before I actually have written it - which may very well not have happened before the actual day of the exam. I have a pool of over 300 questions, categorised by the expected length of the answer (no multiple choice over here in Switzerland - you must word your own answers). The duration of the exam (normally 4x60 mins) determines the number of questions from each category. But the actual questions are chosen randomly, I even wrote a programme to do this part for me, to make sure that it is fair (I have my \"favourites\", the programme doesn't).</p>\n\n<p>Secondly, I want the students to have a close look at large parts of the most important materials of the field. I don't expect them to know everything and all questions are worded in a way, that you can answer with the knowledge from one area or that of another; e.g. a question on the relevance of Hegel or Nietzsche can be answered from a historical point of view (what lead there and where did it lead afterwards?) or from a philosophical point of view (what did they say and why is that important?). So if you're weak in historical knowledge but strong in philosophical, you can put the stress on the latter and still get full scores - and vice versa, of course.</p>\n\n<p>This way the exams are fair: Everybody knows the area, they can learn what is most interesting to them and still everybody can get good grades, given they really put effort into the preparations.</p>\n\n<p>For oral exams the answer is pretty similar: The examiner and the co-examiner prepare a pool of questions at a meeting normally not much more before the exam than maybe a week. So also here: We simply don't know what questions will be in the exam, we just know which areas we want to cover. Also here we will adjust the questions to the strongest areas of the examinee. They have 5 to 10 minutes at the beginning to show us what they know: They choose a topic and get started. After that we ask questions with stress on that area. You quickly know which students have prepared well and which didn't.</p>\n\n<p>Basically: If we see the effort, the grade will be good.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34293,
"author": "Paul de Vrieze",
"author_id": 10183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10183",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to the other answers my personal motivation is based upon the fact that any exam is only a sample. To be valid as an assessment of how much the student knows about the subject this can only work if it is a truly random sample. If students know, or can predict due to a bias on topic selection, what topics are actually going to be assessed there is no random sample, and therefore the exam is no longer valid as random sample.</p>\n\n<p>As such I do not give hints on what is covered in the exam. I do make clear which topics will not be covered, or what the structure of the exam will be. I will even help with tips such as including answer plans (such as mindmaps), examples and diagrams.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34306,
"author": "Akka Demic",
"author_id": 23986,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23986",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think your premise is wrong. I've never had a professor not disclose the scope of knowledge and/or skill that I'm expected to know at the end of the course.</p>\n\n<p>I've always been told to expect the exam to cover a subset of that material, sometimes with more explicit relative weighting between areas.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34456,
"author": "Trevor Wilson",
"author_id": 8937,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8937",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The question raises a few points that I would like to address separately.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I've noticed a majority of professors that I have had will tell students something along the lines of, the exam covers Chapters 1, 2, 3, or the exam covers topics X, Y, Z. Sometimes this is ends up being so broad that it is unlikely that students will even see all the material that is fair game on the exam.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In your \"sometimes\" scenario, it sounds like you are saying that the exam covers a chapter or topic that has not been addressed <em>at all</em> in the lectures or in the homework. If so, this sounds like a serious problem that is different than the concern described in the question title.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It also likely ends up with some material being more prominent than other material which means playing the guessing game.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Indeed, not all material from the term can be represented on the exam (because the exam period is so much shorter than the term!) So some material will end up being more prominent than other material (which may even be absent.) I don't agree that this means \"playing the guessing game\". I think it would usually work better to study everything a little bit than to guess a random subset and study that to the exclusion of everything else.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Why are professors hesitant to tell students more precisely what they expect them to know?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There are two senses of \"expect [students] to know\" here. In one sense, we expect students to know everything we taught; otherwise we wouldn't have wasted our time and theirs teaching it. In a more limited sense, for the exam we expect you to know the answers to the exam questions. Obviously we're not going to tell those.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>However, given that undergraduate course material is fairly static, would not the professor be expecting the students to have the same knowledge as the previous students?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In the first sense, yes: for this term's exam, we expect the students to know everything we covered this term, and for last term's exam, we expected the students to know everything we covered last term. So if what we covered is the same, what we expect the students to know is also the same (but this isn't a very useful observation.) In the second sense, no: we ask different question on this term's exam than on last term's exam; otherwise if some students get hold of the last exam, it defeats the purpose of the exam.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Executive summary</strong>: We expect you to know everything we taught you—duh :-)</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34275",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21194/"
] |
34,276 |
<p>Let me explain my case first. I submitted an article to a Computer Science Conference, and it got one rejection, and two qualifications as a borderline paper. The reviewer that rejected the paper only said that it was not in the scope of the conference and nothing more. The other two reviewers made thoughtful comments and the final verdict was that I should submit it for a workshop on that conference.</p>
<p>I made the necessary changes, submitted to the workshop and it got accepted. Here it was one accept, one borderline and one reject. So I changed some parts that the reviewers suggested and submit it for the final printing.</p>
<p>The thing is that there will be an special edition of a journal that is planning to consider the papers submitted to this conference. So the authors should re-submit their papers for a new review and they state that the papers should present at least 30% of new material.</p>
<p>Here is the point, the deadline is approaching fast and I am making the add-ons based on what the reviewers point me before (when I first submit it for the conference and then what was the suggestions for the workshop), but I am running out of ideas; by the way, I am the sole author of this paper. What should I do in this case? Should I just submit it with the changes? I just don't know if that would be enough. Or am I just wasting my time and should I left it because it has already been published in the workshop?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34320,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My short answer would be, do what you think should be done and submit it. How anyone can put a fixed, in this case, 30% new material requirement on something appears ridiculous. To imagine a good paper would be rejected because it is not 30% new creates a sense of amusement in me. Either the manuscript is publishable or it is not. It can of course be deemed not appropriate for the issue but that is a different problem.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from the idiosyncrasies of your system you need to assess the value of your manuscript. Is the work publishable or not. Will the thematic issue be the only way forward for this manuscript or will it be publishable elsewhere? Actually regardless of the answer to the latter question, sending it to the thematic issue would not hurt. You could get it published there which probably would attract attention to it since it is published along with other papers with similar focus. If it is rejected you will likely have additional feedback that would help when publishing elsewhere. I will point out to anyone thinking otherwise that I am not suggesting sending in something subpar just to get reviewers to help here!</p>\n\n<p>In the end you need to see what you think <em>can</em> and <em>should</em> be done with your manuscript and make sure you do it. You cannot do much more, if you fall short of 30%.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 36771,
"author": "DCTLib",
"author_id": 7390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7390",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>From an ethical point of view, submitting your paper is perfectly fine if you make clear what the changes to the workshop version are that make the paper contain something new.</p>\n\n<p>As far as the question whether you should do it is concerned: If you cannot even convince yourself that you have enough new stuff in the paper to justify (another) journal publication, then it will be insanely hard for you to convince the reviewers that there is enough new stuff. So the submission is likely to waste your time (and possible the reviewer's time -- if the paper gets past the editor) as it is too likely to be rejected. If you are very lucky, some reviewer will suggest a possible point of extension that will make the paper strong enough for another submission.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34276",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144/"
] |
34,286 |
<p>My question relates to a certain type of opaque pseudo-technical prose that unfortunately is so pervasive in management literature. Authors with this kind of writing style like to make completely arbitrary distinctions between imaginary concepts which are devoid of any internal logical structure, inconsistent throughout the literature even within individual sources, and of highly questionable empirical value. Because of the low information density of such literature, I find it very difficult to retain and it is frustrating me to tears.</p>
<p>How can I approach this kind of literature in a way that allows for satisfactory information retention?</p>
<p>Again the most important characteristics:</p>
<ul>
<li>Extremely low information density</li>
<li>Complete lack of academic wit</li>
<li>Inconsistent use of unclear terminology throughout</li>
<li>Distinctions which are introduced only to be violated</li>
<li>High noun-to-verb ratio which obstructs flow</li>
</ul>
<p>To give you an example from a 'leading' textbook in this field: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The financial perspective specifies the financial performance objectives anticipated from pursuing the organisation's strategy and also the economic consequences of the outcomes expected from achieving the objectives specified from the other [...] perspectives</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While this is merely a badly-written, not necessarily difficult sentence, I find it very difficult to pinpoint the central statement or to paraphrase the sentence in such a way that a clear, concise, and informative sentence results. This is typical of the kind of literature I have described above.</p>
<p>To clarify: Ignoring this source -- which I would usually do with literature of this kind -- is not an option as this source is the official textbook for a class I am taking and which I would like to complete. So what I am looking for are little tricks which I can use to maximise retention of this thin material and to extract what's truly important, while efficiently ignoring the rest.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34298,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is a mistake to read any scientific literature like a novel, and especially when you are trying to sift to see if there is anything worth reading at all. Instead, you should take a triage approach, in which you first attempt to determine what, if any, meat an article actually contains.</p>\n\n<p>My own personal triage list goes:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Read the title and abstract. The abstract should tell a story roughly of the form: Context, Problem, Solution, Evidence. If it does not, the article is already in big trouble.</li>\n<li>Skim the structure of the paper and look at the figures, especially figures showing results. You should be able to get a sense of what the paper is about and what evidence it is bringing forth from this. In my opinion, every paper needs figures, preferably lots of figures: even the most abstract mathematical symbol manipulation can generally benefit from diagrams that help give intuitions and intellectual roadmaps for the reader.</li>\n<li>If there weren't any results in figures, go looking for results in the text. Theorems, numbers, any sort of evidence that they authors actually have produced evidence.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>At this point, if you haven't been able to find anything the authors appear to have actually done, it is appropriate to discard the paper as meaningless. If they <em>have</em> done something and you haven't yet been able to penetrate their prose, then if you need to understand what they've done you can start recursing with further passes and dissecting particular sections for material. <a href=\"http://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/readingsci.htm\" rel=\"nofollow\">A nice guide for doing so can be found here.</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34307,
"author": "Steve",
"author_id": 26589,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26589",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I run into the same thing and agree it is frustrating. To decipher the example above, do the following:</p>\n\n<p>Use different coloured highlighters. Separate the sentence at the \"and\"; this is a clear split between two sub-ideas.</p>\n\n<p>The subject is \"financial perspective\" so realize that this is what you are defining. The \"and\" indicates two parts to the definition.</p>\n\n<p>Notice the final subordinate clause for the first section: \"pursuing the organisation's strategy.\" They are asking what the quantitative result is of the strategy.</p>\n\n<p>The second half is stating that another set of objectives exist, and there will be outcomes from those objectives which are not obviously financial (employee morale, innovative ideas, etc.) They are asking what the expected financial return (or loss) would be from achieving those objectives.</p>\n\n<p>I have had to go through entire textbooks analysing ridiculous sentences like this. I feel for you. Breaking the sentences down by highlighting will help tremendously.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34334,
"author": "keshlam",
"author_id": 10225,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10225",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Last-resort, completely-silly trick: When I had to force myself to read through a particularly awful textbook, I decided to read it aloud to myself in a series of silly voices. That actually did make me pay attention to what I was reading, so I could get the emphasis and inflections right... and perhaps surprisingly, I <em>did</em> find and retain the new ideas I was reading for.</p>\n\n<p>Another approach can be to take it as a translation or editing task. Into another language, or into the same language minus the sequipedalian verbiage and jargon. Again, the goal here is to try to make a bit more of a game out of it so it isn't a completely uphill slog.</p>\n\n<p>Note that if you have any interest in publishing your own textbooks at some point, this can be an excellent education in what <em>not</em> to do... you might want to take notes on that too.</p>\n\n<p>Occasionally, the right answer is not to read the textbook at all and just work from the lecture notes. Or see if you can find a set of Condensed Cream Of Textbook notes somewhere -- Cliff Notes-ish things do exist for some books. </p>\n\n<p>... But in the end, the real answer is \"try things and see what works for you.\" </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34346,
"author": "Ornello",
"author_id": 23374,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23374",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Bad writing reflects bad thinking. The 'material' you quoted is basically garbage, and if I were you I would ignore it completely. The old tale of the emperor with no clothes comes to mind here....</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately in the academic world and the management world this sort of language is all too common.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 76076,
"author": "user296844",
"author_id": 18207,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18207",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Read the intros and conclusions, and skim over any big bullet-points. Most business-speak is bullshit through-and-through. Above all, don't take it seriously.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 132822,
"author": "Martin Kochanski",
"author_id": 56925,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/56925",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Read it quickly, badly and inattentively. Do not try to treat it as if it contained useful content. Definitely do not highlight it in six different colours! Make only the briefest of notes, if any.</p>\n\n<p>Your subconscious will filter out the meaning from the rubbish. That is what it is designed to do. Ask yourself about the book a few days later and if you answer \"yes, it had this or that idea in it\", then you can go back and have another look.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34286",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25093/"
] |
34,287 |
<p>This question is only concerning references to non-permanent (and even semi-permanent) information, for example, Web pages (but not limited to web pages). </p>
<p>I understand that some researches post the normal author, year, time, etc... and the URL of a referenced non-permanent Web Page.</p>
<p>I've heard that some readers or reviewers may object to reference any non-permanent source. To eliminate these complaints, am I allowed to simply include the original web page, saved as a PDF file, as as an attachment, with the research paper? (to, for example, IEEE)?</p>
<p>Can I include the PDF referenced web pages, via arXiv? (as part of the published research paper).</p>
<p>Can I reference the PDF referenced web pages, via PDF files I host on Google drive (or something similar)?</p>
<p>I'm aware that in certain situations, you should not reference a Web page. However, that is not my question (and in certain situations, it is OK to reference web pages; for example, if your study is showing how the web page changes over time :-) ).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34291,
"author": "Paul de Vrieze",
"author_id": 10183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10183",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, there are two common usage cases of referring to web pages. There is use like any other reference - in which case you refer to mainly the written content on a particular web page (hopefully, and in many cases, this is dated). The other case is when you refer to a website such as academia.stackexchange.com. </p>\n\n<p>Websites are inherently dynamic and their use is not as a reference (a footnote may be more appropriate here).</p>\n\n<p>The primary factor in deciding how to use the materials is by looking at their role within the paper. In your case you are looking at specific parts of dynamic web pages. These pages would in effect be illustrations, not unlike pictures of observations or experiments (say a set of photo's from microscope observations in the case of a biology paper). The papers/pdfs should be treated as such and either included in-line, as appendices, or made available as separate download (preferably through the publisher).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34295,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I think that there are three main cases to consider here:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>The web pages are aggregated <em>data</em>, e.g., in your example of a study that quantifies change over time. Collecting web pages as data is routinely done in scientific studies, such as complexity studies that track a <em>lot</em> of pages. In this case, the pages are not generally cited (and any data from them is likely to be at least partially abstracted and de-identified, to deal with a variety of legal issues).</p></li>\n<li><p>An individual web page is a subject of study, e.g., for literary or intellectual criticism. In this case, the standard references to the URL with time accessed is appropriate, along with block quoting of critical passages as part of your analysis. You should save full copies yourself, and share them upon request, but likely cannot publish them unless you obtain permission or unless the source has explicitly adopted a copyright that allows republication (e.g., <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Wikipedia</a>).</p></li>\n<li><p>The web page is being cited as a scientific work (some overlap with the last case). In this case also, the standard reference of URL with time accessed is appropriate. This is unusual, since most scientific works go into archival papers of some form, but does happen---I've certainly done so, when that is actually the right document to cite. This should still be a document with some expectation of longevity, e.g., a blog post on a scientist's established site, the archives of a mailing list or discussion group, a manual from a piece of software's distribution site.</p></li>\n</ol>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/14
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34287",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26573/"
] |
34,310 |
<p>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?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34325,
"author": "Rami M. Nassar",
"author_id": 26611,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26611",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Think about it like this, CV is an official paper to introduce yourself for others. \nAt least it has the basic information about you and your achievements. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 35142,
"author": "David M W Powers",
"author_id": 6390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6390",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>We want to know who you are, who is the best fit as supervisor/advisor, what is the best fit as a topic?</p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n\n<p>What else do we look for beyond the formal education/publication part?</p>\n\n<p>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!</p>\n\n<p>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).</p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 35217,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>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.</p>\n\n<p>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 <a href=\"http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/CV%2008_11_0.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a>.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34310",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26594/"
] |
34,314 |
<p>This is a question that fascinates a lot of people prior to attending graduate school. The question whether one should already have chosen a thesis topic so that all efforts will be put on creating that thesis and more time can be used to explore that given topic.</p>
<p>Or a more basic question, is it feasible or even possible for someone to know exactly what their thesis topic would be before going into graduate school?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34316,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There may be advisers, departments, universities, countries (academic cultures) or fields where you need to come up with your own idea. I would not think this is the norm, however. In many cases Phd positions are financed by project funding so that the project is largely defined. This does not mean that the entire PhD is staked out in advance but the direction is. When you start a PhD you need an adviser which would imply that the field and direction of research of that adviser will determine the direction of your research. In many academic systems you directly apply to a PhD project which is pre-defined. I could probably come up with more cases that point away from come up with your own thesis topic.</p>\n\n<p>That said, however, it is not inconceivable that someone could enter a system with an own idea but since coming up with great ideas commonly involves having a deep understanding of a field, and that in itself being one of the goals of a PhD, it would be a very rare case.</p>\n\n<p>So depending where you are or where you are heading in the academic world, you do not need to know the thesis topic in advance. You will be looking for topics that may interest you and once finding positions announced decide if they fit your interests. It is rare that you find exactly what you dream of so many go for positions that are \"close enough\". Another point here is that you would probably not select a topic only, you would also consider the academic milieu and if you think it would be good for you and your endeavour into research.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34318,
"author": "Benedict Eastaugh",
"author_id": 6067,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6067",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a very local issue, depending (as Peter Jansson says) on the country, university, field etc. For instance, at least in the arts and humanities, it is usual in the UK to apply to PhD programmes with a thesis proposal that explains pretty much what your thesis will be on. Of course, there's nothing to stop you changing what you work on once you're accepted into the programme, have discussed it with your supervisor etc.</p>\n\n<p>As to whether or not it's advisable, again that depends on local conditions. If your PhD has coursework then you have plenty of time to think about good thesis topics while you do that. On the other hand, for a purely research-based PhD like those in the UK, it's good to know the topic going in because you're supposed to get on with research straight away.</p>\n\n<p>I've seen mixed results with this approach, to be honest. I ended up sticking with exactly what I proposed, but I suspect that's less common: research often doesn't turn out how one expects, some topics seem like a good idea at the start but as one learns more one's focus shifts and what appeared to be an interesting and tractable question turns out to be tedious or impossible to make progress on. Many of my fellow PhD students changed topic partway through, although often this was more a change of emphasis than a complete change of topic—that's less common, and correspondingly more difficult since ars longa, vita brevis (in particular, PhD students in the UK are expected to complete within four years).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34337,
"author": "BrenBarn",
"author_id": 9041,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9041",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The answer is heavily dependent on the field, school, and department you will be applying to, and also the individual faculty you will be working with. As the other answers suggest, in some programs it is common for students to be immediately attached to an ongoing project, and the general boundaries of their possible dissertation projects will be set by that. In other programs that is almost unheard of, and each student must develop his or her own project.</p>\n\n<p>That said, my impression is that you should have at least some idea (or ideas, plural!) of questions you would like to answer, even if you don't know exactly what the thesis topic per se will be. One big reason to have such ideas is that you aren't likely to be accepted into grad programs if you have no plans for what to write about. The difference between programs seems to be that some of them expect you to apply knowing that you will work on a particular project and write about that, some expect you to have a topic in mind and stick to it, and some expect you to have ideas but won't care if you change your mind during the program.</p>\n\n<p>The individual variation in attitudes towards this question was, for me, beautifully summed up in a personal experience. When I was applying to PhD programs, I visited a certain school along with several other prospective students. As part of this process, each student had a short meeting with each faculty member. One professor, during our meeting, mentioned that she felt \"students who come in with a dissertation topic already in mind sometimes miss the point\" --- that is, that they should be open to exploring new things they hadn't thought of before. I then went across the hall to meet with another professor, whose first question was \"Do you have any ideas for your dissertation topic?\" And this was in the same department!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34338,
"author": "Eric Wilson",
"author_id": 10036,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10036",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This will very greatly by the discipline. My PhD was in mathematics, and I do not know of any of my colleagues that entered grad school with an idea of the problem that they would solve for their dissertation. In fact, most entered with no more than a notion of the area of mathematics that interested them (algebra, analysis, topology, applied math, logic) and at least half ended up in a different area from their notion on entry.</p>\n\n<p>In mathematics it seems not feasible to me to know the area upon entry. The frontiers of mathematics are just too far away ...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34356,
"author": "angarg12",
"author_id": 27993,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27993",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just to touch a point that nobody else did, there is also the issue of <em>timeliness</em>. </p>\n\n<p>Some fields of research advance pretty fast, and what was a great topic before starting graduate school, may be outdated or not relevant anymore when you are about to start your Ph.D.</p>\n\n<p>For these fields it is usually better to define the topic close to the moment when you will actually start your research. I did my Ph.D. in Computer Sciences, and I have seen people Ph.D. topics get outdated while they were developing it!.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34314",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20070/"
] |
34,327 |
<p>I often produce figures with a surface with quantitative data attached, plotted in a heatmap type style (see figure).</p>
<p>Previously, I've used the default matlab colormap for this but I recently noticed how terrible this is when printed black & white, the high and low colors appear the same.</p>
<p>Is there a better/recommended colormap I should use to improve clarity when printed.</p>
<p>Related: <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13616/are-there-good-reasons-to-avoid-using-color-in-research-papers">Are there good reasons to avoid using color in research papers?</a></p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/MAD8m.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34328,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think the default colour map is not that good for most cases, since having essentially four different colours can make it look different than what it is. <a href=\"https://abandonmatlab.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/lets-talk-colormaps/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">A very clear example of what I say</a> (and a bunch of rants why one should not use MATLAB).</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/6epMq.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>See the yellow stripe? It is essentially an artefact of jet, and not a property of the data (more on the post).</p>\n\n<p>For a better option, I would suggest <a href=\"http://colorbrewer2.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Color Brewer</a>, that can suggest you different colour schemes safe for black and white, colourblind friendly, etc.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34329,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The figure examples pretty much says it all, if you look at how the different hues are translated into a grey scale you will see that a two-tone scale going from a colour rendering dark in B/W to a colour rendering light in B/W would the solution. But, this is not much different from using a monochrome scale from light to dark since the boundary when colour one and colour two may only be clearly visible in colour and not in B/W.</p>\n\n<p>There is thus reasons for trying to solve graphics in B/W until it is clearly impossible to solve what you want to visualize in any other form than with multiple colours. Back in time, one would always argue that copying colour papers would result in poor B/W copies is not so relevant anymore since it is possible to use colour copiers, a combination of scanning and printing in colour or downloading a pdf to print in colour.</p>\n\n<p>So while colour is all around us there are still reasons to consider B/W as a primary choice. Colour blindness (as mentioned in another reply) is one such reason. Plotting software, be it rudimentary as Excel or more advanced as Matlab\nforces colour in cases where it is not necessary.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34336,
"author": "Ander Biguri",
"author_id": 16023,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16023",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p><strong>UPDATE:2</strong> </p>\n\n<p>Use perceptually uniform color-maps when possible. I suggest to use this nice toolbox in Matlab (<a href=\"http://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/45208-colorbrewer--attractive-and-distinctive-colormaps\" rel=\"noreferrer\">colorBrewer</a>) or to use the new perceptually uniform colormaps from python matplotlib (<a href=\"http://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/51986-perceptually-uniform-colormaps\" rel=\"noreferrer\">also available in Matlab</a>).</p>\n\n<p>Matplotlib's new colormaps look like this:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hnmz4.jpg\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hnmz4.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p><strong>UPDATE:</strong> </p>\n\n<p>If you use Matlab, and you have access to Matlab R2014b or newer, use the default colormap: parula. They designed it so it is a good colormap, not only for b&w printing but also for correct data visualization (i.e. it doesn't add features due to the choice of colour, as jet does)</p>\n\n<p>Explanation: <a href=\"http://blogs.mathworks.com/steve/2014/10/20/a-new-colormap-for-matlab-part-2-troubles-with-rainbows/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://blogs.mathworks.com/steve/2014/10/20/a-new-colormap-for-matlab-part-2-troubles-with-rainbows/</a></p>\n\n<p>Parula looks like this:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/DsRZ8.png\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/DsRZ8.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a>\n<a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/bVCeo.png\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/bVCeo.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p><strong>Original answer</strong></p>\n\n<p>Use the \"hot\" colormap. If you use Matlab this is one of the built colormaps. I believe than in numpy and other languages you also have this colormap included.</p>\n\n<p>You can see in the image below, how the commonly used \"jet\" , the \"hot\" and a \"gray\" colormap are seen in grayscale. It can be seen that the \"hot\" colormap is quite good both in colour and grayscale. </p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/GXEKJ.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34484,
"author": "nivag",
"author_id": 14115,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Thanks to those who pointed out that Parula is the new default Matlab colormap and solves this problem nicely. I will give a more general explanation of why this problem arises. A very good series of articles about colormaps can be found <a href=\"https://mycarta.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/the-rainbow-is-dead-long-live-the-rainbow-series-outline/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>.</p>\n\n<p>I'll consider the colormap as a series of colours in Lab space, for reasons which will become clear shortly. In Lab space L represents the colour's lightness and a and b give the colour. Therefore we can view converting to greyscale as taking only the L component (with a=b=0). Therefore to convert well into greyscale our colormap should be monotonic in L and ideally approximately linear.</p>\n\n<p>The 3D color inspector plugin for imageJ provides a handy tool to visualise the colormaps in Lab space. Looking at the Jet colormap (the old Matlab default) in this way the problem becomes clear. Jet is not monotonic in lightness and approaches maximum lightness somewhere in the green/yellow range. Therefore, when converted to greyscale the two ends of the map appear dark while the centre is light coloured.</p>\n\n<p>Compare this to the parula colormap, which is monotonic in lightness. If you do further analysis you can also show that it is reasonably linear in lightness. The conversion to greyscale will therefore be pretty good.</p>\n\n<p>There are many other colormaps which also have this property of monotonic lightness, in particular most monotone maps. However, it is also advantageous to maximise the distance between colours in Lab space to increase clarity when viewing in colour. Monochrome maps are relatively weak in this respect as they have a much more limited range of ab values than rainbow type maps.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/ehH1Z.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"> </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 60913,
"author": "Neil G",
"author_id": 1245,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1245",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For a free (and maybe nicer?) alternative to Parula use Python matplotlib's <strong>Viridis</strong>. See this fascinating <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU\" rel=\"noreferrer\">talk</a> for its development:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/PwKtx.png\" alt=\"Virid\"></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 62105,
"author": "hugke729",
"author_id": 47973,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/47973",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The chosen answer mentions the 'hot' colormap, but I tend to find this is often too bright. I find that the 'cold' colormap (top) often works better.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/E2n5H.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/E2n5H.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Also no one has mentioned monochrome colormaps (bottom), which are just like grayscale but without the gray. These give you the ability to pick any hue you like, which can be helpful for making the colormap fit in with other elements of a presentation/poster/report etc. And you're guaranteed they'll remain meaningful in black and white.</p>\n\n<p>I give more detail <a href=\"https://brushingupscience.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/stop-using-rainbow-colourmaps/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">in this post</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 109583,
"author": "jberrio",
"author_id": 92625,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/92625",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I could write an answer to your question but why rewriting when the exact problem you describe and its solution have been beautifully explained in this webpage</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/intro-to-viridis.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/intro-to-viridis.html</a></p>\n\n<p>In there you will find the following colour scales:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Viridis </li>\n<li>Magma </li>\n<li>Plasma </li>\n<li>Inferno </li>\n<li>Cividis</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34327",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115/"
] |
34,330 |
<p>I must create a new module (first time to do from scratch). In the past, I've had either existing course descriptions, textbooks, etc. as a base on which to structure a module which is new for me. This time, I have nothing (blank canvas).</p>
<p>My thought is to use an open access textbook and some initial looking makes me believe I can find something either usable as-is or that will allow me to mix-and-match the chapters into something suitable.</p>
<p>I'm concerned about what, if any, dangers might not be obvious to me at this stage but might cause significant problems for the students, myself, or the department later (say, after the semester begins).</p>
<p>After reading <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/28670/2692">this question</a>, I still find myself wondering.</p>
<p>If anyone has designed a course using an open access textbook in the past, what are the key considerations which should be considered for first-timers?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34333,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's important to check the license used by the author to make sure that it's compatible with your use of the open access textbook. </p>\n\n<p>Issues to check include:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Does the license allows you to redistribute the book to your students (e.g. by putting it on your course web site) or whether students have to get it from the author's web site. I would not be willing to use any material that I couldn't distribute to my students, because the author might pull it from the web at any time. </p></li>\n<li><p>Does the license allow you to modify the work (e.g. fix typos or more broadly edit the work)? How are you required to describe any modifications? </p></li>\n<li><p>If there are any restrictions on \"commercial use\", does your course constitute commercial use? Some people have argued that for-profit higher educational institutions can't use Creative Commons NC (CC-NC) licensed materials in courses. </p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Many open access educational resources are licensed under the Creative Commons license with varying options (CC-BY, CC-NC, CC-ND, etc.) The Creative Commons web site has clear explanations of how those licenses work. Many other resources have been put up on the web with no specified license. If there's no license specified you should contact the author and ask for permission to use the material. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34612,
"author": "Aubrey",
"author_id": 26682,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26682",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think Brian's answer is perfect, but let me be a bit more clear: the answer is <em>none</em>. \nAs others have said better, one crucial quality for material course is <em>quality</em>: if you had an excellent \"closed\" textbook and a mediocre open access one, you should choose the better one, for the sake of your students. \nBut in this case I don't think you can actually choose, and this is for the better: you can start off with an open access textbook, and you probably can make it better. \n\"Openness\" of things boils down to their license. They are often (as said) <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses\" rel=\"nofollow\">Creative Commons</a>:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>CC-BY-SA</strong> allows you to do whatever you want with the original material, and create your own derivative works <em>without even asking</em>, provided that you release your material with the same license. For example, Wikipedia articles have this license: everyone builds on the previous version of the page, the license persists, the article (often) gets better. </li>\n<li><strong>CC-BY-NC</strong> allows you to do everything <em>without even asking</em>, provided that you do not have a commercial purpose. Brian's response hints that this is maybe tricky, but I'll come to that.</li>\n<li><strong>CC-BY-ND</strong> is rare, but <strong>CC-BY-NC-ND</strong> is common: it is the strictest version of Creative Commons, and in practice you can use and share the material, but not have commercial purpose and create derivative work <em>without asking</em>. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This is important: you can't do it <em>without asking</em>. </p>\n\n<p>Of course, you can directly ask the author, and I doubt very much you can't negotiate a way to use the material as you want. It is possible you'd have to pay, but this is the norm with closed textbooks. \nCreative Commons are licensed used to share our creative works: the <em>open access</em>-<em>open knowledge</em> movement advocates for a more flexible copyright system in which people are allowed to share and build things together. </p>\n\n<p>The only thing you should pay attention, thus, are the different licenses of the different materials involved: if you want to create a new textbook, for example, you should check them and ask/negotiate permission if needed. \nCopyright-wise, things can't get <em>worse</em> than with closed-access content.</p>\n\n<p>Hope this clears a little. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34330",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692/"
] |
34,335 |
<p>Bear with me while I put some biographical information here.</p>
<p>I'm a bachelor of engineering graduate from India with approximately a decade of work experience in design, engineering and project management. I've got a real fascination for the following subjects:</p>
<ol>
<li>Optimization methods</li>
<li>Chaotic and dynamical systems</li>
<li>Data analysis and statistics (a field in which I work - as a quality management professional)</li>
</ol>
<p>I have presented a couple of papers in international conferences in the first subject - based on work I did by teaching myself optimization methods. Learnt the ropes on researching papers/work, contacting researchers, running my own studies, writing concise papers, over many attempts in unpublished papers. I have only read books and papers on the remaining two subjects (#2 and #3) for over seven years but haven't really contributed anything significant or original. </p>
<p>Since I never was in the right financial state to pursue a masters or a PhD, I never earned one. I turned down an MS admit at Duke in 2010 for financial reasons too (didn't manage to secure funding). I considered and visited Indian universities including the IITs but find the entry barrier high for any univs worth going to, because I have a 7.0/10.0 GPA on my Bachelor's degree. Moreover, I hate going back and asking for recommendations from professors that I share no common interest with or who had no bearing or influence on my technical interests whatsoever. My mentors have all been in the industry, and all MS/PhD applications seem to want only academic recommendations, which I thought was stupid.</p>
<p>Having read a number of reports and accounts from researchers on the troubles PhD scholars face and the standard of life, I'm inclined to think that I wouldn't be happy giving up my job and my lifestyle (and compromising my wife's lifestyle) for a decade of research which may or may not lead to a PhD. I love the subjects but I'm looking for a way to learn and discover things in them without subjecting myself to the financial commitment that comes with a huge loan.</p>
<p>Is a life of independent research (something that is exciting for me personally) a viable way to move forward, or should I consider getting a formal research postgraduate degree? I'm eager to hear thoughts, advice, comments. Thanks for taking time out to read this.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34400,
"author": "Phil",
"author_id": 26688,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26688",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Honestly, independently researching on your own time could be a lot tougher than working in a research group.</p>\n\n<p>Here's a tip: if you are <strong>serious</strong> about researching, go to graduate school. A lot of people do independent readings as a hobby as well. Find which category you fit into.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34414,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with phil above.</p>\n\n<p>Research is fascinating but also very hard if done on one's own. There're so many results/problems out there. Without the guidance of a field expert you might just be spending time repeating someone else's research without knowing it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34418,
"author": "silvado",
"author_id": 3890,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3890",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It seems you have two options to weigh against each other:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Do research independently, viewing it more as a hobby than as your profession, or</li>\n<li>become a professional researcher, which would require getting the appropriate formal education.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>If you want to make research the most important aspect of your life, then option 2 would be the way to go. However, from your current biography, it seems that this may require more effort and changes to your life than you may be willing to invest. Getting a PhD is a definite requirement along this path.</p>\n\n<p>If you go for option 1, it will still be possible to make research an important aspect of your life. It will be more difficult though to maintain sufficient investment of time in view of work and family commitments to keep things running.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I think that being a hobby researcher can be viable and satisfying in research fields where you don't need expensive equipment. While the examples I know mostly do something like locally focussed historical research or botanical/zoological research in their environment, it seems that mathematical or theoretical engineering topics will also be feasible for this. If you want to go that way, the internet certainly provides much more advice on being a hobby researcher than I can hope to give here. A link to start with may be <a href=\"https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/2966/what-would-you-advise-someone-who-wants-to-do-research-as-a-hobby\">this question on cstheory.stackexchange.com</a>.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/15
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34335",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26617/"
] |
34,349 |
<p>I am a Masters graduate student studying finance at a large public university located in a major city. Recently, I accepted a job as a teaching assistant. A significant number of students are from non-western cultures, with East Asia being especially heavily represented(China, S.Korea, etc). In leading discussion,I have found communication to be a problem and I strongly sense it has cultural roots. </p>
<p>Encouraging participation through questions does not seem to help and the students seem to be painfully shy. I attempt discussion that builds upon the text, but the students seem to have trouble expressing themselves and finding their voice. I use mainly open ended questions with some close ended questions for clarification. At the very first session, I explained my expectations:</p>
<ol>
<li>Respect is crucial. While attacks on ideas are encouraged, personal attacks are inappropriate.</li>
<li>Creativity of thought is encouraged</li>
<li>That I am open to feedback about the students opinions.</li>
<li>Acknowledge wish to speak by raising hand</li>
</ol>
<p>I feel its important for students to have their own ideas and to actively engage in these smaller discussion sections as it applies the concepts taught in lecture. In addition, I want feedback regarding what I can do better and students' opinions are valuable.</p>
<p>Some relevant background</p>
<ol>
<li>English proficiency: Understandable but mediocre with accent</li>
<li>Most present in the USA less than 1 year</li>
<li>No family present in the US.</li>
</ol>
<p>Coming from a western culture (USA), aside from leveraging the professor, what else can I do to improve the efficacy of these discussion groups?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34355,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>I have found communication to be a problem and I strongly sense it has cultural roots.</em> </p>\n\n<p>I think this is the first point to start with: Try to find out if your sense is right here and try to identify what kind of cultural difference may be the cause. In fact I am not sure if cultural differences are really the only (or most important) problem, but you may well be correct. However, there are very different cultures also in east Asia and also in the same country.</p>\n\n<p>One thing that I have heard of is that in some Asian cultures it is impolite to ask questions to a professor (because it somehow shows that she did not explain things well). It may well be considered impolite to try answer questions for which the answer has not been well prepared in advance. (If this would be the case, you could, in principle, think about preparing questions in advance and hand them out a week early.)</p>\n\n<p>If discussing of unprepared ideas is really important for the class, I am not sure what you could do. You may consider collecting different styles for the class such as</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>participants present prepared thoughts on homework questions in written form as a hand-out or orally (or both),</li>\n<li>prepare handouts for some topics and distribute them in class, then let the participants work on them alone (or in groups), let them prepare statements and collect the statements,</li>\n<li>have open discussion (prepared or non-prepared).</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In any case, communicate the different modes clearly to the students, i.e. explain what they have to do, what you expect them to deliver and what (besides the actual content) they should learn in class. In this way you may get the message across, that \"discussing\" (and comparable skills) is really something that you expect the students to learn. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34367,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You don't really explain how you try to get these discussions started. Do you ask open-ended questions (such as, \"Does anyone have any questions?\") or pointed questions (such as, \"Who can explain why X did not work in this case?\"). </p>\n\n<p>You also don't explain your protocol for letting students answer questions. Do they just chime in? Raise their hands first? Do you call on them individually?</p>\n\n<p>Also, what mechanisms do you use to prevent a few extroverted and knowledgeable students from dominating the conversation?</p>\n\n<p>Lastly, how do you encourage classwide participation? What expectations have you set?</p>\n\n<p>The problems you discuss (students who are introverted, intimidated, embarrassed, or hesitant to talk), are not unique to any one culture, although certain cultural backgrounds or language barriers can exacerbate those problems.</p>\n\n<p>Here are a few tricks that might help:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Call on certain students individually. Try to get all your more taciturn students speaking more often, and your more vocal students giving others a chance to talk. (If a few students have already answered a couple questions, tell them that they are \"done for awhile,\" and they need to give their classmates a chance to answer some questions now.)</li>\n<li>Let the students work in pairs for five minutes or so, and then call on those teams to share their thoughts. This may help students feel more confident as they realize they are not the only ones in the room who may be a little unsure about something. Also, even if a quieter student says very little in class, under this arrangement, they are still articulating their thoughts to a peer. (In your specific case, you might considered pairing up an international student with a native English speaker.)</li>\n<li>Use polling tools (a.k.a. \"clickers\"), if they are available at your institute. These will get everyone into a mindset of participating. You can also use your poll results to steer the conversation in a certain direction (for example, \"Someone who answered (b) – please tell us why you thought that was the best answer.\") </li>\n</ul>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34349",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23518/"
] |
34,350 |
<p>For final exam in my university chemistry class, a note sheet, 8 by 11, was allowed. You could put anything on the sheet, however it was to remain 1-sided. Of all things, I forgot about the last rule, and created a 2 sided note sheet for the exam. Well, now that the grades are out, my professor emailed me saying that a third of my points were deducted because of my note card. He was really being generous, because the rules say that I should actually get a score of 0.</p>
<p>Well, I still passed the class, but will this incident be put on my academic profile for applying to the engineering department? I mean, I'm still mad at myself for this, but do I have to and how would I explain it to the school if it's necessary?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34353,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Often a professor is no more eager than you to invoke formal disciplinary mechanisms, as they are often complex and time-consuming. From what you describe, it sounds like you've been given your punishment and find it fair. If the professor was interested in taking it further, you would likely (but not necessarily) have been informed in the same email.</p>\n\n<p>To find out, you can simply email the professor back. Say pretty much what you said here: you made a mistake, you find the punishment fair and even generous, and you just want to check whether the matter is now settled, or if you need to anticipate further disciplinary action.</p>\n\n<p>If the professor feels that the matter is settled, and that the grade reduction is all the consequence that you need to face, then you can safely put it behind you; if not, it may become part of your record and may require explanation, depending on how things proceed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34365,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At the U.S. schools I have been at, a minor punishment for academic integrity such as this does not appear on your transcript and you are not obligated to mention it when you apply to other schools (unless they ask, which I don't expect that they will.) The same holds for most other \"internal\" disciplinary actions that the school takes. </p>\n\n<p>This is particularly the case if the professor has not taken \"formal\" action. At many schools, there are two options for the professor. For minor penalties, the instructor can handle it personally with the student, as long as they can both come to an agreement. In this case, there is no permanent record of the penalty except with the professor. </p>\n\n<p>For more serious penalties, or if the student and faculty don't agree, the instructor has to initiate a formal process. If the formal process results in a penalty, then additionally a disciplinary letter is put in your file (probably in the dean's office for your college). If there is another incident, the presence of the first letter will make the penalty worse. At my school, students are expelled after the third formal incident.</p>\n\n<p>You can check with the professor, as jakebeal says, to find out whether a letter has been filed. As he says, you could tell the professor that you understand the penalty and accept it, and will not repeat it, but for your information you'd like to know if formal paperwork was filed. You could also ask this in person during office hours. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34377,
"author": "David Hill",
"author_id": 11258,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11258",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This answer follows on your comment to jakebeal's excellent answer (which you might consider accepting). You have already emailed your professor and, as he has not replied, I'd take that as \"nothing further needs to be discussed\". Conclusion: no, do not contact him again about this matter.</p>\n\n<p>Also, in your comment below the question, it appears that you professor already has a good opinion of you (you were above average on previous exams, etc) and therefore lightened the punishment. This is already a pretty strong indication that he does not intend to take things further.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 100117,
"author": "einpoklum",
"author_id": 7319,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Consider asking the Professor to retake the exam with next semester/next year's class, this time without a 2-sided note sheet. Explain that you made an honest mistake and were not trying to hide it etc. That way you're not asking for a \"free pass\" or anything.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34350",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26632/"
] |
34,354 |
<p>I am applying now to PhD programs in various management related fields (quantitative marketing and finance) and took both the GMAT and GRE back in October.</p>
<p>My score, specifically in the quantitative section, wildly varied between the GRE and GMAT. Basically, this was the breakdown of my scores:</p>
<p><strong>GRE:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Verbal</strong>
159 (81%)</p>
<p><strong>Quant</strong>
160 (78%)</p>
<p><strong>Analytical</strong>
4.5 (80%)</p>
<p>And on the other side...</p>
<p><strong>GMAT:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Verbal</strong>
40 (91%)</p>
<p><strong>Quant</strong>
41 (49%)</p>
<p><strong>Total</strong>
660 (80%)</p>
<p><strong>Analytical</strong>
5.5 (81%)</p>
<p><strong>Integrated Reasoning</strong>
8 (92%) [Perfect Score]</p>
<p>None of the schools I'm applying to exclusively accept the GMAT, but many do state that they prefer it. I'm wondering if I should just simply hide my GMAT or if my GRE in combination with my GMAT make the quantitative section there look like a random fluke. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38358,
"author": "Tripartio",
"author_id": 20418,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20418",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Since the fields you mentioned (quantitative marketing and finance) are both heavily based on mathematics, I would think that the quantitative score is by far the most important. If you can possibly avoid it, you don't want to be in a position of having to explain away a weakness, especially where the weakness is at a very important criterion.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, I recommend that you submit only the GRE score and make no mention of the GMAT. Although your verbal score in GMAT was quite good, it isn't quite as important for those fields you are applying for, and the mediocre quantitative results would probably outweigh anything positive you might otherwise have.</p>\n\n<p>That said, you could simply call the schools you want to apply to and ask them directly; since each school might have different preferences for GMAT and GRE and their respective scores, one blanket answer might not be suitable for all the schools you are applying to.</p>\n\n<p>Specifically, you could try to talk to the department chair or to the graduate program director (just call the department office and ask to be transferred to the right person). You don't have to identify yourself; just say that you want to anonymously ask a question related to admissions.</p>\n\n<p>I know that that last suggestion might sound wild, but believe it or not, it often works surprisingly well--I recently used that kind of strategy to receive anonymous answers from a research ethics office concerning a grey research ethics question I was faced with, and I quickly got the exact clarity that I needed for my situation. Never underestimate the power of picking up the phone and calling.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 39007,
"author": "Eliza",
"author_id": 29501,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/29501",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can't speak for PHD programs, but I know that business school really only care about your highest score, so it is not a big deal if you send multiple scores, they will only look at the highest. This might be different for PHD programs and with scores from multiple tests, so you should check like someone else mentioned. But since your verbal score on the GMAT is higher I wouldn't immediately give up on sending that score. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34354",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26636/"
] |
34,360 |
<p>Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science?</p>
<p>That is, while some countries may have a higher proportion of women in science, while others have a lower proportion of women in science, if you compared the gender ratio in physics compared to the gender ratio of biology in a country, would you always see the same or similar results? Or could you see a higher proportion of women in physics compared to biology in one country, but see a higher proportion of women in biology compared to physics in another country?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34376,
"author": "Noah Snyder",
"author_id": 25,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Within Europe alone there are huge variations in the number of female mathematicians as documented with lots of graphs and maps <a href=\"http://womenandmath.wordpress.com/past-activities/statistics-on-women-in-mathematics/\">here</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 94081,
"author": "John Slegers",
"author_id": 37939,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/37939",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is a misconception that women are underrepresented in science or <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_technology,_engineering,_and_mathematics\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">STEM fields</a> fields in general. The reality is that women have entered some STEM fields to the point where they are no longer underrepresented (e.g., biology) while largely forsaking other STEM fields (e.g., computer science).</p>\n\n<p>Today, more women than ever major in so-called STEM fields. <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/where-the-women-are-biology.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">More than 58% of all bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in biology are being awarded to women</a>.Within certain University biology departments, women also make up nearly half of the faculty. And within the department of behavioral and social sciences, <a href=\"http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016/03/16/women-in-science-tend-to-gravitate-toward-biology-cognitive-sciences/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">70% of faculty members are women</a> :</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/WiJZq.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/WiJZq.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p>However, <a href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/truth-women-stem-careers\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">women comprise only 18% of students receiving bachelor's degrees in computer science and engineering</a>, and those figures have actually dropped over the past couple of years :</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/A7kZD.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/A7kZD.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p>And in spite of <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">having an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job</a> in any STEM field, women remain underrepresented as faculty members for those fields as well. Policies to attract more girls and women into subjects such as computer science, physics and engineering <a href=\"http://www.mrctv.org/blog/study-girls-feel-more-negative-emotions-about-math-boys\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">have largely failed</a>.</p>\n\n<p>These trends in gender representation are consistent internationally. For example, if we look at Britain, we see that <a href=\"https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/infographic-gender-breakdown-at-course-level\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">women are eg. less than 20% of all engineering and computer science undergraduates, but more than 60% of all biology undergraduates and even more than 75% of all veterinarian undergraduates</a> :</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGtZL.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGtZL.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p>If we look at Europe as a whole, we see that 40% of the 17 million scientists and engineers in the EU are women. However, men are particularly overrepresented in manufacturing (83% of scientists and engineers in manufacturing were male), <a href=\"https://epws.org/eurostat-women-in-science-and-technology/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">while the services sector was much more balanced</a> (55% male and 45% female). </p>\n\n<p>Further, we see that <a href=\"http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Tertiary_education_statistics\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">women are in the majority in all of the EU Member States among students studying for Master’s degrees</a>. Yet, we also see that there are considerably more female than male students studying social sciences, journalism, information, business, administration or law, with women accounting for 57.6 % of all students within this field of education :</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/kZXro.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/kZXro.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Even if we look beyond Europe and North-America, <a href=\"https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/women-are-still-under-represented-in-science-maths-and-engineering-heres-what-we-can-do\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">we see a very similar gender distribution across different fields</a> :</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/MU0cW.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/MU0cW.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p>My girlfriend and I, both living in Belgium, are a perfect reflection this pattern as well : I work as a programmer in corporate R&D and have only male colleagues, while my girlfriend teaches bio-chemistry faculty at a local university and has mostly female colleagues.</p>\n\n<p>Obviously, <a href=\"http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">there still remain differences in the gender gap on a per county basis</a>. Peculiar about these differences, however, is that women are actually <a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">less likely to enter a STEM field</a> in countries with greater gender equality :</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FnwO.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FnwO.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p>One possible explanation for the aforementioned gender distribution is <a href=\"https://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2016-11-23/study-girls-less-interested-in-stem-fields-perceived-as-masculine\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the high \"geek factor\"</a> in fields like computer science, physics and engineering. Another would be <a href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/09/24/study-suggests-link-between-ethnicity-gender-stereotypes-and-interest-stem\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">gender stereotyping</a> transmitted through our interaction with others. However, there also biological differences to consider, like the <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-hardwired-difference-between-male-and-female-brains-could-explain-why-men-are-better-at-map-8978248.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">difference between men's and women's brains</a>. </p>\n\n<p>Men may simply be more driven by a biological urge to build things, whereas women may simply be <a href=\"http://www.qmed.com/mpmn/medtechpulse/why-women-are-embracing-biomedical-engineering\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">more driven by a biological urge to help people</a>. It would be foolish to underestimate the impact of sex hormones on our individual preferences when even among monkeys <a href=\"https://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">males prefer to play with trucks and females with dolls</a>!</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34360",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3945/"
] |
34,363 |
<p>Many journals in my field accept both Word and LaTeX formats for article submission. From the publisher's point of view, what are the advantages of using the LaTeX format for submission?</p>
<p>Do publishers eventually use LaTeX to typeset the final version of the article? In that case, I can imagine that having the references ready in BibTeX and equations in TeX (among other things) can save quite some time in the typesetting process, and be less error prone. Are there any other advantages?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34364,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If a publisher accepts LaTeX manuscripts they likely use LaTeX also for the final type-setting. I am sure there are exceptions but could not point you to one.</p>\n\n<p>The benefits, apart from obvious LaTeX benefits such as equations and built in standards for references, numbering of equations, figures and tables etc., lie in the way a manuscript can easily be taken from a manuscript form to a finished product.</p>\n\n<p>Many journals have class files that allow you to move from manuscript to essentially \"proof\" mode by changing a switch in the document and \"re-compiling\" it. This also means that the journal can go to typesetting without moving file contents to a new format or another program (not many journals are type-set in Word).</p>\n\n<p>In the case of journals that do not have class files for use by the author, moving a manuscript from a generic LaTeX format into a specified journal format is not necessarily difficult. There are probably many different approaches to this but from a LaTeX point of view all definitions of a document are there in the plain LaTeX file and it would be easy to apply a class that re-defines the plain format to something that will yield a finished layout.</p>\n\n<p>With LaTeX focus is on writing the text, not formatting the manuscript. As Editor-in-Chief for a journal that uses both Word and LaTeX, I have spent many hours weeping over hopeless Word formatting (including field codes that do not work) that is both unnecessary and complicating moving the document to the type-setter. LaTeX is a text file and so does not contain anything that cannot be easily spotted and changed if need be. </p>\n\n<p>So, to be fair, one can mess up with LaTeX as well, and I want to point at an overarching rule which is to always strictly adhere to any instructions for authors provided by the journal and not to send in material that is of a format that differs from what is asked for.</p>\n\n<p>So the benefits of LaTeX is that the move from manuscript form to finished layout is simplified and reduces the amount of manual work for the type-setter. But, in all type-setting there is always need for manual control so LaTeX is not 100% automatic, just closer to it.</p>\n\n<p>About BibTeX referencing: Most journals and I would guess type-setters want the manuscript in as few parts as possible. therefore many provide a <code>.bst</code> for the reference style but ask that you run BibTeX to produce the <code>.bbl</code> file (containing all references properly formatted with <code>\\bibitem</code> formatting) and then paste the content into the document to provide a complete and correctly formatted reference list inside the document file itself.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34372,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>The biggest benefit: Their typesetter will love you.</strong></p>\n\n<p>Now seriously: There are three possible cases:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>They use LaTeX for everything.</strong> Then posting a LaTeX article means: less work for them (I mean, <em>much much much less work for them</em>), less errors introduced, clearer proofs, typesetter more happy etc.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>They use what you use.</strong> Then it depends on how well the LaTeX template is done. I've seen journals (mostly engineering and chemistry) that have a LaTeX template just \"because people were bugging us to have one\". Then choose what you prefer and what you think is easier. Or, write to them and ask what they prefer.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>They send everything to somewhere, and all articles are completely re-done there at low costs and high quality.</strong> Yes, this seems to be the case for some journals<sup>[<em>citation needed</em>]</sup> and as before, it doesn't matter what you do use.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>So, FWIW, LaTeX is never a mistake, nor is asking what they prefer.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>As for BibTeX, it's a bit more complicated than what Peter presents. The rule is: Follow the guidelines (you have read them, right?). If BibTeX is not mentioned in the guidelines, suppose it's not supported, choose your favourite style, and either include the <code>.bbl</code> file or simply copy the contents of the <code>.bbl</code> file in place of the instruction <code>\\bibliography{mybibfile}</code>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34389,
"author": "user2379888",
"author_id": 9365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9365",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Latex is always good, but I've gotten skeptical of going out of my way to format my articles of the journals and provide source files. I've found that some journals will rekey the whole manuscript, no matter what you send them. I've picked up on that by discovering typos that were not in the originally submitted files. They also often have their own particular bibliography formatting style.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37819,
"author": "Gimelist",
"author_id": 22213,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22213",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I just had an article accepted to a earth science Springer journal. I asked the typesetter whether they prefer LaTeX or Word. His reply was:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It is better for us to submit the manuscripts as latex or word\n document to avoid font missing problem.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'm not sure what you can make of it.</p>\n\n<p>Also, it seems that the proofs were reformatted into something which is not LaTeX or LaTeX-based at all. This is weird, given that I submitted the article using Springer's LaTeX template. This could be because in this field, people hardly use LaTeX.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37826,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>From the publisher's point of view, what are the advantages of using the LaTeX format for submission?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Because if they don't, their competitors will, and authors who prefer to write their papers in LaTeX will choose to submit elsewhere. See the comments <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14565/\">here</a>.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34363",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22213/"
] |
34,370 |
<p>I am preparing to give a job talk for
an on-campus interview for a tenure-track assistant professor position.
The university is located in city X.
I really want a job in city X
because I have many relatives living in city X,
and my parents also live a few hours by plane from city X,
and I feel that city X is a good place for my wife and I to raise our kids.</p>
<p>I would like to spend one slide and a minute near the end of my job talk
in order to explain why I really want to live in city X.
Would this strengthen my case,
or would this be seen by the faculty as "too much information?"</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34373,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Just to put what's already in the comments into an answer:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Yes</strong>, you should convey the information you've told us to the hiring faculty. If you've gotten a campus interview for a faculty position, they are already extremely interested and satisfied with your on-paper qualifications. Final decisions are often strongly motivated by who they think will take the offer and who they think will stick around, happily and productively, in the job. You list several things that would earn you lots of points on that score, and since the hiring faculty cannot and should not ask too many questions about your personal life, the way to make that information known is to tell them so explicitly. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>However,</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>No</strong>, you should not put that information in as a slide. Your talk should be about your professional work. Throwing in \"I'd like it here! Hire me!!\" while people are listening to your work is jarring and shows (I think) just a soupçon of poor judgment. I assume that your on-campus interview is structured so that anyone who is involved in hiring you has multiple opportunities to talk to you outside of the context of your job talk. If so, then I wouldn't even bring it up at all in your talk, except possibly as an ice-breaker at the beginning or a parting shot at the very end.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34385,
"author": "iayork",
"author_id": 26671,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26671",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would not put it in a slide, but I would feel free to briefly mention it at the beginning or end of your talk. Immediately after you're introduced is a perfect time to say something like \"Thank you [name of introducer], I'm looking forward to my day [or I've had a wonderful day] and I'm really excited to be in [city], because this is my favorite place in the world and I have so many family and friends here.\" You make your point quickly and efficiently without being effusive, it's a nice compliment to the people who are listening, and I think most people would find it a charming and elegant way of segueing into your talk.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34397,
"author": "jobucks",
"author_id": 4313,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4313",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your talk is likely to be to a wider audience than the selection committee (who may not come in some universities) and might be even wider than your immediate disciplinary group.</p>\n\n<p>You want to convey appreciation for the opportunity to address them. At the beginning, thank them for the opportunity and put up a slide or two on the main strengths of the university and town. This can feel like an exercise in bald-faced flattery but it is the equivalent of \"good morning, how are you\". You are simply acknowledging the audience and you will feel the appreciation mirrored back to you quite palpably. </p>\n\n<p>Don't include personal reasons here unless they are likely to be shared by your audience. Once I a slide - about the third in my opening pack before I started speaking - and simply said \"flat\". I was coming from a city that was very hilly. The point is that these points must be shared.</p>\n\n<p>And then to your talk --- and very good luck. Just remember that everyone likes to be liked. Let your liking shine through!</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34370",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8802/"
] |
34,374 |
<p>I'm working on my first publication on work I did as an undergrad. My adviser from undergrad will be helping me edit and go through multiple drafts, but because I'm now at a different university for grad school I haven't spoken to him about this first draft.</p>
<p>I've looked at the publisher's website, but they were vague and provided only general comments about how to format the manuscript. I don't want to send my draft to my old adviser and have him think I'm an idiot because my formatting is different from the norm. (Perhaps relevant: this publication has to do with marine biology and physiology.)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What font is appropriate? Times New Roman 12?</p></li>
<li><p>Double spaced?</p></li>
<li><p>Do figures go at the end? Should I space my figures the way I want them spaced in the publication?</p></li>
<li><p>Do I include line numbers?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Side question: What is an appropriate length (in number of words/pages/whatever) for this type of publication? I know it depends on the journal, but it's hard to translate pages in a journal to typewritten pages. I'm submitting to a journal with an average impact factor.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34375,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At this stage, <em>content is what you should focus on</em>. In most biology journals, formatting is done by the publisher. Thus formatting at this stage <em>only serves the purpose of making your draft easy to read and comment on</em>, so to answer your questions:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What font is appropriate? Times New Roman 12?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If your adviser usually reads on a screen, consider using a sans serif typeface (Calibri, Arial, etc.), if read on paper TNR is fine.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Double spaced?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Only useful for people who print it out and need space to scribble. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Do figures go at the end? Should I space my figures the way I want them spaced in the publication?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>For the convenience of your adviser, you should include them where you think they are relevant. It's usually editorial management software that place them at the end (which makes reading draft cumbersome). Consider using a smaller font size for captions to help differentiate them from the body.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Do I include line numbers?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Can be helpful if you do not use interactive commenting tool (like the one of MS Word) it never hurts to have them IMO, make sure they are continuous, and <em>include page numbers</em> by all means.</p>\n\n<p>Note: this only applies to internal circulation, you might need to re-format for submission following the journal's guidelines.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34378,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/34375/8313\">general formatting advice from @CapeCode</a> is sound. Generic font (certainly not anything odd) and 1.5-2 line spacing is fine for the text. Tables and figures should go at then end. Many journals ask for figure files not to be included in the manuscript file at all, follow such advise. If figures are separate all figure captions go at the end of the manuscript file. </p>\n\n<p>Regarding line numbers it is not a major issue unless the journal specifies something special. Some manuscript systems provide only PDF-files of the manuscript. Some reviewers then prefer to have the line numbers to locate their comments. If the journal provides the Word files then as @Cape Code states these can be more of an issue. So try to see if you can figure out what the journal sends out but in the end I do nto think it is a major issue.</p>\n\n<p>In addition, I strongly want to push following any instructions for authors to the point. Make sure your use the proper reference formats and follow other journal formatting details. If no explicit instructions for authors exist then look at recent articles to see what styles the journal uses. A manuscript that follows the journal style looks more serious than a manuscript that does not.</p>\n\n<p>As for length, I would say that 6000-8000 words incl. references is a reasonable size for a regular research paper in your disciplines, shorter is possible but longer should be treated as a warning. If you really want to know just count the words on a page and guestimate the total for the article, you will not be far off.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34398,
"author": "Phil",
"author_id": 26688,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26688",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Most of these would depend on which journal/conference you are submitting to. For instance, IEEE and Springer each have their own style.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34374",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21458/"
] |
34,379 |
<p>I am in the process of updating my teaching and research descriptions the main website of my university. It seems many of the best descriptions are written in the 3rd person, but as far as I am aware, they were all written by the individual being described. Presumably those willing to talk about themselves in the 3rd person also put in the effort to have a good web presence. It seems disingenuous to write about myself in the 3rd person. My university has no guidance or policy on this issue (it must be an oversight given how much they love to manage everything). Is there a preferred style for official descriptions on the web? The webpage is dynamically from a CMS system so it is possible that some pages (either now or in the future) would present the content in a way that it is not obviously linked to an individual.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34381,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I think that it depends on whether the web site is written from a personal or an institutional perspective.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Personal perspective:</strong> On <a href=\"http://jakebeal.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">my own web page</a>, I use first person because I have formatted it as a web page about me personally and about my personal work.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Institutional perspective:</strong> A close colleague of mine has formatted their page as \"Name Laboratory\", and it includes description of both themselves and of all of the students and postdocs in their group. Their web page is written in the third person, including their self-description, because it is from outside perspective of the group as a collective, rather than their own perspective.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Just as in most questions of writing and tense, either can be correct, and I think the question is really about which you feel most comfortable doing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34399,
"author": "Phil",
"author_id": 26688,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26688",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've seen both 3rd and 1st being used. Though I mostly see 1st person used. I'd opt for 1st person to properly propel your voice.</p>\n\n<p>Many of the 3rd person ones that I have seen are non-personal and feel awkward as I can't get a sense of the voice of the author.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34379",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/"
] |
34,380 |
<p>I have a Master of Science degree from the EECS department at MIT. From the <a href="http://www.eecs.mit.edu/academics-admissions/graduate-program/degree-programs">website</a> it is pretty clear they call it an SM degree. I think many US universities refer to a Master of Science degree as an MS degree. My UK department has offered for a long time a program that leads to a Master of Science degree that we call the MSc program, but next year we are introducing an MSci degree. Do the different abbreviations officially mean something? Is it dishonest to refer to my SM as an MSc in the UK? If not, is it helpful?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34383,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is no difference: M.S., M.Sc., and S.M. all mean Master of Science. The difference for S.M. is that it is in Latin: <em><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%27s_degree\">scientiae magister</a></em>. </p>\n\n<p>I have no idea whether it will actually help anybody's confusion to translate back to MS, but there is certainly no question of honesty. For anybody with a Ph.D., however, I expect it will not make the least shred of difference, as a Ph.D. supersedes it quite effectively.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34424,
"author": "nivag",
"author_id": 14115,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14115",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>While all these degrees fall under the category of Master of Science there are technical differences in the course content. In general you should always refer to your degree by its actual title/abbreviation. If you think someone might not know what an abbreviation is e.g. on your CV or something, you could add a brief note such as MS (US Master's) but I'm not sure how useful this really is. Google has all this information readily available.</p>\n\n<p>For the particular degrees you list:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>I've no idea if there is a difference between an SM and MS, but I'm not in the US.</p></li>\n<li><p>A US MS is generally two years compared to the UK MSc's one. I also the impression that the MS is more research focused, although that might just be my view of things.</p></li>\n<li><p>An MSci is a 4 year combined bachelors and masters that is increasingly popular in the UK. Generally students only do a single research project/dissertation in their 4th year which is slightly shorter than an equivalent project for MSc students. So having an Msci is not exactly equivalent to an MSc.</p></li>\n<li><p>This is before you get to some of the more obscure things such as MRes which some UK students do. These are still broadly at Masters level but have different focuses to the course.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Just to be clear, I would consider it somewhat dishonest to translated the abbreviation of your degree. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 143593,
"author": "GE the CPA",
"author_id": 118900,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118900",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Harvard University uses SM for its Master of Science degrees. Please see <a href=\"https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2017/06/harvard-launches-data-science-masters-degree-program\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2017/06/harvard-launches-data-science-masters-degree-program</a>.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/16
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34380",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/"
] |
34,402 |
<p>Quite a few tenure-track job ads I've come across recently have mentioned supervising research of undergraduate students as one of the position responsibilities specifically. I have had plenty of opportunities to supervise graduate student research activities, but have no experience supervising undergraduate research.</p>
<p>Personally, I never took advantage of opportunities to do research as an undergraduate (as an engineering undergraduate student, I was more focused on doing internships). So, unfortunately, I don't have any personal experience on "the receiving end," so to speak, to draw upon for what makes a good (or bad) approach to undergraduate research supervision.</p>
<p>My question:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What are the key components of being an effective supervisor of
undergraduate researchers?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the field of study matters, this is in engineering (in particular, electrical engineering, and some of the job ads I've seen combine research supervision of both the electrical engineering and computer science undergraduates).</p>
<p>Somewhat related:</p>
<p><a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7252/what-are-the-main-differences-between-undergraduate-masters-and-doctoral-thes">What are the main differences between undergraduate, master's, and doctoral theses?</a></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34403,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I have had some pretty good success advising undergrads by:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Making sure that the problem is extremely well-defined. That is, don't throw them into the water and see if they swim. Think a lot about what the expected outcome will be, and what the foreseeable steps, challenges and problems will be. Yes, this is a lot of work and means that you could (almost) \"do the work yourself\" in the same time, but for undergrads you can typically not yet expect that you can just drop them a research question and see them run with it.</li>\n<li>Have regular meetings. Make sure that there is progress, and if there isn't, make sure that you know what the blocking issues are. Don't expect them to necessarily come to you first with any issues. In my experience, undergrads often are a bit shy about asking for help, and sometimes get stuck on (for you) relatively easy problems unnecessarily.</li>\n<li>Make sure that you <em>would be able to do the project yourself given enough time</em>. I know that this is somewhat controversial, but for grad students, I am perfectly happy to accept projects where I myself wouldn't know how to do every part myself. That is, I expect a grad student to be able to solve her/his own problems. For undergrads, I do not do this. I want to be able to help undergrads in a meaningful way if they get stuck, technically.</li>\n<li>Conversely, make sure that the work is not just random grunt work. In my experience, the best way to make sure that the undergrad research project is <em>not</em> interesting for the student is by letting them do something that everybody else either considers unimportant or terribly tedious to do. Undergrads are not yet experienced, but they are still colleagues and <em>not</em> some sort of scientific minions.</li>\n<li>Somewhat related: make sure that you are excited about the project, or at the very least be able to convincingly pretend that you are. Again, having the feeling that nobody cares about their project is a surefire way to make for a terrible research experience.</li>\n<li>Integrate the undergrads into the lab. When there are talks, the undergrads are invited (i.e., expected to come). When the grad students are expected to regularly speak in the internal seminar, the undergrads need to do this as well. If there is a regular lab beer night, the undergrads are invited as well. If the lab usually goes to lunch together, the undergrads are asked to come along. You get the idea.</li>\n<li>If at all possible, give them a fixed work place in the lab, and require them to be there at least some percent of the time.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>To summarize, the best undergrad projects in my lab always worked on a well-defined project, which was still an integral part of the research agenda for the lab that others were enthusiastic about. On concrete example from my research: some members of my lab are currently working on benchmarking compute cloud providers. That typically means hacking up some automation scripts, deploying benchmarks, gathering some data, and analysing the results. This is rather tedious and error-prone work. Hence, I got a computer science bachelor student to build a web-based platform, which students could use to define, schedule and execute benchmarks using a relatively simple DSL (domain-specific language). The platform the student built technically wasn't terribly complex, but the solution worked well, tackled a common community problem, and most importantly saved multiple grad students a ton of time. We also published the tool as open source software and wrote a small paper about it, allowing to student to go to a conference to another continent. During the conference, a number of professors asked the student for details on his tool, and expressed interest to also use it for their research.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34404,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When I was in high school, my (favorite) supervisor</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Gave me a written problem statement</strong> at the beginning of the project. In retrospect I really appreciate that he put it in writing, because it's easy to forget what was said in a verbal conversation.</li>\n<li><strong>Explained most of the relevant background to me</strong>, instead of telling me to do a literature review. I really appreciated this because I wouldn't have understood most of the papers if he'd asked me to read them myself.</li>\n<li><strong>Kept his door open</strong> so I could bug him whenever I had data or a question. (We didn't have weekly meetings, but I talked with him almost every day.)</li>\n<li><strong>Supervised me directly</strong> instead of handing me off to a grad student.</li>\n<li>Had me give talks at <strong>group meeting</strong>.</li>\n<li><strong>Was actively interested in my future career</strong>, and even helped me submit my project to a science fair.</li>\n<li>In general, he <strong>told me what to do, but never how to do it</strong>. He would tell me what problems to solve, and what directions were worth exploring, but he wouldn't help me code or tell me how to solve problems.</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34402",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11192/"
] |
34,407 |
<p><strong>Background:</strong>
I am a student. I didn't have anything in life for four years, and I worked myself silly at times for it. So now I ask - when I pay hundreds of dollars over the production cost (new textbooks are over a week's pay <em>each</em>) what and whom am I giving my money to?</p>
<p>It's probably not those working in the publishing factory, I don't think it's the professor who wrote the book; I imagine a rich entrepreneur , who, by positioning himself well in life, makes an immense amount of money while directly producing nothing of value, aka, the brass of a publishing company (correct me if I'm wrong). In fact, when our college tried to use an "open source" textbook, publishing companies promised to stop selling us books - all over that one class!</p>
<p>Now, I can buy an international version for some 20 or so hours of my life (aka, payrate) for each and every class. However, there are plenty of people in this process who deserve to be paid (yes, even the brass.) That said, books are so (over)priced I think it is more unethical <strong>not</strong> to pirate the book or buy a used or international edition - by feeding the predators, I become part of the problem.</p>
<p>However, there are many people on this site who are vastly more informed and experienced in academia than me and so I ask the following questions.</p>
<p><strong>Questions:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Is it ethical for me to buy international textbooks?</li>
<li>Incidentally, is it legal in the United States to buy international textbooks?</li>
</ul>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34410,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The US Supreme Court ruled that <a href=\"http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/how-an-ebay-bookseller-defeated-a-publishing-giant-at-the-supreme-court/\">it is legal to buy and sell international editions of textbooks</a>. As for the ethics, it clearly goes against the wishes of the publisher, so one might conclude that despite being legal that it is unethical. As for where the money is going, I believe most big publishers are publicly held, so the profits in general go to the share holders. Of course the costs include the salaries of the executives, royalties to authors, and the salaries of the individuals running the printing press.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 83417,
"author": "Brendan",
"author_id": 67860,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/67860",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>NPR did a piece on this concluding that publishers' response to piracy and digital copies was to keep jacking up the price assuming there are many people who don't care about the cost and just pay the price asked regardless of how ridiculous (ie their parents pay or student loans, grants, or scholarship money pays for it). This results in $30 books shooting up to $100+ in a decade or two. If the publishers are happy with this model, I see no ethical issue as poor and middle class can still pirate or buy cheap copies while those who don't care about exponentially increasing prices can offset the fact that less people are buying standard versions. The fact that they are required to lower the price by 80% to sell outside the US should be a pretty clear message that the ethics problem is not on the consumer/pirate side. As iTunes $1 song sales was the solution to piracy when the alternative was pay $15 for a CD with 1 song you wanted, the solution here would be for publishers to go back down to realistic prices where it is easier just to buy the textbook rather than go through the hassle of pirating it or locating international editions. They won't stop making international editions because other countries will just bootleg xerox copies of the book and bind it, as I believe was the practice before international editions became available (and I think I bought a few of those in the past as well). I hope they figure out price-fixing doesn't work like the music industry, as pirated/international editions are saturating the market currently.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 96231,
"author": "Peter Green",
"author_id": 42323,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/42323",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Is it ethical for me to buy international textbooks?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Big companies want to have their cake and eat it. They want to source their labour and materials from whereever in the world is cheapest but they want to discriminate on price based on what each local market will bear.</p>\n\n<p>American students have easier access to money than students in most other places. Even in relatively rich countries like the UK the student finance system is not set up to support students buying large numbers of expensive books. </p>\n\n<p>So textbook companies set a high price for American students driving them deeper into debt while setting a lower price for the rest of the world where students can't and won't pay american prices.</p>\n\n<p>I see nothing unethical about refusing to play along with their price discrimination games and buying an international edition.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 111547,
"author": "Allure",
"author_id": 84834,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/84834",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Strongbad answered the legal aspect. I won't say whether or not it's ethical because it's ultimately up to your personal values, but I'll mention this tidbit which hasn't been mentioned yet.</p>\n\n<p><strong>All the book contracts I've seen has had author royalties tied to sales revenue</strong>. The clause can be complicated, but the essence is always the same: the more revenue the publisher makes from the book, the more the author is paid. If you buy an international edition, you pay less, so the author also gets less. If you pirate the book, you paid nothing, so the author gets nothing also.</p>\n\n<p>Whether or not this is ethical is up to your personal values.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 114460,
"author": "Dmitry Grigoryev",
"author_id": 32934,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32934",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While publishers often argue that international editions open access to knowledge in poorer countries, this argument is hypocritical at best. Publishers do make a profit when selling such books, it's by no means a charity. And the \"market segmentation\" strategy is not unique to textbooks, it is applied to various retail goods from computer games to luxury products with the purpose of <strong>maximizing the total profit</strong>. So if you think that you're paying a higher price for your calculus book so that poor a Syldavian student can afford one too, you're being simply misled.</p>\n\n<p>Furthermore, the means required to implement such market segmentation are disruptive to the free market because they <strong>violate the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">First-sale doctrine</a></strong>. If you let publishers forbid reselling international books, what prevents the car manufacturer from forbidding you to resell your car to someone who'd have to buy a new one otherwise, with the same argument that they're losing a profit? (If you think my example is too far off, consider what fraction of the car's price is software, with copyright considerations which are not that different from a textbook). I don't see anything ethical about it, quite the contrary.</p>\n\n<p>Buying cheaper books most probably reduces royalties the authors get. On the other hand, if you have a fixed budget to spend on books, buying international books will get you more books while the authors will get the same amount of money on average. Free market is great at maximizing the profits at one side an utility at the other, and I don't see <strong>how disturbing free market can be more ethical</strong> than letting it do its job.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34407",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23544/"
] |
34,411 |
<p>I've read several questions relating to the (typically US) practice of requiring students to buy up-to-date, expensive, editions of textbooks. I can see why the publishers are in favour of this, but I don't understand why everyone else plays along. As far as I've seen, the UK seems to get along fine without this.</p>
<p>In my field (mathematics) it seems pretty obvious that new editions are generally not that important - maths just doesn't change that fast (the material taught at undergraduate level has mostly been around for the odd hundred years). So my question is:</p>
<p><strong>Are there subjects for which it is important to have the most up-to-date edition of a texbook</strong>, enough to justify the cost to students (/libraries)?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34412,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>With regards to \"the most up to date,\" it certainly depends on the frequency of versioning: for example, I cannot imagine a subject in which a new version every year would be justified from a scientific consensus perspective.</p>\n\n<p>There are, however, fields where the consensus is advancing quickly enough that a new version every 5-10 years would certainly make sense. A number of biomedical sciences, for example, would have this property, as there has been a continuing rapid advance in our understanding of the mechanisms of control within individual cells and their relationship to organism-level behaviors.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, a highly motivated instructor might collect notes and surveys themselves such that a textbook was not needed, but that's an independent axis from your question, I believe...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34415,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Take undergrad economics. While standard micro- and macroeconomic <em>theory</em> likely doesn't change quickly enough to warrant a new textbook edition every few years, students might be... irritated... if recent economic events (the US housing crisis, the Great Stagnation, right now the ruble meltdown) were not reflected and discussed. </p>\n\n<p>Suppose the last example of a major crisis in your econ textbook (printed in 2004) were the dotcom bubble bursting in 2001 - today's college students were barely walking back then. This would be ancient history for them.</p>\n\n<p>Yes, of course a motivated instructor could work with an older textbook and provide the updates based on his own notes. This is a lot of effort, though, and apparently few instructors go to this trouble.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34440,
"author": "user28375028",
"author_id": 21694,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21694",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Communications engineering, from what I understand, is rapidly changing (what with the Internet at all). In fact, any textbook related to computer technology is bound to be severely outdated in several years (with some exceptions). There can be issues, for example, when students are led to believe (as is the case in my telecommunications textbook published in 2005 and used in 2014) that Token Rings are common alternatives to Ethernet--something that <a href=\"http://www.networkworld.com/article/2287366/lan-wan/ethernet-vs--token-ring.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">this article from 2007</a> quite firmly denies. </p>\n\n<p>While introductory calculus hasn't changed much in the past couple hundred years, fields that are rapidly changing, e.g. anything involving computers, require up-to-date textbooks. I don't imagine anyone will benefit much from a textbook on internet communications published 5+ years ago as opposed to a current one.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34447,
"author": "chmullig",
"author_id": 6024,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6024",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Machine Learning and related fields in statistics, etc require fairly frequent revision. New algorithms are being developed and adopted at a fairly rapid pace, in large part because the technology is enabling datasets and algorithms that were previously infeasible to be common.</p>\n\n<p>Even an introductory machine learning text with a copyright 5 years ago was probably drafted even earlier. So a now common technique might have been brand new. One fairly simple example would be elastic net regression, which was first written about in 2005. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 81204,
"author": "Weckar E.",
"author_id": 56566,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/56566",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I find that many STEM fields like to use specific editions of textbooks not because of the content, but because of the end-of-chapter problems. </p>\n\n<p>These tend to change per edition (if not the actual problem, sometimes the numbering), and many intructors like to assign these as homework. This practice doesn't work as well if not all students have the same problems available under the same problem number.</p>\n\n<p>I'm not saying it is a good reason, but it is a reason it happens.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34411",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20036/"
] |
34,416 |
<p>The <a href="http://www.ugc.ac.in/" rel="nofollow">University Grants Commission (U.G.C)</a> is the autonomous and statutory body in India responsible for governing the rules and regulations of the universities and various other academic institutions
that come under its purview.</p>
<p>The rule for appointment of teachers in the important academic institutes of India is governed by its rule, <a href="http://www.ugc.ac.in/oldpdf/regulations/englishgazette.pdf" rel="nofollow">"UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education 2010"</a>.
It is generally taken as the order of the day.</p>
<p>In this regulation, there is a provision for calculating the points for research papers, research contributions etc. I tried to go through them, but feeling slightly ambiguous. It is given generally in Appendix III. </p>
<p>My question is in the tables given against each item maximum score is given.
But how should we take the count of each item. I tried to go through the same but did not find anything.</p>
<p>What is the value of each item and how does it contribute to the maximum score as given in the tables in the aforementioned report. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 45251,
"author": "Aditya Singh",
"author_id": 23489,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23489",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, the link you gave us in your question is not working. So, I can't figure out what you are talking about. </p>\n\n<p>If you are talking about API (academic performance indicator), then I think you should look for the application form issued the university where you wish to apply for the post of assistant professor. You will find all the information about API including how to calculate your own API in that application form itself. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 45321,
"author": "MrMeritology",
"author_id": 17564,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17564",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I was able to download the paper using the link provided, and thus the link is functional.</p>\n\n<p>I have looked at Appendix III briefly, and will offer my interpretation. However, I am not Indian and have no experience in India, so my interpretation is strictly based on what I have read and my background (US, academic + industry, where we do not use such explicit scoring systems).</p>\n\n<p>My interpretation is that <strong><em>the maximum number of points would be awarded if the requirements for each item are fully met</em></strong>. E.g. if you publish a research paper in one of the specified refereed journals, you get 15 points for that publication, regardless of the number of citations that paper gets or the ranking/reputation of the journal, or even your own opinion of the quality of that paper. <em>Though it is not stated in Appendix III</em>, I would interpret \"max points\" as meaning that a lower score might be awarded if the criteria is only partially met. For example, if you published an essay or commentary in a journal rather than a full research paper, you might award yourself 4 points or 7 points rather than the full 15. (E.g. I had a letter published in <em>PNAS</em> critiquing a published article. It went through a review process, but at 500 words would hardly qualify as an \"article\". So maybe it's worth 1 point in this category.)</p>\n\n<p>In part I base my interpretation at the <em>fine granularity</em> of the scoring system and the many explicit rules and criteria that go along with each item. I also base my interpretation on the lack of any mention of \"quality\" or \"impact\" or \"significance\" in the criteria.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>What my interpretation leaves out is the cultural norms, both across Indian colleges and universities, and also by regions, fields/disciplines, etc. What ever the <em>official</em> and <em>explicit</em> rules of any scoring system, there are always <em>unofficial</em> and <em>tacit</em> norms as to how they are executed and interpreted.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34416",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25129/"
] |
34,417 |
<p>Few days back while attending a thesis defense, one Professor was asking the defender why does he think, he deserves the degree. I was wondering since then, is there really any general answer for that? or the answer should be given describing my own work and then emphasis them how it is important for research field?</p>
<p>I asked the question here to know your opinion about it and to list down what could be the possible answers to this question.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34419,
"author": "silvado",
"author_id": 3890,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3890",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The general requirement for getting a PhD degree is to produce novel research results (including of course writing them down in a dissertation and defending it in front of a committee). By this, you should show that you can work as an independent researcher.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>one Professor was asking the defender why does he think, he deserves the degree.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If someone asks that during the defense, the answer should point out in which way the results are novel and a contribution to the current knowledge in the thesis' area of research.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34420,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Usually the answer to this is formulated in the rules of the institution. In Germany we call this the \"Bachelor-/Masterprüfungsordnung\" (for BSc and Msc) or \"Promotionsordnung\" (for a PhD).</p>\n\n<p>The one from my institution contains something like</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Die Promotion dient dem Nachweis der Befähigung zu vertiefter selbständiger wissenschaftlicher Arbeit.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>which translates roughly to </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The PhD degree certifies the ability for in-depth and independent scientific work. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It also says that one needs a written work (called dissertation) and an oral exam. For the dissertation there is</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Die Dissertation muss die Befähigung der Verfasserin oder des Verfassers zu vertiefter und selbständiger\n wissenschaftlicher Arbeit nachweisen und einen Beitrag zum Fortschritt der Wissenschaft auf [insert some field] darstellen.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>which is roughly</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The dissertation has to certify the ability of the writer to do in-depth and independent scientific work, and to contribute to the advancement of science in [insert some field].</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There are also some regulations for the oral exam but actually there is not a specific term what constitutes a passed or failed oral exam.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34422,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For a Ph.D., my favorite explanation is <a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/\">this cartoon</a> by <a href=\"http://matt.might.net/\">Matt Might</a>.</p>\n\n<p>In short: a Ph.D. is a measurable contribution to a sum of human knowledge.</p>\n\n<p>To be able to answer this question, all you need is an idea of how to describe what you have discovered, and how it fits into the context of work by others that has come before. This is often not easy to answer, but an important thing to think about as one is writing one's thesis in any case.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34449,
"author": "Floris",
"author_id": 15062,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15062",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Let's look at the abbreviation: PhD. <em>Philosophiae Doctor</em> which literally translates (my translation) as \"Teacher of the beloved wisdom\". (Doctor from doceo - to teach; philosophia from φιλος - dear, beloved and σοφια - wisdom or knowledge.</p>\n\n<p>To be worthy of a PhD, you must therefore <em>teach</em> - which in the widest sense means <em>add to the body of knowledge that came before</em>. You are no longer learning - you traveled to the edge of the universe of knowledge, and boldly went where no-one had gone before. And - and this is a crucial element - you told stories of what you discovered when you came back.</p>\n\n<p>The question is a good and fair one - and the answer should be obvious: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Through my research I have discovered [X,Y,Z] which I have taught the world through my publications and dissertation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No need to blush - just state the facts.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34485,
"author": "Joshua Taylor",
"author_id": 8313,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8313",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When I arrived to this question, there was (and probably still is) a highly upvoted comment:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"I fulfilled all of the requirements.\" — <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34417/what-makes-someone-deserving-of-a-ph-d#comment76360_34417\">Austin Henley</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think that it's very easy for a new PhD or candidate to have serious doubts about the quality of their work, and to suffer a bit of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the impostor syndrome</a>. After all, they've spent numerous years seeing just how much knowledge is out there, and realizing that despite their new expertise, in the big scheme of things, it's actually a pretty small piece.</p>\n\n<p>I've just completed my PhD, and one of the things that my advisor mentioned to me was very helpful, especially when I was feeling a bit of what I've described above. At my university, PhD students become <em>candidates</em> when they complete their <em>candidacy</em>, which includes their <em>candidacy proposal</em>, in which the student presents their research proposal to a committee (typically with members of their eventual examining committee) who must approve the proposal. My advisor reminded me that regardless of my own perspective on my research, the fact of the matter is that three or four years ago, a committee of experienced researchers, professors, etc., (i.e., my candidacy committee) reviewed my proposal and confirmed that the work it describes merits a PhD.</p>\n\n<p>Based on that reminder, I framed by defense slides by beginning with a very quick review of the original candidacy, including a slide with a short problem statement. At the end of the defense, I pulled up another copy of that slide and addressed each point in the original problem statement, explaining how I'd addressed it. Then I followed with some \"reveal text\":</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"spoiler\">\n <p> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">quod erat demonstrandum</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>My research involved a fair amount of proof theory and formal logic, so this was especially appropriate, but the point remains: the work that I presented was that \"which had to be demonstrated\". The experienced committee said several years ago that the proposed work merits a PhD, and I completed that work.</p>\n\n<p>The point here is that it's not really the candidate's place to determine what merits a PhD. They haven't, at that time, enough experience to make that determination. The university and committee does, and has already decided what merits a PhD, and it would be entirely appropriate to respond to the question \"What merits a PhD?\" with \"you, as a committee member, explained that to me some number of years ago, and I've fulfilled those requirements.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34497,
"author": "Des",
"author_id": 26783,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26783",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For a Masters Degree, you are using existing knowledge and applying it to a new situation. For a PhD, you are creating new knowledge - you have discovered or invented something that was not known or existed before. If you can show that you have done this, you deserve a PhD.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34603,
"author": "h22",
"author_id": 10920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10920",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This question is not a check if you are over self-confident or anything the like. Simply provide arguments why your PhD work matches the acceptance criteria that a valid for that institution. Your supervisor should know. </p>\n\n<p>If criteria seem not obvious for some reason, emphasize the scientific novelty (some details you have investigated first ever) and any scientific recognition of the results (accepted papers, attended conferences). Negative results that just disprove the initial work hypothesis may be near equally significant. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 43966,
"author": "posdef",
"author_id": 5674,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5674",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A couple of years a senior and well-respected scientist that I know personally told me his perspective regarding what the title <em>PhD</em> means to him. I try to take that with me since then, especially at times of self-doubt.</p>\n\n<p>He said the most important message that the title <em>PhD</em> conveys is that the holder has survived a significant period of time (3-5 years depending on where you live/work) in the academic world, battling with self-doubt, uncertainties in work, questionable guidance/project management, and many more challenges. </p>\n\n<p>So, the way I see it; if you have survived until the end of your thesis defence <strong>AND</strong> fulfilled all criteria set by the university <sup>†</sup> (including original research), then you damn-well deserve the title and there's nothing anyone can fuss about. :)</p>\n\n<p>Good luck with your work/defence. </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><sup>†</sup> after all it's the university that grants the title, and thus its the institution's responsibility to make sure that the titles they bestow upon candidates is up to the international standard. It's their reputation on the line, as well. </p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34417",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26698/"
] |
34,428 |
<p>I recently asked <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/34152/2692">this question</a> about how many office hours per week are common for undergraduate lecturers but then I just read <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/34402/2692">this one</a> about supervising research done by undergrads. This got me thinking that perhaps my previous question was going in the wrong direction.</p>
<p>I have >300 students in 3 different subjects. 200 of those students are in one subject and that subject requires students to do extensive research. My challenge (explained in the question linked above) is that I seem to have too little time to properly support this many students.</p>
<p>These are business students so there is no lab. The research is reading the literature, finding data, integrating the two into some meaningful insight.</p>
<p>So, my question is, <strong>when supervising undergraduate students who are doing research, how much time on average, per week, per student, should this consume of the supervisor's time?</strong> 15 minutes? 30 minutes? 1 hour?</p>
<p><strong>Edit:</strong> To put this in perspective, the students are not writing a bachelor thesis. However, they are expected to put in about 100 hours of non-class time (after the class time has finished) doing their research and writing it up. The final product is about 4,000 - 5,00 words (so far less than a thesis).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34429,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One person cannot possibly supervise 200 undergraduate research projects per semester of any substance. This sounds more like a term paper with a research component than 200 fully-fledged research projects. When I did undergraduate research, it was a 20-hour per week job that I got paid for, and even then my supervisor and I rarely met for more than half an hour per week. </p>\n\n<p>There are only 168 hours <em>total</em> in one week, and only 40 working hours in a week. If you spent your <em>entire</em> job meeting with all of the students every week, you could give them 12 minutes each. This is clearly impossible. 200 students is so many that giving them each a 30-minute kickoff meeting to discuss their initial idea at the beginning of the semester would take you two and a half <em>weeks</em>. This would put some students at a serious disadvantage over others by potentially delaying their project start or leaving them confused about what is required of them.</p>\n\n<p>If these are not much more than a term paper, then one person can probably do this by putting the assignment together on paper or in email and only answering questions during normal office hours. These kinds of assignments have clearly articulated goals and guidelines and apply techniques as laid out in lectures and homeworks. If you want a more substantial, independent project, then you need TA support, at least 6 and as many as 20 TAs to cover 200 students. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 59530,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can relate how long I spend, in my own experience. My experience is in mathematics and computer science, which may be different from other fields.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>When I wrote my PhD, I usually met with my advisor for about 1-2 hours each week, unless there was a special reason to have a second meeting. </p></li>\n<li><p>I work at a department with a master's program. When supervising a master's thesis, I expect to meet with my advisee for about the same amount of time, about 1-2 hours a week, unless there is a reason to meet a second time.</p></li>\n<li><p>Similarly, when I co-authored a paper with a strong undergraduate student last year, we met for about 2 hours a week for a semester and a half. Part of this was instruction by me about the area, and part of it was research meetings to engage with our problem.</p></li>\n<li><p>When I advise an undergraduate \"senior project\", I set up a meeting for one hour per week with each student I advise. These projects are \"research light\" at my institution, and can even be expository for some students. But at least one senior projects I have supervised developed into a different co-authored paper, so some real research is done as well. </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In every case, I expect the student to work for several hours between each of our meetings. When they are writing, I require them to send a draft at least s day before we meet, so I can review it. When they are writing computer code, I also require them to send that a day before we meet as well. This helps me keep the meetings productive - we can talk about challenges they have encountered in the research, or about my feedback on their work, or about future plans, etc., with a minimal amount of wasted time during the meetings. </p>\n\n<p>Each time I have a meeting with a student, I try to make a plan before it begins about what we will talk about. Of course, if the student has something more pressing to discuss, that takes precedence over my plans. But I try not to waste and meeting, because that leads to having to meet again that week or to slipping deadlines, both of which I want to avoid if possible. </p>\n\n<p>Of course, you cannot possibly meet for one hour each week with 200 students. I find the even four personal meetings per week is more than enough to keep me occupied - both in terms of time and in terms of mental capacity. So you will need to find a way to economize, and give less personal attention. You might try organizing group peer review sessions.</p>\n\n<p>Frankly, I am surprised you can even grade the 200 papers that are written - if you can manage 30 minutes per paper all day long that is still over 2 weeks of grading! </p>\n\n<p>If you have any say at the department, you might propose having the students work in groups; 50 groups of 4 is much more appealing than 200 groups of 1, both for advising and for grading.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34428",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692/"
] |
34,441 |
<p>I'm writing a paper on The Beatles and in this paragraph I'm talking about the formation of the group. I got the info from their biographical book. So it's just a summarized version of a chapter. I have no idea how to state that this info is from a book?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34443,
"author": "Bob Brown",
"author_id": 16183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16183",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are paraphrasing the material, not quoting it. (You summarized it.) Put the citation at the end of the paragraph and add the source to your bibliography.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34446,
"author": "padawan",
"author_id": 15949,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15949",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Summarizing a chapter in a paragraph and citing it at the end, I think, is not a good idea. </p>\n\n<p>It is better to write </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Simpson mentions the formation of the group in Chapter 5 of History\n of The Beatles [12].</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And then write your paragraph in italic.</p>\n\n<p>Actually, if you can, put citations at the end of each 2-3 sentences.\nThe following example is more proper when writing an academic manuscript.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The Famous English Rock Band Beatles was formed in 1957 [34]. First,\n John Lennon, the founder of the band, named the band as The Blackjacks. Then, with Paul McCartney joining the band, the name was changed\n to The Quarrymen [21].</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34441",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26729/"
] |
34,450 |
<p>I'm about to finish my undergraduates studies; I majored in mathematics and minored in physics, and I always intended on going to grad school to pursue a PhD in mathematics, but I've been having doubts recently. I did well in all my courses (3.92 GPA), but I'm trying to seriously consider if my background is strong enough now and if I'd truly have the motivation to stick it out. I've also been thinking even if I decided to give it a shot, it might be nice to take some time off for rest and to improve on some of my weaker areas. But I've been told by a few people that <strong>if you want to do a PhD in mathematics, you have to go pretty much right after undergrad</strong>, mainly because recent letters of recommendation are so important, and professors forget you after a time. So <strong>I wanted to know if this is true</strong>, and also thought I'd ask for advice if anyone has been in a similar situation. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34451,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I doubled in math and physics at MIT, and went on to get a PhD. in physics. Although I had a successful career, first as a supergravity theorist and then as a computational physicist, I have always wished I had gone into math, which was my stronger love and better talent.</p>\n\n<p>You don't have to be uniformly strong in all areas to do wel in a math PhD program. (Although many nice ideas stem from creative ideas in unrelated parts of math.) You do have to be pretty sure you can become insanely strong in one area, and you do need to be confident that you will love what you are doing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34452,
"author": "Vladhagen",
"author_id": 14518,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14518",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At least in my area of the world (Western US) and among the professors from the institution where I did grad work, almost everyone did a master's degree first. There are exceptions to this of course. How I see it is if you are a genius, go on to the PhD directly. Otherwise, a MS can give you some good background without drinking from a fire hose. This is how I improved my weaker areas. I was weak in analysis before grad school. I was able to take 4 analysis classes (graduate level!) for my MS and it was a significant boost. </p>\n\n<p>When I applied to PhD programs, I got my letters from professors I had taken graduate classes from (and my thesis advisor). This allowed them to comment not just on how well they <em>thought</em> I would do in grad school, but how well I <em>actually</em> had done. This also allowed for them to comment on my research. I think it made me a stronger PhD candidate.</p>\n\n<p>I will back up that you will need to be (somewhat) confident that you can become very strong in a specific niche. But that is why you go to grad school; its purpose is to make you strong in your field. And your strengths may change. I entered grad school as a group theorist and left as a probabilist. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34453,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Entering a PhD program is a major commitment that you should not enter into if you're not completely ready. Your question shows that you're very unsure about what you want to do. Thus I would not recommend entering a PhD program at this point in time. </p>\n\n<p>It is certainly possible to work for a while and then go back to graduate school. </p>\n\n<p>My own personal experience is that when I got my BS degree (in Computer Science), many friends urged me to go on to graduate school immediately. Instead, I went to work as a software developer for the next three years. It became clear that I would need at least an MS degree in order to advance within the company that employed me so I went back to graduate school for an MS in applied mathematics. During my first semester as a full time graduate student I became very interested in a new area (interior point methods for LP), and applied to switch into the PhD program so that I could really immerse myself in that topic. I wouldn't recommend this approach to everyone, but at the same time, I'm quite certain that it helped me to have worked for a while before going back to graduate school.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34454,
"author": "Kimball",
"author_id": 19607,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19607",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The other answers don't really address the issue of recommendations, so let me, at least briefly. I've been on our math PhD admission committee several times and we get many applications from people who've gotten their undergrad some time ago.</p>\n\n<p>First, yes there is some truth to it being easier to get in right after your undergrad degree. The letters of recommendation are important. If your professors know you quite well, and the department is relatively small, they should still be able to write you decent letters after a year or two hiatus, but if it gets to 5-10 years, they may not, and with that kind of time lapse, their letters won't count for as much anyway.</p>\n\n<p>My advice would be to consider what else you want to do. Is there something else you really want to do for awhile (peace corps, travel, interesting job opportunity)? If so, it won't kill your chances for grad school, but you may have to apply to more backup schools. If you're out for longer, it might be best to do a masters first before getting into a PhD program.</p>\n\n<p>If you don't have any definite ideas, why don't you try applying to a few masters programs (Vladhagan's suggestion of trying a masters first is a good idea to give you a sense of what you want to do and give yourself a better background) and a few PhD programs that seem interesting to you? At the same time, maybe go to a career fair and send out a few job applications in the spring? The PhD programs that accept you (at least if you're in the US) at least should give you an opportunity to visit, so even if you're undecided about a PhD in the spring, visiting these schools (and similarly any job interview impressions) may help you make a decision.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34458,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>But I've been told by a few people that if you want to do a PhD in mathematics, you have to go pretty much right after undergrad, mainly because recent letters of recommendation are so important, and professors forget you after a time. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You do not have to start a PhD program \"pretty much right after undergrad\". It is most common to do so, but there is a substantial minority of students who are older and/or spent several years out of school. In (American, at least) academia, your age counts for nothing; the ticking clock in the sky keeps track of the number of years since your PhD. I know several people who spent years off from undergrad in the sense of leaving school but clearly kept up with their mathematical reading and learning -- while in the Israeli army, culinary school, creative writing programs... -- and started grad school with skills at least at good as those around them and a maturity that most 22 year-olds lack. I've looked through hundreds verging on thousands of job applicants' CVs, and I am struck by how often the stronger candidates were in their 30's rather than their 20's when they got their PhD. </p>\n\n<p>Of course the biggest risk in taking time off between undergrad and grad is that you will get distracted by the rest of the world and not come back for graduate study. But that's only a risk in the context of your original plan: if you found something else that you like better than being a graduate student, good for you. It is also relatively common that after a fairly small time away -- one or two years -- people realize that they really do prefer an academic career. (For some reason this seems to be most common among high school teachers. Isn't that a bit sad?) If you're not totally committed to a PhD program, taking time off and seeing whether your desire waxes or wanes is a pretty smart idea.</p>\n\n<p>Of all things in your decision, I don't think that going straight to a PhD program because you're worried that your professors will forget about you is a good strategy. Professors don't forget about students that quickly, but after a few years, they may. To combat this, I would say: if you are not sure whether you want to do a PhD right away, why not <strong>apply right away</strong> to PhD programs? Certainly knowing where you can get in and seeing the programs that admitted you are all factors in your decision. If you apply right away, professors will write letters for you, and if you go away even for a long time, those letters should still be equally usable afterwards: your past undergraduate performance is not a function of time.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/17
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34450",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26741/"
] |
34,459 |
<p>I am currently two years into a math PhD program at a mid-tier state school. I read a lot of advice about getting a STEM PhD on the Internet, but a lot of it seems very inapplicable to mathematics. I don't have a lab or a PI, I don't need data, and my assistantship consists solely of teaching. None of the advice I read sounds anything like the experience I'm having here.</p>
<p>Compared to other STEM fields,</p>
<ul>
<li><p>How common is it for math students to be supported by external funding (e.g. NSF GRFP) rather than a TAship? How common is it for math students to do internships in industry to gain practical experience? How common is it for math students to do outreach or volunteer work during graduate school?</p></li>
<li><p>Does a math department generally provide support and guidance to students when it comes to finding and applying for fellowships and internships? Is it a common attitude that it is the student's responsibility, if he wants those things, to undertake all steps of this process by himself?</p></li>
<li><p>Is it normal for math departments to disregard students' research interests in favor of mandatory coursework? For example, because all of my time is tied up in the 1st/2nd year courses and exams, I have been unable to do any research for the last two years, despite being very prepared and capable on my first day. (I published during undergrad and was chasing several promising ideas when I arrived.) When I asked to be allowed time to do research instead of taking classes, I was rudely shut down.</p></li>
<li><p>How often do mathematics departments get together in social or community events, such as departmental happy hours?</p></li>
<li><p>How is networking different in mathematics? Do professors generally have connections in industry or prominent members of their field, or is that a rare thing?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>(<strong>Note.</strong> I'm sure it is evident from some of the above questions that I am feeling a little put off by my department. The point of this question is not to seek out sympathy or validation. The department just seems stubbornly uncooperative, and completely uninvested in my future, which is not what I was expecting. I want to know how common this is- whether it is unique to my department, or the nature of the discipline. But this is a peripheral point, the question I'm asking is about how these factors work in general, not just with me.)</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34486,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In brief, many aspects of math grad school are very different from CompSci, for example.</p>\n\n<p>The vast majority of math grad students are funded by TA-ships, although some have NSF and other fellowships. The (large) size of typical math depts is tied to their role as service departments, teaching lower-division math, and this is what funds the large number of math grad students.</p>\n\n<p>Internships in some applied math fields are desirable, but non-trivial to arrange.</p>\n\n<p>Outreach and volunteer work are not strongly connected with these other questions.</p>\n\n<p>It is not that math depts \"disregard students' research interests\", but that, almost universally in the U.S., further coursework beyond undergrad work is ... wise. If one has an unusually solid background, there are usually procedures by which to \"test out\" of requirements. On another hand, I am well aware that a certain number of grad students do feel that they're all ready to do research, and that coursework gets in the way. The \"problem\" is that \"research\" at a professional level in mathematics is not necessarily an immediate continuation of the sort of \"research\" typically done in undergrad projects. Another \"problem\" is that mathematics is an old subject, and there is a lot of very useful, helpful, enlightening stuff already known... and whose relevance to any given research project is very difficult to guess based on ignorance. I am absolutely not in favor of \"oppressing\" students by pointless busywork, but I am equally opposed to ignorance. Accurate perception of a given situation is difficult, and both students and faculty often have pre-existing biases... Again, testing-out of requirements ought to be a viable option, if one is well-prepared. If one doesn't see the relevance of the requirements, I'd tend to interpret this as reflecting a need to better understand the <em>content</em> of the required subjects. (Because they <em>are</em> relevant.)</p>\n\n<p>In particular, depts to not \"disregard students' research interests\", except as not automatically exempting students from \"requirements\". Further, there are many hours in a day...</p>\n\n<p>As to social events... it depends.</p>\n\n<p>Networking? People know people. \"Industrial connections\" would exist only for very applied people, although connections to applied science research groups inside the university are common.</p>\n\n<p>And/but none of what the question describes strikes me as unusually \"uncooperative\". In my observation, it is very common that math grad school is quite different from what people are expecting, exactly insofar as many students expect to immediately \"start research\" (perhaps parallel to the impression given about other STEM fields' programs), rather than having any required coursework at all. Also, there seems to be a not-uncommon disaffection with TA-ing, as though this were lowlier than having a fellowship of some sort or research assistantship... and is construed, again, as \"obstructing research\". But without all these TA-ships, many fewer math grad students would have any financial support at all. (There's little grunt-work available in mathematics that would compare to the low-level research-support work in some other STEM fields, which does (by tradition) get the student's name on a published paper, etc.)</p>\n\n<p>So, yes, mathematics is somewhat different from other STEM fields. Further, the fact that a program is not what one presumed it would/should be is not at all a strong indicator that something's wrong with the program (although, of course, there are dubious programs). The greatest resentment I see is among students who believe that they're fully-fledged \"researchers\", and are offended to not be immediately treated as such... While this message can be imparted rudely, and perceived as \"a rude shut-down\", the many issues of professional competence are not easy for novices to judge.</p>\n\n<p>(One more time: one can see about \"testing out\" of requirements...)</p>\n\n<p>Edit: prompted by Brian Borcher's comment... Teaching is an important part of an academic mathematician's job! The question of \"how much\" is secondary. The TA experience is very important to get up to speed on teaching, and, in unhappy cases, to discover early on that one hasn't the taste for it, if that is so. (I had one PhD student who discovered this unhappy fact in his own case, so he did not take the academic route.) Part of what one should try to learn is that \"teaching is not a burden\"... !!! ... to say the least. :)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34487,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm going to focus on the third question: \"Is it normal for math departments to disregard students' research interests in favor of mandatory coursework?\"</p>\n\n<p>In comparison with PhD programs in many other fields, PhD programs in mathematics in the US typically have quite a bit of required coursework and often include preliminary/qualifying exams that cover a very broad range of topics. In my experience, graduate students working in other STEM disciplines typically have fewer required courses to take. Thus the answer to your question is \"Yes, this is quite common.\" </p>\n\n<p>For example, as a graduate student I took required courses in abstract algebra, real and complex analysis, functional analysis, and topology, even though my dissertation was in computational optimization.</p>\n\n<p>It's traditionally felt that mathematics PhD's should have a broad background in mathematics so that they can easily teach undergraduate courses in almost any area of mathematics. The required coursework helps to develop this breadth. </p>\n\n<p>Keep in mind that the academic job market for PhD's in mathematics in the US is very different from the job market for PhD's in other STEM disciplines. Most PhD's in mathematics will end up working in teaching positions at community colleges and regional comprehensive 4 year colleges rather than in research oriented positions at universities. Having a broad background in mathematics (and experience as a TA) is helpful preparation for teaching oriented positions. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34551,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While I think some of your questions point to genuine weaknesses in math departments (a lack of an internship pipeline, for example), a lot of them reflect a really unrealistic idea of what \"cooperation\" means. Your DGS, chair, etc. have met a lot of 1st/2nd year graduate students, and thus they know that very few of them are ready to do serious research, and in fact very few of them really know what that would mean. It wouldn't be looking after your interests to leave you to do research on your own, with no way of checking that you aren't just wasting your time. 1st year classes exist to cover basic material that any mathematician should know. If you know the material, it would have been reasonable to skip them (and usually departments will give students flexibility to do this), but as I say below, if they are taking up all your time, that gives the lie to your suggestion that you were already ready to do research. </p>\n\n<p><em>How common is it for math students to be supported by external funding (e.g. NSF GRFP) rather than a TAship?</em></p>\n\n<p>Rare, outside the very top schools.</p>\n\n<p><em>How common is it for math students to do internships in industry to gain practical experience?</em></p>\n\n<p>Rare in my experience in pure math departments.</p>\n\n<p><em>How common is it for math students to do outreach or volunteer work during graduate school?</em></p>\n\n<p>More common. I've known lots of people who taught (for example) in prisons as volunteers, or worked with K-12 students. Depends a lot on what's available.</p>\n\n<p><em>Does a math department generally provide support and guidance to students when it comes to finding and applying for fellowships and internships?</em> </p>\n\n<p>For fellowships, they should but the reality is more mixed. In my experience, the problem is more that students aren't willing to go through the application process, so faculty have been burned a few too many times to be proactive about it. It might require a little initiative to get help with this.</p>\n\n<p><em>Is it a common attitude that it is the student's responsibility, if he wants those things, to undertake all steps of this process by himself?</em></p>\n\n<p>Yes. Graduate students are adults, and responsible for themselves. It might happen that someone in the department is looking for graduate students for an opportunity like this, but at the end of the day, it is up to you.</p>\n\n<p><em>Is it normal for math departments to disregard students' research interests in favor of mandatory coursework?</em></p>\n\n<p>This is pretty insulting: obviously the department requires the coursework because they believe it is in the students' interests. Of course, it's hard to have a system that fits everyone, but very few students could be successful in grad school in math without taking a couple of years of classes (again, with the possible exception of the best schools).</p>\n\n<p><em>For example, because all of my time is tied up in the 1st/2nd year courses and exams, I have been unable to do any research for the last two years, despite being very prepared and capable on my first day. (I published during undergrad and was chasing several promising ideas when I arrived.)</em> </p>\n\n<p>If you were very prepared and capable, then your first year classes should have been easy, and you should have had plenty of time. If they were hard enough to take up all your time, you didn't know the material.</p>\n\n<p><em>When I asked to be allowed time to do research instead of taking classes, I was rudely shut down.</em></p>\n\n<p>I can't comment on whether it was rude or not, but I can't say it was a surprise that this approach did not work. Since you haven't mentioned a research advisor, I'm going to assume you don't have one. Very few students would be capable of doing this, and I have trouble imagining that your undergrad publications were so strong and independent that the department should have had faith that you were one of them. </p>\n\n<p><em>How often do mathematics departments get together in social or community events, such as departmental happy hours?</em></p>\n\n<p>Depends. Departmental happy hours aren't a strong tradition, but department teas are, and usually departments have a department-wide social event like a picnic or holiday party every semester or so.</p>\n\n<p><em>How is networking different in mathematics? Do professors generally have connections in industry or prominent members of their field, or is that a rare thing?</em></p>\n\n<p>Rarely in industry, usually with prominent members of their field, but this depends a lot on the definition of \"prominent\" and \"field.\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34459",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26743/"
] |
34,460 |
<p>I have an accepted paper in <a href="http://www.greenorbs.org/TrustCom2014/" rel="nofollow">TrustCom 2014</a>. The conference was held several months ago. However I could not find any information regarding the proceedings. They do not answer email. Is it normal? In general, how long after a conference are proceedings published?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34486,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In brief, many aspects of math grad school are very different from CompSci, for example.</p>\n\n<p>The vast majority of math grad students are funded by TA-ships, although some have NSF and other fellowships. The (large) size of typical math depts is tied to their role as service departments, teaching lower-division math, and this is what funds the large number of math grad students.</p>\n\n<p>Internships in some applied math fields are desirable, but non-trivial to arrange.</p>\n\n<p>Outreach and volunteer work are not strongly connected with these other questions.</p>\n\n<p>It is not that math depts \"disregard students' research interests\", but that, almost universally in the U.S., further coursework beyond undergrad work is ... wise. If one has an unusually solid background, there are usually procedures by which to \"test out\" of requirements. On another hand, I am well aware that a certain number of grad students do feel that they're all ready to do research, and that coursework gets in the way. The \"problem\" is that \"research\" at a professional level in mathematics is not necessarily an immediate continuation of the sort of \"research\" typically done in undergrad projects. Another \"problem\" is that mathematics is an old subject, and there is a lot of very useful, helpful, enlightening stuff already known... and whose relevance to any given research project is very difficult to guess based on ignorance. I am absolutely not in favor of \"oppressing\" students by pointless busywork, but I am equally opposed to ignorance. Accurate perception of a given situation is difficult, and both students and faculty often have pre-existing biases... Again, testing-out of requirements ought to be a viable option, if one is well-prepared. If one doesn't see the relevance of the requirements, I'd tend to interpret this as reflecting a need to better understand the <em>content</em> of the required subjects. (Because they <em>are</em> relevant.)</p>\n\n<p>In particular, depts to not \"disregard students' research interests\", except as not automatically exempting students from \"requirements\". Further, there are many hours in a day...</p>\n\n<p>As to social events... it depends.</p>\n\n<p>Networking? People know people. \"Industrial connections\" would exist only for very applied people, although connections to applied science research groups inside the university are common.</p>\n\n<p>And/but none of what the question describes strikes me as unusually \"uncooperative\". In my observation, it is very common that math grad school is quite different from what people are expecting, exactly insofar as many students expect to immediately \"start research\" (perhaps parallel to the impression given about other STEM fields' programs), rather than having any required coursework at all. Also, there seems to be a not-uncommon disaffection with TA-ing, as though this were lowlier than having a fellowship of some sort or research assistantship... and is construed, again, as \"obstructing research\". But without all these TA-ships, many fewer math grad students would have any financial support at all. (There's little grunt-work available in mathematics that would compare to the low-level research-support work in some other STEM fields, which does (by tradition) get the student's name on a published paper, etc.)</p>\n\n<p>So, yes, mathematics is somewhat different from other STEM fields. Further, the fact that a program is not what one presumed it would/should be is not at all a strong indicator that something's wrong with the program (although, of course, there are dubious programs). The greatest resentment I see is among students who believe that they're fully-fledged \"researchers\", and are offended to not be immediately treated as such... While this message can be imparted rudely, and perceived as \"a rude shut-down\", the many issues of professional competence are not easy for novices to judge.</p>\n\n<p>(One more time: one can see about \"testing out\" of requirements...)</p>\n\n<p>Edit: prompted by Brian Borcher's comment... Teaching is an important part of an academic mathematician's job! The question of \"how much\" is secondary. The TA experience is very important to get up to speed on teaching, and, in unhappy cases, to discover early on that one hasn't the taste for it, if that is so. (I had one PhD student who discovered this unhappy fact in his own case, so he did not take the academic route.) Part of what one should try to learn is that \"teaching is not a burden\"... !!! ... to say the least. :)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34487,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm going to focus on the third question: \"Is it normal for math departments to disregard students' research interests in favor of mandatory coursework?\"</p>\n\n<p>In comparison with PhD programs in many other fields, PhD programs in mathematics in the US typically have quite a bit of required coursework and often include preliminary/qualifying exams that cover a very broad range of topics. In my experience, graduate students working in other STEM disciplines typically have fewer required courses to take. Thus the answer to your question is \"Yes, this is quite common.\" </p>\n\n<p>For example, as a graduate student I took required courses in abstract algebra, real and complex analysis, functional analysis, and topology, even though my dissertation was in computational optimization.</p>\n\n<p>It's traditionally felt that mathematics PhD's should have a broad background in mathematics so that they can easily teach undergraduate courses in almost any area of mathematics. The required coursework helps to develop this breadth. </p>\n\n<p>Keep in mind that the academic job market for PhD's in mathematics in the US is very different from the job market for PhD's in other STEM disciplines. Most PhD's in mathematics will end up working in teaching positions at community colleges and regional comprehensive 4 year colleges rather than in research oriented positions at universities. Having a broad background in mathematics (and experience as a TA) is helpful preparation for teaching oriented positions. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34551,
"author": "Ben Webster",
"author_id": 13,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While I think some of your questions point to genuine weaknesses in math departments (a lack of an internship pipeline, for example), a lot of them reflect a really unrealistic idea of what \"cooperation\" means. Your DGS, chair, etc. have met a lot of 1st/2nd year graduate students, and thus they know that very few of them are ready to do serious research, and in fact very few of them really know what that would mean. It wouldn't be looking after your interests to leave you to do research on your own, with no way of checking that you aren't just wasting your time. 1st year classes exist to cover basic material that any mathematician should know. If you know the material, it would have been reasonable to skip them (and usually departments will give students flexibility to do this), but as I say below, if they are taking up all your time, that gives the lie to your suggestion that you were already ready to do research. </p>\n\n<p><em>How common is it for math students to be supported by external funding (e.g. NSF GRFP) rather than a TAship?</em></p>\n\n<p>Rare, outside the very top schools.</p>\n\n<p><em>How common is it for math students to do internships in industry to gain practical experience?</em></p>\n\n<p>Rare in my experience in pure math departments.</p>\n\n<p><em>How common is it for math students to do outreach or volunteer work during graduate school?</em></p>\n\n<p>More common. I've known lots of people who taught (for example) in prisons as volunteers, or worked with K-12 students. Depends a lot on what's available.</p>\n\n<p><em>Does a math department generally provide support and guidance to students when it comes to finding and applying for fellowships and internships?</em> </p>\n\n<p>For fellowships, they should but the reality is more mixed. In my experience, the problem is more that students aren't willing to go through the application process, so faculty have been burned a few too many times to be proactive about it. It might require a little initiative to get help with this.</p>\n\n<p><em>Is it a common attitude that it is the student's responsibility, if he wants those things, to undertake all steps of this process by himself?</em></p>\n\n<p>Yes. Graduate students are adults, and responsible for themselves. It might happen that someone in the department is looking for graduate students for an opportunity like this, but at the end of the day, it is up to you.</p>\n\n<p><em>Is it normal for math departments to disregard students' research interests in favor of mandatory coursework?</em></p>\n\n<p>This is pretty insulting: obviously the department requires the coursework because they believe it is in the students' interests. Of course, it's hard to have a system that fits everyone, but very few students could be successful in grad school in math without taking a couple of years of classes (again, with the possible exception of the best schools).</p>\n\n<p><em>For example, because all of my time is tied up in the 1st/2nd year courses and exams, I have been unable to do any research for the last two years, despite being very prepared and capable on my first day. (I published during undergrad and was chasing several promising ideas when I arrived.)</em> </p>\n\n<p>If you were very prepared and capable, then your first year classes should have been easy, and you should have had plenty of time. If they were hard enough to take up all your time, you didn't know the material.</p>\n\n<p><em>When I asked to be allowed time to do research instead of taking classes, I was rudely shut down.</em></p>\n\n<p>I can't comment on whether it was rude or not, but I can't say it was a surprise that this approach did not work. Since you haven't mentioned a research advisor, I'm going to assume you don't have one. Very few students would be capable of doing this, and I have trouble imagining that your undergrad publications were so strong and independent that the department should have had faith that you were one of them. </p>\n\n<p><em>How often do mathematics departments get together in social or community events, such as departmental happy hours?</em></p>\n\n<p>Depends. Departmental happy hours aren't a strong tradition, but department teas are, and usually departments have a department-wide social event like a picnic or holiday party every semester or so.</p>\n\n<p><em>How is networking different in mathematics? Do professors generally have connections in industry or prominent members of their field, or is that a rare thing?</em></p>\n\n<p>Rarely in industry, usually with prominent members of their field, but this depends a lot on the definition of \"prominent\" and \"field.\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34460",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1070/"
] |
34,464 |
<p>I'm applying for tenure track jobs this year, and unfortunately the silence from universities I've applied to has been almost deafening so far. While I'm sure there are several factors contributing to this, one concern that has been nagging me comes from the fact that I am currently finishing up a postdoc in England, and I've been applying to North American institutions exclusively. My questions are:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Would the potentially high cost of flying me to an interview lead to some institutions passing me over?</p>
<p>If so, would it help if I offer in the cover letter to (at least partially) pay my way?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am concerned because I feel that by far my best chances are for positions at smaller liberal arts schools or state colleges. My guess is that these types of institutions may have smaller search budgets than so-called R1 universities, and really for the cost of interviewing me they could interview two or three equally qualified people who live nearby.</p>
<p>At the risk of making this question too localized, I should mention that I am working under a very generous grant with a substantial research expense budget, and so the cost wouldn't necessarily be out of my own pocket, assuming I can give a research talk at the interview.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34465,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Would the potentially high cost of flying me to an interview lead to some institutions passing me over?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I believe many universities, especially smaller universities, will balk at flying overseas candidates in for interviews. Often they will move down their short lists and only if they are unable to find a suitable candidate that is higher than you on the list, will they be willing to fly you in. This isn't a huge disadvantage, but it is a disadvantage. In my experience candidates often hurt themselves during interviews and rarely perform so well they substantially move up in the rankings.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If so, would it help if I offer in the cover letter to (at least partially) pay my way?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I would not offer to pay for an interview directly. This would in essence be calling out the search committee for being cheap. A better strategy would be to mention in your cover letter that you will happen to be in the States, possibly even states/cities near by, on a couple of dates and you would be happy to extend your trip and come to them for a visit. It would be nice if you have an academic pretence for those visits (conference, seminar, or visiting colleagues), but even saying you will be in the States for personal reasons is fine. If you do not get an interview, you do not have to go to the States.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34489,
"author": "JenB",
"author_id": 26776,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26776",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have done lots of international interviews before with skype - it is quite common for university staff. I don't believe cost is a factor or that offering to contribute would help at all. They will set up a skype interview if they are interested in you.</p>\n\n<p>A better suggestion might be to use your research budget to go to some US based conferences and present your work and meet some people. Perhaps stay an extra couple of days at each end. You might also arrange a research visit, where you go to a few relevant institutions to talk about collaborating on some project. That way you have the opportunity to make a good impression with some US based research groups, which is much more likely to land you an interview when they recognise your name among the applicants.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34464",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8633/"
] |
34,471 |
<p>Although I am primarily interested in studying pure math, for certain personal reasons, I had to ask such a question. What I fear now is the mismatch that'll be noticed between my Personal Statement, where I intend to write about my interests in pure math and this query which clearly exhibits the fact that I have as yet not made up my mind. Even if I re-do my personal statement to reflect an interest in applied math instead of pure math, the fact that I wasn't sure at this terminal stage of the application process might go against me. Is there any way to rectify my mistake?</p>
<p>For reference, this question is with regards to a university in the UK.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34501,
"author": "Des",
"author_id": 26783,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26783",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It will not go against you. I shows that you have an enquiring mind and are willing to change your mind as new opportunities open. To continue in a subject that is not right for you will be a really bad experience for you and may end up in failure - that's not good for you, or the institution. Go ahead and ask the question, but frame it as a positive decision, rather than a negative one.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34503,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Assuming your personal reasons are sound, a polite conversation cannot hurt you. Explain your reasons, and keep an open attitude. It is very common for people to change sub-fields (and fields) after their PhD, or even postdocs, so it will not strike as an big oddity.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if it is possible or not, depends mainly on where does your funding come from; and if the university regulations allow it. This will be brought up in the conversation.</p>\n\n<p>If your reasons for studying applied maths are your desire to clone green dogs, well, it will look bad.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34515,
"author": "mako",
"author_id": 5962,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Although I am primarily speaking from my experience in the US, my experience is that nobody will hold you to what you have written in your personal statement during your application. It is not a contract. You'll be lucky if anybody even remembers!</p>\n\n<p>The point of the personal statement is (a) to show that you can think and write clearly about your research and preparation and (b) to ensure that your interests overlap with available resources in the department including both funding and faculty.</p>\n\n<p>If you want to switch to something that the department (or individually faculty member admitting/funding you) can advise and support you in doing, people will likely not have a problem. If you want to switch to something that the people admitting you cannot supervise you effectively on, the problem is much more serious that you \"looking bad\" because you will either be supervised poorly or working on something you do not love.</p>\n\n<p>If you heart lies in an area other than one you suggested in your personal statement, you should raise the issue before you say \"yes\" to a program so that you don't end up in a program that is poorly suited to supporting you in following your interests.</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34471",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26760/"
] |
34,481 |
<p>After reading <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/264/what-is-the-typical-time-period-after-which-an-incoming-grad-student-is-expected">this question</a>, I am curious as to the publication expectations for part-time students. I am a Mlitt Student (working full-time and studying part-time) and am in the process of switching from my (uncompleted) masters programme to a PhD programme. My own personal feeling is that if it is expected that a full time student publish before they get their PhD then the same should be applied for a part-time one. It may take me longer to do a PhD but should the same expectations to publish not be there? </p>
<p>As I'm in the process of changing to the PhD I'm not sure yet if there is a requirement to publish to gain it, which of course may make the decision anyway. I am aware as per the answers in the linked question that this can vary between different institutions and disciplines. I am in the Humanities. </p>
<p>I am mainly asking in the context that in my Mlitt it was expected that I write my research thesis and possibly present at a conference, but there appeared to be no real pressure to publish an article etc. If this is something that will change, I'll have to factor it into my work-plan.</p>
<p><strong>Edit(additional info):</strong> When I originally posted this question I attempted to keep it a generic as possible so didn't include info from my own case. I think this example shows where there can be slight differences between what can be expected from a full-time and part-time student. In my university full-time students have to do a blended PhD(about 20% coursework, 80% Thesis) whereas due to working 9-5(or more) I'll be doing a traditional PhD of Thesis only (an option not allowed to full time students). Personally I don't think this should have major impact on expectations on students to publish but does highlight that as a part-time student I shall be getting(hopefully!) my PhD by way of a different process to full-time student so there may be different expectations. </p>
<p>The easy answer is 'Ask your supervisor' and I will but it would be great if someone was either a part-time PhD student or supervised one etc, could give some insight on if there is an expectation in academia that a part-time PhD student publish?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 34482,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The expectation to publish does not depend on whether you are full-time, half-time or spare-time student, it is based on the general expectations on students in your field, department, or academic culture, or some combination. If a PhD thesis is a monograph then the main focus will be to complete such a thesis. this commonly does not preclude publishing as well. If you need to write a thesis that consists of published papers and manuscripts then that is what you need to do. </p>\n\n<p>I doubt the advisor is the key player here although that person will be representative of what you can expect from your graduate school education in terms of expectations on your writing. So check what is written in the form of PhD these and you will know. Communicating your results will inevitably be required so some form of written result will be on the horizon.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 34492,
"author": "Ben Voigt",
"author_id": 8705,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8705",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While it (usually) isn't a deal breaker to not publish, failure to do so will hurt you in one way or another.</p>\n\n<p>During my defense last week, one of the committee members suggested that the work wasn't significant, and commented on lack of peer-reviewed publications. That didn't prove that the work wasn't significant, but having a journal publication in hand makes fielding a question about significance as easy as quoting from a review report, while having none means that you will have to provide justification in oral arguments.</p>\n\n<p>(Context: part-time PhD in Electrical and Systems Engineering, now \"all but deposit\")</p>\n"
}
] |
2014/12/18
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34481",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12454/"
] |
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