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37,544 |
<p>I've had my IQ measured on multiple tests over the past several decades. The first time was in middle school and it was measured at 120. I guarantee you that I didn't care about the result when I took that test as a kid. I probably wanted to get it over with. Much later in life, and consistent with another time later in life, my IQ was measured at 138. I am a believer that these measurements can vary with motivation, health, alertness, sleep deprivation, and other psychophysiological factors.</p>
<p>Based on my measured IQ range of 120-138, I'd like to see an answer to the following questions:</p>
<p>What is the probability that I could complete a PhD in Mathematics or Physics? What is the probability that I could contribute at least slightly significantly to either of those fields over the long term as a PhD?</p>
<p>One of my "best" qualities is that I'm very tenacious regarding problem-solving. I might not get there the quickest, but I don't give up until I do or the pursuit begins to interfere with other aspects of life. People might accuse me of being physically lazy, but there's no way they can accuse me of being problem-solving lazy. I'm the kind of person who will hire a home maintenance technician as a last resort only because I don't have the tools. I'm pretty frugal.</p>
<p>I feel pretty inferior to many of the people who have posted comments on StackExchange.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37545,
"author": "keshlam",
"author_id": 10225,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10225",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>IQ is only part of the question. Determination, wisdom(how you apply your intelligence), and other factors also enter into it. You don't have to be a genius to do good PhD work. Remember, 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration... and a bit of good luck never hurts.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37547,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>IQ is a terrible test for anything but certain types of pattern matching and to aid in educational intervention, and <a href=\"https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200910/intelligent-testing\">its limitations are well understood by actual psychological practitioners</a>. There are correlations, but the correlations are pretty loose. With all those caveats, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Real-life_accomplishments\">according to Wikipedia, you are totally in a reasonable range to get a Ph.D.</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37551,
"author": "Florian D'Souza",
"author_id": 26958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26958",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As others have said, IQ isn't the best predictor of academic success. The IQ test is criticized for focusing on a quite narrow band of intellectual skills. Traits like creativity, collegiality, and tenacity are just as important as one's \"intelligence,\" as measured by the IQ test. </p>\n\n<p>Since you asked specifically about math/physics, one of the better examples would be Richard Feynman, who was a Putnam fellow while at MIT and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Many sources have claimed that Feynman self-reported his IQ as a \"merely respectable\" 125. So, while Feynman did have a relatively high IQ, his accomplishments in math/physics cannot be ascribed to his IQ alone.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37554,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Others have given the right answer several times over, but there are still some nuances that I would like to hit. </p>\n\n<p>Most importantly I would say: IQ tests are neither administered by the post K-12 academic community nor used for them by any purpose.</p>\n\n<p>They are -- sometimes, anyway -- given to children to identify them as being eligible (or not) for certain \"Mentally Gifted\" programs. In this way, I took an IQ test when I was seven years old. I did it because my best friend had taken one and got to spend one day a week in a special \"MG\" classroom. I walked by the classroom one day and -- well, this was a while ago, but the way I remember it, I saw a big room which did not have individual student desks and a bunch of kids milling about in it. I knew it was the MG room because my friend was there. Some other kids placed a crown made of brown construction paper on his head, and he was grinning from ear to ear. So I asked my parents to arrange for me to take the test, took it, and some of my other friends followed suit and got to spend one day a week with a special MG teacher doing much more fun stuff. Sometimes it was on the brainy side: I remember learning about prime numbers there, for instance. But there was also a bit of what I would identify now as a Montessori-style emphasis on manipulating and building things. I did this in the second through the fourth grades, then I went to a different middle school with no such program, and then when I went to my high school those same test results allowed me to take a few special \"MG\" courses, including creative writing. (Looking back on this it all seems a bit unfair.) They also kept our test records in a big file cabinet in the \"MG room\" (as before, a fun place to hang out), and one day when everyone else was gone, I decided to sneak a peek. I remember being a bit disappointed at my score: I think it was in the 130's, just like the OP. </p>\n\n<p>Once someone is a college or university student, I see no point whatsoever in taking IQ tests: rather famously, the academy administers plenty of tests of its own, which we largely do believe determine students' potential and suitability for future study. Should you get a PhD in math or physics? Who cares what your IQ is: assuming you went to a partway reputable institution, what matters is how you did in your coursework there. Wondering how you'll measure up against other ambitious aspiring mathematicians? Take the math subject GRE. This is not telling you everything -- and certainly, whatever it's telling you should be calibrated against your prior training and education -- but it's telling you a lot more than an IQ test, and whether you believe that or not, many graduate admissions committees do. </p>\n\n<p>I feel like a few of the other answers are assuming that IQ is measuring how \"academically smart\" you are. I really don't think that's the case at the tail end of the spectrum that you're talking about. I mentioned my IQ above: it's in the top 2%, I guess. (Allow me to omit the ritual reading of the CV, but:) My academic intelligence is considerably higher than my IQ test would indicate. By this I don't mean to imply that the IQ test \"got me wrong\" or anything like that: my spatial reasoning skills are average at best; I have never completed a crossword puzzle in my life; I am only moderately quick at solving the kind of logical puzzles that appear on the LSAT. But I have a big vocabulary and can read and write quickly and well; my memory becomes much sharper and clearer on anything academic than, say, political or financial matters; and I can learn and do mathematics quickly and easily (relatively speaking, of course: if the <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0cvqT1tAE\">famous plastic philospher</a> had <em>actually</em> said \"math is hard\", she would still have gotten in trouble but she would not have been wrong). </p>\n\n<p>So I want to be honest and say that I do believe in academic intelligence -- though I heartily agree that it is not everything, and again in a certain tail end of the spectrum it ceases to be very important -- but I just don't think it's the same as having a \"high IQ\". I think that the probability of academic success of anyone with an IQ of, say, 125 or above does not depend on their IQ in a meaningful way. It's really one of the last things you should be thinking about in making a career decision of this kind.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37556,
"author": "Trevor Wilson",
"author_id": 8937,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8937",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think that variations in IQ (at least on the higher end of the scale, where the OP is) would have very little relevance to the ability to earn a PhD.</p>\n\n<p>First, IQ tests measure one's ability to answer questions that the test writer already knows the answers to. A PhD measures one's ability to answer questions that <em>nobody</em> knows the answers to yet. So nobody (not even the people who write these tests, whoever they are) is qualified to write an IQ-like-test that would simulate earning a PhD.</p>\n\n<p>Second, IQ tests take a matter of minutes or hours whereas earning a PhD takes years. The ability to think quickly is important for an IQ test but less so for a PhD. On the other hand, perseverance is important for a PhD but less so for an IQ test.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 73232,
"author": "Oani00",
"author_id": 58509,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/58509",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Haven't read all the other answers but what I can say is that your IQ score doesen't exactly predict nothing. It could estimate your maximum level of academic achievement as it has correlations, CORRELATIONS, no relations of causation to academic achievement.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>One of my \"best\" qualities is that I'm very tenacious regarding\n problem-solving. I might not get there the quickest, but I don't give\n up until I do or the pursuit begins to interfere with other aspects of\n life. People might accuse me of being physically lazy, but there's no\n way they can accuse me of being problem-solving lazy. I'm the kind of\n person who will hire a home maintenance technician as a last resort\n only because I don't have the tools. I'm pretty frugal.</p>\n \n <p>I feel pretty inferior to many of the people who have posted comments\n on StackExchange.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This may be more important than a score to predict anything. IQ, the number, alone can mean nothing. Say someone has an IQ of 160, next day is hit by a car and dies, had 5 years. Isn't the next Einstein. Life is extremelly complicated to a \"factor\" of \"sucess\" determine anything. Intelligence is a complicated subject, your IQ maybe have helped to got you where you are now, but your house, your city, the world economy, a lot of factors too.</p>\n\n<p><em>Dawn P. Flanagan, Patti L. Harrison-Contemporary \nIntellectual Assessment_ Theories, Tests, and Issues-The \nGuilford Press (2012)</em></p>\n\n<p><em>Malcolm Gladwell \nOutliers: The Story of Success \nLittle, Brown and Company on November 18, 2008.</em></p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/25
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37544",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985/"
] |
37,559 |
<p>After a series of unethical incidents that affected me directly in my previous academic institution, I managed to move to a higher ranked department in my field about seven years ago. I am now in the hiring committee in my current institution and one of the candidates who is being considered is from my former institution.</p>
<p>There are two unethical practices that the candidate performed that I am aware of. One is that he managed to squeeze in as a third author on a finished paper and he thus made no contribution. I did most of the work for the paper and the paper was finished when my co-author added this person's name and submitted it. The second incident is that the candidate has announced in the past how he has changed his research results before submission to please the editor of a top journal in my field. He did this in the early years of his career. There are others in my former institution who know about it but they find this to be no big deal.</p>
<p>I am considering doing one of the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>Discuss this with my current dept. </li>
<li>Keep quiet and stay in the committee. </li>
<li>Keep quiet but step down from the committee</li>
</ol>
<p>For your information, I am a foreigner whose work is appreciated by everyone. However, I feel that I will not get much support if I open up. I had tried this in my previous institution and I realized that only a couple of people supported me. What should I do?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37564,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you're on the hiring committee, then your job is to evaluate the candidates. I see no need to back away from that (and by the way, I can't see what your being a \"foreigner\" could possibly have to do with any of this).</p>\n\n<p>One has to exercise some restraint in repeating \"hearsay\" in official matters: unless you can find evidence about the changed research, I would hesitate to bring it up because it's hard for everyone else to independently evaluate. On the other hand, if you are a coauthor of a paper with the candidate in question, then your colleagues should be very interested to hear your take on that. I think you should certainly describe the candidate's contributions -- or lack thereof -- honestly to your colleagues. I might avoid putting the banner of \"unethical behavior\" on it: the ethics of it are really for your colleagues to evaluate as well, right? In general I think that in these kinds of matters it is more collegial and also more convincing to provide information which is factual rather than subjective or purely evaluative.</p>\n\n<p>There is also the issue of why you, as the first author of a paper, allowed a coauthor whom you feel did absolutely nothing. Isn't that at least arguably unethical behavior on your part? I think it's better not to open that can of worms, but rather say that in fact the candidate's contribution to the joint work was minimal and that you do not feel like he should get much credit for it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37565,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you make an accusation about any individual(s) you must have proof. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people get accused of things without proof. I myself have been accused of things I haven't committed. It's unethical to accuse without proof. Also, I personally believe the proof must be complete and infallible. Accusing someone of falsifying data is one of the most serious accusations that can be made in academia.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if you yourself are certain about the person's guilt beyond any doubt in your own mind, then I believe you are well within your right to step down. You can explain to the others that you are ethically compelled to step down. If your \"bosses\" demand an explanation, then you can tell them that although you don't have proof about something committed by someone, you are personally 100% certain it took place. That way, if the unethical person gets hired, you will be blameless for that decision.</p>\n\n<p>If you say you are stepping down for ethical reasons, I think it will generate great curiosity among your colleagues. They may demand an explanation. It seems to me that saying anything without proof that prevents a person from getting hired is legally risky.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37568,
"author": "BrenBarn",
"author_id": 9041,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9041",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If committee members had to step down just because they knew something about a job candidate, no one would ever get hired (or at least no one good). My impression from serving on a hiring committee is that prior knowledge of the person's professional/research activities is a good thing, since it allows you to make a more informed decision about their merits. It would be appropriate to step down (or refrain from discussion of this candidate) if you had <em>non</em>-academic dealings with this person that might color your judgement (e.g., a romantic relationship, a business venture, a childhood friendship). Of course, you should clearly differentiate between evidence-based facts about the person and your own opinions of them, but I don't think it's wrong to mention your opinions to the committee.</p>\n\n<p>That said, the two examples of \"unethical behavior\" you give seem quite different to me. Getting a third-author credit on a paper without doing much work doesn't seem like much of an ethical breach to me, unless the means by which this was achieved were themselves unethical (e.g., bribes or threats).</p>\n\n<p>I'm not sure what you mean by \"changed his research results\", but if you mean \"falsified his data\", then that sounds seriously unethical. If you have evidence that the candidate has done this, you should definitely share that with the committee. If you don't have direct evidence, but you've heard the candidate himself admit to it, that's worth sharing too. If you've just heard secondhand rumors where other colleagues suggested the candidate had done this, that could be mentioned, but you should make it clear that you're only reporting about how the person is perceived by their colleagues, not anything you know for certain they actually did.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37576,
"author": "DDDDD",
"author_id": 28431,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28431",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The first question I would put is:\n1. He is smart/competent enough for this position?\n2. Is he a hardworker who will contribute?</p>\n\n<p>Come on man, everybody makes mistakes. Just get over it and make sure it does not happen in the future.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37653,
"author": "pratik_m",
"author_id": 24382,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24382",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The failure to act against an unethical act is a breach of ethics in itself.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>If you have any evidence to suggest that he falsified the results, DO NOT step down. You will have failed your duty as an academician. You must report the facts. Whether or not he is chosen by the committee after that is a collective decision. It would definitely be wrong to deprive them of this very relevant information.</li>\n<li>If you disapprove of the way he nudged into your paper at the last\nminute, you must try to objectively decide if your disapproval is a\nresult of your own prejudice. If you find that hard, you could\nconsider consulting your co-author and seek to clarify the issue. If\nhe fails this test, you are obligated to report this too. (Although,\ntry not to colour it with your perspective. Cold, hard facts only.)</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I disagree with an answer here that suggests you need 'infallible' proof. If you have reason to believe there is something wrong, you must share that intuition. It is what separates a hiring committee from an automatic resume-ranking tool. Be sure to separate the facts from your personal judgement. If you must err, do it on the side of caution. (Inform the committee, but let them know you aren't confident) </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/25
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37559",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28420/"
] |
37,571 |
<p>I would like to apply for a Master degree.
I'm looking for a major that study both Computer and Maths.
Can anyone tell me what such major are?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37588,
"author": "DCTLib",
"author_id": 7390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As an example, the University of Oxford (UK) as an <a href=\"http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-mathematics-and-foundations-computer-science\" rel=\"nofollow\">MSc program in Mathematics and the Foundations of Computer Science</a>, which not only has courses in computer science and mathematics, but in particular also offers courses on the interplay between these areas.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37597,
"author": "Alexander Gruber",
"author_id": 4545,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4545",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you like applied, Computational Mathematics could be a good option. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37599,
"author": "bdeonovic",
"author_id": 14040,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14040",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Many scientific fields nowadays rely heavily on computation (physics, statistics, biology, etc). You could go into any of these with a computational focus in mind (develop new computational methodology, algorithms, improve speed/performance of existing algorithms). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37612,
"author": "Ken",
"author_id": 28428,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28428",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm not sure what your prior experience/work is, but if you have a little experience in Computer Science, another option is Cryptography. </p>\n\n<p>Though it's usually not an explicit major, one typically studies it through a given Mathematics program, and if you concentrate on the applied side of things (i.e., writing actual algorithms and performing time/space analyses of them), you'll be deep enough in the weeds to be forced to learn more Computer Science along the way.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/26
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37571",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
37,585 |
<p>I need to download the following PhD Thesis:</p>
<p>"LH Jensen - Large deviations of the asymmetric simple exclusion process in one dimension"</p>
<p>However <a href="http://search.proquest.com/docview/304606557">this</a> website forces me to pay for it. I think it is possible to download the thesis from the Columbia Library (<a href="http://clio.columbia.edu/quicksearch?q=Large%20deviations%20of%20the%20asymmetric%20simple%20exclusion%20process%20in%20one%20dimension&commit=Search">link</a>), but as I am a PhD student based in the UK, I don't have access to it.</p>
<p>So how can I access an American PhD thesis?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37591,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are a number of ways of accessing American PhD theses. Many, possibly most, US PhD theses are are archived at <a href=\"http://www.proquest.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">ProQuest</a> (cf. this <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28693/is-proquest-a-reputable-company\">question</a> for more about them). In some cases there may be an embargo period before which the thesis will not be available. Some universities have subscriptions to ProQuest allowing you to download the theses from them for free. If your university does not have a subscription, you can purchase the thesis directly from them.</p>\n\n<p>Most US universities have archival copies of all recent theses in their libraries. If you search the library catalogue (as you did in the question), you may find a link that allows you to download the thesis for free (or a fee). If not, it should provide enough information to allow you to make an inter-library loan (ILL) request.</p>\n\n<p>If for some reason you are unable to buy the thesis from a place like ProQuest and you library cannot arrange for an ILL, you can also ask someone at a university with a less inept/cheap library to download, or make an ILL request, for the thesis. Note, however, that this may not be legally allowed by the licensing agreements. Finally, note that the main site of AC.SE is not the place to make such a request, but you could try in the chatroom.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37592,
"author": "just-learning",
"author_id": 10483,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10483",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In general, one could also just write a polite e-mail to the author of the thesis requesting the file (and making it clear that you need it for your research). Unfortunately, in this particular case I was not able to find the author's e-mail by googling. </p>\n\n<p>As a truly very last resort one could try to contact the thesis advisor (which in this particular case can be found through <a href=\"http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=46312\">this link</a>) and <strong>very politely</strong> ask whether he could either pass your request to his/her former student or even provide you with the file of the thesis.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37618,
"author": "A E",
"author_id": 23260,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23260",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You could use ProQuest for free at the British Library.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Obtaining theses in the Reading Rooms: North American theses</p>\n<p><strong>ProQuest Dissertations & Theses</strong> is available online on the electronic\nresources terminals in Humanities - Floors 1 and 2.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/theses/hrrtheses/theses.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/theses/hrrtheses/theses.html</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37619,
"author": "Jukka Suomela",
"author_id": 351,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/351",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The same way you can access almost any other publication that does not seem to be available online: <strong>ask your local university library</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>Interlibrary loan works very well, also internationally. Most likely you can get fairly quickly photocopies or scans of the thesis. You do not need to locate a copy of the thesis yourself; you do not need to browse any library catalogs or anything of that sort. Just tell your own library what you want, and they will do everything for you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37654,
"author": "Andrew",
"author_id": 27825,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27825",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree entirely with Jukka. Your institution pays librarians to do this for you, go give them something to do ;-)</p>\n\n<p>(Plus, theses are interesting and librarians like a challenge. I much prefer getting a request for a thesis, or something like a pre-revolutionary Russian publication, than for an article in a recent journal...)</p>\n\n<p>So as to add something useful to this comment rather than just \"+1, me too\", here's a worked example of how the librarian will try and find your thesis, assuming they don't have ProQuest:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Google it. You'd be amazed. I've had people shyly ask for something deeply obscure which they assumed was near-impossible, and then discover in two minutes that the author put it online years ago. </p></li>\n<li><p>Nail down the author, date, and institution - and correct the title if needed, as a surprisingly high proportion of thesis requests have the title garbled. (Why this is more common than for journals is an interesting question). Then double-check our own catalogue in case <em>we</em> have a print copy. You never know. [For a British work, I'd now try the EThOS service, but that's UK only]</p></li>\n<li><p>The original institution's repository. New York University has a repository (archive.nyu.edu) - these are always worth checking, as they're not always indexed well enough to be picked up by step 1. 2000 is a little early to make it into the repository, but you never know. Sadly, we draw a blank in this case - it's not quite clear if the repository covers theses at all.</p></li>\n<li><p>Nearby libraries. Occasionally, copies of theses get acquired by other institutions, and these can usually be borrowed without too much trouble. In this case, COPAC reports no copies in the major UK libraries, and a separate check confirms there isn't one at the BL.</p></li>\n<li><p>The original institution's library. Checking the catalogue, they have both microfilm and print copies, as well as a link to Proquest (very helpful). Digging around on their website, they do accept ILL requests from overseas, and (praise be!) they will loan bound dissertations (see <a href=\"http://library.nyu.edu/services/lending.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://library.nyu.edu/services/lending.html</a>). They also hint they'll do copies but don't go into detail. Some institutions are exceptionally generous and will scan entire theses on request without charging; others will charge a standard fee but we have an ILL budget for just this reason.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Copy found, and if we're lucky it could be in the post by the end of the day...</p>\n\n<p>[Steps 6 onwards would be various forms of \"look for the author\", but not needed here]</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 68575,
"author": "Sara",
"author_id": 44158,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/44158",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Just to ad there is also \"Search NDLTD\" <a href=\"http://search.ndltd.org/index.php\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://search.ndltd.org/index.php</a> which is the nearest thing to a global PhDthesis/dissertations index. Sadly not comprehensive and this one, again, draws a blank.\nTip: encourage your own library to get their theses indexed in Google and/or added to Search NDLTD.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/26
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37585",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21270/"
] |
37,606 |
<p>With the academic job situation so tight and uncertain, I am thinking of jobs outside academia (after a PhD in Computer Science). There are plenty of programming jobs that require an undergrad or even no degree. I tried some of them and they are so routine and so narrow that one gets frustrated easily. They also involve 8-5, M-F drudgery.
Can anyone suggest better alternatives. How do companies advertise for research positions? I haven't seen many ads for those. BTW, I live in Southeast of US and due to family reasons can not relocate far.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37607,
"author": "mkennedy",
"author_id": 5711,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5711",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you're finding boring (to you) jobs, you're not looking in the right places. Off the top of my head I thought of SAS, which is located in North Carolina. One possibility is to look for companies that were spun off from university research. </p>\n\n<p>Ask your professors--where did other master's and PhD graduates end up, if they didn't go into academia? Talk to the career center. Even though they may be focused on undergraduates, they may have some ideas.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37610,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is a large and active demand for computer science Ph.D. holds outside of academia. Some of the main classes of positions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Contract R&D organizations like <a href=\"http://www.ihmc.us/\">IHMC</a> (near you in Florida) or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBN_Technologies\">my own employer</a>, work a lot like soft-money academia.</li>\n<li>Government laboratories are much the same, though the money works differently.</li>\n<li>Government agencies need Ph.D.-level people to help manage their R&D portfolios, either directly as program managers or via private-sector contractors like <a href=\"http://www.boozallen.com/\">Booz-Allen</a>.</li>\n<li>Giant companies like Lockheed-Martin, Pfizer, or Ford have high-tech or internal R&D sections that do Ph.D.-level computer science work.</li>\n<li>Near any major tech university, you will find lots of startup companies and consulting firms and other odd niches.</li>\n<li>Finance companies and hedge funds will offer you lots of money in exchange for your immortal soul.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>These are just a few of the more typical routes: the research ecosystem in the US is actually very complex and has a lot of strange niches; I don't have solid numbers, but I suspect the outside-of-academia R&D world is actually much larger than traditional academia, and that's even before we start counting non-R&D positions like hedge funds.</p>\n\n<p>Some of these sorts of jobs, you can find via ordinary online job listings. You'll likely do a lot better, though, if you reach out through your professional network and research community. Your advisor and other faculty are one good place to start: they'll likely have former students and other colleagues to put you in touch with outside of academia. Another good step is to go to the big conferences in your area, especially those with a more applied flavor, and look for the industry people there. You'll likely find quite a number of good opportunities, especially if you are a US citizen.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37614,
"author": "Phil",
"author_id": 19988,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19988",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have found LinkedIn to be pretty good at recommending jobs for me, both with its own algorithms and with the occasional 'inmail' from a recruiter. Sometimes it's enough to make me wrestle with leaving academia, for the reasons you cite in the question.</p>\n\n<p>Make sure you use it to its full potential by (signing up!), updating your profile and making it look amazing, following companies, joining groups, connecting with people you know, and connecting with tech recruiters.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/26
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37606",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26986/"
] |
37,620 |
<p>After sending a faculty application online, should the applicant send an email to check if all documents were received and whether the application is complete or not? Some suggest to send an email, while others suggest not to, since sending unnecessary email to the committee could raise a flag.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37621,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think it's okay. Just make sure you are emailing someone who knows where to get the information you seek. Otherwise, it may \"get buried\" and disregarded.</p>\n\n<p>Email is an accepted and efficient method of communication and should not offend somebody's sense of etiquette. If I were the one receiving your email, I wouldn't be offended in any way unless you were bugging me frequently.</p>\n\n<p>Just a couple months ago, I received an email request from a friend to be a reference for him. I thought nothing of it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37622,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Assuming that you submitted your application to the human resources office of the university, then it would be appropriate to check with them to make sure that the application was received and was considered to be complete. I would not send a query to faculty members of the search committee (if you could even figure out which faculty were on the search committee.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38795,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Try to find out the staff person who is responsible for helping the search committee. Usually this is the person who you addressed the initial file to (our senior admin here is used to getting e-mails addressed to Prof. Lastname, it tickles her sense of humor).</p>\n\n<p>The staffer usually has the best sense of where things are in process. All of the files are at his or her fingertips, whereas a member of the search committee may not be able to recall all of the first-round cuts and the search committee chair may be too overworked or stressed to respond. If your file was incomplete, the search comm members may not have even seen it.</p>\n\n<p>Annoying the staffer has little influence on your file, so that person is the safest person to bother with questions like this.(FN1)</p>\n\n<p>FN1: I won't say it is entirely risk free. If you are truly obnoxious to our staff, then the faculty may view this is as a sign of your future collegiality. So act within reason and professional behavior. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/26
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37620",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24823/"
] |
37,627 |
<p>Assume there are 3-5 teaching universities near each other. What would be a good answer for an interview question : why you want to teach at this teaching university? </p>
<p>To me I see no difference and it does not matter which teaching university to work at.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37628,
"author": "Austin Henley",
"author_id": 746,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/746",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I can see many things to factor in when choosing among several similar schools. Disclaimer: I am only a student.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>What about the atmosphere?</li>\n<li>What impression did you get after speaking to the other faculty? Do they seem enthusiastic and make you want to work with them?</li>\n<li>What about the campus/building you might possibly be at for the next 20+ years?</li>\n<li>Did you get a chance to talk to students?</li>\n<li>Do most students live on campus or do they commute? (From personal experience, this makes a big difference in student involvement!)</li>\n<li>Department size?</li>\n<li>Class size?</li>\n<li>What courses will you be expected to teach?</li>\n<li>Which has better food?</li>\n<li>What non-teaching requirements/opportunities will you have? </li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37669,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Let me elaborate on xLeitix's comment. Applicants sometimes feel anxious about interview questions with hidden meaning or context. The stereotypical example is \"What would you say is your greatest weakness?\", which is not a request to confess something awkward or damaging. Instead it's a test of social competence, of whether the applicant can offer a smooth, natural response that sounds like it is addressing the question and avoids disclosing anything problematic without sounding arrogant either. These sorts of questions are less common in academic interviews, so you can usually assume a question means more or less what it says.</p>\n\n<p>In particular, this question is trying to gauge how well you would fit into the university and department. Teaching universities can be really diverse in how they function, which students they serve, or what they consider their mission. They are looking for someone who will participate enthusiastically and help make the department a better place, not just someone who is willing to teach there (or, worse yet, will feel bitter or resentful about not having found their dream job).</p>\n\n<p>The worst case answer is \"Gee, I don't know. You have students, and I can teach. What's not to like?\" That basically amounts to announcing that even you don't think you're a particularly good fit. Your comments sound uncomfortably close to this, like you really don't care or see any relevant differences between these schools. If that's the case, then you need to spend some time looking into them online or asking your friends or colleagues. Unless you've applied to an extraordinarily narrow range of universities, I can't really believe they are indistinguishable. And if they are, then you must have targeted this type of school intentionally, so you just need to explain why.</p>\n\n<p>Austin Henley's answer provides a nice list of criteria you could keep in mind, and there are also big-picture issues. Are these schools public or private? How do they present themselves to the world? Is there anything distinctive about their history, such as a religious or social mission (former or current)? Is there any special focus, such as technical or liberal arts education? What sort of student body do they serve?</p>\n\n<p>There are no right or wrong answers here: one person might prefer to teach diverse and economically downtrodden students, while another might be excited about working with exceptionally well-prepared students from the elite. What's important is that your answer should reflect some genuine resonance between you and the school. If it sounds like you are saying something generic or canned, then it won't really help your case, but anything insightful or heartfelt could help.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37627",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24823/"
] |
37,630 |
<p>The first slide which follows the title page of my presentation is the overview slide. It has the title for each section to follow in the talk (thank you Latex!).</p>
<p>My question is how much time is to be spent on the Overview slide, given the talk lasts twenty minutes? Should I talk about each section's one-line-synopsis to let the audience mull it over? If the answer is no, how do I transition smoothly from the Paper Title Slide to the one on Motivation for the talk (For example : Why I love Science?).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37631,
"author": "Orion",
"author_id": 19732,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19732",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I often skip the overview slide in short talks. Instead, after giving motivation I simply say what the talk it is about: This talk will introduce you to Nutella, analyze its deliciousness, and compare it to peanut butter. Finally, we will talk about Nutella extensions - chunky Nutella, with chopped hazelnut.</p>\n\n<p>In general, the overview slide allows the listeners to pace themselves, and understand where in the presentation you are. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37632,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think the overview slide is the most important slide in the talk.</p>\n\n<p>I like to use my overview slide to encapsulate the whole talk in a single diagram. A heuristic that I find holds true is that in a good <1 hour talk, you can say <em>one</em> idea: that idea might have a lot of different elements and side points as part of its explanation, but it all really anchors down to one core statement if you want the talk to hang together tightly. And that's what's on my overview slide.</p>\n\n<p>You can tell it to the audience straight, too. I like to say, \"Here's my talk, summarized in a single slide\" and then explain the ideas. It's also good to give people the \"punchline\" of your talk right up front too, and then promise that by the end of the talk they'll understand how it works / why it matters / whatever.</p>\n\n<p>One important further thought: I <strong>strongly</strong> recommend that your overview slide be very diagram/image-driven. Have people listen to your words, rather than read them, and a diagram will stick with their minds much better.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edited to add</strong> Per request, some examples of visual overview slides from talks that I have recently given:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/4OIMD.jpg\" alt=\"Aggregate programming overview talk\"></p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/dQFha.jpg\" alt=\"BioCompiler talk\"></p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fh7wH.jpg\" alt=\"Fast consensus algorithm talk\"></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37658,
"author": "Frank",
"author_id": 13421,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13421",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It depends on what you mean by \"Overview\" slide. If it's an opener slide that introduces and communicates the core idea(s) to the audience, this is likely the most essential part of a talk; this is where you have to engage your listeners, it should motivate your whole talk.</p>\n\n<p>If, however, the \"Overview\" slide is basically just a bunch of headlines (\"Table of Contents\"), I would consider this slide a waste of everybody's time. Instead of boring the hell out of your audience reciting headlines, your narrative should be easy to follow without ever presenting a ToC (in German, I would refer to that minding your \"roter Faden\"; I guess it's called \"Golden Thread\" in English?).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37680,
"author": "Joe",
"author_id": 12346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12346",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A good overview slide is part of a road map that allows the audience to know where they are in the presentation. The overview itself provides the initial road map, and then as you get to major sections, you should have signpost slides that indicate where in the road map you are.</p>\n\n<p>This helps the audience in a number of ways. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It gives them a good idea for what to look for in your presentation, particularly if they are only interested in part of it. </li>\n<li>It helps them understand the relevance of the earlier slides. This is particularly important if you have some earlier section that may not seem directly related to your point but is necessary to understand it; but even without that, the signpost slides combined with the overview can help put the different pieces together.</li>\n<li>It provides some structure, similar to how bulletpoints in this list make it more readable; with no signposts or road map it is like freeform text with no paragraphs.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Without that overview slide, the audience has to spend some effort figuring out how to put all of those bits together. Do the work for them, give them a road map, and let them spend their effort understanding your important points instead!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37683,
"author": "WoJ",
"author_id": 15446,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15446",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I never use \"overview\" or \"agenda\" slides. </p>\n\n<p>They basically show what you will be talking about, which you will repeat afterwards anyway.</p>\n\n<p>When you read a book, do you expect to have an overview of what will be happening? Or a movie? Or at a concerto would the pianist stand up and say <em>\"I will be playing the piano and the guy over here the trumpet\"</em>?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37692,
"author": "Wrzlprmft",
"author_id": 7734,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7734",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This may somewhat depend on the field and maybe I am a bit biased, but I have not seen a single overview slide (following the title) that was not a total waste of time so far. <a href=\"//eloquentscience.com/2011/02/is-your-outline-slide-really-needed/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Eloquent Science</a> agrees with me.</p>\n\n<p>Essentially, there are two flavours of useless overview slides:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>The overview slide and what the speaker says alongside it tell me that the talk has a more or less standard structure. To give an extreme example:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>First, I will give an overview; then I will present my methods; then I will present my results; finally, I will draw my conclusions and give an outlook.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Nothing of the above helps anybody to follow the talk better or in any other way, as they already expect something along the lines of this to happen. If there are deviations in the detail, this is nothing they need to know at this point of your talk. Even, if your talk has some very unorthodox structure, e.g., if you start with the results and then have the methods follow, you can mention this when you start describing the results and do not need an overview slide for this.</p></li>\n<li><p>The overview slide and the speaker tell me something about the actual content, such as</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I first introduce the problem of banana transmogrification. Then I explain our latest progress on flux compensators. Finally, we will report on our results on transmogrifying bananas with flux compensators.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The problem here is that most people attending the talk know next to nothing about flux compensators or banana transmogrification and thus will have forgotten that flux compensators are going to appear in this talk halfway through your first slide on bananas. Sure, there will be one or two people in the room who read your recent paper on apple transmogrifications with flux compensators, but those are not the people who need your didactic attention – they would probably even understand the talk if you went through the slides backwards.</p>\n\n<p>This does not mean that you shouldn’t explain that the reason why you are talking about flux compensators is that you want to use them for banana transmogrification, but that’s something you should do when you transition from banana transmogrification to flux compensators. In general, you have to remind the audience again and again why you are doing things, explain connections to what you have said before and guide them through your talk with this, but that’s something that happens during the talk, not in the beginning.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>As already said, this may be somewhat field-dependent. So, you are probably best advised to think about what you are going to present on this overview slide and take the point of view of the audience to consider whether it really needs and understands this information at this point of the talk and is not better said later in a more fitting context.</p>\n\n<p>Also, there are a few occasions where some general sort of overview slide can be a good idea. For example:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>In a long talk that is separated into several large and seemingly unrelated chapters, you might give a brief overview <em>after</em> the introduction to the general topic.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you address several aspects of something that are at first separate. For example, a colleague of mine once gave a talk where he “took a tour through the parameter space” of a system and regularly showed an overview diagram of the parameter space like a tour map, indicating what places were already visited and what came next.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If the answer is no, how do I transition smoothly from the Paper Title Slide to the one on Motivation for the talk (For example : Why I love Science?).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>How would the transition from an overview slide to a motivation be more smooth than from a title slide to a motivation?</p>\n\n<p>That being said, I do not think that this transition needs to be smooth at all. The transition from whatever happened before you started talking to you talking is very unsmooth already, and thus it won’t be any worse if you dive straight into the big important reason why you are doing what you do.</p>\n\n<p>However, often something relevant to your motivation appears in your title and you can build a transition on this. For example:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>As you probably guessed already, I spent some time on transmogrifying bananas and you probably wondered why anybody would want to transmogrify fruit in the first place.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(I intentionally ignored your example topic, as in this case the whole talk would be a motivation.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 81791,
"author": "hugke729",
"author_id": 47973,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/47973",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><a href=\"https://brushingupscience.wordpress.com/2016/01/06/skip-the-outline-slide-use-a-sidebar/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Including a sidebar</a> is a far better option than using an outline slide (see example below). As noted in other answers, the audience already knows the order your talk will follow. A sidebar, however, is useful in that it gives the audience an indication of how far through your talk you are. (If I had a dollar for every time I wondered how much longer a talk would go for…)</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/8IDxO.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/8IDxO.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a> </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37630",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26638/"
] |
37,634 |
<p>I am not a fan of heavy/text-infested slides and hope my audience also second my opinion. I did resort to the healthy image-text ratio in most of the slides and am relying on my speaking skills during my <strong>first</strong> presentation! In this context, how should he/she adapt himself to suit the interest of audience,dynamically? If I realize that a couple of sides have turned out to be cumbersome or "boring"**, how should I seamlessly switch over to the next section and regain the lost interest.</p>
<p>**boring = Many example slides are available as follows :</p>
<ol>
<li>Example 1 :Slide which talks about the approach of simulation, when actually results of the simulation are the "meat" of the talk. </li>
<li>Example 2(The first few slides of the talk)
<ul>
<li>Hypothetical Talk : Thumbdrives have changed the world, Jan 2003</li>
<li>Motivation Slide, 1 : End of the road for Floppy Disks(3 Bullets) </li>
<li>Motivation Slide, 2 : The Storage Roadmap(Image), the arise of the
PenDrive(3 Bullets) </li>
<li>The News Slide, 3 : Ascend,ManDisk and Watergate 3 News Clippings + 3 Images </li>
<li>The Cool Feature, 4 : Pendrives = 1K X Floppy Disks, they are Reusable CDs </li>
<li>Paper Starts , 5 : How I used the cool features efficiently to build something
even cooler?</li>
</ul></li>
</ol>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37638,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In your talk, every slide tells a story. That story can be as short or as long as you want. Just like the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37630/what-is-the-significance-of-the-overview-slide-in-a-presentation\">overview slide</a> tells the story of the whole talk in a single slide, each section of the talk and even each individual slide can be presented at multiple levels of resolution.\nFamiliarize yourself with the story you want to tell at these multiple different levels of resolution, and you can change the pacing to match the interest level of the audience. </p>\n\n<p>For example, let's say you've got a slide explaining the details of how you performed a simulation. You might present this same slide at three radically different levels of detail:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>High detail: explain each of the parameters and why you chose it</li>\n<li>Low detail: \"To study this in simulation, we selected these parameters. The important choices here are ...\" [explain the critical choices]</li>\n<li>Minimalist: \"We studied this in simulation using these parameters, and ...\" [move on to following results slide]</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If you are concerned that you are boring your audience, you can shift to a lower detail presentation without actually disrupting your narrative.\nThis is also a good technique for managing your time, to ensure that you don't go over-time or badly under-time, and can help you customize your material for different audiences.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37641,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can adapt the order of your talk, putting the boring details towards the end. So, you briefly state your simulation, show the cool results (and why should we care about your simulation at all), and then, once you have hopefully convinced your audience that what you did was meritful and worth paying attention to, explain the details of the choice of parameters.</p>\n\n<p>Another advantage of this approach is that you can keep more people engaged for longer. The moment you start talking about the details of the parameters you will loose most of the people non expert on the topic, and you are unlikely to get them back in time to hear your results.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37634",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26638/"
] |
37,643 |
<p>I started working on my PhD few months ago and I am trying to solve a problem in a particular topic. The topic is quite specific and many people have already worked on it before. I am stuck at the following two scenarios: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>I would like to extend the topic in some particular direction which I think is interesting and new. How will I know if people have already worked on that 'new extended topic'? I google hoping to find something, but I don't. I read some review papers (but most of them are old) and they don't cover any. Also, I think it is very difficult to read <em>all</em> recent papers <em>related</em> to the topic of research in a hope to land on my specific topic.</p></li>
<li><p>I would like to solve an existing specific topic in a new way, which may be quite simple, but looks efficient. But, I have the feeling that people should have already solved the problem in 'my new way'. How will I find if that has been done? I use google again and land up in quite interesting papers but it still do not solve my problem.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>How do you tackle the above situations? I think one way is to do a very extensive literature review of the topic, but how will you achieve that? Review papers? Reading 'all' papers in that topic? I tried to do that right at the beginning, but I realized I can not and should not know <em>everything</em>, but should have a very rough overview of the topic and in depth knowledge in my way of solving the problem. </p>
<p>Edit: My research is in the topic of Computer Vision, in the field of Computer Science. My very specific topic is the topic of marker-less augmented reality.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37645,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, finding 'a state of the art' of a research area will take some time! You can do the following while searching for papers:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Quantity Check</strong>: Who did publish more papers/journals for the last 5 years in your field. This is a little tricky, because if your field is more on the theoretical side, then you might even need to go back and check the last 20 to 50 years.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Quality Check</strong>: Who did publish more high rank journals. This is pretty strait forward, from the list you made in the first step, check what journals they published, and the ranking of each journals. This step, will definitely give you a clear idea, who is doing the real contribution in your field.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Other factors</strong>: There are other common sense factors, you can check on them. For example, who is more involved in the conferences in your field; or who has more of an active research group.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37647,
"author": "Patricia Shanahan",
"author_id": 10220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Among the papers you have found, there will be some that most papers in your research direction would reference, such as foundation papers that define the sub-field and its terminology. Look for recent papers that reference them. Pick out the ones closest to your proposed direction. </p>\n\n<p>Recent doctoral dissertations in your general area can be particularly useful. One of their purposes is to convince the committee that the student is familiar with existing research in the area. They typically have a substantial \"related work\" section that is, in effect, a small survey paper.</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, select the journals or conferences to which you might submit your papers. Your supervisor should be able to give guidance on selecting journals and conferences. Examine their tables of contents for the last few years, looking for papers related to your direction.</p>\n\n<p>You now have some recent papers that are at least a little bit related to your research direction. Read them, and look at papers they reference, always trying to move in a direction closer to your ideas.</p>\n\n<p>If your field is one with commercial implications, you should also attempt a patent search. However, this is very difficult because patents often use different terminology and seem to me to be designed to be unreadable. It will be a little easier if you use the paper trail to get the names of people working in the area.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37661,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What I find most critical: <strong>figure out the nomenclature.</strong> Look for articles about your research question in your own words and create a list of keywords that are frequently used. There is usually no consensus, so you will end up with synonyms. </p>\n\n<p>Once you know the words used by the community in your field to describe the concepts and problems, literature searches get a lot easier. My usual approach is to use a large database of publications (in my field Medline is good, I guess your field has its equivalent) and look for the few keywords I listed. Now, don't read all articles of course, do a selection based on the title first, then on the abstract. There is <em>a lot</em> of redundancy in published papers so you will be able to weed out a majority of the papers at this point.</p>\n\n<p>In some fields, senior researchers sometimes write <strong>review articles</strong> that list the 'open problems' in the field. Even if they don't give such a list, good review papers give an overview of the state of the art and are a great source of secondary citations.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, discuss the matter with your colleagues and adviser, <strong>read prominent blogs</strong> and if possible <strong>go to (a) good conference(s)</strong>. Conferences are great to grasp what others do and don't, and they help to make sure you don't reinvent the wheel. </p>\n\n<p>Finally, I think you shouldn't worry too much at this point, here are a few words form my answer to this question <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/27472/10643\">Is there any research on the prevalence of academic theft?</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The chances that your idea is absolutely original is close to zero. Concepts, ideas and theories are almost always due to an\n intellectual environment in which many researchers are present. Even\n theories traditionally attributed to a single individual [...] were the result of\n inputs from several individuals over several years.</p>\n \n <p>The chances that your state of research, access to resources and previous intellectual work is similar for someone else is very small.\n Research breakthrough are a result of the right coincidence of\n opportunity, resources and intellectual maturity.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37678,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, note that proving a negative is often practically impossible. This includes proving that noone had your idea before. </p>\n\n<p>If you find something, then you prositively know that someone else had the idea already. If you do not find anything, there are several possibilities:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>you're really the first one. </li>\n<li>You didn't do your homework properly. </li>\n<li><p>It has been done & published, but under some name that you did not find. </p>\n\n<p>I've made this experience (actually more than once): e.g. thought about a problem, eventually solved it. \nKnowing the solution lead me to further search terms which in the end lead to literature in a not too closely related field (remote sensing vs. spectroscopic tumor recognition) but even retrospectively, I wouldn't associate the remote sensing name of the method with my description of problem and solution: some key term of the remote sensing nomenclature is used already with (several!) different meanings in my field.</p>\n\n<p>You may be lucky and find the \"unknown\" search term mentioned in an introduction section of an article you find via \"your\" terminology. But I've experienced it twice that came across the \"unknown\" term by accident - hadn't found a paper giving the link, and even after asking around on conferences for several years whether someone knows (of) a solution for ...</p></li>\n<li><p>It may be that the key terms are not really suitable for searching. </p>\n\n<p>One part of this is the already mentioned overlap in terminology. For the example above, we now have a 4th meaning of \"soft\" in chemometrics...<br>\nOr, while the precise search terms do not yield results, widening the search may lead to impractically large numbers of papers to wade through (see below). </p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Point 1 obviously is what you hope for, while point 2 is what you fear. Points 3 and 4 I'd say come under the general risks of research life: shit happens, and IMHO it is an illusion to think it possible to prove the absence of a particular idea in the scientific literature. </p>\n\n<p>So I'd recommend to document that the negative results are not due to your negligence. This may be slightly unusual, but e.g. I told my supervisor that I did not find any previous work for something (report the search terms you tried), but that I'm not absolutely sure it was not done as it was not feasible to read through the details of the >80000 pubmed records that list the \"parent\" method just to ensure that noone has done what I did before under a totally different name and that I gave up after >100 abstracts hadn't yielded anything.<br>\nI'd guess that it is good to have numbers if you follow this line of argument.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>For the literature search, if your reviews are old, do not forget to check which articles cite these reviews.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 48847,
"author": "Medical Humanities",
"author_id": 37254,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/37254",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>have you consulted with the reference librarian at your university library? this person can most effectively help you in finding the appropriate data bases to search and assist you in formulating the proper search query (ies). Google is NOT the answer.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37643",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28491/"
] |
37,648 |
<p>I received help with some aspects of my PhD thesis from a tutor (proofreading and graphics). Of the help I received, some mathematical notation they provided made it into my thesis. </p>
<p>However, I did not acknowledge the tutor in the PhD thesis for this help (since received). </p>
<p>Is there anything I could (or should) do to rectify this? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37649,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You might be able to edit the acknowledgement section of the electronic version of you thesis. Contact the university library yourself or through the postgraduate student service. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37650,
"author": "JRN",
"author_id": 64,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/64",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If ever the thesis is published elsewhere, say as a paper in a journal or a conference, or perhaps as a technical report, include the name of the person there.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37668,
"author": "gerrit",
"author_id": 1033,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's probably not a huge deal. Not many people read theses and probably even fewer scan the acknowledgements. In the worst case you might figuratively have stepped on the persons toes. I would send them an e-mail or perhaps a postcard with apologies for forgetting to mention them. That probably suffices — their career is not going to depend on you mentioning them in the acknowledgements.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37648",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28499/"
] |
37,660 |
<p>My paper is successfully accepted in a very prestigious and reputable conference, to be presented orally in one of the presentation sessions. This is my first time that I am going to give such a talk in a large academic conference. My previous experiences are my presentations for my class projects and my bachelor's and master's thesis presentations. In my previous talks, I had reviewed my presentation slides more than five or six times before the presentation and had a bottle of water beside my laptop, but still I was too nervous.</p>
<p>I am a little nervous about giving a presentation talk in front of a large number of students and professors. I am sure that in the day of the presentation, I will be in trouble and my hands will start shaking and my voice will be vibrating when I am going to talk, because of my stress.</p>
<p>How should I decrease my stress on the day of my paper presentation and better control my nervousness in my presentation? My research paper is perfectly done; I don't want my nervousness ruin my first academic presentation in a conference and the huge research my co-authors and I have done in the research paper.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37662,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Remember that the main key players at this conference, liked your idea and accepted your paper. So you are welcome there.</p>\n<p>Here what I did and worked for me:</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>First know your slides very well (material, flow, etc.)</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Second, one or two weeks before the conference give the same talk to the research group your supervisor is supervising.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Third, give the same talk to your close friends.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Fourth, the day before the talk give the talk to yourself. Also, make sure you sleep enough hours.</p>\n<p>Basically lots of repetition of the same talk.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Fifth, go to the conference, set up your machine earlier if possible, bring your laptop charger, a backup USB, and also email the slides to yourself (for the worst case).</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37663,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I don't want my nervousness ruin my first academic presentation in a conference and the huge research my co-authors and I have done in the research paper.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You being nervous will <em>not</em> ruin your research. Everybody knows that PhD students (or professors!) are often nervous when speaking at big conferences. No sane person will look at you being nervous, and hence deduct that your research has to be somehow faulty. Of course, everybody wants to be perceived \"cool\" in research talks, and it is certainly easier to do a great conference presentation when one is not too nervous (a little bit of tension helps, though). However, you should never forget that <em>very</em> little actual damage is being done if the audience sees that you are a bit nervous.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How should I decrease my stress on the day of my paper presentation and better control my nervousness in my presentation?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The best remedy for being nervous are (1) knowing your material / presentation really well, and (2) having a lot of practice (not just for this specific presentation, but of presentations in general). You do not sound like you are very experienced giving talks, so some amount of nervousness is not troublesome at all. Prepare your talk early and do at least 2 to 3 test talks in your department, until you have convinced yourself that your talk is good.</p>\n\n<p>You'll probably still be a bit nervous on the big day, but don't be too hard on yourself - a bit shaky hands are not going to be any problem.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37664,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Despite having given more talks than I can remember, I still get quite nervous, with the nervousness exponentially rising as I come to the last moments before the talk. I find that, past a certain point, intensive studying and recitation actually make things worse for me. Once I feel generally comfortable with the material, it's better to take my mind off of things, so that I don't focus on the bad.</p>\n\n<p>So I crack jokes and make conversation.</p>\n\n<p>There's always a little setup period, while you're making sure that your slides are showing right, etc. During that period, I chat with the audience, saying nothing much of consequence, but just getting myself warmed up. That way, when I'm ready to start the talk, I'm already feeling conversational and my nervousness has broken.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edited to add:</strong> One more benefit of \"warming up the audience\" is that some people may start smiling at you. When I give a talk, I let myself notice the people who are smiling or nodding along. There's nothing that relaxes me faster than somebody in the audience who is smiling at what I'm saying.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37665,
"author": "user3209815",
"author_id": 14133,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my experience it is always the hardest just before the beginning (e.g. when the person before you is about to finish their talk, or when you are walking up, or are just about to introduce yourself), however, once I start talking I usually loosen up considerably and by the end of it, I realize that it is really no big deal. Therefore, I pay the most attention to the details of the introductory few sentences of the presentation. Once that is down, the rest flows naturally. So, my advice is:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><em>before the talk:</em> be clear how to start your talk, practice it, so that the nervousness doesn't hinder you. </p>\n\n<p><em>at the talk:</em> Take a deep breath, focus on your voice (in order not to squeal, stutter, shout, etc.), introduce yourself and your work in a few sentences.</p></li>\n<li><p><em>before the talk:</em> summarize what you are going to talk about and in what order, and here I don't mean learn the whole 15min talk by heart, but a few (I find usually 3-5 enough) guidelines of at most a sentence long defining the most important parts of your work. The most important thing here is that you can develop a narration to connect those guidelines. Here are the slides also of great help.</p>\n\n<p><em>at the talk:</em> focus on delivering the audience a relaxed version of the paper. You know what you are going to say (the guidelines), just connect them with a story.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>This approach deals very good with my nervousness, to the point at which I no longer practice my talks. I make a mental concept of the most important points while preparing the slides and focus on the introduction. Essentially, I just needed a way to overcome the initial anxiousness and start talking, after all, it is my work which I enjoy and love to talk to others about, in that sense a large audience is not that different.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37673,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When I was still new to presenting, I used various theatrical warmup exercises to get ready for big events. The ones that worked best for me were:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Breathing exercises. Controlling my breath focused my attention away from my nervousness.</li>\n<li>Clenching and unclenching my fist together with breathing control. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>You can find other exercises if you do some google searches for \"theatre warmup exercises\" or for \"public speaking nervousness\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37682,
"author": "Simd",
"author_id": 37765,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/37765",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I recommend: practice, practice and practice again. Practice giving the whole talk so many times that you could do it off by heart. It's hard to be both bored and nervous :)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37684,
"author": "Phil",
"author_id": 19988,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19988",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Well done for getting your paper accepted! I don't think I can add much advice about the talk itself that hasn't already been offered. A few other things I always do:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Visit the room beforehand so that I don't get lost and can visualize the presentation.</li>\n<li>Read the instructions on A/V very carefully. If the presentation system is managed, go to the preview room and make sure that my slides look right. </li>\n<li>Attend the entire session in which my talk is placed.</li>\n<li>Introduce myself to the session chair when I arrive.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I once did a whole conference presentation with my left leg vibrating wildly - it hasn't happened before or since - and nobody seemed to notice!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37693,
"author": "afaust",
"author_id": 21371,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21371",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Practice! I used to be very nervous, not so much anymore. </p>\n\n<p>I remember preparing for my first conference talk, and it was nerve-wracking. I rehearsed the poor talk to death. The practice really paid off! The first few minutes were overwhelming - you are trying to grasp the audience, microphone, screen, and everything at the same time. The words were just unconsciously flying out of my mouth during these first few minutes while I was grasping the situation. The talk was good.</p>\n\n<p>Now, I am not so nervous, but I still memorize the opening. It helps me start smoothly until I get into steady pace. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37694,
"author": "Jon Custer",
"author_id": 15477,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15477",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As others have mentioned, practice will help. If you are really really nervous with public speaking, there may be a Toastmasters group nearby and they are there to help.<br>\nBut, to give you a personal anecdote. My first big presentation was as an undergraduate at the APS March meeting. This was back in the dark ages of hand-written vugraphs and an actual, wooden, pointer. I barely heard the session chair introduce me, placed my title vugraph on the overhead projector, picked up the stick, and turned to point with it at my title as I introduced myself.<br>\nWell, the pointer went flying out of my sweaty hands, fortunately landing in the corner of the room instead of impaling someone in the front row. At that point, and I still remember this clearly, the thought went through my head that, well, the worst that could happen had just actually happened. Nobody laughed, the earth did not open up to swallow me, and I walked over to the corner, picked up the pointer, and calmly went through my talk.\nAfter giving many talks and lectures, I now think it is a lot of fun to be up and talking about stuff that really interests me. So, practice your talk, realize that everyone can and will get nervous at times, but also remember that it will be just fine in the end. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37705,
"author": "NeuroticallyHelpful",
"author_id": 28541,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28541",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Fun fact: you can trick your body out of a flight-or-flight response by sucking on a mint or hard candy or chewing on some gum. When you're nervous like you are when you're about to give a presentation, your sympathetic nervous system is kicking in--that is, you're basically having a fight-or-flight response. If your body thinks you're eating, it kills the response. It kind of figures, \"If I'm eating, there's clearly no real danger; if I'm fleeing a saber-toothed tiger, I'm not going to be munching mammoth jerky while doing it.\" Chewing gum or sucking on hard candies or mints tricks your body into thinking you're eating, thus your body figures there is no danger and no need to pump you with adrenaline.</p>\n\n<p>Fun little trick I use all the time. Doing so also supposedly increases your mental clarity/concentration...at least according to all my teachers in high school who used to give us hard candies before tests.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37717,
"author": "Anniepoo",
"author_id": 11527,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11527",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There's a ton of material online for how to prepare a presentation. </p>\n\n<p>Practice your presentation just as you'll give it. Arrange your space as much like the stage as you can. I had a large TV in the room where I practiced, I'd put the presso on that so it was behind me, so I could get used to working iwth it back there adn a 'presenters view' in front of me.</p>\n\n<p>Don't read your presentation - you want to be like a stage actor delivering lines they know, not like the school principle reading a notice. But you should know exactly what you're going to say - not memorized, but 'now I'll say my uncertainty calculations were done by the XYZ method' . Going over your slides 5-6 times is not enough if you're not a practiced speaker. Actually say it, out loud, over and over until you find yourself bored to death and find yourself daydreaming while giving it to the walls over and over. </p>\n\n<p>Before a major talk I find myself giving the talk over and over when driving, cleaning house, etc. Near the time I deliver it, I'm hitting my timing marks within a few seconds.</p>\n\n<p>Then invite a couple friends (fellow grad students are ideal) to listen. </p>\n\n<p>I regularly give talks before large audiences at computer conferences, and the only solution to being scared is to be so thoroughly prepared that there's nothing to be scared of.</p>\n\n<p>I have a couple little rituals. One is that I contact the organizer and find out if they'll introduce me or whatever, cause I hate that little awkwardness at the start of gthe talk. </p>\n\n<p>The other is that I mentally say 'I love you, you're wonderful, you'll give a great talk' to myself right before I speak. It's incredibly doofy feeling, but does work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37731,
"author": "user28576",
"author_id": 28576,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28576",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Well, you are going to hold a talk before a large audience first time. So you are going to be nervous. Accept it.</p>\n\n<p>If you feel like you are going to make your talk incoherent, you can tell the audience in advance \"well, I am not yet used to giving talks, so if you feel that any links are missing, feel free to ask\".</p>\n\n<p>Note that if this is your first talk, you'll likely be bad at estimating how much time you need for what. Holding a talk in your living room will help to give a good estimate, but particularly if you allow the audience to interrupt, you should substructure your talk into more and less important subissues and put a timeline next to them.</p>\n\n<p>If you see yourself falling behind, you skip less important stuff or details: the important thing is that the spine of the talk gets delivered. Obviously, you want to do that kind of prioritization in advance since you don't have all that much organizing capacity available at talk time. Particularly if you are going to be nervous.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37748,
"author": "dr mat",
"author_id": 20755,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20755",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Agree completely with David Rose - would add a few thngs, though.</p>\n\n<p>I'm myself extremely nervous when speaking in public, even a presentation to my close collegues at work gives me sleepless nights.</p>\n\n<p>But - once the talk starts and You are allowed to concentrate on the speech the nervousness generally subsides. Just remember to talk slowly as one tends to speak fast when nervous (to get over with it, I presume) and that makes it hard to follow as a listener, which makes some people increase non-verbal (or even distracting verbal) signs of disattention which in the speaker leads to more nervousness - a vicious circle. </p>\n\n<p>Slow - Loud - Clear</p>\n\n<p>The presentation should not distract from the speech but underline it - no sentences in the slides, but keywors You use in the speech. One keyword every one or every two sentences. And try not to let it sound like print, better to construct the sentences around the keywords naturally, maybe even changing the sentences a bit every time You rehearse - the flexibility You gain will help You not to get stuck when You don't remeber the exact sentence You tried to learn by heart. Just a look at the slide and You'll remember what to say.</p>\n\n<p>Don't forget to look at the audience, not only to Your manuscript (which in my case now only contains the keywords) and finally: rehearse a lot, alone and in public (family, friends, collegues, research group).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37777,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I voted you up because I empathize with you and completely understand how you feel. I don't have an answer for you but I wanted to write this to let you know that <strong>your nerves can't possibly be worse than my nerves</strong>. I thought that simply saying this to you might help you. Also, there's at least one great stage actor who suffered from it.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Capua, Michelangelo. Yul Brynner. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2006. (<a href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=mAllHF9-7ZYC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=yul+brynner+stage+fright&source=bl&ots=GaiAqo9MQp&sig=ZqS4M0biBgaxacZrjMQ43Zif4RQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d4PJVMzgNbWAsQSEqIDwCA&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=yul%20brynner%20stage%20fright&f=false\" rel=\"nofollow\">Link</a>)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I simply can't present to large groups of unknowns. I've never been to a psychologist, but I'm certain I'd be diagnosed with \"Glossophobia\". When you get to my level and you would prefer death to giving the presentation, you are in a world of hurt. Nausea, cold sweats, the shakes...all the norm for me. It has literally prevented my achieving optimum success in life. I have been living with it for about 35 years.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 58640,
"author": "aparente001",
"author_id": 32436,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32436",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a musician, I've had a lot of experience with nerves. One thing I didn't see mentioned here is that getting nervous has an up-side. When your body gives you more adrenaline, it makes you a bit of a Superman/Wonder Woman. Without that spurt of adrenaline, the music or the talk is not as compelling.</p>\n\n<p>Slowing your breathing (like in yoga) is helpful. But you need to practice a little bit every day. Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your tummy. When you take your breath in, feel your whole torso fill up like a balloon. Make sure your shoulders remain relaxed and low as you breathe in. Count the seconds as you are breathing out, and try to make each successive exhalation last longer than the one before.</p>\n\n<p>If you find that your fingertips or your face start to tingle, that means you have hyperventilated, and you should inhale from and exhale into a small paper bag a few times. This will keep you doing the slow deep breathing that will relax you, but you won't be taking in too much oxygen.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37660",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15723/"
] |
37,666 |
<p>I have applied to 4 PhD applications in Computer Science and I have sent an introduction email to a professor in each of the schools I have applied to. In this email I first introduced myself and then mentioned one of their papers I'm interested in, and at the end asked them for any time they can give me to meet them in person and talk to them about my future plans. </p>
<p>But, I just heard from one professor and the rest have not replied my email after two weeks. How could I write an email to remind them about my old email I sent them? </p>
<p>I googled and did not find a concise answer. Any help is appreciated.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37667,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, most academics are busy people who do need to research on the top of the all the other duties they have at the university. So, some academics do reply late or even don't reply if their answer is no. Therefore, here for you it is important to get their attention and have an answer from them (either yes or no) before you send more emails/reminders with the possibility of no response. </p>\n\n<p>The best bet to get the attention of a busy academic is send an email to the secretary of the research group, the academic is working for. In the email tell the secretary what is the best way of communicating with the academic, as you sent him/her an email and he/she did not reply to you.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37700,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Generally speaking, I would recommend that you don't. </p>\n\n<p>I think it is perfectly fine to send such an e-mail in the first place, but you should remember that these professors don't owe you a response. Admissions (at least in the US, in mathematics -- I would guess CS is the same) are typically handled by a committee, and many professors might prefer to wait until the committee has decided whom to admit before trying to recruit prospective graduate students.</p>\n\n<p>However, you might send similar e-mails to other professors in the same departments. At least in my field, it is a good idea to study at a department where there are several professors with whom you would interact scientifically.</p>\n\n<p>In the fall, such e-mails are more likely to get a response, since professors are trying to encourage strong students to apply. As it is now, since you have applied already, I would recommend waiting for an official response and following up if you are accepted.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37707,
"author": "Corvus",
"author_id": 27900,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27900",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>As a busy professor myself, I personally appreciate getting a reminder email. I fully intend to reply to every email I get from a prospective student, even if only to say \"Sorry, your research interests do not seem to be a good match for the work we are doing in my group.\" But in practice, life gets busy. I'm traveling. Or I'm booked solid with meetings and so I don't have time to immediate answer the 50 or so daily emails requiring responses. And so some emails fall through the cracks. Thus I appreciate receiving a single reminder email. Such emails help me do something I <em>want</em> to do: namely, be the kind of person who gives every serious inquiry the courtesy of a response. (A second reminder email is not necessary. If I haven't replied the first two times, there is likely a reason.) </p>\n\n<p>As for what to write, anything short and sweet and non-accusatory should be fine. Personally, I prefer the polite fiction that perhaps I did not receive the original email. You know it's not true, I know you know it's not true, but in phrasing your note this way we agree to mutually overlook these facts. I'd suggest something very simple, such as the following.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Dear Prof. X, </p>\n \n <p>I wrote you a letter a few weeks ago, but given the uncertainties of\n email I do not know whether you received it. Thus I am resending my\n note just in case. </p>\n \n <p>With my best regards, Joe</p>\n \n <p>[and then append the earlier letter here]</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37666",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28513/"
] |
37,670 |
<p>I got an email from professor M asking me if I will have time for a tea with her on Friday, and then I came up with this question:</p>
<p>Even if it is an important email from your professor (e.g. select your thesis or advisor), when you need some time to think before you make the final decision, how fast should a student reply to the a professor's email before the student is considered a lazy student, or a student who tries to slack off in studies?</p>
<p>If I write the reply to my professor's email after 3 days, will she get angry or even unfriend me?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37672,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is more business etiquette than anything else, but you should try to respond to your superiors within 1 business day -- even if it is something such as \"Thank you for the invitation, I need to check with my schedule/partner to see if this is a possibility. I'll write back later in the week to let you know.\"</p>\n\n<p>Responding quickly is clearly best practice, but there's a great deal of latitude depending on your relationships with your advisor (casual vs. formal); your advisor's own expectations of you (lateral vs. hierarchical); the criticality of the request; department culture; and so forth.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37674,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There isn't really anything special about academia in this regard. If someone sends you an email that needs a response, it is always courteous to respond as quickly as you are able. It doesn't matter if it's to a professor or a student or a friend.</p>\n\n<p><em>Anyone</em> might get annoyed with you if you take a long time to respond to an email to which they need a quick response - not just professors! But there's no magic number - you can't say that 71 hours is fine but 73 hours is excessive. Some messages are urgent and need a quick response, others are not. If someone is expecting a quick response but you need more time to make a decision, you can certainly contact them to let them know you are considering it, and ask when they need your answer.</p>\n\n<p>As a general note: several of your recent questions seem to be written from the assumption that academia has its own special unwritten laws for everything, and if you can only find out what they are and obey them, everything will be fine. For better or for worse, that's not generally the case - there are no such objective standards. The key to successful interactions, in academia or any other job, is \"act like a decent and professional human being\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37675,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>An addendum to other answers: prompt response is always good... <em>even</em> if you don't immediately know the answer to a question, it is helpful to all parties to send a quick email <em>saying</em> exactly that. In the case at hand, perhaps \"Thanks for the invitation, I'll check the details of my schedule and get back to you as soon as I can. Sincerely, ...\"</p>\n\n<p>I would think that the same could apply for research or educational issues: in effect acknowledge the communique, and indicate as best you can how soon the other party could expect a definitive response.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37752,
"author": "dr mat",
"author_id": 20755,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20755",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At the time of letters a reply took time and was generally granted.</p>\n\n<p>At the time of emails and smartphones with 24h-internet-access one can assume that the email, if not instantly, is read at least the next morning. So a reply, if no further work on the answer is required, is awaited on the spot - 24 h seems a good time-frame. Not only in academic field but in everyday life, also.</p>\n\n<p>Unless You are on holiday abroad, where internet-access is expensive. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37775,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I can only use my personal experience as a guide.</p>\n\n<p>I check my own email at least twice per day. I'm married, so any social engagements or other appointments have to be run by my wife. Getting that settled with my wife will take at most several hours. Most of the time it only takes minutes.</p>\n\n<p>Getting back in touch with someone, in most cases, should take less than 24 hours. There are rare instances when it could take more than 24 hours and then an explanation for the delay would be polite regardless of whom is making the invite.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37670",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27408/"
] |
37,676 |
<p>Many university in North America or in Europe offer fundings for masters program . But it only for those students who have a good CGPA in undergraduate examination .I have completed my bachelor degree in computer science and engineering . I have a very poor cgpa . Is there any possibility that I can get myself admitted in those institution for masters program with fundings . I have heard that a good GRE score will help a lot . Is it true ? Can I get funding if I have a good GRE score once again I repeat I have a very poor cgpa . </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37738,
"author": "Abbas Javan Jafari",
"author_id": 17459,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17459",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Before I begin to answer your question, let me elaborate that US and European universities typically do not have much funding available to students participating in a masters degree. Most funding options (in some universities all of them) are reserved for PhD students and for the universities that do offer funding for master students, it is usually awarded to a selected few. Furthermore, it is less common for European universities to offer funding (when compared to the US) but study cost in Europe can be much cheaper.</p>\n\n<p>A poor undergraduate GPA alone does not prevent you from being accepted to a masters program. One can even hope to receive full funding if he can satisfy the admission committee that he is a fully capable student and his grades do not reflect his potential for being a graduate student.</p>\n\n<p>However to be applicable for a fully funded masters program you will most likely need more than a good GRE score. Having the following can significantly increase your chances:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Good letters of recommendation from professors whom you've worked with and can vouch for you</li>\n<li>Having related research experience (preferably with published results in a peer-reviewed journal)</li>\n<li>Finding a professor (for your graduate supervisor) who has a highly matched research interest as you</li>\n<li>Having related industry work experience</li>\n<li>Preparing a compelling statement of purpose, providing convincing reasons for your poor undergraduate performance</li>\n<li>Having a high TOEFL/IELTS score (for international applicants) </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In computer science, having valuable achievements in an internationally recognizable contest like the <em>\"ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest\"</em> can tremendously boost your chances of getting accepted (and funded) at even the top schools. However, even qualifying to participate in such a contest requires a strong background in programming and algorithms.</p>\n\n<p>Final note. From my understanding, European universities are more sensitive to bad undergraduate GPAs and many have hard cut-offs which will eliminate you from the admission process without considering your application as a whole. Therefore, it is my <em>personal</em> recommendation to apply to US and Canadian universities alone as it will improve your chances and save you time and money.</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately even by having exact and complete knowledge of your GPA (which I don't), there is no way to be sure what your chances will be and parts of what is said above can be deemed opinion-based. The graduate admission process, from what I understand, is a complicated and nonlinear process with many different factors playing their part.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37741,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with the existing answer. In the US (I will restrict to that), funding is scarce for master's students under the best of circumstances, in large part because in many fields one does not need a master's degree to enroll in a PhD program, and thus master's students are often characterized by a limitation of their interest, commitment, ability and achievements relative to PhD students. </p>\n\n<p>I suppose every department must have its own philosophy on which master's students to fund. In my department (mathematics, UGA), we are likely to fund master's students we think will (in particular, can) become PhD students: in fact, in many instances the student applied for both programs and we decided to start them in the master's program to give them more time and funding overall.</p>\n\n<p>I don't know what you consider a \"very poor\" GPA to be and I'd like to. I will assume that you mean that your GPA in your major is under 3.0. In my opinion that will make it extremely difficult for you to get funding in a master's program in the US: as above, such funding is scarce and competitive, and your undergraduate performance is really not. The other answer gives a lot of things that would mitigate/amelioriate a poor GPA, but in my opinion most of these are not really enough to get you serious consideration. I think that to have a real chance at getting funding in this situation you should have (i) some <strong>exceptional</strong> research-related achievement -- in my field, a paper that you wrote on your own and got published in a reputable journal would count -- and (ii) a convincing explanation for your poor GPA.</p>\n\n<p>Let me discuss the second point. After some years of undergraduate teaching, I will cheerfully admit that student grades are not perfectly correlated to student understanding and ability: a large percentage of students are simply not committed / serious / mature enough to get the grades that their command of the material should warrant. Presumably any plausible candidate for master's funding with a poor GPA is in this situation. But there is an inherent awkwardness there: what you'd like us to believe is that you're very strong and talented and just couldn't get it together to get the coursework done as well as lots of other students who didn't want to go on to graduate study. So you haven't committed to your undergraduate studies...and now you want us to commit <strong>our money</strong> to your graduate studies. Well, there's no logical contradiction there, but it's a pretty tough sell. I would indeed concentrate on making a convincing argument for this (in your personal statement and/or cover letter).</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37676",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28519/"
] |
37,681 |
<p>I'm currently in my second year of teaching English at the secondary level, and I'm wondering if it's better to pursue a Master's in English (I have a Bachelor's in English Lit.) or Education. Is there a strong advantage to one or the other in terms of professional development for teachers? I also see myself teaching at the college level someday. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37687,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general, college-level instructors are expected to have much more in-depth knowledge of their subject areas than someone teaching at previous levels of education. Therefore, it would seem imperative to have the strongest possible degree in the field in which one wants to teach (or a closely allied field). So, in this particular case, a degree in English would be more useful than education.</p>\n\n<p>If \"secondary\" means \"high school,\" the calculus changes quite a bit, as what is expected often will vary from state to state or even school district to school district. You should see if an education degree is required, or if a lower level of proficiency (such as some form of certification) is sufficient. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37691,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Assuming you are in the U.S., a master's degree in English may qualify you to teach at a community college (but there are enough unemployed Ph.D.s in English that the competition is tough for those with only a master's degree). It would definitely not be enough for a regular faculty position at a four-year college, but it could be a step towards earning a Ph.D.</p>\n\n<p>A master's degree in education could be a valuable credential in secondary education, depending on how your school system handles it, but it counts for nothing if you'd like to teach English at the college level. (Furthermore, it doesn't qualify you to teach in a department of education, which would require a doctorate.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38700,
"author": "Jonathan Kenigson",
"author_id": 29239,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/29239",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>With regard to your professional goals, I would hazard the following:</p>\n\n<p>A master of education can offer state teacher certification, allowing one to teach in public schools and abroad. This qualification is of utmost importance to public schools but of comparatively limited importance to private or independent schools. Nearly all public schools will consider the credentials equivalent for the purpose of pay increases, so long as both masters are regionally accredited.</p>\n\n<p>In private or independent schools, a master in discipline will generally be given substantially more weight by hiring authorities than a master of education, unless the latter was earned at Harvard, Columbia, or other similarly prestigious institutions.</p>\n\n<p>Teaching at university (and increasingly at community college) will de - facto require a PhD, unless you possess truly extraordinary, publicly acclaimed research or teaching experience, or you know the hiring authorities personally and they are disposed to offer you a position typically granted to PhD recipients. </p>\n\n<p>A U.S. master in English will likely not be available by distance learning and may be extremely costly to pursue without a TA, which at programs of distinction would very likely be offered to PhD students. Certain DL options from the UK exist (I reference in particular Birmingham and Wales Trinity Saint David), but unless backed by a PhD from a leading university would be unlikely to lead to university employment in the U.S. except for adjunct or non tenured roles. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37681",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28523/"
] |
37,685 |
<p>I've created an improved textual parsing algorithm, as a part of my hobby project. In comparison to existing ones, it provides better performance and memory efficiency. I haven't published my project yet. The question is, is there any way I can convert this research to a PhD? Or anything else I can do to improve my scientific karma? (I'm not a professional scientist, just a programmer with bachelor's degree). How much bureaucracy does this involve?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37686,
"author": "enthu",
"author_id": 15723,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15723",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you think you have done some research, just show your work to a professor in your department who has similar research interest to your research project and ask him your questions about your research. That professor can tell you whether you really have done some valuable research, whether it can be published or you can work more on your research and improve it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37688,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>What you should do right now depends on the nature of the improvements that you have made:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If your new algorithm achieves its improvement due to some shift in how you represent or think about the problem, then it's probably worth publishing. You don't need to be in any special position to publish: anybody can write a paper. Look at where the competing algorithms that you outperform are published, and how they are presented and evaluated in those papers, and you've got a good template to start from.</li>\n<li>If your new algorithm is mainly an improvement because of a whole bunch of little tweaks and optimizations, or because of how you've coded it, then it's probably not worth publishing, but definitely worth sharing <em>as a software engineering artifact</em>. It may not be scientific karma, but it's definitely computer programmer karma.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Getting a Ph.D. is a whole different matter, which involves a lot more than just doing a piece of research (though that's certainly part of it). If you want to pursue a Ph.D., it will be a multi-year process with a lot more scientific contributions involved. This work that you have done, however, could definitely be helpful evidence of research ability and help you get admitted to a program.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37689,
"author": "eykanal",
"author_id": 73,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The short answer is that you may be able to, but it's unlikely.</p>\n\n<p>In more detail, performing academic research requires much more than an interesting finding. Researchers requires domain-specific expertise, familiarity with past research (both successful and unsuccessful), ability to actually perform the research at hand, knowledge of how to write, submit, edit, and respond to comments for an academic journal, among other skills.</p>\n\n<p>From your post, it appears that you may have found an interesting text parsing approach. How does that fit in to the current approaches described in academic literature? Are others doing work similar to it? Has it already been proposed? What are the pros and cons relative to other work, both past and current?</p>\n\n<p>From the perspective of a PhD thesis, you would have to not only be interested in the algorithm itself, but finding the answers to most of the questions listed above. At that point, you could see whether your algorithm may be able to lead to a thesis. If that's the case, then you'd have to go through the trouble of getting accepted to a graduate program which is host to a professor doing similar research, getting into said professor's lab, and working through related coursework, yadda yadda yadda.</p>\n\n<p>Basically, it's possible, but it would be a long haul.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37696,
"author": "Peteris",
"author_id": 10730,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10730",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<h2>Is it really novel and useful?</h2>\n\n<p>A big issue is if the contribution (algorithm in this case) is actually academically novel and useful. This is a nontrivial question to answer and requires an expert in the field or a serious review of academic literature to find out what exactly <em>is</em> the state of art for this problem.</p>\n\n<p>When people have made an improvement \"in comparison to existing ones\" then usually, sadly, it means \"in comparison to <em>widely used</em> existing ones\". The criteria that matters is \"in comparison to the best results ever published anywhere\" - for research to be publishable you'd have to reasonably claim that you already know everything that has been tried before for this problem and are comparing against the best approaches known to other academic experts in the field. </p>\n\n<p>If you haven't verified this, then it is quite likely that the same thing or something offering much better results have already been published elsewhere Common knowledge, textbooks, widely used toolkits, etc usually lag the 'bleeding edge' by years or even decades.</p>\n\n<p>If someone else has done and published this before (doesn't matter if you knew this), then it's not novel research relevant to a PhD thesis even if most people are not aware of it and are using something inferior.</p>\n\n<h2>Academic publications</h2>\n\n<p>If it is novel and useful, and you want academic credit for it, then this credit is measured in citable publications. Blog posts and public source code don't really count as that. In Computer Science, the usual venue is respectable academic conferences and publication in their proceedings (for an 'improved textual parsing algorithm' <a href=\"http://idibon.com/top-nlp-conferences-journals/\">http://idibon.com/top-nlp-conferences-journals/</a> may be relevant). Respected venues tend to be rather competive with low acceptance percentages. As an alternative, a solid academic-style paper on arxiv.org may be appropriate.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37701,
"author": "Sergii Dymchenko",
"author_id": 6626,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6626",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm also \"just a programmer with bachelor's degree\". </p>\n\n<p>I've been having a hobby project for several years. Some time ago I realized that my project could be interesting from the scientific point of view (it's not a groundbreaking result, but it has some novelty and it's somewhat surprising).</p>\n\n<p>I wrote a paper as an independent researcher and submitted it to a relevant conference. The paper was rejected, but I got very meaningful and valuable feedback from the reviewers.</p>\n\n<p>After a lot of work I had the second version of the paper. This version was much better and it was accepted to a good ACM conference.</p>\n\n<p>I'm not sure if I'm going to pursue a PhD, but as far as I understand, a published paper is definitely a plus for a PhD admission. I didn't encounter too much bureaucracy (nobody was concerned about my lack of academic affiliation), but writing a paper is a lot of work. Also be prepared to pay $$$ for a conference ticket if your paper is accepted.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37735,
"author": "Scott Seidman",
"author_id": 20457,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20457",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are some Master's Program, like Concordia, that call themselves \"life experience\" Master's Programs. I think they lean towards documenting professional experiences, but if your hobby experiences are sufficiently documented, perhaps that will count.</p>\n\n<p>For the first time, I've seen such degrees on a CV for a very special kind of instructor's position. I think it got the person through the door, and the person got the offer. When we found out it was a life experience Master's nobody on the search committee-- including me -- seemed to mind. Human Resources is having an interesting time with it, but I think that correctly used such degrees can have value.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37857,
"author": "Dominic Cronin",
"author_id": 28687,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28687",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Rather than aiming at a Ph.D you might do better to look for a suitable M. Phil programme. It may be possible to achieve an M.Phil purely on the basis of a dissertation, but even if there are other requirements, it may be possible to enrol in a distance learning scheme which would give you access to mentoring etc. and allow you to focus what was previously your hobby in a more academic direction. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/27
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37685",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7684/"
] |
37,695 |
<p>I have reviewed the theoretical trajectory of my research topic and I see gaps that I would like to fill with my own proposed theory. Is it too early in my career to put forward a theory? I am just a PhD student. If I can put forth a theory at this stage, what is the best way to go about it? Will the fact that I am a junior faculty member and a student affect the reception of my theory in the international scholarship community?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37697,
"author": "Garry Jolley-Rogers",
"author_id": 24775,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24775",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>of course. that is the nature of a PhD. Of course, if it is anything contentious then you need to have arguments and evidence. And of course \"extraordinary theories require extraordinary evidence\". That said, coming up a hypothesis or two is evidence of critical thought. Be prepared to defend it. And do so with courtesy and good will.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37703,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A theory (assuming you mean hypothesis or idea, not proven theorem) is the start of the process. You might come up with one at any time! Of course it will probably be wrong: this is nothing against you, its just that most interesting theories turn out to be wrong. </p>\n\n<p>The interesting challenge, and most of the work, comes next, when you try to show that the theory is true or false, either empirically or analytically...</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37695",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28538/"
] |
37,698 |
<p>I'm currently in my second semester of college at university in the United States, and am currently majoring in Computer Engineering. I passed a lot of AP tests in high school, all of which gave me college credit. Because of this, if I take only the bare-minimum of required classes for my major, I'll end up averaging ~10 hours per semester for the next 6 semesters. Due to the way pre-requisite classes are set up, it's impossible for me to graduate early. And besides, I have a full scholarship, so I don't want to graduate early.</p>
<p>My question is this: I can take as many credits outside of my major as I need inside my major. How can I make the most of this freedom? I plan to pursue a career in robotics (Ideally at NASA, but that's a long shot), so I want to use my next three years to help that dream. The way I see it, there's a few obvious options:</p>
<ul>
<li>Dual Major. I could probably get a dual major with any other engineering major if I was determined enough, but Computer Science or Electrical Engineering have enough overlapping classes that they would make the most sense.</li>
<li>Triple major. This sounds pretty ridiculous, but it is an option. I could potentially major in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and still graduate in the normal 4 years while taking a maximum of 18 hours per semester. Of course, this would be pushing it a little. If I had one conflict of two different classes being taught at the same time, I wouldn't have room to fix it. And then there's the problem of stress: I'm taking 18 hours now, and have loads of free time, but half of those hours are freshman-level courses. I <em>think</em> I'd be able to handle 18 hours of junior- and senior-level classes, but I can't know until I try it.</li>
<li>Take interesting classes. There's a lot of classes that I'd like to take that aren't required by my major (artificial intelligence, digital image processing, intro to relativity). However, there's not really enough to fill the amount of space I have.</li>
<li>Take fewer hours and get a job or internship. This is not <em>much</em> of an option, because my scholarships require that I take at least 15 hours per semester, which still leaves a lot of empty space in my schedule.</li>
<li>Start a Master's degree. My university allows undergraduate seniors to begin working toward a graduate degree if they are taking few enough undergraduate credit hours. My goal is to attend a different school for a Master's degree, but that plan will probably change several times between now and when I graduate. (I'm a teenager. We make stupid decisions.)</li>
<li>Research. I go to a fairly large university, so there's plenty of research opportunities.</li>
<li>Study abroad. This is fairly low on my list of priorities, but who knows? That may change. It's always an option.</li>
</ul>
<p>The idea of taking a lot of classes solely because I'm interested is very appealing, but I have a feeling that it wouldn't add as much to a resume as, say, a dual degree. And I <em>am</em> very interested in the material in my major, so it's not as if I'm going to have to suffer through my required classes.</p>
<p>So, in summary: I have room to take an entire second major's worth of classes in my next 6 semesters of college. What should I do to best further my dream of working as a NASA robotics engineer?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37702,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am surprised not to see getting involved in research projects on your list. At many schools, you can get academic credit for research. It is often no good for satisfying requirements, but that sounds like that's not a problem for you.</p>\n\n<p>Getting involved in research is an excellent way to further your dreams, especially in getting on the track for graduate school. It can also introduce you to lots of interesting material that you would never encounter in a class.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37715,
"author": "Ken",
"author_id": 28428,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28428",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering should have a <em>ton</em> of overlap, and depending on course structure, EE might even be better suited for robotics at your university. Your instincts are right: Computer Science would be the next logical thing to major in, and in addition to being useful for robotics, it's very useful in general, should robotics not pan out immediately.</p>\n\n<p>I'm not sure I'd recommend triple-majoring in your case, largely because you know what you want to do, and the above dual should get you there. Concerning the 18 credit hour question, I can but give you my experience when I foolishly took 21 during senior year: the stars aligned to make every project from all classes due on successive weeks (rather than being bunched up at once). Were it not for that happenstance, things would have been a lot harder to organize. You'd likely be able to handle 18 of upper level classes, but it may well come down to factors out of your control.</p>\n\n<p>If you can do an internship in a related field, that'd likely open more doors for you without the commitment of a Master's degree. If that doesn't pan out, research would be a great next thing to do.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37736,
"author": "galois",
"author_id": 25375,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25375",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A double major in CE and EE would be pretty cool (sounds like 5V isn't enough for you, anyways!). Instead of triple majoring with CS, maybe fill the rest of the free space with some useful math (or physics) courses. </p>\n\n<p>As far as math goes, I assume you will take at least one differential equations course and one linear algebra course. Try to take another of each, if you uni offers it. Other courses to consider:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>vector analysis</li>\n<li>numerical analysis</li>\n<li>discrete math</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>A pure math course or two like combinatorics couldn't hurt, either, especially for artificial intelligence.</p>\n\n<p>Computer science courses that could be useful would be courses that you may have already taken for CE, such as </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>microprocessors</li>\n<li>computer systems and assembly language</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Basically anything relating to control engineering would be helpful in your case.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37698",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28539/"
] |
37,710 |
<p>I'm a math grad student in my first year, which means that I have not yet taught a class (in my program first years grade or provide one-on-one tutoring for students who struggle in calculus). I have facial aphasia, which means that I am completely unable to recognize people's faces. After a while (upwards a year) I can reliably recognize someone based on how they move, dress, wear their hair and so on. Before that I will just have a vague feeling that I recognize someone, but I can't put a name to them . It happens that I can't recognize people I've lived with for several years, or, on a few memorable occasions, my own family members. This causes some problems on occasion, but nothing I haven't been able to work out. However, up until now the people I've been expected to learn to recognize have been friends, or coworkers I see every day that I can explain my problem with faces to. My question is:</p>
<p>How do I handle teaching when I can't recognize my students and it would take me a year minimum to learn their faces? I know from my own experience that good instructors / TAs learn their students' names and faces and this helps motivate the students to learn, because they notice that their teacher cares about them. How can I compensate for my facial aphasia?</p>
<p>EDIT: Thank you for all the great responses! I feel a lot more confident that I can do well as a TA with all these ideas to work with :) </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37712,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Unless it is too embarrassing to you, you might actually consider simply telling your students about your facial aphasia at the beginning of the semester. You can explain that even though you care about them and know who they are as people and students, you won't be able to recognize them by appearance. A more familiar condition you might make an analogy to is color-blindness.</p>\n\n<p>You might then ask them to identify themselves by something that you <em>will</em> be able to recognize them by. For example:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If it's a small class, you might make name tags to sit on students' desks in front of them during class.</li>\n<li>In a large class, you might ask students to say their name when they ask a question.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>You know your condition best, of course, and what things will work well for you. You are, of course, admitting a weakness and some of the nastier undergraduates might attempt to use it to play pranks on you or to cheat in some way. I suspect, though, that at that age in most cases it may be better to play it straight and people will respect you more for doing that than for attempting to hide it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37732,
"author": "JostySpoons",
"author_id": 28579,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28579",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>How about learning from a seating plan? If the class have designated seats, take a note of where each student sits in the class with their corresponding name and then learn that. It may take a while but it will take much less than a year to master.</p>\n\n<p>For me, this idea spawns from waiters in a restaurant, they have to learn the floor plan extremely quickly, and remembering a customers surname when serving 10 tables at once will be very difficult. So having the customers name assigned to a table number makes it much easier to manage.</p>\n\n<p>Good luck in your teaching and I do agree that you should be honest with your students and tell them that you do have this condition. Hopefully they will understand you are trying and support you throughout!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37733,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am absolutely terrible with names and faces. I simply can't remember them. I will forget the name of my next door neighbor of eight years. I have a friend who has facial blindness and I know that there is a difference with what she has. My own version is closer to facial aphasia (recognizes face but cannot recall name) rather than blindness (cannot recognize face), so please take my comments in that context.</p>\n\n<p>I am upfront with my students about this at the beginning of the semester. I tell them I will forget their names repeatedly, but it doesn't mean I don't care about them. They do get confused because one week I will remember their names and then the next week, it'll be an utter blank. It then becomes a little bit of a running joke in the class but that's ok. I try not to stress too much over it.</p>\n\n<p>Note that there are different strategies for lectures (i.e. big classes where there is minimal expectation that you will have to remember names) and for seminars and discussion groups (where some students will expect you to remember their name). Finally, doctoral students in your own lab will also expect their names to be remembered, but since those are a longer term presence, this can be less of an issue.</p>\n\n<p>Here are some techniques that can be useful for larger classes and for seminars:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>As some have mentioned, some course management systems have \"photo rosters.\" I don't find these useful because 1/4 of my students go by nicknames or middlenames that don't show in the CMS. And the photos are very old. And if I could remember someone's name by looking at their face, I wouldn't have this problem to begin with. </p></li>\n<li><p>You can ask students to always sit in the same seat each day. For seminars, during roll call, I write down the seating arrangement of the students in my roll call chart. In some schools, students have assigned seating. And so instead of recognizing the face, I can associate the seat with the name -- so I ask Jillian-who-sits-in-the-back-left, not Jillian-who-has-a-face-I-can't-remember.</p></li>\n<li><p>I have asked students who look very similar to sit apart. They giggle and think it's a joke, but after a while they realize I really do have a problem and generally comply. </p></li>\n<li><p>I ask students to try to wear the same distinctive item. For example, I remembered one student because of the eyeglasses that he wore. The frame stuck better in my mind than his face. When he changed his glasses, 'poof' it was gone. </p></li>\n<li><p>I ask students for mnemonics. One student named Steve, I only remembered because he was Japanese-American and made a peace sign, so 'V' -> Steve. Some students can come up with good mnemonics, others can not.</p></li>\n<li><p>You can ask students to have name placards, although most lose them in the first few weeks (and for me, my problem lasts longer than that).</p></li>\n<li><p>You can ask them to always say their own name when speaking up. In seminar, you can have them say their own name as well as physically say the name of the student who preceded them in a comment: \"This is Charlie, I want to follow up with what Alice just said there....\"</p></li>\n<li><p>You can make it a running joke so that the students know that they have to help you constantly. Students are usually surprised when I forget the names of even the most active students in the class, that's when they recognize that it's equal opportunity facial aphasia and that they need to step in to help me.</p></li>\n<li><p>You can have your teaching fellow help you. For example, if I talk to a student after class and forget their name, I ask my TF to tell me. </p></li>\n<li><p>In seminar, I occasionally nominated a student to go around the table saying all of the names. It helped when I realized that the students only knew half the names. Better than me, but still it showed that we are all fallible. It also encouraged the quieter students to be more vocal if they wanted to be remembered by their peers.</p></li>\n<li><p>You can design your classes so that it isn't important for you to have instant recall of their names. </p></li>\n<li><p>Ask for things in writing. I have trouble remembering the names of students who come up to me after lecture asking for a variance on their grade or attendance policy. I ask them to send such requests to me by e-mail. </p></li>\n<li><p>You can schedule your office hours so students have to sign up with their names in order to see you (i.e., avoid an 'open door' office policy). That way you can greet them by name (and look up their records) before they come.</p></li>\n<li><p>For your advisees, you can keep a portfolio on your computer where you record their name, face, year, identifying characteristics (student who always wears a vest, is a smoker (recognize by smell), etc.), and then things about their academic and family life that you'll need the next time you meet them.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In summary, it's not the end of the world and many faculty have difficult with this. Students recognize that they're just one in many. They also recognize the difference between professors who forget who they are because they are apathetic, and faculty who care but genuinely have trouble with this issue. One or two students will consistently raise it in my student evaluations at the end of the semester, but there are enough more positive comments to overwhelm them.</p>\n\n<p>Again, you'll find many faculty with some version of this. You can ask your learning and teaching center at your school for other tips and techniques.</p>\n\n<p>Note: You may want to register this as a disability with the disability office. As a student, you may be able to get some support (i.e., an assistant teaching assistant). As a faculty member, it might be helpful to have this in your file so that student complaints about this do not count against you when you are reviewed for promotion and tenure.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37740,
"author": "David E Speyer",
"author_id": 1244,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1244",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my experience, students tend to pick a favorite seat and stick to it unless forced to move around. I suspect that if you made a chart of your students favorite \npositions in the first week, it would be pretty accurate for the rest of the term. </p>\n\n<p>Making this chart could also be a good opportunity for you to explain your situation to your students and to ask them to stay in their locations, without making them feel that you are assigning seats as in grade school.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37710",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27327/"
] |
37,719 |
<p>I've interviewed for a few positions, one of which has made me an offer. I'm very pleased with the offer, but I prefer some of the other positions. I have the luxury of being able to take a lot of time to decide whether or not I accept this offer, so I'm certain I will hear back (either positively or negatively) from the other positions before a decision is required for the offer I've received.</p>
<p>I'm trying to decide between two courses of action, and I want to choose the one that will best help my candidacy with the positions I've yet to hear from. Plan 1 is to do nothing and simply wait to hear back from the other positions for which I've already interviewed. Plan 2 is to be in touch with the other positions to let them know I have an offer, and ask where I stand with them.</p>
<p>Would Plan 2 make me a more desirable candidate with the other positions, as they might see my offer as further validation of my credentials? Or, might initiating with the interviewers in this way be detrimental to my candidacy, perhaps making me seem pushy or self-centered? If so, I would rather just wait for them to run their course of action (Plan 1). As I've said, I have plenty of time, so I don't want impatience to hurt me.</p>
<p>If there is a good chance that my meddling will be detrimental, then I'd rather be hands-off here. However, if it's more likely that informing the other interviewers of my offer will give me a boost, then I'd want to do so.</p>
<p>Thanks for any clarity you can provide!</p>
<p><strong>Edit:</strong> For a bit more information and context, the position I've been offered is a non-academic research position that my advisor has described as "prestigious." The other positions for which I've interviewed (and which I prefer) are mostly academic teaching-centered positions (visiting assistant professors, tenure-track at smaller four year institutions).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37723,
"author": "Nobody",
"author_id": 546,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, congratulations!</p>\n\n<p>I think you should take Plan 1 at least for now, that is to do nothing and simply wait to hear back from the other positions for which you've already interviewed.</p>\n\n<p>The reasons are, </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>You prefer some of the other positions </li>\n<li>You really don't know Plan 2 (to be in touch with the other positions to let them know you have an offer) will be helpful or harmful for you to get the other positions</li>\n<li>You still have plenty of time to think about it.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>During this waiting period, you may want to find more information about the organization who offered you the research position. Is the offer truly good? Would you be happy when you work there? (It seems to me you like teaching better). In the mean time, if any of the teaching position offers arrives, you can make a smart decision then.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37737,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The argument for plan 2 is that if you have an offer from employer A with a particular deadline but you would prefer to take a position with employer B, then if you don't say something, employer B could take too long to decide what to do and you'd be forced to take offer A before employer B gets around to making you an offer. </p>\n\n<p>I've been on the employer side of this (as both employer A and employer B.) Keep in mind that once a search committee has completed interviews it has to meet to decide on who should be offered the position and then this has to be reviewed by higher level administrators (deans or vice presidents) and that the process can take time (days or weeks.) It may be possible to expedite this process if there's a particular deadline, or it may not. </p>\n\n<p>I think that if you've decided that you'll take offer A by a particular deadline if you have no other offers (and that you wouldn't break your contract with employer A after accepting the offer), then you should tell the other potential employers about the offer and the deadline (I wouldn't mention employer A's name or the specific amount of the offer.) It's not likely to hurt your chances with these other employers, but it could help motivate them to get an offer out to you in a timely fashion.</p>\n\n<p>I have received this kind of information from job candidates in the past. Unfortunately, I've always had to say that (because we had other candidates scheduled for on campus interviews) that we couldn't make an offer before the deadline. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37742,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Would Plan 2 make me a more desirable candidate with the other positions, as they might see my offer as further validation of my credentials?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is a bit of a crap shot, I am afraid. How this may be perceived also depends on whether the other institutions perceive your offer as less, about equal, or more attractive than their own position.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Case 1</strong> - less attractive:</p>\n\n<p>They will probably not care too much about your other offer. They assume that you will likely take theirs if you get an offer, and the fact that you have an offer for a position that they assume is easier to get won't fundamentally change their assessment of you. If the other offer is perceived as <em>much worse</em> they may question why you have even applied for this, and wonder whether you think yourself that you are very unlikely to get their position.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Case 2</strong> - about the same:</p>\n\n<p>In this case, I think this <em>may</em> make you seem like a better candidate. At least it will show that other people also think that you are good enough for the job you are applying to. It may be a minor factor, though.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Case 3</strong> - more attractive:</p>\n\n<p>They will probably assume that you will either take the more attractive alternative option anyway (and hence will be much less likely to offer you a job), or that you will negotiate very hard. Both are not exactly plusses for your application.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37719",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21610/"
] |
37,722 |
<p>Given that it's a very broad question I'll try to create some context:</p>
<p>I'm in my first year (just started) and at the moment my task as PhD student is closer to learn the techniques and technologies used in the department than to real work. Almost in a weekly basis I receive small tasks which, once completed, are reported and then substituted by a new small task.</p>
<p>However, sometimes the task is completed and no report is due (for whatever the reason) so I'm stuck with no excuse to go to my supervisor's office and no work to do on account of not going to my supervisor's office.</p>
<p>My supervisor is a very busy person and so I have always the feeling I'm intruding when I 'request' (by mail or simply going to his office) to talk to him. </p>
<p>I would like to build some cofidence with my supervisor, but I don't really know how to approach him in the first place. Any tips?</p>
<p>Ps:I was sure someone would've asked this before, but I couldn't find anything so I would like to apologise in advance just in case it has already been asked.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37725,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Just talk to your advisor when you feel you need his input. </p>\n\n<p>All of the busy people I know (myself included) <em>want</em> the people they work with to let them know if things are ahead of schedule. When I supervise a student, <em>someone</em> has to be moving things along. If the student takes responsibility for that, and can be counted on to come to me when he/she needs my input, it's much less work for me than the students I have to monitor more actively.</p>\n\n<p>Having said that, there are several things that can also help:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Ask your supervisor to discuss the \"big picture\" with you. This way you'll understand what these small tasks are getting at and can make a reasonable guess as to what the next task will be. This will help with your problem and will also help you develop your skills as an independent researcher (which is what you're training for, after all).</li>\n<li>Develop your own research interests (either side projects, or related to the work you're doing with your advisor) and work on those when you're \"blocked\" waiting for your advisor. This, too, will also help you develop your skills as an independent researcher.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37726,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>At this point you should assign new tasks to yourself. If you don't know what to do, reading books or papers in the field may be a good start. If he's already given you a real research question, you should start thinking of things you can do to solve it yourself, without him feeding you the way to do it.</p>\n\n<p>Lots of people can carry out tasks that other people assign, but you'll stand out if you contribute your own approaches to solving the problem, and show that you're an independent researcher.</p>\n\n<p>Alternatively, you can email him early and see if he replies, and while you're waiting you can work on other things.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37734,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Across the course of your Ph.D., you are expected to develop into a independent researcher capable of formulating and pursuing your own independent research agenda.\nRight now, you're behaving like an undergraduate waiting to get your next problem set, rather than like a scientist. This is pretty common for new Ph.D. students, but you're going to have to grow past this point if you want to be a researcher.</p>\n\n<p>A good way to think of these small tasks that you are being given is as \"training wheels,\" feeding you a research agenda one incremental step at a time, in the hopes that you will start to figure out how to choose the next step on your own. When you finish a task, try to figure out what the next interesting thing to do in pursuing this research might be, and do that until your next meeting with your advisor.</p>\n\n<p>Then, when you meet, you can say you finished the task early, and tell about what you did next. Your advisor will likely be very happy that you are showing initiative, and can give you feedback to help you learn to make more and more productive research choices on your own.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37754,
"author": "Scott Seidman",
"author_id": 20457,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20457",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can either use the suggestions offered above, which are fine, and both offer paths to moving on to a new task, but I offer an alternative which might apply.</p>\n\n<p>Think about whether you're <em>really</em> finished with the task at hand, and consider if there are ways you could do it better, learn about it more, extend your research ....</p>\n\n<p>On a smaller scale, if you're using Pomodoro time management, and you finish your task in the middle of a Pomodoro, you don't stop, or rest, or move on to the next task. You finish <em>better</em>. You cross every t and dot every i.</p>\n\n<p>On a larger scale, when somebody brings be a program that they said they \"finished\" that has an involved user interface, I'll sit down with them and hit wrong buttons in the interface until its crashed. Then I explain about rigorous testing, failure mode analysis, etc, and tell the coder to bring it back to me when its bulletproof. If the program controls big pieces of moving equipment designed to move research subjects, I tell them that when they think the code is ready, they can be the first rider!</p>\n\n<p>This is just a suggestion for consideration, and sometimes the approach could be valuable. Other times, you really would be wasting time if you took this approach. Use it judiciously.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37770,
"author": "Toby Derrum",
"author_id": 28608,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28608",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can either treat it as if you were seeking an audience with Kublah Khan in which case you should approach your supervisor with decorum and due reverence whilst being careful not startle him. \nThen receive some sign that they have acknowledged your presence and then wait for some further indication that you may approach.</p>\n\n<p>Or</p>\n\n<p>Accept that you are a Ph.D student on merit deserving of his time and attention. If you find him awkward try formally booking a meeting slot but be respectful of his time and never request more time than is really necessary.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37774,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would suggest sending an email to an account you know he uses frequently and say something like the following using a subject line;</p>\n\n<p>Subject: Assignment Completed</p>\n\n<p>Dr. Name,</p>\n\n<p>I've finished the \"whatever assignment\" you gave me the other day. At your convenience, let me know when you want me to speak with you again. Contact me at this address or at this cell number.</p>\n\n<p>Thanks,\nName</p>\n\n<p>Sending a very short email like this is not intruding, and, if he gets upset by this, be prepared to be saddled with a lousy (personality wise) supervisor for quite some time. Getting irritated by that very short, humble, informative email is completely unreasonable.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37722",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27630/"
] |
37,744 |
<p>I am writing my master of science thesis and I am not sure whether I should add some of the code I have written: they are not proper programs, but more like input files to be fed to a commercial program (Nastran) very popular in my field.</p>
<p>My concerns are related to the fact that I am not making any discovery, just applying the things I have learned reading the manual. Still, I feel the code will make the effort I put into the thesis to also learn this language clearer.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37745,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Making your code available along with your thesis can be very helpful to other researchers who are trying to reproduce your results. I'd encourage you to do this. </p>\n\n<p>However, you should not simply insert a printout of your code into the text of the thesis, since that will make it difficult (practically impossible) for someone to use the code that they obtain from a printed copy of the thesis or even a .PDF of the thesis. Rather, you should put the code into some online repository (such as e.g. github) so that others can download the code from the web. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37758,
"author": "Ken",
"author_id": 28428,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28428",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>@Brian Borchers's answer is sound, and it sounds like it would apply best in your case. </p>\n\n<p>However, if you used a particularly interesting or novel algorithm to generate your input files (that is, you had unusual insight into how best to solve your problem that might help others), then in addition to linking your code to an online repository, you could provide a pseudocode description of that algorithm in your main body or an appendix, depending on flow. (If you're not sure if your process is sufficiently interesting, ask your advisor.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37760,
"author": "Chris H",
"author_id": 8494,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8494",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>My take on this -- in a physics PhD -- was that code that had a bearing on the results should be included in the appendix. I read in the entire source of my data-processing routines (using the <em>listings</em> package in LaTeX) and included them.</p>\n\n<p><em>But</em> I skipped bits like 40 consecutive lines of assigning defaults to variables (0s for later incrementing) or writing a default config file:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/6fd3Y.png\" alt=\"Skipped lines\"></p>\n\n<p>(check the line numbers in the example)\nThis is easy to do in <em>listings</em>, as is setting monospaced fonts and code highlighting.</p>\n\n<p>I'm not saying this is <em>the</em> right way of doing it, just <em>a sensible</em> way. I may not even have implemented this approach as well as I could have done.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this will depend on your field. In my case the code was an important processing step in the results of some tricky new experiments. No-one is realistically going to want to replicate my code, checking some aspects of it is another matter. And yes, I do have every intention of making it available as well -- but it would be of limited use given that my coding style could at best be described as \"scientist, self taught in Python\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37762,
"author": "O. R. Mapper",
"author_id": 14017,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14017",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In computer science, I am very much used to (and encourage) theses that contain any noteworthy code snippets as floats. In fact, as theses provide virtually unlimited space, there is no need for the extreme brevity of papers and a <em>Concept</em> chapter that describes the rationale for design decisions in the developed concept is usually followed by an <em>Implementation</em> chapter that can describe the implemented version in depth, including (but not limited to) showing presentation-worthy excerpts of the source code.</p>\n\n<p>In most cases, this does <em>not</em> mean that whole source code files should be printed. This is usually referring to a few lines of code, or single methods that implement a specific algorithm.</p>\n\n<p>For input/output files, things are similar, and they may be even more important than code snippets, as they may explain the handling and actual output of a prototype developed as a part of the thesis.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Contrary to various other answers here, I advise <em>against</em> putting any source code in the appendix in the usual case.</strong> The appendix is for extensive information that may be needed for further reference, but which is too \"boring\" to integrate in its entirety in the main body of text. This implies that the information in the appendix should be optimized so it can be taken advantage of in a meaningful way. In other words, the appendix in a (printed) document may be good for human-readable questionnaires or sets of tables, but full source code files should always be delivered in digital form (and in universities I am familiar with, (at least CS) theses have to be handed in as printed documents that are accompanied by a CD). <strong>Source code snippets that go into the main body of text as floats serve the same purpose as figures, tables or formulas in the main body of text - they illustrate something which would be too cumbersome to describe in the text.</strong></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37900,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Adding code snippets in the text achives two goals: first, it shows the implementation details and, second, it documents the code. The two goals are of course closely related and complement each other. In order to be valuable, however, the code should be split into parts (called chunks) that come in logical order in the text rather than in the order they are executed by a computer. (Thus no full code listing in an appendix.) In this way the code becomes an integral part of the text. This is an old idea of Don Knuth, known as <a href=\"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming\" rel=\"nofollow\">literate programming</a>. There are programs such as <a href=\"http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/noweb/\" rel=\"nofollow\">noweb</a> that automatically extract the code and the human readable text from one source file.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37997,
"author": "tikiribanda",
"author_id": 28774,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28774",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think you must contact your supervisor for a proper answer for this question because he/she will be the person who is going to evaluate your thesis.</p>\n\n<p>If your course is more into technical stuff you might have to add more code than for a theoretical MSc. </p>\n\n<p>My personal advice is to contact your supervisor/lecturer/tutor and get their opinion. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37744",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28587/"
] |
37,749 |
<p>I applied to a few US universities last year and they rejected my application because of my low GRE scores. Now I want to reapply again to the same universities. Can you explain the process to reapply? My concern is about application fees. Is it required to pay application fees for the second time?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37757,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Generally, there is nothing special about a reapplication; you apply just as if you were applying for the first time. You will submit all the required materials again. Of course, you will submit updated transcripts and scores, and you will probably have revised or rewritten your application essay, so you'll submit the updated version. Letters of recommendation will also need to be resubmitted; you should ask your letter writers to update their letters to reflect whatever you have been doing in the last year. And yes, you do have to pay another application fee.</p>\n\n<p>Most institutions will give your new application a fresh look; the fact that you have previously applied and been rejected should not prejudice them against your current application. (However, people are human, and if some of the same people are still on the admission committee, they may have some memories of the weaknesses they saw in your previous application.)</p>\n\n<p>Of course, to have a better chance of acceptance this time, you should have made yourself a stronger applicant! Hopefully you have better GRE scores and stronger letters of recommendation, and can report some additional helpful and relevant coursework or work experience in the year since your last application.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37784,
"author": "Yasha",
"author_id": 28181,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28181",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In short? Yes.</p>\n\n<p>Application fees cover the administrative costs of reviewing your application. Every time you apply to these schools, you will need to pay the fees.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37749",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28590/"
] |
37,750 |
<p>I am organising a conference. This will take place in 6 months time. One of the invited speakers works on a topic that is highly related to my research interests. I would like to propose a specific collaboration to this professor, but I feel that the fact that I invited him to the conference (I am paying for his accommodation, expenses ...) may induce some pressure to accept my invitation to collaborate.</p>
<p>I wonder whether I should just wait after the conference to tell him about this project or if it is OK to tell him now? The reason I want to tell him now is that I would not like to wait for another 6 months to start this project.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37766,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't see any ethical dilemma here unless you threaten to retract his invitation. Don't even hint at it. You liked his work enough to invite him to speak, you should feel free to invite him to collaborate. If he declines, thank him for considering it and tell him you're looking forward to his talk this summer. If he shows interest in collaborating, keep the email conversation going, set up a phone call, etc, etc, and see where it goes. You might be able to use his visit to get some real work done (write a paper, write some code, write a grant, etc) if you're already agreed to collaborate. Don't waste your time between now and then.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37771,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't think it's so much an \"ethical\" issue as just \"personal awkwardness\"... If I were on the receiving end of this, I'd feel a bit put off, and I think I'd never propose such, especially to a more senior person in that situation.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37750",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28591/"
] |
37,759 |
<p>I work at a University Library in Canada, we've recently produced a promotional video for a book scanner. In the video, we demonstrate the use of the book scanner using a random book off the shelf, but the focus is always on the scanner, never on the pages of the book (though there are some shots where you can see pictures, and at least one where you can read a title on the page). One of the Librarians is under the impression that we need to cite the book and give attribution to the author. Originally we thought we could probably pass this off as incidental use, but according to the Librarian it's not, because we deliberately used that book as a prop. I've never heard of attribution being given to authors of books used as props, is this really necessary? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37764,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I cannot imagine it being necessary or even appropriate to cite the book.\nCitation is used to acknowledge the intellectual contribution of an author.</p>\n\n<p>No aspect of that intellectual contribution was implicated in any way in your choice of that book over any other book in the library: that book could have been replaced with literally any other book, with not the slightest difference in the intellectual content of your video.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37769,
"author": "Wrzlprmft",
"author_id": 7734,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7734",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am not a lawyer and not familiar with Canadian copyright law, but here are some thoughts that should apply to any reasonable copyright law, might be convincing even without citing a law or that might help you on your research:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Just attributing the author should not pose any legal benefit unless for works is published under some licence (such as some Creative Commons licences) that especially requires it. So, if you actually have a copyright issue here, attributing won’t help unless the book is under such a licence.</p></li>\n<li><p>Copyright protects creators (and copyright holders in general) only from certain things, most importantly the unwanted reproduction of their intellectual content. I find it questionable that what you did falls in any way under something that copyright law protects anybody from. For more detail, have a look at the law itself (in particular <a href=\"http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-42/page-4.html#h-3\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-42/page-16.html#h-21\" rel=\"nofollow\">here</a>).</p></li>\n<li><p>What you did might fall under <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing_in_Canadian_copyright_law\" rel=\"nofollow\">fair dealing</a>. If I understood it correctly, you are not showing more of the book than, e.g., is permittable for the purpose of review. However, the situation is a little bit different as you are not reviewing the book.</p></li>\n<li><p>If I understood it correctly, there is little difference between what you did and, e.g., any documentary where somebody is interviewed in an office surrounded by hundreds of books, maybe some of them lieing plainly on the table, so you can see the cover. If legal issues were involved in making such films, people would be interviewed in plain boring rooms much more often.</p></li>\n<li><p>You are probably seeing more intellectual content of whoever designed the cover of the book and made those images than the author of the book (though this might be the author). So why attribute the author?</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Finally, from the ethical point of view, I do not see any problem: The author of the book did not intelectually contribute to your video in any way. The author is not harmed by what you are doing. If at all, there is a slight benefit as you are providing free advertisement.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 44812,
"author": "ShemSeger",
"author_id": 19906,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19906",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>So I actually emailed my question to <a href=\"http://www.michaelgeist.ca/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Michael Geist</a>, who is a professor of law and happens to be one of the foremost experts in Canadian copyright... <em>in the whole world</em>. He was gracious enough to reply:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"No. That sounds de minimis to me and does not require permission or\n attribution.\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So the answer is no, they don't need attribution. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37759",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19906/"
] |
37,765 |
<p>I am curious to hear some words of advice on how to select a publishing community for multi-disciplinary topics. </p>
<p>Your contribution is that methods in area A, which is your main area, can solve problems in B more efficiently than traditionally used methods from area C. </p>
<p>Where do you publish, A, B, or C? You are contributing a new application domain to your main area A, along with theory that supports the bridge between A and B, but your reviewers are not familiar with domain B and do not find it relevant. You are contributing new tools to the problem domain B. Finally, all of the related work is in C. </p>
<p>This is CS research, if that helps.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37767,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Where you publish depends on what you are trying to do with a particular publication. From my own experience with interdisciplinary research, I would say:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Work focusing on the nature of the techniques goes to community A. These are good for building up your credibility in your home community, building your tenure case in a department of A, etc.</li>\n<li>Work focusing on the value and contributions to the application area goes to community B. These are good for getting your work into use, building collaborations, extending into new areas, building a tenure case in a department of B, et.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If your topic is something that many are thinking about, then there will also likely be some explicitly interdisciplinary AB meetings. These are often less prestigious than the single-discipline venues, but much better for networking and getting feedback on your work.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37789,
"author": "Benoît Kloeckner",
"author_id": 946,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/946",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The answer of jakebeal seems pretty good to me, but there is another option (to be considered with care, as the line between wise publishing and salami publishing is rather thin): to publish two papers in both A and B. The first paper would describe in depth the technique of the method and could assume knowledge in A; the second paper would assume the conclusion of the first paper (proofs and evidence and technical discussions being there) and would explain how good the method is for the B-problem you are considering, i.e. it would focus on the application of the method. The point of publishing two papers is that community B might have a hard time getting into the technical details of the A-heavy method, while you need to have them documented somewhere.</p>\n\n<p>The first paper might only get published in a lesser venue if community A is not appealed to much by it, but I guess that if community B is excited by your work you might be able to publish the second paper in a first-tier journal or conference. And, as mentioned in a comment, it might be that you have a good starting point for a career in B -- one need not stay in the same field for 40 years, and switching can potentially happen anytime, given the opportunities.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/28
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37765",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21371/"
] |
37,791 |
<p>I was wondering if my institute can use a figure which I made for a paper that has been published and crop it slightly and use it for press releases, etc., and instead of putting my name underneath the figure, they just put the institute's name.</p>
<p>Is it generally OK for them to do so, or should they give me credit?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37792,
"author": "DCTLib",
"author_id": 7390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7390",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It depends. If (1) you once signed a contract that allows the university to do so, and (2) they contacted your publisher to obtain authorization for duplicating the figure, this may be legally allowed. That depends a bit on the laws in your country, which often differ in such matters.</p>\n\n<p>It is certainly bad style, though. Also, PR offices that are careful enough the think of condition (2) will typically also contact you prior to publication of the press release - especially since cropping of the figure occurred. Also: Don't attribute malice to a deed when other possibilities exist. For example, they could have asked you advisor, who said that this would be fine (whether this is OK by the advisor to do so is a different question). Also, replacing your name by the university name could have been the work of an unexperienced intern in the office, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Perhaps you can contact them and ask if this is a mistake. If you want to go the easy route, you could just mention that you are concerned that the figure violates the publisher's copyright and that cropping the image may not be covered by the agreement they gave. In the same mail/call, you could offer help with this potential problem by provide them with the needed source information for a proper \"image citation\" and helping with obtaining authorization by the publisher (if needed). You could also express genuine concerns that potential future collaborators on research questions related to the figure could use the information of you being the source to establish contact, which would potentially be beneficial for both your career and the future reputation of the university (by strengthening the research done at your institution).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37799,
"author": "O. R. Mapper",
"author_id": 14017,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14017",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This depends a lot on your arrangement with the university, as well as the context of the figure:</p>\n\n<p>As <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7390/dctlib\">DCTLib</a> has already pointed out in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/37792/14017\">their answer</a>, first of all, the copyright legislation this is subject to has an influence on this, both with respect to you as well as any publishers of the paper. The legal side of this may also be related to whatever may be stated in any contracts you signed.</p>\n\n<p>Now, concerning the question whether this is a \"good way\" to do things, I am used to arrangements where the unspoken agreement exists that any graphic produced by an employee of the university during their work is free for PR people and similar to use in presentations. Your mileage may vary, though I personally always perceived that as extremely convenient, as that means I had more time for my research and less time being bothered by requests to help with public relations of the university or the department. There are people being paid for doing that PR work, and I am glad about every second they save of my time.</p>\n\n<p>Things get critical if there could be a considerable benefit by mentioning your name (that you expect to be absent if only the university or department name is mentioned).</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Is the figure embedded in a press release that targets an academic audience, possibly specific to your topic? In that case, it could indeed be crucial to provide direct contact info. On the other hand, if the target audience is really that specific, I would wonder why you were not asked to write the text yourself in the first place, as PR departments are not normally specialized in accurately conveying very specific information on research.\n\n<ul>\n<li>And even if this is the case, consider the goal the university is trying to achieve - is it meant as a here-and-now info (so getting in touch with you is realistic), or is it supposed to say \"This is what we did in field X in 2015.\", which will then be provided as a proof for the permanent activity in your field when applying for a project grant long after you personally have left that university?</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>On the other hand, is the press release rather for a general audience? In such a case, figures are often not expected to be understood in depth, and are rather meant to convey a general sense of awe for the \"pretty colourful things that are produced at the university\". Note that this includes both public settings (newspaper articles for everyone) and professional settings (funding reports that will be checked by financial people who do not have the slightest idea about the actual content of the research and who just want to see that <em>something</em> is being done that justifies the expenses for staff and equipment).</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Lastly, it can be considered a very similar situation to how other products are attributed. Have a look into the <em>About</em> boxes of Microsoft Visual Studio or Google Chrome - they only say that they're by Microsoft and Google, respectively. Likewise, product description websites such as <a href=\"http://www.softenergy.de/en/produkte/screenshots.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this</a>, <a href=\"http://www.accentosoftware.com/en/our-products.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this</a>, or <a href=\"http://www.torrid-tech.com/rp_screens.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this</a> merely provide the company name as the only form of attribution along with the screenshots. The single developers or designers are not listed, but if there is any reason to contact them, that contact can certainly be established by contacting the indicated organization.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37791",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28629/"
] |
37,796 |
<p>I wrote my Ph.D. thesis without copy/pasting any of my prior published articles. Now that the university library got hold of my Ph.D. thesis; I'm wondering who owns the entire publishing rights of my Ph.D. thesis? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37797,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Did you sign an agreement to transfer copyright to someone else?</p>\n\n<p>Does your university policy (<a href=\"http://web.mit.edu/policies/13/13.1.html#sub3\">example</a>) or employment contract specify that someone else holds the copyright to your thesis?</p>\n\n<p>If the answer to both questions is \"no\" then you, as the author of the thesis, hold the copyright.</p>\n\n<p>In the US, most university students retain the copyright for their thesis. Often they are required to grant the university and/or ProQuest a non-exclusive license to distribute the thesis, but without giving up copyright.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37798,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You do, until you sign the rights away. This is regardless of whether you have a copyright page, thanks to the Berne Convention.</p>\n\n<p>Note that depositing it in the library does not waive any of your rights.</p>\n\n<p>You do transfer some rights when you deposit it through ProQuest but 1) you didn't mention doing so, 2) the form you would have signed if you had done so would have made what rights they wanted explicit, and 3) ProQuest does not request exclusive rights to publish and distribute your dissertation in any case , so you can publish parts or all of it in other venues without their permission.</p>\n\n<p>Note that some publishers are hesitant to publish monographs based on dissertations accessible on ProQuest but this is a business decision not legal one. They fear the availability of the ProQuest version is a market threat that draws away from the salability of a monograph based on the dissertation. As a result, some students have asked ProQuest to embargo the dissertation for a few years, which is something ProQuest is happy to do.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37828,
"author": "user28655",
"author_id": 28655,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28655",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A priori you own the rights. But you may have transferred them to the University (when signing a study agreement) or to a project (e.g. when you thesis is e.g. financed by an EU project) or to a company financing your thesis.</p>\n\n<p>Most Universities do, nowadays, give the copyright to the PhD student. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 93105,
"author": "user76061",
"author_id": 76061,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/76061",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I copyrighted my Ph.D. dissertation as soon as I was awarded by degree. I am the only copyright owner. The dissertation was archived through a well known group in Michigan (Dissertation Databases\nProQuest Dissertations & Theses). I did not sign over or transfer my copyright to them for their archives. Anyone who wishes to use material from my dissertation must contact me for copyright permission before doing so. Anyone who publishes work using any of my original data or ideas must also cite my dissertation in their bibliography to avoid copyright infringement or plagiarism claims. </p>\n\n<p>I was disappointed to learn that my thesis advisor who was not a co-author of my dissertation decided to publish my work in a peer reviewed journal without my knowledge or permission. He named himself author and did not cite my dissertation in the bibliography. Neither the journal nor NYU cared to intervene on my behalf to correct and restitute me with authorship and citation as I was entitled. </p>\n\n<p>The only recourse a student has against the theft of their dissertation in the absence of granting copyright permission to another person who wishes to publish work from the dissertation is to apply for and obtain the copyright first. This does grant legal rights to the copyright owner in case of theft or wrong doing on the part of another person who appropriates material without permission. Graduate students should insure a written agreement or statement from the university,their mentor or their Dept. guaranteeing them authorship rights to their original dissertation research prior to beginning a lengthy Ph.D. program.....otherwise they will become unpaid slaves for five to six years and end up with nothing to show for it in the end if these rights are not secured before they begin. A word to the wise but filing for copyright ownership is a form of security should they require legal protection down the road! </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37796",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552/"
] |
37,801 |
<p>I am currently working at a university of applied sciences, in the field of Computer Science. Recently there has been formed a section that is in charge of giving stipends related to research. This group has put as a rule that they will only fund research that is indexed in Scimago and in Scopus, but that this could change over time. They have in mind that this would help the institution for increase their visibility in terms of research.</p>
<p>My question is, for our field, should there be other criteria considered, such as if the publication has been indexed in ACM, IEEE Xplore, or DBLP? I mean, there are some conferences that are not considered in Scimago or in Scopus, but that have a good reputation. How to propose that change? What do you think about considering these indexing venues also?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37803,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Computer science is typically badly under-represented in the \"traditional\" citation indices, which do not consider conferences to be peer-reviewed publications. As any computer scientist knows, that is a bad joke: many computer science conferences are much more stiffly reviewed and difficult to enter than most journals. </p>\n\n<p>It is for this reason that DBLP was created, to actually index relevant and reputable computer science publications. I believe that DBLP should cover everything in ACM DL and IEEE Xplore, so getting just that accepted by the university should be sufficient.</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, what you are seeing is another instance of a long-running and frequently waged fight. Take heart, however, that this fight has already been won at most top institutions, and can be won at yours as well.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37847,
"author": "DCTLib",
"author_id": 7390,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7390",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In addition to jakebeal's answer, let me address the "How to propose that change?" question.</p>\n<p>Surely the requirement to have work indexed at Scimago and Scopus was instantiated to have some "measurable" guideline -- the initiators of the project probably wanted to avoid any discussions on what papers should count and what shouldn't later. While this is understandable, it has the problems of (1) giving people an incentive to game the system, and (2) keep people away from supporting new publication venues that are not yet on a list.</p>\n<p>So all you can do is to have them make the list of acceptable publication venues as inclusive as reasonably possible - and you will need to follow their "visibility in terms of research" line of thought to have strong arguments. Here is one idea for doing so, although it means a lot of work.</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>Check how many venues that are not already in Scimago and Scopus have been used to present research that was mentioned in connection with the Turing medal. Surely, if venues that had such an impact are missing, your request for making the list more inclusive would be reasonable.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>There is a <a href=\"http://www.core.edu.au/index.php/conference-rankings\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">CORE conference ranking</a> - Quite a lot of effort has been put into assembling it and it is or was used somehow for research funding allocation in Australia (someone else may know more about that). While such rankings are not unproblematic (and this one is based on the Australian perspective), publications in conferences ranked "A" in this list should surely count. If you find some conferences on the list that are ranked A and are not indexed in Scopus or Scimago but are indexed on DBLP, this makes a reasonably strong case for the inclusion of DBLP.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>You may also need to provide evidence that conference papers are so important for computer science. I think that publications on this matter have been mentioned here at academia.stackexchange, so you should also be able to find them.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>On a related note, I'm not sure if all IEEE Xplore publications are indexed by DBLP. There used to be quite a significant lag between IEEE Xplore publication and addition to DBLP (>6 months), which is very late if the data is to be used for scholarship allocation. Also, IEEE Xplore used to contain proceedings of some "spamferences", but they may have kicked them out in the meantime.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37801",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144/"
] |
37,810 |
<p>I am not sure about some side-topics related to my thesis. During the development of the results I have to rely on some other mehods which are not the main topic of the thesis but since I used them to derive some approximation I then implement in the analysis I think it is useful to explain how this methods works so any reader can understand what I did and also because I spent time learning them.</p>
<p>I was thinking to put these extra-info in an Appendix not to cause confusion in the main topic, but I am afraid they will be considered as off-topics.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37813,
"author": "Yasha",
"author_id": 28181,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28181",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If the methods that you are considering including in the appendix were necessary to arrive at your final results, then they certainly aren't \"off topic\". Without knowing your field of study or your topic of research, it's hard to give a more direct answer than that.</p>\n\n<p>I'm in the social sciences, and we often include mathematical proofs in our appendices in order to save space in the main text (as well as not distract from the substance). Nonetheless, given the importance of transparency, we include our proofs for review by others.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37874,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>This answer relates to my field (business) and it might be different for other fields.</p>\n\n<p>The guideline I have always followed, and recommend to all of my students, is that you should consider the overall \"flow\" of the document. That is, if you are discussing the results and what is important is the results, then focus on the results. Of course, the methodology would be included but any kind of back-story would not belong in the text because it would distract from what you are really trying to communicate. <strong>You want to avoid distraction to keep the reader's mind on topic</strong> and that is why we have appendixes.</p>\n\n<p>The back-story may, or may not, belong in the appendix. You <strong>should not</strong> assume that anything that does not go in the body goes in the appendix. Some information simply does not belong there at all (for example, your musings about the secret connections between Plato's early work and the shape of a doughnut).</p>\n\n<p><strong>The only things which should appear in the appendix are things which are referenced in the main text.</strong> If there was no easy place to refer to it in the main text, that is a sign that you should not put it in the appendix either.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37810",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28587/"
] |
37,811 |
<p>I have been reading a few Q/A about plagiarism, but I still have a doubt about the use of books and papers to explain the method I am applying in my thesis. </p>
<p>I mixed up the infos I found in a book and in a paper to explain the method (because some parts where better explained in the book and some others in the paper), of course I cited them at the beginning and I put them in the bibliography. Is this considered plagiarism since I am not using "my words" to explain it?</p>
<p><strong>EDIT</strong> to be clearer: I am not doing copying and paste: I am following the same flow of ideas to present the method, some parts where omitted in the paper, therefore I had to rely on the book to take care of every aspect</p>
<p>And at the beginning I wrote:"the method is fully explained here [1][2] and it is here reported for completeness </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37814,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you are using somebody else's words, you need to make this fact clear and explicit via quotation/block quotation; to do otherwise is clearly plagiarism, even if you are splicing together multiple different sources into some sort of Frankenparagraph. </p>\n\n<p>If you are making a complex remix of two sources, proper quotation may feel very choppy and incoherent, however, so you are probably better off paraphrasing into your own words instead.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37815,
"author": "Ken",
"author_id": 28428,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28428",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>The short answer is \"you have to be careful\"; as with everything, style matters, and there might be style restrictions about how you cite that your discipline imposes. </p>\n\n<p>For maximum protection, one thing to keep in mind is that, because you've interleaved text from two different sources, it's a bad idea to copy those things verbatim since each part would need to be directly quoted and cited, and that interrupts the flow. Instead, paraphrase or reword the blending. You'll still need to cite, but how you do it would depend on the size of the text. </p>\n\n<p>Absent any other direction, I'd recommend the following. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you have a paragraph of now-blended text, at the end of that paragraph make your citations for the two different sources.</li>\n<li>If you have, say, half a page or more of now-blended text, then introduce it in the beginning of that text as \"The following approach comes from [1] and [2]:\". (Replace [1] and [2] with whatever the citations are supposed to look like.)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In any case, always make clear what didn't come out of your head.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37811",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28587/"
] |
37,816 |
<p>I noticed that I have more and more serious problems keeping focused, and despite my efforts to fix it the problem is just getting worse over time.</p>
<p>When I'm in a research-related discussion with someone, my mind easily wanders, and I won't be able to recall the last thing other person was saying so I have to politely ask them to repeat it. Usually this is because I'm still thinking about the last idea they mentioned instead of continuing to listen to them talk, but sometimes it's just as if my mind just turned off for the duration of a sentence of two.</p>
<p>At least when I'm talking to one person, I can always ask them to repeat what they said or ask them to slow down. But when it's a group discussion or a lecture/talk, this is not possible. When I was an undergraduate and attended lectures regularly, I didn't have this problem.</p>
<p>Am I alone with this problem, or do others encounter it too?</p>
<p>What strategies can one use to improve concentration and comprehension? How can I train myself to focus better?</p>
<p>I am very concerned about this problem as it affects my academic work and performance.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37820,
"author": "Ketan Maheshwari",
"author_id": 6103,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6103",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a common issue I have when attending a talk or discussing on some intense topic with a collaborator. Since English is not my first language, I also happen to spend some time mentally translating it to my internal language (which is a mix of many by now). </p>\n\n<p>Personally, some mental homework and meditation has helped me focus. Looking at the abstract and author bio (if available) before the talk helps. Experience gained from attending more and more talks has also helped.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37822,
"author": "Trevor Wilson",
"author_id": 8937,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8937",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think it helps to ask as many questions as you can reasonably get away with asking, about whatever parts of the talk you are able to formulate questions about. As well as helping you understand the thing itself that you are asking about, it slows down the talk (which might be appreciated by others as well as by yourself) and also may help to keep you engaged.</p>\n\n<p>(Of course, the number of questions that you can reasonably get away with asking may depend on the speaker, the type of talk, and the audience.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37825,
"author": "Emerson",
"author_id": 28654,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28654",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>What you describe sounds remarkably like burnout (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_%28psychology%29\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_%28psychology%29</a>) - the effort and amount of material and time involved after undergrad are often greater than during undergrad. It may not be possible, but downshifting or taking a break for focusing on other avenues could also help - if it is burnout \"pushing through\" can exacerbate the situation (you note that it seems to be getting worse). </p>\n\n<p>If it is not possible to take an actual break or temporarily reduce workload/hours, it might help to enforce personal time to focus on other tasks (for instance reading a book for pleasure, going on a hike over a weekend, playing a video game, volunteering at a local charity, etc.).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37834,
"author": "Cassie Sherman",
"author_id": 28658,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28658",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Snap a rubber band on your wrist. If it is a lecture, take notes. You could use the program Lumosity to improve your brain's attention span, memory, etc. Ask questions, but only good ones... Don't annoy people, or they will hate you forever. Not really, but still. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40271,
"author": "Alasdair McAndrew",
"author_id": 30710,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/30710",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I find that writing - note taking - helps me greatly. If I'm just listening then my mind wanders (problems of middle-age: one's mind is not as flexible as once it was!)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40363,
"author": "MrMeritology",
"author_id": 17564,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17564",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You should first attend to any lifestyle factor that may be disrupting your ability to focus and maintain short-term attention.</p>\n\n<p>Most important is sleep. Make sure you have regular, consistent sleep of sufficient quality and quantity. This means going to bed at the same time each night, and waking up the same time each day. Avoid alcohol and caffeine after 6pm. Get some exercise or activity (20 min. walk) each day.</p>\n\n<p>Second is to avoid \"multi-tasking\". Stop doing two, three, or four things at once when you study, read, or attend class. TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Be in a completely quite place. No other screens or activity on around you. If you are working on your computer, turn off your email and your messaging apps. Don't look at them for hours.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, start writing notes <strong><em>BY HAND</em></strong> when you attend lectures and group discussion, and you should aim to catch <strong><em>ALL</em></strong> important comments and points. If you put this level of attention into written notes, then it's hard to allow space for your mind to wander.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37816",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28650/"
] |
37,817 |
<p>I am an amateur mathematician. I am writing a research monograph in the field of abstract mathematics (general topology, specifically).</p>
<p>Should I publish it traditionally or self-publish?</p>
<p>There are many benefits of self-publishing (e.g with <a href="http://luli.com">Lulu</a>) an academic work:</p>
<ol>
<li>No need to tremble awaiting my book to be rejected by a peer review. No responses like "first publish in articles, only then make a book". I am in full control what I want to publish.</li>
<li>I don't pay the publisher 80-90% of my revenue. (This also may make AdWords marketing of my book profitable and thus I can do a rather huge advertisement of my book myself using AdWords. I suspect, this may over-perform traditional publishers in the number of sales.)</li>
<li>I am in a full control of my book. No forced need to change something, if an editor's opinion differs from my own.</li>
<li>No need to convert it to LaTeX, I can use my preferred software such as <a href="http://www.texmacs.org">TeXmacs</a>.</li>
<li>The book goes into Amazon and other distribution channels anyway.</li>
</ol>
<p>I can pay a professional scientific editor to edit my book for paid, as a kind of business investment.</p>
<p>Peer review is intended to choose which books are published and which are not. I can do fine without peer review, allowing the buyers of my book to decide for themselves.</p>
<p>Well, a potential buyer may prefer books published by a big publisher, but it (in my opinion) can be well replaced with big red letters "Edited and checked for errors by professor XXX."</p>
<p>Drawbacks which I know:</p>
<ol>
<li>It may not be as good for my academic carrier as traditional academic publishing. (It does not matter for me anyway, as I am not a professional academic.)</li>
<li>Not sure if my book goes into university libraries (please comment on this issue).</li>
</ol>
<p>I've pointed many benefits of self-publishing. What are drawbacks (except of pointed by me)?</p>
<hr>
<p>And one more specific question: Is the number of books sold if using a traditional publisher, likely to greatly overperform the number of books sold if self-publishing? If yes, why?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37818,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Your mathematics might be wrong, and since you're too close to it and too steeped in it, you might not notice. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37821,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I've pointed many benefits of self-publishing. What are drawbacks (except of pointed by me)?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The scientific community will very likely ignore your contributions. That is, your book will have approximately zero impact. The combination of \"I speak in a bold voice\" and \"I did not let my work get peer-reviewed\" screams \"crank\" to professional mathematicians.</li>\n<li>Your business plan of \"I get 100% of the profits instead of 10%, hence I make a lot more money\" is a bit naive. If your book is not distributed and advertised by a known publisher, you can also expect to sell <em>much less</em> copies, so it is no clear that you will make more money (if any at all) using self-distribution.</li>\n<li>Relatedly, it is true that <em>\"the book goes into Amazon and other distribution channels anyway\"</em>, but there is a large difference between \"is hidden somewhere on Amazon\" and \"is advertised by Springer\".</li>\n<li>You are in full control over your book, but you also don't get professional feedback. You seem to falsely assume that peer review is a mechanism to somehow suppress books and ideas. This is not the case - largely, peer review improves published work by forcing an author to take comments of other, independent researchers from the field into account. You seem to think that this is a bad thing, but most people would probably disagree.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37823,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Should I publish it traditionally or self-publish?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Why do you want to publish at all? You answered</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I write the book to store down my research results and to spread my new knowledge. To make money is not the main aim, but it would be nice.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Given that: the answer is that you should certainly not self-publish your work. You can store your results and spread knowledge by having the material freely available on the internet, as I believe is already the case. The arxiv is one nice place to put work, but it is not the only one: you could put in on github or any number of other repositories. You can just put it on your own website and make sure that google indexes it. That means that billions of people can access it at any time.</p>\n\n<p>Let me be clear with you: you are not going to make money self-publishing works of mathematics that you have not been able to publish traditionally. It is exceedingly rare for any mathematical text beyond the undergraduate level to make a profit that is worth the time taken to write it. (Maybe a few of Serge Lang's books qualify; probably not.) If you go self-publishing rather than traditional publishing, you will lose money, and what you're paying for is the vanity of being a published author. </p>\n\n<p>The bar for interest by the mathematical community is much lower than the bar for the type of public interest needed to generate any real sales. The thought that you have \"My ideas are too bold for the mathematical community, so I need to take matters into my own hands; they don't know the value of my work as well as I do\" is not only crankish but actually <em>specifically damaging</em> to you: it makes you ideal prey for predators of various kinds. You told us in a previous question that you literally fell prey to a diploma mill and thereby lost money. The same mindset that you have now is going to cost you more money in the future. </p>\n\n<p>I'm sorry to tell you this, but this has been going on for several years now, so I feel I should be plain: no one in the world has found your work to be of significant mathematical value. This means that, with probability slightly less than one, that your work does not have significant mathematical value. But in the unlikely event that your work does have value, you're not doing what is necessary in order to show it. Mathematical research is not about simply writing down structures that generalize other structures and proving results about them. You have to solve old problems or pose new ones that are of interest to the community. Bold statements of superiority would be a positive thing if they are specific and factual: for your work to be \"superior\", it should solve at least one problem that others have posed. If you've done that, please explain yourself properly and then your work can be published in the mathematical mainstream. If you haven't: please start to be honest with yourself about the value of your work. Your livelihood is at stake.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37824,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I don't have time to look at your work in detail, but I have at least skimmed through parts of it. I would recommend against self-publishing if you hope for mainstream acceptance of your work (but if you don't care about that and self-publishing would make you happy, then go for it). What you write looks like mathematics, not the sort of nonsense one sometimes sees from amateurs, and it might plausibly be correct, but the motivation is absolutely unclear to me. To put it bluntly, I can't think of anyone who would want to read it, since I can't identify what they would learn or get out of it. I imagine this is the reason traditional publishers are reluctant to publish it, namely that there's no apparent market for this book in its current form.</p>\n\n<p>Of course this doesn't mean your work isn't good. I don't know, since I haven't actually understood it, and it is possible that there are good reasons why it should be more popular than it has been so far. However, if you'd like your ideas to spread and be used by others, then you need to communicate them more compellingly:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>If you can address problems or topics other people have cared about in the past, in a way that couldn't be done without your work, then that will attract readers.</p></li>\n<li><p>It's important to give interesting or beautiful examples, whose attraction does not depend on already having an emotional commitment to this work.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you can't give great examples or make connections with previous work, then it will be difficult to attract readers, but at the very least you need to give clear, intuitive explanations of the concepts you deal with and why they are important.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In its current form, I don't think your book does any of these things. If you self-publish it, I do not expect it will sell many copies at all, and almost exclusively to people who are unlikely to contribute to mainstream acceptance of your work (such as friends or family). I would expect it to sell zero copies to professional mathematicians, and I'd be very surprised if it sold more than a handful.</p>\n\n<p>One major contribution the publisher can make is to enforce clear and well-motivated communication. You are too close to the work to be an objective judge of this. You've spent years thinking about these ideas, so deeply that they now feel comfortable and natural to you, but nobody else has developed this perspective on them yet. If you want other people to take up these research topics, then you need to attract their interest. Reviewers or editors might be able to help refine an already attractive manuscript, but they can't add motivation from scratch (you have to convince them before they can help you convince anyone else). Until you reach the point where a traditional publisher would accept the book, I don't think it will have the impact you desire. So the fundamental questions are whether you can reach this point and whether you want to try.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37827,
"author": "Chris Sunami",
"author_id": 12743,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12743",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you publish traditionally, you make it much more likely that the audience with the background to understand your work and an interest in the topic will find it and read it. The very fact of making it past the gatekeepers of traditional publishing serves as an advertisement of the quality of your work.</p>\n\n<p>I say this based on personal experience from years of publishing philosophy non-traditionally. You can potentially reach a general audience outside of academia <em>if</em> your work is truly of broad general interest, but if you want to reach the experts in your field (or if you're working in a niche that is only accessible to the experts!) you 100% need to publish in the places they publish.</p>\n\n<p>For a field like mathematics, even amateurs are unlikely to take a chance on reading something not peer-reviewed. If you disagree, ask yourself a question: When is the last time YOU purchased a self-published mathematics text by an unknown author?</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37817",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1637/"
] |
37,832 |
<p>I need Matlab code of a method to compare it with the results of my proposed method.</p>
<p>The method which I want to use happened to be available online by a research group in a university in US in 1997 <a href="http://www.crpc.rice.edu/newsletters/win97/news_NBI.html" rel="nofollow"> [see here]</a>. Unfortunately, when I click the <a href="http://www.caam.rice.edu/~indra/NBIhomepage.html" rel="nofollow">corresponding link</a> of the method, it gives a server Error message. I've tried to email the person who seems to be responsible for <a href="http://softlib.rice.edu/NBI.html" rel="nofollow">this page</a>, but I didn't get a reply. <a href="http://softlib.rice.edu/nbilicreg.html" rel="nofollow">This page</a> also returns a server error.</p>
<p>As I urgently need this code, what should I do to contact to this research group? </p>
<p>Also, how can I convince them to give me the code? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37835,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>PhD students come and move on, so if you are looking for code that isn't exactly brand new then contacting the responsible professor is usually your best bet. That being said, I would not get my hopes up too much that you get your code \"urgently\". There is a good chance that even the responsible professor will need to do some good ol' digging before (s)he unearths this material, if at all (and then there is still a good chance that nobody knows anymore how to make it work, or that it does not run anymore on today's platforms). Assume that this is going to be a bit of a project on its own.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37855,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The <a href=\"http://uk.mathworks.com/help/releases/R13sp2/pdf_doc/mbc/cage.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">MATLAB R13SP2 Model-Based Calibration Toolbox</a> (hopefully the link works without a MATLAB license/account) contained the NBI algorithm:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To understand the options for the NBI algorithm, some limited understanding of the algorithm is required. For more information on the NBI algorithm, see the NBI home page at the following URL: <a href=\"http://www.caam.rice.edu/~indra/NBIhomepage.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.caam.rice.edu/~indra/NBIhomepage.html</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>While the NBI link is dead, it is the same link you are asking about, so it is potentially the same algorithm.</p>\n\n<p>MATLAB R13SP2 (6.5.2) was released in 2003 so is not quite as old as the original link, but it is still old. I cannot find any documentation which says that newer releases of MATLAB contain the NBI algorithm (but nor did I find any documentation that it has been removed). My Mathworks account and license allows me to download R13SP2. The <a href=\"http://uk.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/release13/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">system requirements</a> suggest it should work on Windows XP or 32 bit Linux (you might need an old kernel and glibc).</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/29
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37832",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8294/"
] |
37,838 |
<p>I left University early (during the final year) and was only awarded an associates degree (one level below a full bachelors) in Computer Science.</p>
<p>I've been an IT professional for a few years now (development and consulting) and I'm looking to fix my broken educational record.</p>
<p>At this point, I could enter a bachelors programme in the final year and upgrade my associates degree to a full bachelors OR I can go straight into a Master's degree. Several Universities have offered me entry to their part time Master's degree in computing off the back of my associates degree and work experience.</p>
<p>I'm at a loss as to what I should do?</p>
<p>I've always wanted to do a PhD in software engineering project methods or maybe something more comp sci based but I fear that a masters without a bachelors won't be good enough to be accepted anywhere.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37835,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>PhD students come and move on, so if you are looking for code that isn't exactly brand new then contacting the responsible professor is usually your best bet. That being said, I would not get my hopes up too much that you get your code \"urgently\". There is a good chance that even the responsible professor will need to do some good ol' digging before (s)he unearths this material, if at all (and then there is still a good chance that nobody knows anymore how to make it work, or that it does not run anymore on today's platforms). Assume that this is going to be a bit of a project on its own.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37855,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The <a href=\"http://uk.mathworks.com/help/releases/R13sp2/pdf_doc/mbc/cage.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">MATLAB R13SP2 Model-Based Calibration Toolbox</a> (hopefully the link works without a MATLAB license/account) contained the NBI algorithm:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>To understand the options for the NBI algorithm, some limited understanding of the algorithm is required. For more information on the NBI algorithm, see the NBI home page at the following URL: <a href=\"http://www.caam.rice.edu/~indra/NBIhomepage.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.caam.rice.edu/~indra/NBIhomepage.html</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>While the NBI link is dead, it is the same link you are asking about, so it is potentially the same algorithm.</p>\n\n<p>MATLAB R13SP2 (6.5.2) was released in 2003 so is not quite as old as the original link, but it is still old. I cannot find any documentation which says that newer releases of MATLAB contain the NBI algorithm (but nor did I find any documentation that it has been removed). My Mathworks account and license allows me to download R13SP2. The <a href=\"http://uk.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/release13/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">system requirements</a> suggest it should work on Windows XP or 32 bit Linux (you might need an old kernel and glibc).</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37838",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28661/"
] |
37,839 |
<p>I am having difficulties in math, and every time I try to go to my math professor's office hours she always seems annoyed. When I ask her a question she always says something to the effect "I don't understand what you are asking," I understand being precise with math but it's as if she purposely feigns confusion. I can ask a professor a math question in another one of my classes who barely speaks English and he seems to understand what I mean just fine. In short, this prof always talks down to me and is rude, I am struggling with the math, and am just trying my best to understand it. What should I do in this situation?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37844,
"author": "Aaron Brick",
"author_id": 14140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14140",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think you should ask your question somewhere else first. Is it too obvious to suggest the math.stackexchange? If the question gets ripped to shreds for imprecision, you should rework it before asking that professor. If not, then she's just prickly and you might well choose not to pursue your relationship with her.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40064,
"author": "David Richerby",
"author_id": 10685,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It's possible that your professor just doesn't want to help you: in that case, obviously, you need to find somebody else. Or it may be that she just has bad interpersonal skills and comes across as rude and patronizing when she's just trying to be efficient. In any case, I'll assume that she does want to help but genuinely can't understand your questions.</p>\n\n<p>Most likely, it's because you're asking the \"wrong\" question. A common phenomenon is the so-called \"X-Y problem\", where you're asking about the wrong thing. For example, you've tried to solve an exercise but you couldn't do it. There are two basic possibilities: either you used the wrong method, or you used the right method but got stuck somewhere in the implementation. In the X-Y problem, you start asking detailed questions about how to fix your implementation of the method when, in fact, your problem is that you used the wrong method. There's a great <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem\">post about recognizing and dealing with the X-Y problem</a> on meta.stackexchange.com.</p>\n\n<p>A related phenomenon is asking questions that only make sense to people who share a particular misunderstanding of some other topic. You don't understand X so, of course, you're asking about X. However, the root cause of this is probably that you don't understand Y. Because you don't understand Y, the way you think X works just doesn't make sense: your question only makes sense in the context of your misunderstanding of Y.</p>\n\n<p>Random (and slightly silly) example. Suppose a student of automotive design notices that the tyres are black and the steering wheel is black, too. He decides that all wheels have to be black so there must be a reason for this and builds up some elaborate theory in his head about how black things rotate better or something. And then he sees that his friend's car has a beige steering wheel. The next day, the student goes to his professor and asks what mechanisms the friend's car uses to compensate for the deficiencies of its beige steering wheel. This question makes perfect sense to the student but is total nonsense to anybody else.</p>\n\n<p>The solution is to work backwards through your assumptions with your professor, to try to find the step where you misunderstood.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Student.</strong> What mechanisms does my friend's car use to compensate for the deficiencies of its beige steering wheel?<br>\n<strong>Prof.</strong> Er... I don't understand your question.<br>\n<strong>Student.</strong> Well, cars need to have black steering wheels because they rotate better. My friend's car seems to steer fine so it must have some way of dealing with the bad rotation of its beige steering wheel.<br>\n<strong>Prof.</strong> Why do you think that black steering wheels rotate better? [Note that slight differences of phrasing in this question can make the professor seem much more or less sympathetic. \"What makes you think that...\" can come across as being annoyed, for example.]<br>\n<strong>Student.</strong> I'm not sure but maybe it's because [whatever]. But the tyres and the steering wheel are both black so there must be reason.<br>\n<strong>Prof.</strong> Actually, that's just a coincidence. The tyres are black because they add carbon to the rubber to make it stronger, and the steering wheel is black because the designer thinks it looks nice.<br>\n<strong>Student.</strong> Ohhhhhh. I get it, now.</p>\n\n<p>It may be that your other professor is better at answering your questions because he's better at figuring out what the root cause of your misunderstanding is.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40076,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While I may be downvoted for this, you should also be aware of (the possibility of) your own subjective bias in regards to the gender of the professor. I noticed that you said the female professor was not helpful (\"confused\" and \"annoyed\") while you were much more generous to the male professor. </p>\n\n<p>The analysis of RateMyProfessor (<a href=\"http://benschmidt.org/profGender/#\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://benschmidt.org/profGender/#</a>) shows clear gendered variations between student ratings of professors along the lines of gender.</p>\n\n<p>Using the keyword \"confused\" yields this chart:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/r979C.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>and \"annoyed\" also shows a much stronger bias towards female faculty:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/kDKTY.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>whereas the keyword \"brilliant\" shows that men are rated more highly for this attribute:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/zssMj.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n\n<p>while this data from Ben Schmidt is not peer reviewed, there are peer reviewed articles that also note this:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Centra, John A. and Noreen B. Gaubatz. \"Is There Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching?\" The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2000), pp. 17-33</li>\n<li>Bennett, Sheila K. Student perceptions of and expectations for male and female instructors: Evidence relating to the question of gender bias in teaching evaluation.\nJournal of Educational Psychology, Vol 74(2), Apr 1982, 170-179. <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.74.2.170\" rel=\"noreferrer\">http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.74.2.170</a> </li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 71026,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I suggest trying to figure out if the problem is with you, her, or merely the mixing of the two.</p>\n\n<p>One of the other answers mentions TAs. That might be a good suggestion, but TAs rarely have the same sort of personality and outlook as professors. If you're concerned about this professor being rude and unhelpful and how to deal with that, it might not be helpful to talk to TAs. What you may want to do is seek out another professor, possibly one from a previous class you took, and ask them the same question.</p>\n\n<p>I wouldn't mention anything about you feeling the professor is rude/unhelpful (unless you know this other instructor <em>very</em> well), but you could easily make up a story. Missed your professor's office hours, another student suggested them, felt you needed to hear it from someone else to understand it, whatever. Most of these probably wouldn't even be lies.</p>\n\n<p>You should, however, definitely mention who your current professor is, and pay close attention to the non-verbal response. Usually the other faculty are aware of bad apples and, in my experience, make little effort to hide their feelings.</p>\n\n<p>Once you've got their attention and agreement to give you a few minutes, ask the exact same question(s) the exact same way. If this instructor responds similarly, it might be the questions you're asking or how you're asking them. If the other instructor is helpful, it's possibly your professor at fault.</p>\n\n<p>You could also draw on previous experience. Is this the first class you have had issues with? The first instructor to act this way? In my experience as an engineering student, I only encountered one person who was outright dismissive of questions and condescending as you seem to be experiencing. While of course it will vary with university and discipline, if you've experienced this a lot, it might also suggest it's the way you're approaching the interaction. If this is an outlier, the problem probably isn't with you.</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes you just have to acknowledge there are bad teachers out there. They might very well not want to be teaching a class, or teaching a class at the level / in the subject they are. Or they might just be garbage at teaching. In that case, you have a few options.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Find someone else to ask. Many universities offer tutorial centers. Maybe as I suggested, another professor will help. Maybe the TAs are more useful.</li>\n<li>Drop the class and take it with someone else.</li>\n<li>Find a source of information you understand better. Youtube videos, websites, Math.SE / etc, even shop around for another textbook.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>What isn't going to happen is that you make a bad teacher a good one. It's also not worth it to try to get some sort of revenge for being mistreated, at least at the mere degree of what you have described. Most universities do, however, offer ways for students to review professors at the end of the semester; use that, and let their superiors address it when the time for that comes.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37839",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28663/"
] |
37,848 |
<p>A student emailed me after a recent exam, complaining about not having enough time to finish the exam. Out of all the students, most managed to finish within 2/3 of the provided time. I wonder what might be some possible ways to respond to this kind of complaint? (This is my first time teaching a class of my own -- I only TA'd before, so I've never had to deal with this type of issue in the past).</p>
<p><strong>More details:</strong> Some people asked about the student's performance. The student's grade was between 60-70%. This is actually a pretty good grade: our system is such that 70%+ would be considered a top-level grade (similar to an A in the US), though grades of 70%-90% are not unusual. Such a grading scheme is typical here; I do not think it is likely that the student interpreted their grade incorrectly.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37853,
"author": "ResearchEnthusiast",
"author_id": 28389,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28389",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Simply reply something like:\n\"I believe that with respect to the test enough time was given and have not heard many similar complaints. Yet, if while grading the exams it will be visible that most of the students had trouble finishing the test in the given time I'll grade the exams properly.\"</p>\n\n<p>This makes you seem understanding of his complaints yet basically tells him that if he is the only one who had problems with the time then the problem is his and not yours.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37854,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The more I teach the more I realize humans in general either complain about something or blame someone for their lack of achievements. Here, you have the opportunity to teach this valuable lesson to the student. I would do the followings: </p>\n\n<p><strong>Notification</strong>: I would send an email to the student, and tell him/her to meet me at my office to discuss this issue. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Discussion</strong>: During the meeting, I would honestly show him/her, the overall statistical point, that shows, most students did well and he/she did not. Then, he/she has two choices that needs to make on his/her own about reality of life and studying at the university. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37863,
"author": "J W",
"author_id": 12339,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12339",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>While running out of time could be indicative that the exam is too long or difficult, it would appear that is not the case if most students managed to finish early. However, I would check their grades too, as finishing early can also occur when students do not know the material or struggle with it so much that they give up.</p>\n\n<p>Assuming this student is an outlier, it could be worthwhile investigating why. Perhaps this particular student has unusual difficulties, health issues or some other reason for not managing to finish in time. It may be necessary to refer the student to appropriate student support services for advice and assistance. This includes study skills and/or exam-taking techniques.</p>\n\n<p>Be firm, but fair; show kindness and understanding as warranted. Give the student the benefit of the doubt, initially, but look into the facts insofar as that is possible. Arrange a meeting with the student and point him/her in the direction of appropriate assistance, based on your investigations and what you learn during the meeting. Finally, be clear on what is the student's own responsibility. You are there to help, but not to carry people.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37864,
"author": "JamesRyan",
"author_id": 8110,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8110",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Give them more time (within reason). Everyone doesn't work at the same pace. Unless you are specifically trying to test a pressure situation (in which case you have failed to apply that to the faster students) then time should not be the major factor. Allowing more time won't suddenly give the knowledge/skill you are trying to test if they don't have it. You might even find that with the extra headroom that student won't get flustered and finish quicker.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from that, look at why they are having trouble and how you/they can work to improve it. It is a bit dissapointing that both the existing answers are about how to leave that student behind.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37873,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When I was a TA for a large artificial intelligence class, we frequently had this complaint from students. The reason was that, due to the nature of the class, many of the problems could be worked out <em>eventually</em> from first principles (or from the book or notes, since these were often open book as well) by somebody who didn't understand the material, but could only be worked out <em>efficiently</em> by a person who knew the material. We thus tended to end up with most students finishing well before allotted time, but a noticeably minority who did very bad work right up to the end, and felt \"if they'd just had another hour or two\" they could have done everything right.</p>\n\n<p>Our response was to explain that the test was looking not just for the ability to solve the problems, but for facility with the problem-solving techniques. Thus, speed really did count! This was also borne out by the distributions: it really wasn't a problem for the stronger students.</p>\n\n<p>I would thus recommend first looking at the distribution of the grades: if the strong students mostly finished early, then you probably have a weak student who was trying to work things out from first principles, hazy recollection, or source material (if you're open book). You can then explain something similar, that you are testing not just the ability to solve problems, but facility with the concepts, and if they are weak with the concepts, it is likely to show up in slow test-taking time.</p>\n\n<p>Now, it is also possible that the student has a medical impairment, such as dyslexia, that genuinely means they cannot work quickly. If this is the case, then most universities have services that can help to evaluate them and plan appropriate accommodation, which can be communicated to you for application to <strong>future</strong> exams by the responsible personnel. Don't just take a Doctor's note, because an M.D. can only detect the existence of a condition, not calibrate an appropriate educational adjustment for it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37879,
"author": "JeffE",
"author_id": 65,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My usual response to this complaint is to agree that there is a problem, reassure the student that they are not alone, and to provide them with as many tools as possible to address the problem on future exams.</p>\n\n<p>I strongly suggest working with (not just copying from) a study group, attending office hours and discussion sections, posting questions to Piazza, reading carefully through homework solutions, and most importantly, not being afraid to ask \"stupid\" questions. I try to probe for specific topics that the student is struggling with, and offer additional resources for those (usually prerequisite) topics. I suggest specific time-management strategies for the kinds of exams I write. (For example: Read the <em>entire</em> exam and understand <em>every</em> problem before consciously thinking about how to solve anything, much less writing anything. Never spend more than five minutes staring at the same problem; if you're stuck, jot down what you're thinking, turn the page, and come back later.) I offer to set up additional meetings with the student to go over their future homeworks before the submission deadline. (They almost never take me up on this offer.) I mention that there are well-oiled official channels for students to request additional time or other accommodations, but the request must be made well in advance. I suggest that if they decide to drop the class, that they continue attending lectures and discussions and submitting homework, as a dry run for their next attempt.</p>\n\n<p>What I do <strong>not</strong> do is accept that student's \"lack of time\" as evidence that the exam was too difficult, that the student was treated unfairly, or that I should change that student's exam grade.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37933,
"author": "Brian Tompsett - 汤莱恩",
"author_id": 26708,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26708",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are many excellent answers here which raise points I agree with. @JW correctly points out potential underlying alternate needs issues and the role of student support services. @jakebeal correctly points out that more complete understanding of the material permits the better students to move directly to an answer, and the purpose of some questions is to make that distinction between students. @JeffE shows his experience in being a supportive tutor. I relate to all these points as an experienced tutor with responsibility for students with alternate needs.</p>\n<p>This question (and the answers) may be read in the future by students who feel aggrieved and new staff who may be less experienced, so I wanted to ensure an important part of academic/university processes was mentioned. Sometimes we are so familiar with our own internal mechanisms we forget to explain them to outsiders (like students). Less experienced staff may also have not become aware of the different ways students react to these situations.</p>\n<p>Firstly, let me mention academic processes of quality and scrutiny. I do not have experience of the procedures in every continent, but in the UK, all examination processes are overseen and monitored by an external examiner. I myself am an external examiner for other institutions. Usually the exam questions, the marking scheme and the sample answers are submitted, scrutinised, and moderated by such an external examiner. This helps ensure comparable levels of quality and difficulty across the sector. A reputable department would have internal moderation and scrutiny processes in place to remove basic errors and typographic mistakes at an early stage, and should have some form of level checking in place (i.e. are the questions set at the right level). Many students are not aware of this and think the Professor just threw the paper together to torture them personally.</p>\n<p>The next stage of scrutiny is during the marking and grade determination. It is good practice for answers that are qualitative in nature (and thus the grading is judgemental) for there to be a double-marking processes. Usually this might be by statistical sampling of scripts or it might be a full double-bind re-mark depending on the need. The final grades are then submitted to a board of examiners that makes the final decision based on the evidence available with the support of the external examiner. The full statistical information of the mark profiles and distributions would be available to the examination board and these would indicate and papers that appeared to have too high or to low an average. There is often a <em>mitigating circumstances</em> panel (that meets in camera) and takes into account any submitted mitigation and alternate needs. The decision that results is a decision taken jointly by the combined examiners. It is thus, not an arbitrary and ephemeral decision of the on the part of the Professor as some students might imagine.</p>\n<p>Failure to communicate effectively with students on the quality processes in place can result in adverse publicity as this <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31057005\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">media report</a> might indicate. Also, if your department or institution does not have such quality processes in place you are not achieving <em>best practice</em>; but then I am departmental quality officer too!</p>\n<p>The last part, for the less experienced, is knowing that different students respond in different ways to being challenged by learning experiences. See articles on <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">The Theory of Mind</a> and how this can affect Undergraduate Behavior ( <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/026151000165517/pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Disruptive behaviour, avoidance of\nresponsibility and theory of mind</a> ) and theories of <a href=\"https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201205/high-conflict-people-drive-disputes-home-school-work\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">high conflict people</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38020,
"author": "abathur",
"author_id": 5668,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5668",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I want to push back a little on the comments some have made about the relative value of solving the same problems at a faster/slower pace. I don't mean to say this is necessarily the case in OP's circumstance, but anyways.</p>\n\n<p>Pacing can be hard to prepare for, <em>especially</em> going into the first exam of the semester; this can be exacerbated if you don't know how many questions there will be and you aren't working closely enough with other students to be aware of where you fall in the pack on pacing. In the absence of information which makes clear the pace at which you'll be expected to deliver correct answers and a way to know where you stand now, <em>it's perfectly reasonable for a student who is able to complete all homework and practice materials without significant difficulty in an amount of time that doesn't feel onerous to assume they are prepared for the exam</em>.</p>\n\n<p>I'll give an <em>extreme</em> example of how this can go wrong: In a class where we had weekly vocabulary quizzes, our final included pairing a few hundred words and definitions. We were all prepared for this. But the semester of training we had matching words with definitions was relatively useless when we discovered all of the words were in a single bank, and all of the definitions in another. Knowing each word well enough to pair it with a definition on a short quiz wasn't anywhere close to knowing it well enough to sort out the correct pairings among many similar words and definitions. Even using flash cards and giving acceptable definitions--one of the primary ways we study vocabulary--was woefully insufficient preparation. The only way we could've possibly prepared to complete the task in the given time was knowing the full scope of what we'd be asked to do and the time we'd have to do it.</p>\n\n<p>All of us make tradeoffs when it comes to how we allocate our time based on our goals--and we all inevitably make mistakes allocating our time when we're short on information.</p>\n\n<p>I figure it's worth documenting here a few policy/design things you might be able to do to hedge against pacing issues in the future:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Allow any student extra time on an exam in exchange for a penalty (assuming your schedule allows).</li>\n<li>Build tests which are hard to complete but allow a student to skip up to N unanswered questions; students who go over can either get bonus or simply dilute the per-question risk.</li>\n<li>Include information useful for pacing or even explicit recommendations at the beginning or throughout the exam. While it's true that self-pacing is a worthwhile skill, pacing can be tricky if parts of the test vary substantively in the time they'll take. Imagine you flip through an exam, note there are 40 questions, estimate the pace you'll need to hold, and think you're doing well to hold just under the pace for 20 questions until you hit a block of 10 questions that take three times as long to complete.</li>\n<li>Include pacing recommendations with any practice tests or study recommendations. Think not just, \"be prepared to answer these types of questions\", but, \"in order to complete the exam, you should prepare to solve problems like the ones in this section at a pace of N minutes per question.\"</li>\n<li>Intentionally scale up the amount of time you intend a test to take up over the semester, and clearly communicate this to students.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 157895,
"author": "Nic Szerman",
"author_id": 28721,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28721",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I have had timing issues with exams all my life. Recently I found out that I have dyslexia. Now, when I use a special font for dyslexic people, I can read and solve problems in literally half the time. I wish someone would have suggested me looking into this many years ago - my two cents.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 158001,
"author": "FourierFlux",
"author_id": 110698,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/110698",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A major problem with exams is when you're tested on something that isn't the focus of the course.</p>\n<p>EX: I once took an exam in an EE class where I had to do all the calculations by hand within the given time limit. It became not an exercise in the topics we covered but in algebraic manipulation under time constraints.</p>\n<p>I would suggest you change exams to test knowledge of the material or give additional time for problems which require a lot of mechanical operations which are not the focus of the course.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37848",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28653/"
] |
37,856 |
<p>I have graduated from Russian university after 5 years of education and got a Specialist degree (Engineer in Computer Science). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialist_degree" rel="nofollow">According to Wikipedia</a>, Specialist is a four-tier degree and stands right above Master degree in some specialities. But despite graduation requirements and due to the duration, I suggest, it can only be put right above Bachelor degree. So the next step I should take is to continue my education to then get Master degree. Is my suggestion right? Or do I think about it wrong way?</p>
<p>If it helps or is necessary, I'm planning to continue education in Canadian university.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37860,
"author": "JP Janet",
"author_id": 28045,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28045",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am in a German masters program, and one of my Russian classmates has a specialist degree (in applied mathematics). I cannot say in generality (i.e. Canada), but it was taken as equivalent to a Bachelor's Degree around here.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 78098,
"author": "errantlinguist",
"author_id": 50609,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/50609",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Since <a href=\"http://int.rsue.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=175&Itemid=209#Degrees\" rel=\"noreferrer\">1997</a>, having a Russian (or rather \"Soviet\"-style) 5-year <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialist_degree\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Specialist (специалист) degree</a> is formally recognized as the equivalent of holding a Master's degree (cf. <a href=\"http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001298/129839eo.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><em>Mutual Recognition of Qualifications: the Russian Federation and the Other European Countries</em></a>); Judging by the fact that, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14662\">in Canada, one can typically directly enter a PhD program without e.g. doing a Master's degree course beforehand</a> (as is typical in e.g. the USA), you should have no problems fulfilling the formal requirements to enter a PhD program there.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37856",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28686/"
] |
37,862 |
<p>When contacting universities, in many cases, I find the replies to my emails extremely well detailed and helpful, therefore in such cases I find a simple "Thank you" to be just insufficient.</p>
<p>For example, when you have already applied to a program, and then you email the department to ask a simple question about supplementary documents, but they put <strong>SO MUCH</strong> effort in their response and even analyze your application before the application process has even started and they <strong>tell you that they are very certain that you will be accepted</strong>. How would you react? Is it rude to say something like: "<strong>I'm very glad to hear that.</strong>"</p>
<p>In such situations, I do not really know how to best answer the person to show them that I really appreciate their email very much.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37865,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Politeness never hurts. \"Thank you for your very detailed and positive information\" could be one option or something along those lines. I am sure most people providing this type of response do not expect much in return (not that they do not deserve it). But as with many other instances, keeping the thanks short and concise is necessary, do not overwork it because that just seems suspicious. Remember that the person is doing their work (well) and should be praised for just that. </p>\n\n<p>If the school to which you are applying is large then it is not very likely you will be remembered and so the response will have little significance other than to show appreciation. In a smaller school, however, your politeness may be noticed and can help you build good relations with administration for the future so politeness never hurts.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37869,
"author": "Kimball",
"author_id": 19607,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19607",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My advice is to examine your own feelings, and understand what exactly you want to express. Then words should come more naturally to you (at least if you're fluent in English). If you just say \"I'm very glad to hear that\" (I don't know if you meant you would write only this sentence) it sounds to me like you are at least reasonably happy you will likely be admitted, but you're not specific expressing gratitude for the effort they put into your inquiry.</p>\n\n<p>In this case, I presume you want to do two things: show excitement/enthusiasm about the news and express appreciation for their effort. For example: \"That's great/wonderful news! I really appreciate all of the effort you took to personally examine my application.\" Or: \"I'm excited to hear that. Thank you very much for taking the time look at my application in detail.\"</p>\n\n<p>Note: It appears Peter is Scandanavian, so he may be more reserved than a classless American like me. Anyway, I don't think you need to restrict yourself to 1 sentence. Two or three is fine, though I agree that you should be brief.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37871,
"author": "Jack Aidley",
"author_id": 5614,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5614",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm going to start by not answering your question: you have no need to express extreme gratitude in this case. The staff at the university are simply exhibiting good customer service: remember that they want you to come to their university and not take your custom to a different university instead and, accordingly, they have taken the time to answer your query effectively. <em>This is doing their job</em> not going above and beyond as you seem to think.</p>\n\n<p>Given this I think the appropriate response is simply a polite thank you rather than any effusive expression of extreme gratitude which I would think is likely to come across as a bit odd.</p>\n\n<p>To answer the question you actually posed: it rather depends on the country the university is in. In the UK, for example, we tend to find overly exuberant displays of gratitude rather odd and even a bit uncomfortable so you'd want to adopt a relatively mild tone, whereas - judging from the students from that region that I interact with - in the Middle East it is normal to thank people much more effusively.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37885,
"author": "Mike Bird",
"author_id": 28703,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28703",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One thing my English Language and Literature teacher taught me was, \"if you want to say it then just say it\".</p>\n\n<p>I would suggest therefore you put your thanks into written form as <em>I would like to express my most sincere gratitude and appreciation for ...</em></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37887,
"author": "Adam Davis",
"author_id": 11901,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11901",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Consider saying thanks twice, not jsut for the information, but also for the time they spent putting it together for you.</p>\n\n<p>Also, like most gifts, people appreciate it when they know you've actually used the product of their effort - it wasn't wasted.</p>\n\n<p>So an enthusiastic, but still professional, thank you might be similar to the following:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Thank you for all this great information. I really appreciate the time and effort you've given me!</p>\n \n <p>The article on [subject] was particularly enlightening, and is proving helpful as I make this decision. I will be careful to [x], [y], and [z], this advice has really clarified a few things for me.</p>\n \n <p>Thanks again!</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37918,
"author": "Kevin",
"author_id": 6030,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6030",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you can, I would suggest sending a thank-you card through snail mail in addition to a thank-you e-mail. Both should be short and concise, but the paper card can be a little longer.</p>\n\n<p>The key thing is, while it's very difficult to express the emotion of being especially thankful in words, sending a card is relatively rare these days and carries additional weight. It will not come off as unprofessional or awkward like a poorly-written thank you would, but it will convey your thanks more deeply.</p>\n\n<p>Considering that you're sending this note as one professional to another, I would recommend either writing the letter on your current university or company's stationary or writing in a very simple thank-you card that does not have anything pre-printed on the inside.</p>\n\n<p>If you would like some advice on what to include in your thank-you note, I recommend these websites. Again, your email response will likely be very short; I would recommend writing just the card like these sites suggest.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.hallmark.com/thank-you/ideas/how-to-write-a-thank-you-note/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.hallmark.com/thank-you/ideas/how-to-write-a-thank-you-note/</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.themorningnews.org/article/how-to-write-a-thank-you-note\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.themorningnews.org/article/how-to-write-a-thank-you-note</a></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37936,
"author": "Colin McLarty",
"author_id": 27912,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27912",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Rather than look for the most extreme adverbs and adjectives to heighten your thanks, another strategy would be to describe clearly and specifically what you found so helpful and why. Extreme expressions can be used insincerely but specific details show you have actually thought about it.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37954,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A simple \"Thank you\" is definitely insufficient. It shows lack of understanding of how they may have spent significant time answering your questions.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, responding with almost religious adoration is also ridiculous. Using words to suggest that their response was \"the best thing that ever happened to you\" is absurd.</p>\n\n<p>Here is a general example that will point you in the right direction:</p>\n\n<p><strong>\"Thank you very much for your response. I'm pleased to receive such a detailed and helpful answer. Your timely efforts are greatly appreciated.\"</strong></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38034,
"author": "Lightness Races in Orbit",
"author_id": 12378,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12378",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This isn't complicated.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I really appreciate your help with this. Thank you!</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37862",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28688/"
] |
37,866 |
<p>Being an editor of a journal can be <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15893/what-is-the-work-load-of-a-journal-reviewing-editor">time-consuming</a>, but has obvious <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9506/why-become-a-journal-editor">benefits</a> (especially if one enjoys reading and reviewing manuscripts). So I expect many academics have a desire to become an editor.</p>
<p>I have never seen an advertisement for a position on an editorial board, which leads me to believe that most positions are not filled this way.</p>
<p>How do most people become editors, and how might a person wishing to become an editor achieve this (without <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8708/how-is-a-new-academic-journal-born">setting up a new journal</a>)?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37867,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Open positions in journal editorial boards are frequently not advertised (though that happens). Instead, when a vacancy appears, the chief editor will typically look for people with the required expertise and ask them whether they would be willing to serve.</p>\n\n<p>Often, editors will have different specialties. So an editor who is stepping down would need to be replaced in his specific area of expertise. Given that he is an expert and should have a good overview of his specific field, he will most likely be asked to suggest possible replacements.</p>\n\n<p>Chief editors will usually be \"elevated\" from among the non-chief editors, since these already know the journal and its specifics.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>So, how to go about to be invited as an editor? Two things:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Build a reputation as an expert in a specific field. Submit good quality papers to the journal you are most interested in (and others), go to conferences etc.</li>\n<li>Build a reputation as dependable and articulate. Hand in reviews promptly, and write <em>good</em> reviews. Editors remember people who write good reviews.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Of course, this is not a guarantee of being asked for an editorship.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37982,
"author": "yo'",
"author_id": 1471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1471",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are in general two types of editors, and their role is quite different.</p>\n\n<p>First, you have the <strong>editors-in-chief</strong> or <strong>editors-in-charge</strong>. There is usually one of them for a journal, sometimes a small group (if the journal has dozens of issues a year). These \"run\" the journal, but are not responsible for the scientific quality of the papers. They can be scientists themselves, but quite often they are not active in science and their editorial job is a full-time.</p>\n\n<p>Second, you have the <strong>communicating editors</strong>. There can be tens of them. Each of them is usually responsible for communicating the papers in some sub-field of the journal's field; so in a graph theory journal, you'll have someone for dealing with graph algorithms, someone for Ramsey theory, etc. These are supposed to be active scientists in their field since only then they know the right people to review the paper and they can have a good level of judgment over the paper's quality themselves.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>So, the hiring process differs a lot. If a non-scientist is sought for, a standard competition will usually be held, the position announced through various means (mailing lists, job advert sites, LinkedIn, etc.). You can simply join the competition, send your CV and other required documents and hope.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if a specialist scientist is sought for, then usually what <strong>Stephan Kolassa</strong> describes is the case: the editor-in-chief will look for people based on the journal's experience with the people and ask them on a personal basis.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Remark: The terminology may differ from journal to journal, and also the actual situation may differ. Especially with small journals, even editor-in-chief need not to have it as a full-time job, and he can do research himself. It just depends.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37866",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14698/"
] |
37,876 |
<p>I know that you can distinguish two ways of referencing scientific work in the Harvard (or author-year) citation style:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You cite the idea or work in general:</p>
<p>"Recently, a new approach for SOME STUFF was demonstrated for the first time (Author, year)."</p>
</li>
<li><p>You cite the author:</p>
<p>"Recently, Author (year) demonstrated SOME STUFF for the first time."</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>However, what is the correct way, if you want to state that something was mentioned in a certain work?</p>
<p>"...as explained in Author (year)..." or "...as explained in (Author, year)..."?</p>
<p>My personal opinion would be the second option, because the idea is not located "in" the author, but "in" the work he published. But in our group opinions differ strongly on this one. Can anyone provide a reliable and authoritative resource?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37877,
"author": "damian",
"author_id": 27812,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27812",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In the second option you suggest, the sentence is not complete. If you would leave out the part between (), the sentence would not make any sense.\nYou should, as also @Peter Jansson suggests, write sth. along the lines of \"As author (2013) explained, ...\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37931,
"author": "Floris",
"author_id": 15062,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15062",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A useful reference is <a href=\"http://www.staffs.ac.uk/assets/harvard_quick_guide_tcm44-47797.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.staffs.ac.uk/assets/harvard_quick_guide_tcm44-47797.pdf</a> which shows the use of both styles. It suggests that a reference to the body of work is followed by (Jones, 2015) while an active description:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Jones (2015) argues the opposite</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Has the form <em>author (date)</em></p>\n\n<p>This makes sense, intuitively. And the your second option becomes the preferred on since it refers to the body. But as others pointed out, perhaps a slightly different turn of phrase would make the problem go away more naturally. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37876",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15216/"
] |
37,883 |
<p>I've noticed that several faculty members (both in my institution and beyond) are affiliate professors in some other institutions (beside being a professor in their own institution, of course). What caught my attention is that the vast majority of them wasn't in any way affiliated with the institution prior to holding the affiliate professor title (the source are their biographies). Afterwards they naturally collaborate on a regular basis.</p>
<p>Example: The professor did their BSc and MSc at my university X, went to university A in the US for a PhD, returned to my institution X (where they are now) and became assistant professor but in the same year became an Affiliate Professor at university B.</p>
<p>So, how does one become an Affiliate Professor?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37891,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>A wide range of \"Affiliate\" and \"Visiting\" titles are often used to simplify bureaucracy in a long-duration academic interaction. For example, you may have a collaborator who frequently visits, and want to give them access to buildings, networks, and other resources so that their visits are less of a hassle for everybody. A \"Research Affiliate\" or \"Affiliate Professor\" or such status allows the institution to officially put the person into the system so that they can be issued keys, ID cards, access permissions, etc.</p>\n\n<p>The mechanism for actually doing this is typically that a sponsoring professor just calls the appropriate department or fills out a form, and it just happens.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37899,
"author": "Cape Code",
"author_id": 10643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10643",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The most frequent use of Affiliate Professor appointments that I have seen are for people that <em>have another primary occupation than research</em>. Typically in the medicine field, for doctors who conduct research besides their clinical work in a university-affiliated hospital. These people need a formal appointment with the university to teach, supervise graduate students, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Now this holds for North America, it might be that things are different in your country.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37883",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133/"
] |
37,884 |
<p>My math paper recently got accepted and I was told that I will be sent a proof soon. It's just four lines I want to add.. is it OK to add it to my paper? It's additional explanation of something, and I would tell the editor about it. </p>
<p>But is it commonly done or done at all? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37888,
"author": "Buzz",
"author_id": 27515,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27515",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It is not uncommon to make some changes to articles while they are in press. However, there are a couple of things you should be aware of. First, you ought to contact the editor, to find out whether there is time to insert anything. After a certain point, the publication schedule will probably not permit any changes. After that point, the editor may be willing to delay your paper until a later issue, or they may not.</p>\n\n<p>The second thing, which is more specific to mathematics, is that the editor may not want to make any change that involves the actual mathematics without sending the article back to the referee(s). Mathematics journals have good reason to be very picky that every symbol and argument that appears in a final publication has been subject to the proper peer review. Additional background or explanatory material will probably be fine, but any change to how you calculate or prove something may not be possible without additional refereeing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37889,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In general no. There may be some circumstance when it can be necessary but the proofing stage is too late for any substantial changes. The manuscript should be published in the form it has been accepted and it is an authors responsibility to provide a final version of the manuscript which ideally should not require any changes once type-set and provided in the form of a proof. Changes that are acceptable are changes that do not in any way change the science of the paper. </p>\n\n<p>If any major changes are done to the paper at proofing, the editor will likely decide whether or not these are permissible. What would happen if anyone tries to push substantial changes altering the core science of the paper probably varies, but in the worst case the paper might have to undergo new review.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37884",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28701/"
] |
37,902 |
<p>I've noticed recently that colleagues, friends, and others seeking employment, have shown, among other things, their Erdős number on their resume/CV. I've also seen some put down their h-index, or their publication with the most citations (the running tally of citations for that publication), or the Impact Factor journal that they have ever published in, etc.</p>
<p><strong>I know there is a <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17990/should-i-put-my-h-index-on-my-cv">question</a> on just h-index in a CV/resume (so please do not mark as duplicate), but this is a <em>broader</em> question about other figures of merit, especially Erdős number.</strong></p>
<p>I realize that having a CV/resume that stands out is important and can give an edge to getting that coveted position, but is listing these types of things appropriate?</p>
<p><em>Let me just make clear that I am not endorsing doing this or saying that I have done it, I am just asking if this is common, acceptable, or purposeful.</em></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37903,
"author": "Oswald Veblen",
"author_id": 16122,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16122",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a mathematician, I don't view an Erdős number as a sign of merit in any serious way. It's more of a cultural in-joke. </p>\n\n<p>There are over 9,000 people with <a href=\"http://www.oakland.edu/enp/thedata/\">Erdős number 2</a>, and far more than that with Erdős number 3, so it doesn't really set you apart. So, if you published with Erdős, that fact will be clear form your list of papers, and if you haven't, your Erdős number tells very little about you. </p>\n\n<p>My own Erdős number is 3 (two ways), FWIW.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37912,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Reiterating \"Oswald Veblen\"'s remarks: probably everyone in the world has an Erdos number that's a single digit, for roughly similar reasons to the fact that, statistically [sic] everyone in Western Europe can (maybe...) trace their lineage to some king of France 900 years ago... but not in any interesting, informative, or \"special\" way.</p>\n\n<p>Only slightly less silly are the \"bibliometric indices\"... </p>\n\n<p>Conceivably, if you are applying for jobs with nincompoops, they'll be moved by silly things, so by all means crank it up.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if your desired employers are not nincompoops, they'll at best think you're young-and-naive to mention such stuff in any way other than as humor. Time-and-space on CV's and in interviews is vastly better spent <em>not</em> kidding around and saying silly things.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37902",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15399/"
] |
37,906 |
<p>I picked a very unique topic for my Masters Thesis, only to find out that there is a Dissertation on the same topic, from 2008, in French. No other books have been published on this topic.</p>
<p>Ugh... I really really wanted to do this. What should I do? Can I do the same topic in English? I can't even translate what the other person wrote.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37907,
"author": "awsoci",
"author_id": 28324,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28324",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can still write on the same topic, you just need to expand the knowledge that's already there and offer some new, original insight to the issue. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38442,
"author": "enthu",
"author_id": 15723,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15723",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It was not clear to me that whether you know French language or not. If you know the language, so spend some time to read the publication. May be the topic is so similar to yours, but it has a different solution or methodology than the one you have in mind.</p>\n\n<p><strong>A. Change your thesis topic</strong><br>\nTalk to your advisor to see whether you can change your thesis topic or not. There may be some regulations in your university which may allow you to change your research topic in such case that happened to you.</p>\n\n<p><strong>B. Work on this topic</strong><br>\nYou can work on this topic but try to develop a new method to solve the problem, work on other questions related to your topic, apply existing methods you have seen in the literature to solve your question. </p>\n\n<p>If somebody else has worked on the same topic does not really mean that you should not. As an example, many scientists have tried to solve the system of equations of motion, but they have different methods to do so, some go for numerical solutions and some other go for analytical methods and applied mathematics. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Suggestions</strong></p>\n\n<p>So if you think that you still want to work on the same topic, here are some of my suggestions:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Review the literature related to your topic carefully;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Read that similar thesis you have found and the references to which it is referred. If it is in a language which you do not know, you can ask for help from a friend who knows the language or at least take a look at the equations, it's abstract and summaries, graphs, tables and etc.; also, the authors may have published some journal or conference papers after the submission of the thesis. Search for their name in the internet and take a look at their publications. These publications may be in English and help you get familiar with their work.</li>\n<li>Try to find books and papers which have worked on the same topic;</li>\n<li>Try to find solutions to similar problems to yours, think about whether you can apply their methodology to your own question or not;</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>Consult your advisor about how you can apply the new methods you have found to your problem. He may advise you that some methods may not lead to a solution and some other have chances to solve it. He may also encourage you to read some papers which you have not seen or found in literature.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Warnings</strong></p>\n\n<p>Here are some warnings about your case which come to my mind;</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Do not be upset and control your emotions; you are a researcher and research is not always an easy process. Do not become too angry or too upset. If you think you have problems on this, it will be a good idea to consult a doctor about it.</p></li>\n<li><p>Please do not think that the solution or methodology which is presented in that thesis is the only way to solve the problem, free your mind and precisely search and think for newer and innovative solutions;</p></li>\n<li><p>Do not loose time, as a student you may not have unlimited amount of time to spend on your research; based on the regulations of your university you may have a year or two to submit your final report;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you feel that you have to change your topic, consult your advisor, find a better topic and change your topic;</li>\n<li>If you think that you found a newer methodology to solve your problem, work on it, but if you see that you are wasting your time on this newer method, do not stop; consult with your advisor, look for another solution, read more papers; don't stop, move forward.</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ol>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37906",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28716/"
] |
37,914 |
<p>I am not familiar with the graduate interview process. Are there signs during and after the interview that student will be able to tell whether he or she will be accepted or rejected in into the research group?</p>
<p>More importantly, how would an applicant know if the graduate interview was a flop. For example, if the professor doesn't follow up with a letter after the interview, is that a sign that the student will probably not considered to be a part of the group?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37907,
"author": "awsoci",
"author_id": 28324,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28324",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can still write on the same topic, you just need to expand the knowledge that's already there and offer some new, original insight to the issue. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38442,
"author": "enthu",
"author_id": 15723,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15723",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It was not clear to me that whether you know French language or not. If you know the language, so spend some time to read the publication. May be the topic is so similar to yours, but it has a different solution or methodology than the one you have in mind.</p>\n\n<p><strong>A. Change your thesis topic</strong><br>\nTalk to your advisor to see whether you can change your thesis topic or not. There may be some regulations in your university which may allow you to change your research topic in such case that happened to you.</p>\n\n<p><strong>B. Work on this topic</strong><br>\nYou can work on this topic but try to develop a new method to solve the problem, work on other questions related to your topic, apply existing methods you have seen in the literature to solve your question. </p>\n\n<p>If somebody else has worked on the same topic does not really mean that you should not. As an example, many scientists have tried to solve the system of equations of motion, but they have different methods to do so, some go for numerical solutions and some other go for analytical methods and applied mathematics. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Suggestions</strong></p>\n\n<p>So if you think that you still want to work on the same topic, here are some of my suggestions:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Review the literature related to your topic carefully;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Read that similar thesis you have found and the references to which it is referred. If it is in a language which you do not know, you can ask for help from a friend who knows the language or at least take a look at the equations, it's abstract and summaries, graphs, tables and etc.; also, the authors may have published some journal or conference papers after the submission of the thesis. Search for their name in the internet and take a look at their publications. These publications may be in English and help you get familiar with their work.</li>\n<li>Try to find books and papers which have worked on the same topic;</li>\n<li>Try to find solutions to similar problems to yours, think about whether you can apply their methodology to your own question or not;</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>Consult your advisor about how you can apply the new methods you have found to your problem. He may advise you that some methods may not lead to a solution and some other have chances to solve it. He may also encourage you to read some papers which you have not seen or found in literature.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Warnings</strong></p>\n\n<p>Here are some warnings about your case which come to my mind;</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Do not be upset and control your emotions; you are a researcher and research is not always an easy process. Do not become too angry or too upset. If you think you have problems on this, it will be a good idea to consult a doctor about it.</p></li>\n<li><p>Please do not think that the solution or methodology which is presented in that thesis is the only way to solve the problem, free your mind and precisely search and think for newer and innovative solutions;</p></li>\n<li><p>Do not loose time, as a student you may not have unlimited amount of time to spend on your research; based on the regulations of your university you may have a year or two to submit your final report;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you feel that you have to change your topic, consult your advisor, find a better topic and change your topic;</li>\n<li>If you think that you found a newer methodology to solve your problem, work on it, but if you see that you are wasting your time on this newer method, do not stop; consult with your advisor, look for another solution, read more papers; don't stop, move forward.</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ol>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37914",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20070/"
] |
37,919 |
<p>Should a scientific paper have copyright?
I guess not.
It seems to me that science and copyright are not compatible. </p>
<p>Let's say I wrote a very important paper in, say, cell biology.
Suppose I have the copyright for the paper(I think so under the copyright law of the US).
Then I also have the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work" rel="nofollow">derivative-work copyright</a>.
Can I exercise the right?
For example, can I refuse other people to use the original idea of my paper?
Or can I forbid them using an original technical procedure described in my paper? Or what about copying graphs or figures?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37923,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Copyright does not protect ideas, just how they are expressed. Copying text generally violates copyright (although there are exceptions in which quoting is permitted), but copyright places no restrictions whatsoever on using ideas.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For example, can I refuse other people to use the original idea of my paper?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, using your ideas is not enough to turn another paper into a derivative work.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Or can I forbid them using an original technical procedure described in my paper?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, copyright is not relevant. It keeps people from copying your description of the procedure; instead, they have to rewrite it in their own words. However, copyright has nothing to do with using the procedure.</p>\n\n<p>Patents could be relevant, if the technical procedure is patented, but that's completely different from copyright (and there are no automatic patents, the way people automatically get copyright). You could certainly debate whether patents are a problem for science, but this has nothing to do with copyright.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Or what about copying graphs or figures?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Copyright does prohibit reproducing graphs or figures (again with some exceptions, such as <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use\">fair use</a> in the U.S.). However, it's OK to create a different graph/figure that conveys the same information.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37927,
"author": "Alexandros",
"author_id": 10042,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10042",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I really do not understand this purpose of your question. Do you want to copy verbatim from someone else? Do you want to forbid other from expanding your work presented in one of your papers? Both these have easy answers. In case 1, do not do it. In case 2, do not publish a paper. Then your idea will be all yours for ever (unless someone else publishes the same idea before you and then you lose). Publishing papers is about sharing results and ideas. Everyone can then expand those ideas as they wish. For protecting novel ideas there are patents and publishing scientific papers is not the way to do it.</p>\n\n<p>You also forget what citation is all about. I can say in my paper a short summary (in my own words) of what you first told in your paper in my related work section if I cite you. I can refer to your results if I cite you. I can compare my results against yours (including those presented in your figures), if I cite you. I can expand your results if I implement your method and improve it significantly, if I cite you. All these are fair uses of your scientific work. If you do not want any of these, do not publish a scientific paper.</p>\n\n<p><strong>UPDATE:</strong> The tone of my answer is a bit hostile but two questions on the same day, one basically defending H. Obokata and the other one basically suggesting copyrighting ideas on scientific papers (most probably for profit or fame) shows a complete misunderstanding on how science and scientific publications are supposed to work. In that case, it is better for people (including the OP) to stay as far away as possible from things they do not really understand or \"get\".</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37919",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28722/"
] |
37,924 |
<p>Some time ago, a course I visited had final exams, and the time announced to the students in advance (several weeks earlier via email by the instructor) was 3 hours. Rather shortly after the students began to write (about 20 minutes), it was announced as a clarification that the room was booked for 3 hours, while the test itself would only take 2 hours.</p>
<p>I did not take part in this exam (I took the second one, which had similar conditions), but I'm sure the students were <em>quite surprised</em>. The exam itself was of average difficulty, had it been 3 hours, but very tough in only 2. This was reflected in the results: 90% failed, instead of the usual 30-50%, and the best grade was only a "B-".</p>
<p>I'm interested if this sort of thing is less unusual than I would think, or if there is a protocol how to deal with it as a student?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38039,
"author": "Trevor Wilson",
"author_id": 8937,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8937",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I would hope this is unusual because it's not very nice to the students. Students deserve to know in advance how much time will be given for the exam. And in my experience, they usually do know this quite far in advance.</p>\n\n<p>It doesn't make sense to me that the figure mentioned in\nthe instructor's e-mail would refer to how long the room was booked (which is not something that the students would care about) rather than how much time would be given for the exam.</p>\n\n<p>Another thing that doesn't make sense to me is why, when the instructor realized that the students thought they would have three hours for the exam, he didn't just keep quiet and let them have the three hours.</p>\n\n<p>However, I don't know what you mean by a \"protocol how to deal with it.\" You could certainly let the instructor know that you are unhappy about this aspect of the exam. But is there something that you think the instructor should do at this point to improve the situation?</p>\n\n<p>Also, what does it mean to say that 90% of the students failed the exam? It's not necessarily a bad thing if 90% of the students got a numerical score below 60% on the exam, but it would be a very bad thing if 90% of the students got an 'F' grade in the course.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38062,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First, I think this is unusual, but I doubt that there is serious data about how common things like this are.</p>\n\n<p>But the more important question seems to be: Can/Should I take action? What action?</p>\n\n<p>This clearly depends: First, there may be a policy how the conditions of final exams have to be announced. At my university many \"moduls\" (i.e. courses) have a description where it is written \"final exams according to the instructors announcements\" and there is a general rule that this announcement has to happen in the first week of the course. Also there are general rule that say how long written exams can be. So if the announcement or the time constraints do not fit the actual conditions there <em>could</em> be room for an action to be taken.</p>\n\n<p>What would happen if you (or a group of students) would file a complain to, e.g., the dean of student affairs (or somebody similar). I expect that the dean would talk to the instructor and asked what has happened. The instructor may answer respond that it was obvious that the exams time had to be shorter than the announced 3 hours and that he planned the exam for two hours. The dean may still be suspicious because of a high fail rate but this may also have other reasons. So in short: The instructor may get into mild to mediocre trouble but anything beyond that is unlikely. In an extreme case there could be a chance to rewrite the exam…</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37924",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5640/"
] |
37,928 |
<p>I'm currently writing my thesis in computer science. My work contains a large amount of equations to do with linear algebra, data transformations and calculus. On receiving feedback on my first draft from my supervisor, he has told me that I am reusing symbols all over the place. So I am going back over things, but I'm finding that I'm running out of both English and Greek characters and I'm having to constantly search back through the text to see if the symbol I want to use has already been defined. For example:</p>
<pre><code>Take two vectors X and Y with lengths m and n respectively.
</code></pre>
<p>All of these symbols have previously been used. So my question is, once a symbol has been defined once, can it not be reused for the whole thesis, and how then should I deal with this problem. </p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37929,
"author": "just-learning",
"author_id": 10483,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10483",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, consider using indices for related objects. E.g., in your example:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Take two vectors X_1 and X_2 with lengths m_1 and m_2 respectively.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(I use _ to indicate a subscript as in TeX).</p>\n\n<p>On a related note, you can employ boldface and italics to distinguish among the symbols for different objects. </p>\n\n<p>Also, as you are in computer science and probably use some flavor of TeX or LaTeX for writing your thesis you can use nonstandard alphabets and symbols it permits (see e.g. <a href=\"http://latex.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_LaTeX_symbols\">this list</a> or <a href=\"http://www.rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/LaTeX_symbols.pdf\">this one</a>).</p>\n\n<p>Second, in the unlikely case the above advice does not completely solve your problem, you fairly safely can redefine the meaning of a symbol once you begin a new chapter (assuming that your average chapter is more than just a few pages).</p>\n\n<p>Third, as a truly last resort, you can use nonstandard alphabets like Hebrew or Cyrillic. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37930,
"author": "O. R. Mapper",
"author_id": 14017,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14017",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A symbol used before <em>can</em> certainly be reused, in particular when it's meant to represent something very generic. For example, a length <em>n</em> on page 15 and a length <em>n</em> on page 21 may both refer to an arbitrary length, without any implied or otherwise statement that both lengths are the same.</p>\n\n<p><strong>The issue in your case is: Your supervisor doesn't like this.</strong></p>\n\n<p>There are, however, ways around this. A common way is to distinguish your symbols by subscript texts:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>For generic symbols, you can use running indices, e.g. n<sub>1</sub>, n<sub>2</sub>, etc.</li>\n<li>Alternatively, as that might mean quite high (and arbitrary-seeming) numbers in later pages (x<sub>34</sub> = y<sub>198</sub> * z<sub>12</sub> might look a bit weird), you can add something specific to the chapter, the formula, or the figure (whatever the maximum scope of the symbols is supposed to be), and just a running number within that context. This would mean that symbols based on <em>n</em> in chapter 3.4 are named something like n<sub>3.4,1</sub>, n<sub>3.4,2</sub>, etc.</li>\n<li>As soon as your symbols are not meant to be entirely generic, but have a certain particular meaning or significance, a good way to name them is to use explicit indices that state the purpose of the symbol. So, you start working with n<sub>MethodX-input</sub>, n<sub>JohnDoesCoefficient</sub> and n<sub>result(algorithm1)</sub>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Depending on future plans for your text, you may even want to consider preferring such subscripts over any Greek characters or formatting variations (cursive, ...) in the first place, as the subscript variant can be flawlessly transformed/represented in contexts where little or no formatting is available (plain text files, unformatted e-mails, instant messages, hand-written paper or boardwriting, ...), and possibly (depending lastly on how you name your symbols) even with only ASCII characters that can be processed and recognized almost everywhere.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37934,
"author": "E.P.",
"author_id": 820,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/820",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Running out of symbols is a fairly common scenario, and it is usually caused by assigning symbols too early without due consideration to the amount of work yet to come. As such, the main thing to do is to</p>\n<h3>Restructure</h3>\n<p>Think about the entire set of symbols you're using.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>For which ones is the specific symbol in use crucial for the clarity of the text? There will usually be a core of symbols that you really don't want to reassign, but this is probably smaller than you think. Earmark those symbols for these concepts, and disregard other occurrences (even if they happen earlier in the text).</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Keep this core small. Use variations on the symbols (upper/lower case, primes, subscripts) to fit as many variations of the concepts into the key symbols.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Serialize. If you have some sequence of objects which you initially called <em>a, b, c, d, ...</em>, use an appropriate subscript or parenthesis notation to collapse them into a single symbol. Over-expansive naming of sequences of this sort is probably the number-one reason for running out of symbols in the first place.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The other thing you should do is</p>\n<h3>Encapsulate</h3>\n<p>It is perfectly OK to have the same symbol appear twice, with different meanings, in the same extended piece of work, <strong>as long as there is no confusion between them</strong>. This is particularly easy to do if the symbols appear, for example, inside the proof of a theorem. Thus, if at some point you use the symbol <em>x</em> in a context like</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Proof</strong>. Let <em>x</em> be ... ... ... . ▮</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>then it is probably OK to re-use the same symbol in a similar encapsulated environment, as long as (i) you clearly define the symbol on its first appearance in each environment, and (ii) you don't (excessively) reference the symbol once you're outside of the encapsulated environments.</p>\n<p>Similarly, it is usually OK to reuse symbols in different chapters as long as the topic of the two chapters is sufficiently different compared to the similarity of the symbols and the amount of weight you put into the choice of symbol. This is a very common practice: look at any linear algebra textbook and you'll see the symbol <em>v</em> used a number of times, to refer to vectors that are not necessarily compatible. The techniques they use to avoid confusion are forms of encapsulation.</p>\n<p>From the phrasing of your question, it seems that this is partly the problem with your supervisor. One way to go about this is to step up the encapsulation, either by being more clear with the text, by introducing formal environments, or even using graphical means like boxes around examples to make it clear that the symbol choice is local to that environment.</p>\n<p>If all else fails</p>\n<h3>Some amount of creativity is OK</h3>\n<p>This includes things like multi-letter symbols for important context, though you should be careful with how you typeset them (usually in upright script). However, you should <strong>avoid</strong> using letters from non-standard alphabets, as they will only further the confusion: few of your readers will know how to pronounce them (which then extends into how they internally vocalize them while reading, and makes it harder for your readers to discuss the paper with each other), and it makes it harder for others to adapt and extend your notation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37943,
"author": "Giacomo Alessandroni",
"author_id": 28699,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28699",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My supervisor says not only that I do not must repeat two time the same symbol, but also that I can not use a symbol like <code>AB</code> because someone could read it like <code>A \\cdot B</code>.</p>\n\n<p>In my last paper, for example, I have used <code>P_{P_E}</code>.</p>\n\n<p>So, in my opinion, when you define an object with a name (e.g. x, y, z) you can not reuse this name for any other parameter.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>\n\n<p>The code, of course, is TeX. ;-)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37948,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are writing a thesis in computer science.</p>\n\n<p>I can use my own personal experience as a guide in answering your question. Rarely, if ever, have I seen symbol repetition in a single college textbook on anything science/math related. However, across different subject matter and their associated different textbooks we do see symbol repetition. A college textbook on calculus might very well use similar symbols as a college textbook on physics.</p>\n\n<p>Your thesis will get confusing if you use X for this and X for that in a single thesis. In my estimation, you have to come up with a way to clearly convey the differences to the readers. You shouldn't confuse the readers in your thesis. It's counter to conveying the fact that you have a mastery of your subject matter. All that being said, I don't think it will be difficult to differentiate all of your symbols. There are many different combinations you can use to convey differences consistently through your thesis.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>This may be a longshot suggestion, but perhaps you could start incorporating symbols from your computer's \"Character Map\" GUI. For example: <strong>Ǟ ź Ǥ</strong></p>\n\n<p>Those three are all from the Arial selection from \"Character Map\". There are many others.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I don't see any problem whatsoever with re-using a symbol that represents the same thing throughout your thesis. That is done everywhere and in every college textbook I've ever seen. For example, if \"D\" means density throughout the thesis then you should be able to use it whenever density is discussed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 49850,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am surprised that no one mentioned the keyword \"scope\" here, especially since there is some connection to computer science. Nor \"global variables\", nor \"name spaces\"...!?! It is true that some effort is required to be clear about scope of variable names, and that there are local and global namespaces, and that sometimes it's not clear, which is a bad thing.</p>\n\n<p>I'd think that all variables (=variable names) should be <em>local</em> by default, rather than <em>global</em>, and to re-use something say \"as earlier in section XX\" rather than having an implicit global namespace. That makes everything easier to read, in any case.</p>\n\n<p>Yes, there are strong arguments in favor of have a <em>few</em> global names, especially if those are standard conventional names anyway. And try to avoid global names that are violently contrary to standard conventions...</p>\n\n<p>Very possibly the issue is not really about symbols per se, but about ambiguities in references/namespaces, so revision of the writing itself (to make such things clearer) is the problem. But, by accident, a critical appraisal may sound like a literal objection to the ambiguous use of symbols, while that's merely a symptom, not the whole problem.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37928",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28728/"
] |
37,935 |
<p>When applying for a faculty position, usually there will be an request to fill a self-identification form about things like race and disabilities. The request will mention that it is a “voluntary” form and will not affect the application. My question is whether applicants should spend some time and fill out all such requests or maybe just the ones for schools with which they have an interview? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37929,
"author": "just-learning",
"author_id": 10483,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10483",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, consider using indices for related objects. E.g., in your example:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Take two vectors X_1 and X_2 with lengths m_1 and m_2 respectively.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(I use _ to indicate a subscript as in TeX).</p>\n\n<p>On a related note, you can employ boldface and italics to distinguish among the symbols for different objects. </p>\n\n<p>Also, as you are in computer science and probably use some flavor of TeX or LaTeX for writing your thesis you can use nonstandard alphabets and symbols it permits (see e.g. <a href=\"http://latex.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_LaTeX_symbols\">this list</a> or <a href=\"http://www.rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/LaTeX_symbols.pdf\">this one</a>).</p>\n\n<p>Second, in the unlikely case the above advice does not completely solve your problem, you fairly safely can redefine the meaning of a symbol once you begin a new chapter (assuming that your average chapter is more than just a few pages).</p>\n\n<p>Third, as a truly last resort, you can use nonstandard alphabets like Hebrew or Cyrillic. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37930,
"author": "O. R. Mapper",
"author_id": 14017,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14017",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A symbol used before <em>can</em> certainly be reused, in particular when it's meant to represent something very generic. For example, a length <em>n</em> on page 15 and a length <em>n</em> on page 21 may both refer to an arbitrary length, without any implied or otherwise statement that both lengths are the same.</p>\n\n<p><strong>The issue in your case is: Your supervisor doesn't like this.</strong></p>\n\n<p>There are, however, ways around this. A common way is to distinguish your symbols by subscript texts:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>For generic symbols, you can use running indices, e.g. n<sub>1</sub>, n<sub>2</sub>, etc.</li>\n<li>Alternatively, as that might mean quite high (and arbitrary-seeming) numbers in later pages (x<sub>34</sub> = y<sub>198</sub> * z<sub>12</sub> might look a bit weird), you can add something specific to the chapter, the formula, or the figure (whatever the maximum scope of the symbols is supposed to be), and just a running number within that context. This would mean that symbols based on <em>n</em> in chapter 3.4 are named something like n<sub>3.4,1</sub>, n<sub>3.4,2</sub>, etc.</li>\n<li>As soon as your symbols are not meant to be entirely generic, but have a certain particular meaning or significance, a good way to name them is to use explicit indices that state the purpose of the symbol. So, you start working with n<sub>MethodX-input</sub>, n<sub>JohnDoesCoefficient</sub> and n<sub>result(algorithm1)</sub>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Depending on future plans for your text, you may even want to consider preferring such subscripts over any Greek characters or formatting variations (cursive, ...) in the first place, as the subscript variant can be flawlessly transformed/represented in contexts where little or no formatting is available (plain text files, unformatted e-mails, instant messages, hand-written paper or boardwriting, ...), and possibly (depending lastly on how you name your symbols) even with only ASCII characters that can be processed and recognized almost everywhere.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37934,
"author": "E.P.",
"author_id": 820,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/820",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Running out of symbols is a fairly common scenario, and it is usually caused by assigning symbols too early without due consideration to the amount of work yet to come. As such, the main thing to do is to</p>\n<h3>Restructure</h3>\n<p>Think about the entire set of symbols you're using.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>For which ones is the specific symbol in use crucial for the clarity of the text? There will usually be a core of symbols that you really don't want to reassign, but this is probably smaller than you think. Earmark those symbols for these concepts, and disregard other occurrences (even if they happen earlier in the text).</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Keep this core small. Use variations on the symbols (upper/lower case, primes, subscripts) to fit as many variations of the concepts into the key symbols.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Serialize. If you have some sequence of objects which you initially called <em>a, b, c, d, ...</em>, use an appropriate subscript or parenthesis notation to collapse them into a single symbol. Over-expansive naming of sequences of this sort is probably the number-one reason for running out of symbols in the first place.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The other thing you should do is</p>\n<h3>Encapsulate</h3>\n<p>It is perfectly OK to have the same symbol appear twice, with different meanings, in the same extended piece of work, <strong>as long as there is no confusion between them</strong>. This is particularly easy to do if the symbols appear, for example, inside the proof of a theorem. Thus, if at some point you use the symbol <em>x</em> in a context like</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Proof</strong>. Let <em>x</em> be ... ... ... . ▮</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>then it is probably OK to re-use the same symbol in a similar encapsulated environment, as long as (i) you clearly define the symbol on its first appearance in each environment, and (ii) you don't (excessively) reference the symbol once you're outside of the encapsulated environments.</p>\n<p>Similarly, it is usually OK to reuse symbols in different chapters as long as the topic of the two chapters is sufficiently different compared to the similarity of the symbols and the amount of weight you put into the choice of symbol. This is a very common practice: look at any linear algebra textbook and you'll see the symbol <em>v</em> used a number of times, to refer to vectors that are not necessarily compatible. The techniques they use to avoid confusion are forms of encapsulation.</p>\n<p>From the phrasing of your question, it seems that this is partly the problem with your supervisor. One way to go about this is to step up the encapsulation, either by being more clear with the text, by introducing formal environments, or even using graphical means like boxes around examples to make it clear that the symbol choice is local to that environment.</p>\n<p>If all else fails</p>\n<h3>Some amount of creativity is OK</h3>\n<p>This includes things like multi-letter symbols for important context, though you should be careful with how you typeset them (usually in upright script). However, you should <strong>avoid</strong> using letters from non-standard alphabets, as they will only further the confusion: few of your readers will know how to pronounce them (which then extends into how they internally vocalize them while reading, and makes it harder for your readers to discuss the paper with each other), and it makes it harder for others to adapt and extend your notation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37943,
"author": "Giacomo Alessandroni",
"author_id": 28699,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28699",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My supervisor says not only that I do not must repeat two time the same symbol, but also that I can not use a symbol like <code>AB</code> because someone could read it like <code>A \\cdot B</code>.</p>\n\n<p>In my last paper, for example, I have used <code>P_{P_E}</code>.</p>\n\n<p>So, in my opinion, when you define an object with a name (e.g. x, y, z) you can not reuse this name for any other parameter.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>\n\n<p>The code, of course, is TeX. ;-)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37948,
"author": "Inquisitive",
"author_id": 27985,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27985",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are writing a thesis in computer science.</p>\n\n<p>I can use my own personal experience as a guide in answering your question. Rarely, if ever, have I seen symbol repetition in a single college textbook on anything science/math related. However, across different subject matter and their associated different textbooks we do see symbol repetition. A college textbook on calculus might very well use similar symbols as a college textbook on physics.</p>\n\n<p>Your thesis will get confusing if you use X for this and X for that in a single thesis. In my estimation, you have to come up with a way to clearly convey the differences to the readers. You shouldn't confuse the readers in your thesis. It's counter to conveying the fact that you have a mastery of your subject matter. All that being said, I don't think it will be difficult to differentiate all of your symbols. There are many different combinations you can use to convey differences consistently through your thesis.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>This may be a longshot suggestion, but perhaps you could start incorporating symbols from your computer's \"Character Map\" GUI. For example: <strong>Ǟ ź Ǥ</strong></p>\n\n<p>Those three are all from the Arial selection from \"Character Map\". There are many others.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I don't see any problem whatsoever with re-using a symbol that represents the same thing throughout your thesis. That is done everywhere and in every college textbook I've ever seen. For example, if \"D\" means density throughout the thesis then you should be able to use it whenever density is discussed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 49850,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am surprised that no one mentioned the keyword \"scope\" here, especially since there is some connection to computer science. Nor \"global variables\", nor \"name spaces\"...!?! It is true that some effort is required to be clear about scope of variable names, and that there are local and global namespaces, and that sometimes it's not clear, which is a bad thing.</p>\n\n<p>I'd think that all variables (=variable names) should be <em>local</em> by default, rather than <em>global</em>, and to re-use something say \"as earlier in section XX\" rather than having an implicit global namespace. That makes everything easier to read, in any case.</p>\n\n<p>Yes, there are strong arguments in favor of have a <em>few</em> global names, especially if those are standard conventional names anyway. And try to avoid global names that are violently contrary to standard conventions...</p>\n\n<p>Very possibly the issue is not really about symbols per se, but about ambiguities in references/namespaces, so revision of the writing itself (to make such things clearer) is the problem. But, by accident, a critical appraisal may sound like a literal objection to the ambiguous use of symbols, while that's merely a symptom, not the whole problem.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37935",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24823/"
] |
37,937 |
<p>I've failed to finish my master thesis, I thought this was attributed to the minimal supervision of my adviser - he/she wasn't an expert in the domain of thesis and didn't give me any kind of insights or help - only general advice - and I was let to do all the work alone and I failed to finish a good thesis (Another reason I thought was the lack of my background courses and again I had to study everything from start without focus on the target which took too much time).</p>
<p>Now I have a chance of interning at a good research lab, the problem that I face now is that <strong>I'm afraid that I don't have the ability/skill to do a good research. Does research require a certain kind of personal abilities or is just a matter of hard work?</strong></p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37939,
"author": "emcor",
"author_id": 18228,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18228",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I had the same problem with my MSc thesis which I will have to hand in this month: The topic was too broad and complicated, the supervisor gave me a topic which was actually supposed for another PhD student. So I failed (will not get very good grade).</p>\n\n<p>But I dont think any conclusion can be drawn for my future work, my other thesis and seminars went all excellent. If you just failed on this one thesis (and otherwise have good results) and the people at the other lab like you, they will certainly help you so you will succeed. The supervisor is I think more crucial than the actual topic, because if you have a nice supervisor he will always help you and with the team together you can succeed.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37964,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Although the question is vague, the implicit distinction in it is perhaps the whole point: being able to focus and genuinely work hard over long periods of time, in the face of fatigue, frustration, etc., is itself a particular talent.</p>\n\n<p>To explain, consider Mozart in music: it's not that he could magically play and compose, but, rather, that he was able to practice a crazy amount starting at an early age, and acquired profiency... So, a significant part of the \"talent\" was the capacity to practice long-and-hard. Yes, one can argue that also the ability to <em>benefit</em> from long-and-hard practice is important. And, all the more resoundingly, long-and-hard work is <em>necessary</em>, although one may fail to benefit from it, even if one does manage it (or is forced by parents or other circumstances).</p>\n\n<p>No, it is not <em>normal</em> to be able to focus on anything at all at an early age, and perhaps even later it would not be normal to be able to entertain a multi-year project. To be able to do so _at_all_ I think (upon some observation) is a talent. To be able to <em>succeed</em> to some degree is a <em>further</em> talent, and there is an element of <em>luck</em> involved in \"high success\". But the latter \"test\" is not often reached. An example of sufficient focus but lack of other necessities is \"crackpots\" or \"cranks\". Even so, in some cases they are eventually vindicated! :) </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37937",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12059/"
] |
37,940 |
<p>A person I know applied for a time-limited position (i.e. a post-doc) somewhere in western Europe. <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xe#Pronoun">Xe</a> gets invited for an interview. The next day, xe receives an informal e-mail, <em>We will recommend HR to send you a formal offer.</em></p>
<p><em>However, we are still waiting to receive recommendation letters from your references before we can do so.</em></p>
<p>And I thought the content of recommendation letters were essential. In this case they are apparently a formality. Is this indeed very unusual, or is it more common than I think?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37941,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Hiring for a limited-term position like a postdoc is a much lighter decision than making a tenure-track offer. Often, there is an urgency to the hiring as well, as many postdocs are tied to specific contracts with specific tasks that need to be executed on a fast time-frame. As a result, \"ordinary\" postdoc hiring can sometimes run a lot more like corporate hiring than academic hiring: a fast process where it's more about the person's ability to fill defined responsibilities and less about their long-term potential as a researcher. In a case like this, references are still important, but are more like a corporate hire, where they are confirming the candidate is what they appear to be, rather than causing them to be noticed in the first place.</p>\n\n<p>It sounds like this is the case for your acquaintance. That's great, if the position is one that they want. Nothing is certain, however, until the offer is in hand: just as easily as an informal offer can be extended, so can it be retracted if the circumstances change.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37942,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In the UK, or at least at my University, recommendation letters are not used in the hiring process of tenure track positions. For some reason after a department decides to hire someone, HR requires recommendation letters. For PhD students, we request and use recommendation letters. HR is not involved in that process and they are not employees.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37940",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033/"
] |
37,947 |
<p>In any academic paper dealing at least in part with math, the authors have to make a choice how much explanation to actually give the math.</p>
<p>It can range from pretty much no explanation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Given a foobar of 12, a ackbar of 57, and general frobnosticating
parameter of 9, the resulting nyan level will be 8. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To belaboring the obvious</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first three people went into the city. Later, four more people
went into the city. This meant that seven people had gone into the
city which is derived by adding the first three people to the next
four people. We add because people are individual units and moving
them to a new location neither combines or divides those units.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How does one decide the appropriate level of explanation? Is there any sort of standard that can be appealed to decide when something is clear enough?</p>
<p>The actual background for this question is that I've looked at a paper for a colleague. It is in a non-mathematical subject but does engage in some mathematical reasoning. I think the paper doesn't explain enough, but my colleague disagrees. I have to work at figuring out what calculations were done in the paper and the justification for many of the inferences he draws. That indicates to me that the explanation is insufficient, but is there a less subjective standard I can appeal to?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37956,
"author": "J.R.",
"author_id": 780,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm guessing the author thinks that putting too much math into the body of the paper might disrupt the paper's flow. On the other hand, as a reader, you don't want to have to reconstruct the calculations to satisfy your curiosity that everything is correct. </p>\n\n<p>If both of those assumptions are true, perhaps some of the math can be included in an appendix at the end of the article, with a brief reference in the main body.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37958,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I find that the choice of how much explanation to give math is generally a three-way negotiation between three factors:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Your estimate of the audience: different communities will need radically different levels of explanation for the same mathematics. </li>\n<li>Adjustment based on the opinions of the reviewers about what needs more or less details</li>\n<li>Any length constraints on the paper.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Of this #1 is really the important thing: you really need to understand your audience in order to decide how in-depth to go with your mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>For example, I recently published a paper which spent several pages explaining a mathematical formulation in depth for its target cross-disciplinary audience. The reviewers requested further expansion of the mathematical explanation (which I was happy to provide). Were I writing for the community from which the mathematics came, however, I would instead spend several pages explaining the context of the problem, but then the math itself would be covered in just a few sentences.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37959,
"author": "Massimo Ortolano",
"author_id": 20058,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20058",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>How does one decide the appropriate level of explanation? </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Know your readers.</p>\n\n<p>There are fields, or subfields, of several applied and experimental sciences where equations, long derivations and mathematical explanations are definitely unwelcome. </p>\n\n<p>In fields like mathematics or theoretical physics, equations, theorems or proofs can be the main topic of a paper: the proof of a theorem can be the most interesting part. In other fields equations might be interesting, but their applications much more; and the proofs are frequently considered a nuisance. Tell me how to use your mathematical ideas, what are the benefits and the weaknesses, but please, really please, put all the proofs, derivations and detailed explanations under the rug.</p>\n\n<p>The rug, in this case, can be either an appendix -- but even there avoid too many details -- or, if you think that your proof is worth <em>per se</em>, write a paper in a journal whose readers might be interested in, then cite it. And sometimes, in a few cases, you can even get away without a proof...</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37947",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5922/"
] |
37,951 |
<p>Which math departments in the U.S. have people known for their contributions to <a href="http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Lie-admissible_algebra" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Lie-admissible algebras</a>?</p>
<p>(I asked <a href="https://math.stackexchange.com/q/1127343/128568">this question</a> on Math SE, but it was voted off-topic there. I hope it's not too specialized of a question here.)</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37953,
"author": "Chris C",
"author_id": 7745,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7745",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This seems to be a highly specific area, so you might want to consider a little broader area (Lie algebras in general?) of study. In the process you can of course study these specific areas, but forcing yourself into a uncommon area of interest might make the job search later more challenging.</p>\n\n<p>Though, this does not mean you have to go to a place that doesn't study Lie-admissible algebras. The best to find places that actively study the subject is to look up the most recent papers to see who the authors are and their associated university. This can give you a selection of universities where you'll find a potential adviser. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37960,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>You can try searching for \"Lie admissible algebra\" on <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/mathscinet\">MathSciNet</a> and the <a href=\"http://www.arXiv.org\">arXiv</a>. There are a few papers each year that mention this topic, but it doesn't seem to be a major research area in its own right. If you are thinking about topics for graduate school, this seems to me to be way too specific to narrow down to before choosing an advisor. (I assume you aren't already working in this research area yourself: if you did, you'd have more information about who else is.)</p>\n\n<p>As for math departments in the U.S., two of the authors of references in the article you linked to (Benkart and Osborn) are emeritus professors at Wisconsin, and Myung used to be at Northern Iowa but has since died. You could try looking up the authors of papers on the topic that excite you, but this won't give you a wide range of schools in the U.S., especially now that Benkart and Osborn have retired. Instead, I agree with Chris C that you'd be better off considering a broader area.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37951",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9425/"
] |
37,962 |
<p>I sent my students a feedback form (I'm a TA) and I got three responses. While they were helpful and informative responses, I am not sure how to interpret them, because there are only three of them and they all disagree with each other.</p>
<p>What is the best way to get feedback from students? Should I enter them in a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37963,
"author": "user141592",
"author_id": 27327,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27327",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>That might work, but I think the best way to make sure they fill in a feedback form is to print it out, hand it out in class and tell them that they can't leave unless they hand you a filled in form. (This is from personal experience as a student).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37965,
"author": "adipro",
"author_id": 10936,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10936",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>A method which I learned quite recently is the <a href=\"http://www.bu.edu/ceit/teaching-resources/start-stop-continue/\">Start-Stop-Continue</a>. I think it is a great method, as it is quick, and it does not require much effort both on your part and your students. You will need to distribute three small pieces of paper (e.g. Post-it) to each student, ask them to label Start, Stop, and Continue, respectively, on the top of each paper, and then ask them to list on each paper, according to the label, what they think you should start doing, stop doing, and continue doing. Ask them to submit their papers before they leave. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37966,
"author": "Ellen Spertus",
"author_id": 269,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/269",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I agree with adipro about taking class time to ask students to write down what they would like you to keep doing and what they would like you to do differently. We often do this in my department. Asking for specific feedback on your teaching methods, rather than general feedback, lessens the likelihood of your getting comments about your appearance or other things you cannot easily (or should not have to) change.</p>\n\n<p>If you absolutely can't use class time, some ideas are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Offer to bring treats if at least X% submit the survey. Send updates about the progress toward that goal.</li>\n<li>Offer credit for turning in a survey, either toward homework, class participation, or extra credit.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37967,
"author": "Florian D'Souza",
"author_id": 26958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26958",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Something that I've used a few times is <a href=\"http://www.polleverywhere.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">Poll Everywhere</a>. It's fairly easy to use, and as long as you can phrase a question in the form of multiple choice, you can ask just about anything. Every once in awhile, I'll stop my lecture and use Poll Everywhere to ask a conceptual question, or I'll simply ask \"Do you think you understand this?\" Based on the responses, I decide what to do. As mentioned in the other answers/comments, one issue is student apathy. I rarely get 100% participation, but overall I think I get enough participation that it is useful.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37968,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Giving students very <em>guided, specific</em> feedback prompts during class time (as others have suggested) can be very helpful.</p>\n\n<p>Here are a couple of specific techniques. These are from a book I am reading called \"<a href=\"http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0674066170\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Teaching What You Don't Know</a>\" by Therese Huston (which is about situations like the one described in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3210/how-to-teach-a-class-that-ive-never-taken\">How to teach a class that I've never taken?</a> - but the advice on assessing your teaching applies more generally).</p>\n\n<h3>The one-point raise</h3>\n\n<p>Pick one aspect of the course on which you want some feedback. Ask the students to get out a blank piece of paper. Then ask them to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 10. After they've done this, ask them to write down an answer to the question \"What would raise that rating by one point.\"</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Make sure to define the endpoints of the scale, so students have a common understand of what 1 means and what 10 means. Use extremes, e.g. \"A '1' means you wish you were getting a root canal instead of sitting in this class and a '10' means you wish this class was on YouTube so you could watch it again right now\"</li>\n<li>Many students will write something that is their own responsibility - i.e., \"My rating would have gone up a point if I had gone to sleep earlier last night.\" On the other hand, for things that are in your control, you'll get immediate, actionable feedback on things that really affect your students' experience.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This evaluation is helpful because it's quick to administer, and quick for students to fill out, so you can do it in class and you can expect a high response rate.</p>\n\n<h3>Two-column form</h3>\n\n<p>Give out a form in which the heading of the first column reads \"I like the way the instructor...\" and the heading of the second reads \"I would like the instructor to...\" Then in each column, put practices you want feedback on. Students can check off the practice in the first column if they like it, and/or indicate in the second column if they want more or less of it. </p>\n\n<p>For example, you might put in the first column (\"I like the way the instructor...\")</p>\n\n<p>__ Solves example problems during class</p>\n\n<p>and then in the second column (\"I would like the instructor to...\")</p>\n\n<p>Solve more/fewer example problems during class.</p>\n\n<p>You can put up to ten specific feedback items in the columns. At the end of the form, you can still ask for open-ended feedback - but it is likely to be much more directed now, since you've asked for very specific feedback on specific practices already.</p>\n\n<p>This form is helpful because it's quick to administer, quick for students to fill out, and models how to give helpful feedback (not all students know how, and this could be preventing some of them from giving any feedback at all).</p>\n\n<h3>Small group analysis</h3>\n\n<p>This is a more time-consuming, but very powerful technique, and practically guarantees that you will get useful feedback. However, you'll need to have an outside facilitator who's trained in the technique. (My university's teaching center offers this service to faculty and graduate students who are teaching - check if yours does.)</p>\n\n<p>In small group analysis, you invite a facilitator (who is trained in SGA) to observe the class. At the end of the class, the instructor leaves the room while the facilitator asks students for feedback about what is most useful to their learning in the course and for suggestions for what might improve their learning in the course.</p>\n\n<p>After the class, the facilitator prepares a report and meets with the instructor to review the results. You can then discuss with the class and tell them what changes you will make based on their feedback.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Also, here are some general comments on making the feedback you collect more effective:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>If you plan to collect feedback often, start early in the course (first or second week) to create a culture of feedback.</li>\n<li>Don't collect more feedback than you can handle. This doesn't apply so much to you because your class is small. But if you are teaching a large course, ask for feedback in small, manageable chunks. You don't want to get into a situation where students believe you are ignoring their feedback, just because you got so much feedback that it takes weeks to read and think about it all.</li>\n<li>Close the feedback loop by telling students what you have changed based on their feedback.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37972,
"author": "earthling",
"author_id": 2692,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2692",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While there are many answers here, I will add one more.</p>\n\n<p>My lectures are driven by slides so at the end of <strong>every</strong> deck (which marks the end of the session) I include a slide which says:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On a 1/2 sheet of paper, answer 3 questions:</p>\n \n <ol>\n <li>What was the <strong>most useful / interesting</strong> idea today?</li>\n <li>What idea did you <strong>least understand</strong> today?</li>\n <li>Any other comments for your teacher?</li>\n </ol>\n \n <p>Bring the paper to me on your way out.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The reason for being the final slide <strong>every</strong> session is as @ff524 wrote, it is important to create a culture of feedback. After the second session they begin to expect this slide.</p>\n\n<p>Do I get 100% participation? No. But I do not need 100%. What I do need is significant participation which I get because I give them the time at the end of class (usually 5 minutes is enough) and because they see it every time, and they see everyone else doing it, those \"sitting on the fence\" will usually do it, even if they say \"nothing\" for question 3. Every session I get a lot of repeat comments (like, \"I least understood xxx\") and that really helps when I teach the same subject the following semester. </p>\n\n<p>At times it has even caused me to send some extra material through email to clarify a point about which many students had an issue. This also helps: Show that you actually care what they write by doing something about their comments. That goes back to the culture issue.</p>\n\n<p>I have used this technique with class sizes between 20 and 100 but believe it would work with all sizes of classes.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/31
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37962",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384/"
] |
37,971 |
<p>I study in a field that is not related to languages. Should I put languages that I can speak into my CV? Other than English, I can speak my native language, and two other languages that I've learned through classes (at an intermediate level). </p>
<p>Might it be seen as irrelevant and hurt my CV?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38007,
"author": "Abbas Javan Jafari",
"author_id": 17459,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17459",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It is completely acceptable to display this kind of information on your CV and I can't think of any situation where it can hurt you professionally or socially. However, I would not recommend putting this kind of information on the resume you send out for specific positions (or even proposals) <strong><em>unless it is important to the job (or proposal) you are applying to</em></strong>. \nI say this because your CV is a more complete profile of your professions and abilities and listing another language (preferably near the bottom somewhere above hobbies) will not be deemed as a bad thing and in many cases it can actually have a positive effect on how others perceive you. However, a resume is more tailored for specific needs and listing irrelevant information can always have a negative impact on the opposite person.</p>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT:</strong> In my personal line of work/study (computer science), speaking another language usually does not help you directly, but is is seen (by many) as an indication of your potential abilities. Speaking another language (and speaking it well) is not an easy task and those who are capable of doing so, show above-average motivation and determination.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38018,
"author": "rhombidodecahedron",
"author_id": 11251,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11251",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, put it. I've gotten positions for strange reasons before (as in: \"many of the other candidates were qualified too, but I chose you because you had additional quality X\"). Maybe your future employer speaks that language and wants to speak it with you. Or maybe they're just impressed by polyglotism. In any case, it can't hurt. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37971",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28707/"
] |
37,976 |
<p>Are there other widely used academic pre-print repositories other than ArXiv? My interest is especially towards <strong>mathematics and physics</strong>.</p>
<p>If possible, one characteristic that I'd like to find in other pre-print repositories is the possibility to update the paper without leaving the older versions online and a better organized "author page" (and, as a note, <em>I personally don't like Research Gate or Academia.edu</em>, which also, as far as I understand, shouldn't be considered pre-print repositories).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38597,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In mathematics and physics arXiv is by far the most used and reputable.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, there are thousands other ways to self-archive your paper using not dedicated solutions (like personal website, GitHub, etc) and some general (like FigShare).</p>\n\n<p>Yet, when it comes to pre-print services, they only one I am aware of is <a href=\"http://vixra.org/\">http://vixra.org/</a>. It has policy of accepting everything; however, it has reputation of crackpotism (as arXiv is popular and editors rarely reject from it, so for the majority if researchers there is no reason to choose viXra (unless as a protest or something)).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 40651,
"author": "Changwang Zhang",
"author_id": 15547,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15547",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Try the PeerJ Prepreints. <a href=\"https://peerj.com/preprints/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">https://peerj.com/preprints/</a></p>\n\n<p>Here is what I copied from their website:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A PeerJ 'PrePrint' is a draft that has not yet been peer reviewed for\n formal publication. Similar to preprint servers that already exist\n (for example arXiv.org), authors can submit draft, incomplete, or\n final versions of articles they are working on.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 105490,
"author": "Kimball",
"author_id": 19607,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19607",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One archive that seems to be gaining some traction (possibly more so in Europe) lately is <a href=\"https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">HAL</a> (mentioned in Taladris' comment above). I don't use it personally, but I've been finding a few preprints in my area there recently. Here is their English description:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The open archive HAL</p>\n \n <p>HAL is an open archive where authors can deposit scholarly documents\n from all academic fields.</p>\n \n <p>For the attention of the authors</p>\n\n<pre><code>The deposit must be made in agreement with the co-authors and in the respect for the policy of the publishers.\nThe deposit is subject of a control, HAL reserves the right to refuse items that do not meet the criteria of the archive.\nAny deposit is definitive, no withdrawals will be made after the on-line posting of the publication.\nText files in pdf format or image files are sent to CINES for long-term archiving.\n</code></pre>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>While it seems you cannot get rid of old versions, it has what I think are somewhat better \"author pages\" than the arXiv, e.g., <a href=\"https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/search/index/q/%2A/authFullName_s/Claire+Voisin/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this example</a>. (You can differentiate people with the same last name and first initial, unlike the default in the arXiv.)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 106986,
"author": "Ooker",
"author_id": 14341,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14341",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><sub>Shamelessly copy from <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/295/14341\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/295/14341</a>, just tailor it a little bit.</sub></p>\n\n<p>The OSF provides a general open preprint infrastructure that is connected to a range of preprint services. Importantly, it is not owned by a commercial publisher. It supports a number of discipline-specific preprint services many of which use the ArXiv name under licence.</p>\n\n<p>The list of preprint services is growing over time. \nFor further information go to: <a href=\"https://osf.io/preprints\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://osf.io/preprints</a> </p>\n\n<p>In general, no matter what the discipline you can post to <strong>OSF preprints</strong>: <a href=\"https://osf.io/preprints/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://osf.io/preprints/</a></p>\n\n<p>More discipline-specific preprint services using the OSF framework are being added on a regular basis: <a href=\"https://cos.io/blog/public-goods-infrastructure-preprints-and-innovation-scholarly-communication/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://cos.io/blog/public-goods-infrastructure-preprints-and-innovation-scholarly-communication/</a></p>\n\n<h3>Useful features of OSF-based preprint services</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Strategy for long term archiving</li>\n<li>Integration with Google Scholar</li>\n<li>Integration with OSF projects which allows you to link other materials such as data, code, and materials</li>\n<li>OSF is a not for profit entity run by academic researchers (contrast this with SSRN, Figshare, ResearchGate; i.e., no ads and goals aligned with academic community)</li>\n<li>The functionality of OSF preprints is improving on a regular basis. See <a href=\"https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SocElbBjc_Nhme4-SJv2_zytBd1ys8R5aZDb3POe94c/edit#gid=1340026270\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">features road map</a></li>\n<li>You can choose a licence</li>\n<li>You can link to the DOI of the subsequently published manuscript.</li>\n</ul>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37976",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
37,977 |
<p>How harmful is it for a PhD student to work with a supervisor whose ambition is greater or lesser than that of the student? </p>
<p>I can imagine that if the supervisor aims much higher than the PhD student the experience could be nightmarish for the student (and frustrating for the supervisor). Similarly if the supervisor aims too low (something like: "Just generalize this theory in way X, that should be enough for a PhD") the work could feel meaningless and the time spent on it wasted, when more challenging and maybe even more important questions could deserve the attention and resources.</p>
<p>Background: I am interested in a career in research. I am worried that if I aim too low in my PhD project it will hurt my career afterwards. PhD takes years and so one would ideally make most of the years spent doing it. Some supervisors are more ambitious and knowledgeable than others. I would imagine that a PhD with a more ambitious researcher (with talent and education to match) would improve one's chances of a career in academia than with a less ambitious one. I have read that the best thesis is a finished one, but surely one should think about how the PhD helps to further a post-PhD research career.</p>
<p>Could the difference be great enough to justify changing programs? Even if the funding is good?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37991,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Ambition is only one dimension of the complex relationship defining whether a student and advisor are well-matched. You can have a complete mis-match in that dimension that still turns out to be a good working relationship. For example:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>A highly ambitious student with a low-ambition but supportive advisor can have a chance to shine early, and to learn how to develop their own independent research identity even while still in graduate school.</li>\n<li>A low-ambition student with a highly ambitious advisor can be a \"valued employee\" who faithfully executes on the advisor's ideas.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Note, however, that you can't necessarily judge the ambition of a supervisor from the scope of a project that they plan with you: project scope depends on both their ambition and their judgement of what you are capable of. No matter how ambitious, a wise supervisor would not plan to put you on a more ambitious project than they think you can accomplish. And if you turn out to get better results faster than expected, adjusting goals and scope is easy.</p>\n\n<p>A final note: research is hard and unpredictable. No matter how ambitious your goals, you will almost certainly be side-tracked in one way or another, just by the nature of basic research.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37996,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It does not make much sense to me to compare the supervisor's ambition <em>for herself</em> to the student's ambition <em>for himself</em>: the supervisor is probably older (more often than not, significantly older) and certainly more experienced and accomplished than the student. If a student feels competitive with his thesis advisor in any direct way, something has probably gone wrong. Students should take on advisors that they view as distinctly wiser and more knowledgeable in the main topic they're trying to learn! (The notion of a student who is comparably knowledgeable and skilled as his advisor is something which appears in the premise of a question on this site at least once a month. Strangely, I have never seen it in real life.) \"Ambition\" isn't exactly the right metric, because it aims at the future, and some very successful, eminent researchers are not pushing hard for the future: they've done plenty already. Such \"big old dogs\" can make great thesis advisors.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, some advisors are much more ambitious than others in their expectation for <em>their students</em>. This is an important thing to take into account when choosing an advisor, and too great a mismatch in either direction is going to be a problem. For instance, it is likely that at some point in the relationship the advisor will say \"I want you to do X, and when you do it you'll have a PhD.\" If the student thinks that there is no way in hell that he is going to get anywhere near X it is worth a conversation ASAP, and if X really needs to be attained to get a PhD (probably not, by the way, but just for argument's sake) then the student should look elsewhere. On the other hand, if the student can (or does) do X in a month or two and the advisor says \"Great -- now you have a PhD!\" then the student may want to start over with someone who is more ambitious <em>on his behalf</em>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 42856,
"author": "aparente001",
"author_id": 32436,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32436",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I will introduce another dimension to your dilemma. Have you ever thought about the relative weights of:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>a lukewarm recommendation letter from a big name advisor, vs.</p></li>\n<li><p>an enthusiastic recommendation letter from a medium name advisor?</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The former can kill a career.</p>\n\n<p>Also think about these questions, with regard to both current advisor and potential new advisor:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>how much heart does the advisor have?</p></li>\n<li><p>to what degree do you feel fascinated by the advisor?</p></li>\n<li><p>to what degree do you feel respected and valued by the advisor?</p></li>\n<li><p>to what degree do you feel that you and the advisor are on the same natural wavelength?</p></li>\n<li><p>does the advisor have good judgment, so that s/he can prevent you from investing a lot of time on tangents or dead-ends?</p></li>\n<li><p>does the advisor have a good nose for what will make a splash, and for realizing when there is a risk that someone else will publish on your topic before you do?</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Take a good look at the potential advisors' publication lists. Also, have some frank conversations with them about yourself, what you are interested in, to find out if the person will be truly supportive of you.</p>\n\n<p>I would not change programs if you are more than a year and a half into your research, unless something is really wrong with your current set-up. If an advisor has invested time and energy in you, it would not be ethical to jump ship just because the grass looks greener elsewhere.</p>\n\n<p>The dean of the graduate program in your department is probably someone you could talk to about your dilemma.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37977",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28742/"
] |
37,981 |
<p>Scribd is surely a huge website, but I was wondering if there are some data on its usage in the academic world as a means for sharing lecture notes or research notes.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38551,
"author": "Chris Jefferson",
"author_id": 20453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20453",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This is a very hard question to answer, as everyone can only give their viewpoint.</p>\n\n<p>I can therefore give you one viewpoint. I am a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, and until seeing this post I'd never heard of this website. Having just gone to the website, it seems to just be a book subscription service, which costs $8.99 a month, with no obvious academic purpose.</p>\n\n<p>I can't see why you would expect me to use it, and I certainly don't intend to start.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38568,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I use it a little, and one of my colleagues uses it a little, but I don't get the impression that it's widely used. The application I used it for was the following. I have written textbooks for use in some of my courses. They're available for free online. About 70 other people are using them. At a certain point, I decided I wanted to do a fairly major revision, which would completely break compatibility with the earlier versions of the book. (There's a different order of topics, for example.) I didn't want the old versions cluttering up my web site and creating confusion, but I also didn't want to force my users to switch immediately to the new version (or at all, if they liked the old version better). So I just put the old ones on scribd.</p>\n\n<p>One of my colleague uses scribd for his course notes, for a somewhat different reason. He simply doesn't want the hassle of maintaining his own web site, paying for webhosting, etc.</p>\n\n<p>For both me and my colleague, one of the considerations was that our school's computing resources are flaky, inadequate, and Windows-centric. People might also prefer not to use a school server for something like a textbook that they want to make clear is not the intellectual property of their employer.</p>\n\n<p>One of the problems with using scribd for these purposes is that scribd has been searching for a business model that will allow them to make a profit, and therefore they keep changing their rules and the way they present themselves publicly. For example, I've heard complaints from people that (at least at one point in time) scribd seemed to be trying to force them to pay money or contribute materials in order to access files.</p>\n\n<p>It is probably not realistic to think of scribd as a permanent place to store documents (cf. arxiv.org or archive.org, where there is some expectation of permanence).</p>\n\n<p>Another educational purpose for which I use scribd is illegal according to the laws of some countries. There are a lot of classic papers in my field that are very important and useful educationally, but are still under copyright in many countries. Some of the old ones are not even available from the publisher in digital form if you're willing to pay; they haven't been digitized, and the only way to access them is by going to the basement at a big university where they keep very old journals. Sometimes when I go to the trouble of obtaining one of these papers, I scan it and post it on scribd.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37981",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
37,986 |
<p>I see that many professors spend all of their time applying for grants, minus a little bit of time to interact with the graduate students on their grants and a little bit of time to fulfill their teaching obligations. They are of course doing a great service to their graduate students, who perhaps otherwise would not be able to do research, but it doesn't seem very enjoyable to be in such a position. </p>
<p>I've spoken with many researchers at national laboratories who say they chose to go that route so that they could be mostly freed from the grant game (of course some of them still have to write grant proposals).</p>
<p>I enjoy doing research, but my real passion is in teaching, so my goal has always been to be a university professor. However, I am not fond of the idea of "hustling for money" (as one researcher at a national lab put it). I personally would much rather spend most of my time preparing strong lectures. (I would consider high school but the topics I would like to teach only are offered in universities.)</p>
<p>So, my question: can one survive in university academia without grants, perhaps at the cost of not having graduate students? Is it enough to be an effective teacher, with a strong albeit grantless research portfolio? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37995,
"author": "Brian Borchers",
"author_id": 4453,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4453",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There are certainly some situations in the US where you can be a tenured professor, do some unsupported research, and never bring in grants. However, the expectation that you will bring in research grants is fairly wide spread, and having at least some grant funding is necessary to obtain tenure at a surprisingly large number of institutions (not just the \"Research I\" nationally ranked universities.) </p>\n\n<p>Research funding varies dramatically between disciplines. In the following I'll restrict my attention to mathematics since you mentioned that was your area. I'm including statistics since in many cases statisticians get jobs in mathematics departments at these kinds of institutions.</p>\n\n<p>The exceptions boil down to universities in which research is not a high priority and teaching is more important. These institutions are typically \"Regional Comprehensive Universities\" often with names of the form \"directional state university.\" For example, in New Mexico we have \"Eastern New Mexico University\", \"Western New Mexico University\", \"New Mexico Highlands University\", and \"Northern New Mexico College\" </p>\n\n<p>Teaching loads at such institutions are typically high (3-3 or 4-4, plus lots of advising) and graduate programs are small or non-existent. Undergraduate\nscience and engineering degree programs are also small. Many of these universities don't offer any degrees in engineering. Much of the enrollment in math and statistics courses is in freshman level service courses like college algebra and intro to statistics. </p>\n\n<p>In order to get hired into a tenure track position at such an institution you'll need a PhD and some teaching experience (many candidates for such positions will have worked in \"visiting assistant professor\" positions for a few years.) There will typically be some expectation that you will publish research during your time as an assistant professor, and you may be encouraged to apply for research grants, but very few faculty at such institutions actually have grant funding from the NSF or other federal agencies. </p>\n\n<p>In mathematics, the number of tenure track positions has been in decline in recent years. The competition for these kinds of positions has become extreme, with institutions reporting hundreds of applications for each position. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38094,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You say in your comment that \"[t]here are no real costs associated with my research,\" which is a huge misunderstanding about the costs of research. The vast majority of research budgets (in the US, based on my experience) are salaries for the researchers. While NSF limits professors to 2 months of salary across all grants from NSF without special permission, many graduate students and postdocs are funded mostly or entirely off grants won by those professors. If you want to have a grad student work with you on your research, you need to fund their salary and tuition, as well as their fringe benefits and the university's overhead charge (which keeps the lights on and pays for admin staff, etc), and at most universities this money comes from external funding. I guess that students who TA can also do unfunded research with a professor as they work towards their PhD, but this seems unfair to them unless the other requirements (classes, quals, etc) from their department are minimal.</p>\n\n<p>Most universities in the US cover 9 months of salary for professors, so if you want to be paid that other 25%, you need to bring in external funds or teach classes during the summer semester/quarter. </p>\n\n<p>How much of this you choose to do will depend on how ambitious you are. If you want tenure and raises, you will almost certainly be required to win some grants. Though, once you have tenure, you can basically stop winning grants and support no students, though your colleagues will probably stop giving you raises at that point as well.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37986",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11251/"
] |
37,988 |
<p>I have a question regarding what tense form should I use to refer to an earlier self publication in a monograph chapter.
For example, if I want to say (in the chapter), "most of the results <strong>were</strong> published in [1]", is that OK? Or should I use the present perfect tense?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37989,
"author": "D.W.",
"author_id": 705,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/705",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, writing \"Most of the results were published in [1].\" is OK.</p>\n\n<p>Bonus tip: Don't treat citations as nouns / noun phrases. Instead, if you delete the citation, the entire sentence should still make sense and be grammatical. Thus, better style is to say \"Most of the results were published by Smith et al. [1].\" (for example).</p>\n\n<p>For more elaboration, see <a href=\"http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/latex.html#refnoun\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/latex.html#refnoun</a>, which is part of <a href=\"http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/latex.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Eddie Kohler's excellent tips on scientific writing and using Latex</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37994,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would generally go with \"are published\", since \"were\" would suggest to me that the results are no longer published. In some odd situations \"were\" might be better, for example, \"the results were published online [1], but the website has been taken down\". Similarly, in a case like \"the results were published in the first edition [1], but have since been removed\", I think \"were\" might be better since although the results are still technically published in the first edition, the point is to note that they are no longer published in the second edition.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/01/30
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37988",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
37,998 |
<p>I shall soon get my degree in Biochemistry. Recently I attended several professional master-classes on film-making and producing, and now I want to get a MA in Film. For this masters, my CV is needed. Thinking that the master-classes I attended will help me in my admission, I am unsure under which sub-category I should place the names of the certificates; under 'Certificates & Awards', 'Education', 'Experience', or something else?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 37989,
"author": "D.W.",
"author_id": 705,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/705",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, writing \"Most of the results were published in [1].\" is OK.</p>\n\n<p>Bonus tip: Don't treat citations as nouns / noun phrases. Instead, if you delete the citation, the entire sentence should still make sense and be grammatical. Thus, better style is to say \"Most of the results were published by Smith et al. [1].\" (for example).</p>\n\n<p>For more elaboration, see <a href=\"http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/latex.html#refnoun\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/latex.html#refnoun</a>, which is part of <a href=\"http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/latex.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Eddie Kohler's excellent tips on scientific writing and using Latex</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 37994,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would generally go with \"are published\", since \"were\" would suggest to me that the results are no longer published. In some odd situations \"were\" might be better, for example, \"the results were published online [1], but the website has been taken down\". Similarly, in a case like \"the results were published in the first edition [1], but have since been removed\", I think \"were\" might be better since although the results are still technically published in the first edition, the point is to note that they are no longer published in the second edition.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37998",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27822/"
] |
37,999 |
<p>I receive many questions from colleagues about homework in a certain course which I took a while back. I try to answer them and help them solve homework which are very similar to the ones I did when I was taking the course. There is no TA for that course, so they come to me with their questions. </p>
<p>I am not sure if what I am doing is ethical. The professor doesn't know that I am doing this. Should I stop and tell him about this and see what he says?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38001,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>To \"answer their questions\" may mean different things, and some of them are OK, while others are not. E.g. answering questions like \"What does this mean?\" by explaining the thing in your own words is of course OK. However, solving their homework problems for them is not.</p>\n\n<p>I guess, one can draw a line here: If you are <strong>helping them to learn the topic</strong> then it <strong>is OK</strong>. If you only try to <strong>help them to pass the course without caring about their progress</strong> in the topic, it <strong>is not OK</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>So my advice would be: Focus on the topic itself when answering questions. Try to find out or guess what the instructor of the course wants the students to learn and help them to accomplish that.</p>\n\n<p>Oh, and of course, asking the instructor is also OK.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38005,
"author": "Florian D'Souza",
"author_id": 26958,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26958",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In most courses I've seen, there is usually some sort of policy regarding how and when to cite sources, where \"sources\" include people. If your course has such a policy, then it should be straightforward to answer whether what you're doing is ethical or not. If the instructor explicitly forbids collaboration on homework assignments, then you should probably not answer anything related to homework. However, if there is no explicit policy, then it is fully acceptable to either ask the professor (as Dirk mentions) or ask that you be cited as a source on the homework.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I only answer homework questions where there is at least some effort put into trying to solve the question(s) and/or not working on the exact problem in favor of a similar one. As such, I am not just giving away solutions, and I can usually focus more on the theory behind the problem than the problem itself. The downside is that it can be hard to come up with a related problem that is not trivially different from the \"real\" homework problem.</p>\n\n<p>As an aside, this type of question comes up very frequently in various Stack Exchange Metas. If you search \"homework questions\" or \"homework policy\" on <a href=\"https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=homework+questions\">Cross Validated</a> or <a href=\"http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/search?q=homework+policy\">Mathematics</a>, for example, you'll see many discussion about what to do when posed with homework questions. I think a lot of the discussions might be relevant to you or anyone faced with a situation like you describe.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38015,
"author": "Bob Brown",
"author_id": 16183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16183",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If, after you are done helping, the person you helped could take a blank piece of paper and completely answer the question(s), then you've helped someone learn and that is good.</p>\n\n<p>If, on the other hand, the person you've helped is parroting your words, formulas, algorithms, or whatever and cannot otherwise answer the question, then (depending on the policies of the course) both of you may have committed academic misconduct. Regardless of policies, what you have done is unethical because you've deprived another student of an opportunity to learn.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38030,
"author": "darkrxn",
"author_id": 28792,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28792",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I enjoy the Socratic method. I can walk somebody through a solution step by step without ever answering their question, by asking them questions that lead them to the next step on their own. This has been widely unpopular for me, because most people I surround myself with want instant gratification. When they see the solution, it makes perfect sense, and they feel like they \"know that,\" but they were not able to synthesize the solution independently, and likely cannot do so later on, such as on an exam. Recognizing solutions and synthesizing them are different. I know very few people who want to endure the pain of learning something, and it sounds like the person using you as a crutch is using you from the way you narrate your situation. I see no harm in using the Socratic method and no need to tell anybody about it. Is the material on Khan Academy?</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37999",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18244/"
] |
38,000 |
<p>I'm not a native English speaker. I would like to cite a book originally written in German for a writing sample to be sent for admission purposes to a graduate school in the UK (MA programme).</p>
<p>There are at least two translations of said work: Romanian and English. I have read the Romanian translation, not the English one, because it was far more convenient to do so. Naturally I translated the Romanian passages to English and cited them appropriately, but the citations are based on the Romanian translation (e. g. I have cited a passage to be found on page 52 of the Romanian translation).</p>
<p>Is it a problem that instead of citing the English version of the book, I have cited and translated the Romanian version? I'm afraid so, because the reviewers probably don't speak Romanian, therefore they can't check whether the cited passage is REALLY there in the Romanian translation or I just made up the whole thing. Plus they might think I'm lazy.</p>
<p>If this is indeed a problem, I have to find all of these passages - which I have originally read in Romanian - in the English translation and rewrite all footnotes, bibliography etc. (e.g. the passage which is located on page 52 in the Romanian translation might be located in a different place, say page 63 in the English translation).</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38002,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There are two things to address here. First, relax. The exact sources you are citing in a writing sample for an MA program are NOT what the admissions decision will be based on. It is unlikely anyone is going to check up on your citations and even if they do, they are not going to care.</p>\n\n<p>The second thing is, it is generally best to use the original, untranslated source. When the original source is not in a language you are proficient in, using a translation is reasonable. If you are writing in English and need to use a translation, then using the English translation is best, unless there is a compelling reason not to. In the future, you may want to work with English translations, but again for a writing sample, no one is going to care.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38003,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are two issues here: what the ethical requirements are, and what will annoy readers.</p>\n\n<p>Ethically, you have to make your citations clear and correct. If your information and page numbers come from the Romanian translation, then you need to indicate this explicitly. (The page numbers and even the details of the content could vary between translations.) As long as you do that, using the Romanian translation would be eccentric but not unethical.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, it will almost certainly annoy your readers, given that you aren't writing for an audience you expect to have a special interest in the Romanian translation. You are making it much more painful for readers to learn anything from your citations, which can give a bad impression (like you don't care about your readers or don't expect anyone to ever want to look up these references).</p>\n\n<p>Updating the references sounds like a pain, but it is worth doing if you can. If you can't do this before submitting your writing sample, then I would append a brief explanation/excuse. For example, you could explain that you wrote this paper for a Romanian audience and don't have the English translation available to update the references. This wouldn't give a great impression, but at least it makes it clear that you realize this is unusual and would fix it if you could.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38017,
"author": "Andreas Blass",
"author_id": 14506,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If I correctly understand your question, you are including, in your writing sample, your own English translations of the Romanian translation of the original German book. As far as I know, that's fine, provided you make it clear that this is what you've done. For example, cite the original German book and its Romanian translation, and add that your translation is based on the latter.</p>\n\n<p>Anonymous Mathematician said that this will make it much more painful for your readers to learn anything from your citations, and that's probably true, but I don't think the purpose of these citations is for the readers to learn anything. They will learn from your English translations. The purpose of the citations is to give proper credit to the author and the translator, and also to insulate you from blame if the Romanian translation that you used turns out to be inaccurate. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 88161,
"author": "virmaior",
"author_id": 19769,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19769",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There are two general answers that are quite good.</p>\n\n<p>I want to add a more specialized answer. In philosophy done in English, there is often a standard academic translation that is used. For instance, the academic version of Hegel's <em>Phenomenology of Spirit</em> was up until very recently AV Miller. </p>\n\n<p>If you are trying to publish a paper or publish with a legitimate press in philosophy in English, you would generally cite the most common translation and its pagination. For things with an academic edition in their original language (like Kant), you cite that pagination. In either case, you can amend the translation if you can do it better or to highlight something you argue for ...</p>\n\n<p>That being said, this would not matter at the point of <em>applying</em> to an MA program and would probably not matter much in courses in MA programs or PhD programs even in philosophy in the US.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 133779,
"author": "anon",
"author_id": 111197,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/111197",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If you are basing your argument on having read a translation from langauge O into language X, which you then translated into language Y, you should cite the translation into language X (and the original publication into language O), notwithstanding the fact that a published translation into language Y exists. This is because there will be differences between <strong>your</strong> translation from O to Y via X and the published translation from O to Y. The point of citation is to show transparently <strong>your</strong> basis for arriving at a given argument/conclusion.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38000",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28777/"
] |
38,022 |
<p>What education does one need to be called "Professor" in the United States of America? A woman with a law degree in a junior college paralegal program insists on being called professor at a local community college. She is the only one in the whole school that does this. Is this normal?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38027,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'll answer the general question in the title of your post:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What education does one need to be called “Professor” in the United States of America?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>None at all. In the United States, someone who holds an appointment as a professor (of any rank, including professor-like positions that may not even include \"professor\" in their official name) at a university may be addressed as \"Professor.\" It is not a matter of their level of education, but of their job title.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A woman with a law degree in a junior college paralegal program insists on being called professor at a local community college. She is the only one in the whole school that does this. Is this normal?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If she has an appointment that is in the range of \"professor\" positions, then she is perfectly entitled to insist on being addressed as \"professor.\"</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38028,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>No specific educational background is necessary to be called \"Professor\" in the United States. It is not an honorific like \"Dr.\" which refers to a specific degree. (There have been some famous academics who had no more than a BA, e.g. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lyman_Kittredge\">Lyman Kittredge</a>. This is less common as time goes on, but there are certainly many professors without terminal degrees in their field.) \"Professor\" is a formal job title in the field of higher education, and if someone holds that title at their institution then they can use it with legitimacy. </p>\n\n<p>In general, anyone can \"insist\" upon being called anything, and the other party can then decide how they want to respond. I could refuse to call my physician \"Dr.\" if I chose to; what happens then is up to them. Insisting on being called by your job title while on the job seems reasonable to me. </p>\n\n<p>\"Is this normal?\" can be a hard question to answer for strangers on the internet. Granting the premise that she is the only faculty member at the institution that wants to be called \"Professor\", then...it seems to follow that it's not normal at that institution. But there are many other American professors who want to be called \"Professor\" and many institutions where this is the most common appellation, so in that sense the practice is normal. </p>\n\n<p>(<b>Added</b>: @AnonymousMathematician gives some compelling conditions in which it may be <em>appropriate</em> to be the only faculty member at their institution who insists on this.) </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38035,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 7,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I completely agree with the answers by ff524 and Pete L. Clark, but I'd like to highlight one issue that's in the background here, regarding whether this behavior is normal. When someone makes a point of emphasizing a professional title, it might be because they are pompous, but they might actually have a good reason for it. It's difficult to do your job well if the people you are interacting with don't maintain an adequate level of respect and professionalism, and insisting on titles can be an effective way to control the tone of your interactions.</p>\n\n<p>Whether this is helpful is often correlated with gender or race: many white men are treated respectfully by default, while women or minorities sometimes find that students or colleagues interact with them in troubling ways that don't arise nearly as often for their white male coworkers. For example, students sometimes expect unreasonably forgiving and nurturing behavior from women and react harshly if they don't get it, students sometimes disrespect women in class and try to challenge or undermine their authority (for no intellectually compelling reason), etc. Of course this doesn't always happen, but it's a real problem for some people.</p>\n\n<p>Insisting on the use of a formal title is one way to address this issue. You run the risk of looking pompous or uppity, but you are willing to take that risk in exchange for reminding everyone of your position and your desire to maintain a formal and respectful tone. This may not be the best solution in any given circumstances, but it works well enough that it's reasonably common.</p>\n\n<p>So my recommendation is to approach this issue with some charity. If you hear complaints about someone insisting on a title that nobody else cares as much about, especially a woman or minority, you should keep in mind that it may be their way of dealing with a difficult situation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38141,
"author": "Pax Per Scientiam",
"author_id": 28858,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28858",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As far as physics goes, any PhD hired to teach is rightfully called \"Professor.\" However, their title may technically be, for instances, \"Assistant Professor\" or \"Associate Professor.\" One is considered a (Full) Professor once one has been granted tenure by the appropriate committee.</p>\n\n<p>In short, one is a professor if one has been granted a PhD and one has been hired on to teach. One is considered a full professor if one has been granted tenure by senior faculty.</p>\n\n<p>That said, I've never met a professor that objected to being addressed as \"Dr.\"</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.bu.edu/handbook/appointments-and-promotions/classification-of-ranks-and-titles/\" rel=\"nofollow\">BU</a> has a very nice general breakdown.</p>\n\n<p>EDIT: not sure why I'm being downvoted. If you're an American physics student whose experience is counter to my account, please do share.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 76611,
"author": "R Philip Aguilar",
"author_id": 61608,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/61608",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In the USA, The title of Professor is given to people that have a PhD and are teachers at any academic level. A person who is a Doctor is someone who has finished a terminal degree meaning they have completed the highest degree in their field of study above a bachelors. Currently a Masters of Fine Arts is the top degree for artist in the USA technically can be called Doctor last name. Art classes are informal setting so you call the instructor by their first name but they are currently trying to develop a PhD program. Master levels are called Instructor. Now because some people get in a snit about the title of Doctor the custom is to only call people with PhD's Doctors. If you are a grad student and are called professor you should correct the person because it is a title that people earn with an additional 5 to 8 years of study. As to the OP on the first day of class the professor should of introduced herself and what degree she has from which schools. Teaching at a 2 year community college only requires a masters degree 4 year universities you need a PhD or terminal degree such as in art person. grads teaching under a direct supervision of of the proper degree person. It was a long answer but so much misinformation in the thread. I have a MFA you will find that most people teaching with an MFA a university know the details because we are the lowly Instructors among the Professors. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 89413,
"author": "Kelly S. French",
"author_id": 105,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/105",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Sharing my own story since it comes in the grey area and might be helpful to some.</p>\n\n<p>I recently completed a Master's degree in Computer Science and was asked to teach an undergraduate class the next semester. The version of this question I asked my wife was, \"what should I have the students call me?\" She was merely amused and responded why would it matter but astutely mentioned that it should be enough for the students to know the university was satisfied with my credentials and thus allow me to teach there. In the same vein of other answers here, I'm not insisting on formality for its own sake but am trying to juggle lots of cultural norms involving titles in an educational setting and so forth.</p>\n\n<p>Since I neither have a PhD nor do I have a medical degree, I shouldn't expect to be called doctor; the question is whether to correct a student who addresses me that way. It hasn't happened but I've resolved to correct them if it does, that just leaves me with what to ask them to use in place of 'Dr.' The natural choices are the forms Prof. French or Mr. French. During my undergrad days when we had an instructor that did not have a PhD. we would make sure to use Mr. or Mrs. (in those days the Ms./Mrs. debate had not flared up yet).</p>\n\n<p>In my case the question came down to whether I could be referred to as Prof. French without either confusing a student who then expected I held a PhD or somehow being seen as borrowing the title as a form of ego-stroking. There are several questions that dance around the issue like, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/89307/is-it-okay-to-call-prof-xx-as-mr-xx\">is it ok to call Prof. X Mr. X</a> <strong>or</strong> <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/57958/105\">addressing a friend who teaches after joining his lab</a> <strong>or</strong> <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/45323/105\">at what point can I refer to my professor by their first name</a> </p>\n\n<p>What cleared it up for me was my appointment letter, which stated unambiguously that I was being appointed as an adjunct professor. At the beginning of class I wrote my full name on the board but did not include my work history or my degrees, heeding my wife's advice on not feeling the need to express my credentials to the students as I don't need to prove anything to them. When students address me they use Professor French both in person and in emails and that works for me. </p>\n\n<p>My oldest daughter has recently finished not only a degree in teaching - and has been teaching in a primary school for years -but completed a master's of her own, but a different field, the same semester as I completed mine. I consulted with her about teaching in general and she had a ton of good information on how to manage a classroom. We agreed that in my case I didn't want to tell them it was my first time teaching; mainly because while it might make me feel less of a need to apologize for mistakes or oversights it would give the students a seed of doubt, however tiny, which might serve as a distraction. </p>\n\n<p>As it turns out, the teaching assistant for the class is a PhD student so she addresses me in emails as Mr. French which I prefer because she isn't one of my students and if I insisted she use Prof. French it implies more formality and hierarchy than I'm comfortable with. When she refers to me when speaking to students she says things like, 'you need to see the instructor' or 'you need to talk to Mr. French.' both of which are fine with me for the same reasons as above.</p>\n\n<p>So in most cases it might be a simple answer but you really need to have more context to guide you whether it comes from the culture or the institution.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if I can only figure out what to call the other faculty now that I am one...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 99536,
"author": "tewodros amberbir mekonnen",
"author_id": 83500,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/83500",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my opinion, I don't think it's appropriate to call or act as a professor without PhD because it lead the community on the wrong way of perception. For instance I have a MBA, and sometimes universities invite me to give lectures. The students used to call me as I'm a professor and I refuse because it don't make sense. I know many colleagues haven't a PhD but they are professor. It seems unusual and inappropriate even assistant or associated professor.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38022",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28790/"
] |
38,023 |
<p>I was wondering if it would be ethical for a PhD student in the field of Computer Science to hire a programmer in an specific domain; so that he could focus more on the algorithmic or mathematical part of the thesis. Would that be something ethical to do? Should the PhD student include this assistant as a co-author in the articles?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38026,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I don't think it is <em>inherently</em> unethical to do this. If all relevant parties know about it and you scrupulously acknowledge this other person's work, then I see no specific problem.</p>\n\n<p>Whether it is advisable is a different question...and one you should certainly ask your advisor. I have to say that it does not sound like such a good idea to me. Your thesis work is for you to do...almost by definition. It is perfectly fine to get help from others on your thesis, and some people are better programmers than others (even in CS, I imagine), so getting some pointers from a friend is actually a good idea. But <em>paying</em> someone to do a part of your thesis work just doesn't sound good to me. Either the programming is an important part of your thesis or it isn't. If it is, you should do it yourself. If it isn't, maybe you don't need to do it at all, or don't need to do it to the degree that an outside professional would. </p>\n\n<p>There is also the issue of the impression this subcontracting would make on others. Perhaps the cultural norms in your field are very different from mine (again: ask your advisor), but I would have a rather negative impression of a PhD student who did this: they don't seem to be very committed to their own work. </p>\n\n<p><b>Added</b>: To be clear, I am interpreting the question as meaning that the doctoral student himself is doing the hiring: i.e., that this is his idea and he is using his own funds. (If his university is giving him funding and simply asking him to pick someone to work with, then even asking the question \"Is it ethical?\" becomes less plausible.) </p>\n\n<p>In terms of suspecting that this is not a good idea, I hope I was clear that this is my personal opinion, with experience from a field (mathematics) which is rather closely related to CS but is not necessarily identical. As I said, the OP should consult their advisor about this. However, for what it's worth I find it hard to believe that the reaction will be \"Sure, spend your money.\" While not <em>unethical</em> on the OP's part, it seems, shall we say, suboptimal if both advisor and student feel that this is the best way to proceed. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38029,
"author": "O. R. Mapper",
"author_id": 14017,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14017",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I am going to outline why I think it is ethical and contrast this with the case described in the question <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30405/is-it-ethically-questionable-for-me-an-undergraduate-to-hire-research-assista\">Is it ethically questionable for me (an undergraduate) to hire “research assistants”?</a>. Also, I am answering with a perspective from Germany.</p>\n\n<p><strong>tl;dr: Yes, it is ethical and it is routinely done.</strong></p>\n\n<p>The question linked above explicitly asks a similar question from the point of view of an undergrad. At that stage of education, as is also pointed out in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/30410/14017\">RoboKaren's answer there</a>, certain restrictions (might usually) apply (and in many cases, keep applying up to a Master's degree):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>It is expected that the student works on their own.</li>\n<li>The tasks are reasonably \"low-level\" in a way that it is realistic and expected that everything is done by one person.</li>\n<li>The tasks are likely to aim at demonstrating skills with a lesser emphasis on producing a real product. (That doesn't mean that, e.g., Bachelor theses cannot yield an impressive small software. But in general, what is created is a prototype rather than a marketable full-fledged product.)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Once entering doctoral candidacy, however, some changes occur:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>There is not necessarily a requirement that the doctoral candidate does <em>everything</em> on their own. (Please check the rules specific to your university to see whether this applies to you.) The doctoral candidate is supposed to choose the direction and make decisions on higher and lower levels, but that does not mean that they have to write every line of code themselves after the conceptual idea has been documented, or that they have to personally accompany all 50+ participants of a user study.</li>\n<li>Related to that, the tasks are sufficiently large that they can be distributed to several people. If the research is funded by a third party, it is often the case that more than one person is funded by that project, so quite some work is done in collaboration.</li>\n<li>While the software produced during doctoral candidacy is often still in a very ... say ... unfinished state, it is indeed expected that real research results are being produced. That means (related to the aforementioned user study example) that it is not sufficient that the doctoral candidate demonstrates once that they can conduct a user study by observing five participants, but actual user studies with several dozens of participants, and more than one such study, have to be done. There is no point in \"torturing\" any single person by having them ask the same questions 50 times, when the same can be achieved by distributing the workload to several persons.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Therefore, as long as the doctoral candidate is \"in charge\" of the conceptual development of the research and its results, it is completely acceptable to outsource some subtasks. One more point is that the doctoral candidate is supposed to acquire some first practical experience at hiring and leading a team of people.</p>\n\n<p>With that said, I get back to my above statement that it is routinely done, in order to provide some exemplary real-world scenarios. I can think of both paid and unpaid variants of this:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>In some places, doctoral candidates can often employ one or more student research assistants (usually Bachelor/Master students), for example, for support in coding. Note that these students are not paid personally by the doctoral candidates, but that their funding is provided by the same sources as the funding of the doctoral candidates themselves. Hence, they are not only allowed, but explicitly meant to work on the same projects as the doctoral candidates. <em>(Still, these student research assistants are \"hired\" by the doctoral candidate. The doctoral candidate will have the idea that some tasks could be delegated, they devise and publish the job offer, they check applicants in interviews and pick the most suitable one, and they decide about what those student research assistants get to do. The only time the student research assistants normally get in touch with anyone beside the doctoral candidate who hired them is for signing their contract, which happens at some HR department of the university.)</em></li>\n<li>Moreover, when doctoral candidates supervise a Bachelor's or a Master's thesis, they often define the topic and requirements in a way so the results from that thesis provide some input to their own doctoral thesis. Like this, it is also a form of outsourcing some of the work that eventually contributes to the doctoral research.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>EDIT: Lastly, I would like to add a more concrete hypothetical example to illustrate what kinds of tasks might be performed by such a \"supporting programmer\":</p>\n\n<p>Imagine a doctoral candidate who does research in the area of HCI to develop some new GUI elements. The creative research part of the work consists in learning about related work, developing a new concept for a GUI control, and drawing some sketches of it on a sheet of paper, as well as designing/choosing some test tasks to validate the hypotheses underlying the design.</p>\n\n<p>Before this can be converted into a publication, much more work has to be done, though. An interactive prototype has to be programmed, based on the sketched design. It will have to be made to look somewhat fancy (3D/glossy look, animations, etc., whatever fanciness contemporary software GUIs usually feature), as otherwise, study participants tend to be extremely distracted by a directly visible lack of fanciness and unable to see through to the actual novelties of the GUI concept being tested, thus totally distorting results in the qualitative part of any study. Then, to ensure tasks cannot be criticized as unrealistic, some real, or at least real-looking, data has to be integrated into the prototype. That usually means adding code to load (and possibly import/convert) one or more existing datasets. If user behaviour is to be recorded and/or timed, the prototype needs to be prepared for that, as well, by writing certain interactions into a database etc.</p>\n\n<p>The whole last paragraph does not contain a single \"scientifically creative\" piece of research, this is just straightforward work that has to be done, and it typically takes a few weeks to get right. Toward the end of the paragraph, we're even way out of the actual research domain of HCI and deep in low-level things such as I/O and database access. All of that latter paragraph is perfectly suitable for outsourcing, and a doctoral candidate will not automatically be expected to have done all of this by their own hands.</p>\n\n<p>EDIT2: Another note, as various of the other answers refer to code quality: It is true that in the case of hiring students as described above, the quality of the produced code might be less than what would be provided by a professional programmer (typically <em>not</em> available in the settings I have described in this answer). However</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>capable students learn quickly (in particular when they are given actual tasks, not practice tasks)</li>\n<li>even though the produced software is supposed to be somewhat stable, it will usually still be a \"prototype\" for a limited amount of uses and thus does not have the same expectations for maintainability or security as production-level code</li>\n<li>doctoral candidates are free to choose and reject suitable and unsuitable applicants to their student research assistant job, respectively (and it's totally fine to hire someone for only a month first to check out how they perform)</li>\n<li>as university staff, the doctoral candidate also has a partial responsibility to give less skilled students a chance to improve, and thus should expect that not every student supervised or hired is the greatest genius around; this comes back to gathering experience in leading a team, as that will often mean a combination of diverging skill levels during the later work life of the doctoral candidate, as well.</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38033,
"author": "Shep",
"author_id": 789,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/789",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Sure, but I doubt you can afford it.</p>\n\n<p>Let's see what the options are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>You can hire an undergrad part-time to write some of your code, but chances are that you'll spend more time digging up their bugs and teaching them it would take to write the code yourself. Probably not worth it.<sup>1</sup></p></li>\n<li><p>Or you could get a <em>real</em> programmer, but a good professional programmer is going to cost much more than a Ph.D. student makes, and probably even more than they cost (In the US the university takes a huge cut for each grad student in a grant, roughly equal to the student's stipend). Probably not worth it unless you are independently rich.</p>\n\n<p>Making matters worse, even a professional software engineer isn't able to read your mind. Their job is to take extremely large systems with many moving parts and make them managable. As a computer science Ph.D. you're probably focusing more heavily on one particular componnet, which you're going to have to understand well enough to write the code yourself.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In either case it doesn't sound like a very good deal for you. </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><sup>1</sup>Note that this only apply if your end goal is simply to avoid coding yourself. On the other hand, advising and supervising are extremely valuable skills and as an academic your job isn't just to do <em>your</em> work but to support the field as a whole. By taking on undergraduates you're potentially doing more for the field than you could ever do by hiring a professional, and future employers will take note. Furthermore, if you treat them as researchers in their own right they might have some valuable insights, but your question was specific to hiring them just to write code.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38102,
"author": "Gary McNickle",
"author_id": 28832,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28832",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I recommend that you consider your career goals. If you intend to enter a career as a software developer, then I would argue that it may be ethical with credits given but is not a good practice.</p>\n\n<p>I have been a hiring manager and instructor in software development for the last two decades, and one constant that I have encountered is that the more educated software developers are, the worse their code is.</p>\n\n<p>They can solve complex problems in code but their code is generally not maintainable. This is something that I have had zero success correcting. This has become such a problem that resumes for software developers with a PhD or double-masters go to the bottom of the resume stack, under candidates with no degrees. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38104,
"author": "Alexandros",
"author_id": 10042,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10042",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I will disagree with the other answers almost completely. If you are in a CS PHD (unless you are in strictly Theoretical Computer Science) and you cannot even code your own algorithms during the PHD, then you are in the wrong business. It is perfectly OK to collaborate (not pay) with other people on writing / sharing the code but putting someone else to code for you (because you cannot do it) is silly to borderline dangerous. You cannot separate the algorithm from the code (unless again you are in strictly Theoretical Computer Science) and how the algorithm performs (on an actual experiment) is in direct correlation with the algorithm's implementation. </p>\n\n<p>How are you going to check if your hired programmer did a correct implementation? You cannot, unless you go exhaustively through his code, which actually might take you longer than implementing your version of the algorithm. But even then, you will never be quite sure. What you are going to do when you think of a new minor optimization? Write him an email, wait for him to implement it and get the answer 2 days later? Good luck finishing your paper in the next 3 years for such a workflow. But even if you manage to finish it, there will always be that 1% chance that something went wrong in his implementation and all your hypotheses will go up in smoke, when someone else implements your algorithm on his own and proves you wrong. What will you do then? Blame it on him? How will you be able to answer the questions about your work that someone else did for you? And say you manage to finish the first paper with the hired help and then he goes to another job. What are you going to do on your next paper? Hire someone else to maintain and expand the previous programmer's code? </p>\n\n<p>Also as a PHD or a postdoc you may be put in charge (as a technical manager) of a research program close to your expertise that might be of significantly larger scale than a research paper. How you will tell your peers or more junior colleagues what to do, if you always rely on someone else to code for you. How can you separate what is doable or not within the project's timeframe if you never implemented not even your algorithms yourself. </p>\n\n<p>When you become more senior (postdoc and beyond) others might actually write more code than you on your co-authored papers. But even then, you must be able to check their code for mistakes, inconsistencies and must be able to predict how the code / algorithm will perform on selected test-cases (unless again you are in strictly Theoretical Computer Science). This is not something you learn by pseudocode, high-level abstraction or shortcuts but it is something you learn by paying your dues by hours of debugging, coding and failed experiments. You cannot get a PHD in Math by letting someone else do the proofs for you. Why you assume CS is any different?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38150,
"author": "Fabio Guerra",
"author_id": 28866,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28866",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>If most of the programming work could easily fit in a general library, you can support someone to do an open source library.</p>\n\n<p>It is not an ethical issue to reuse open source software.</p>\n\n<p>But make sure that this piece of software will be well documented and available to help other people that work in your domain.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/01
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38023",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144/"
] |
38,040 |
<p>As universities provide short deadlines for faculty position offers, applicants can accept an offer-1 (verbally or by signing a contract) and which is not the best. What is the recommended option if a late and a better offer-2 arrives after accepting offer-1?</p>
<ul>
<li>Reject offer-2 and stay with offer-1.</li>
<li>Reject offer-1 and accept offer-2.</li>
<li>Accept and delay offer-2 for a year or two if possible, and work for a year or two with University-1.</li>
<li>other options?</li>
</ul>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38041,
"author": "Bob Brown",
"author_id": 16183,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16183",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Although some would argue about the ethics of the situation, I'd say accept the better offer... <em>unless</em> acceptance of offer-1 was in the form of signing a contract. My reasoning is this: If you were already employed at Uni-1 and Uni-2 made you a better offer, you'd work out the duration of your contract and move.</p>\n\n<p>If you have signed a contract, you are ethically and legally bound to honor it. (Whether anything bad happens if you break it is another question.)</p>\n\n<p>What you <em>must not do</em> is accept Uni-2's offer until you are clear of Uni-1. There's a certain amount of peril in that because Uni-2 might do the same thing you are contemplating, namely withdraw their offer for a better prospect.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38050,
"author": "Anonymous Mathematician",
"author_id": 612,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/612",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>This situation should not actually arise if you are handling your faculty job search properly. If you accept an offer, you should withdraw all your remaining job applications. Otherwise either you are wasting their time in considering you for a position you won't accept, or you were insincere in accepting the previous offer. If you aren't comfortable withdrawing your other applications, then you aren't comfortable accepting the job. You can negotiate on this point, for example by telling them that another job would solve your two-body problem and you hope they can wait on a final decision until you hear about that job, but there's no guarantee that they will agree.</p>\n\n<p>The basic ethical principle here is honesty: you shouldn't give someone a decision they understand to be final without actually meaning it. By default, job acceptances are considered binding decisions in the parts of academia I'm familiar with (certainly in mathematics in the U.S.), so you can't just assume that of course they knew you might change your mind. If you have any reservations or conditions, you should make them explicit before accepting the position. This can't hurt you if nobody really considered the decision to be final in the first place, and it will avoid unethical behavior if they did.</p>\n\n<p>Even though this shouldn't happen, people do occasionally get themselves into this situation. If you unilaterally rescind your initial acceptance and take the other position instead, you face almost no legal risk, since nobody's going to try suing over this. However, you can hurt your reputation, which is a serious danger.</p>\n\n<p>Instead, the way you should handle it is by careful discussions. Typically, University 2 will let you defer their offer for at least a year, since otherwise they look like jerks for trying to steal you away from University 1 after you already accepted an offer. (Another possibility is that University 2 had no idea you had already accepted and will rescind their offer upon learning this.) Then you approach University 1 and apologize profusely for inadvertently creating a terribly awkward situation. You explain that you are willing to come to University 1 and fulfill your obligations, but you have an offer from University 2 and you would very likely leave after a year to go there, so you wonder whether there is any chance they would release you from your acceptance. If they agree, then you are ethically free to accept University 2's offer immediately. (University 1 still won't be happy with you, so you shouldn't do this unless it really matters to you, but asking them for permission is much better than just announcing you aren't coming.) If University 1 insists that they need you next year, then you defer University 2's offer and show up at University 1.</p>\n\n<p>But you really shouldn't let yourself get further faculty offers after you've already accepted a job. You might be able to get away with it once by explaining that you accidentally forgot to withdraw your other applications, but you really don't want to develop a reputation over time as someone who deliberately manipulates the system in unethical ways.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38098,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There's a missing aspect in both of the other answers here: how long did the first university give you to make your decision? </p>\n\n<p>First, you should immediately acknowledge the receipt of their offer, and then if U1 gave you a week (or a day, it happens!), the you should tell them immediately that you like their offer, but that you have other applications pending and that you need more time to decide. This starts a negotiation and recognizes to them your continued interest in the position. Then you should get in touch with all of the other universities which you would still contemplate accepting an offer from and let them know (without, necessarily, naming U1) that you have received an offer with a short deadline to accept. This gives the other universities where you have applied an opportunity to communicate their ongoing interest in you (or not) and help you make your decision about whether to accept or reject U1's offer before hearing from the others.</p>\n\n<p>You should keep this communication up as things progress. There are so many things going on behind the scenes that you don't know about. The more open your communications are, the more likely you are to find the best position for yourself and allow the places you don't go to find their next best option.</p>\n\n<p>When a university makes you an offer, that means they have decided that you are the best candidate that applied that they think they can actually get. They have made a strategic decision to offer you a job over other applicants. They have given you some sort of time limit to decide, because they have other options still waiting, and they don't want to lose their chance at them if you are going to decline. This is true of the places which you haven't heard from yet as well. Letting them know you have an offer will push them to figure out what they want to do.</p>\n\n<p>As others have said, once you have accepted an offer, you really should bow out of the other positions you have applied for, but you don't have to let it get to that point if you communicate with everyone well.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 64851,
"author": "Lee",
"author_id": 49184,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49184",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I must disagree with \"anonymous Mathematician\". That advice might leave you without any offers. His/her advice does not account for the fact that campus interviews, and therefore offers, often occur weeks and even months apart. If the first offer is close enough (2-3 weeks) from an anticipated second offer, you should try to ask for an extension. Inevitably, a school will eventually need an an answer and it is perfectly acceptable for you to accept the offer from School #1 while waiting for a campus interview from School #2. You may have to call School #1 back and let them know the bad news, but don't let people on here scare you into thinking you HAVE to stay with School #1. In my experience, School #1 is perfectly understanding. They would rather let you go than have a bitter faculty member who is disheartened that they didn't have the foresight to reject School #1's offer. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 80248,
"author": "Marlon",
"author_id": 65194,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65194",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For my understanding it is totally okay to turn down an offer even after verbal acceptance, as long as you didn't sign the contract. So I assume we are talking about an offer which you accepted in writing (signed). Ethically speaking, the point when you sign the contract should be the point when you inform other universities that you withdraw from their searches. \nIf you already have signed the contract with University 1, but you really want to accept offer from University 2 for X,Y,Z reasons, then there is nothing wrong in doing so. But you should be aware that you are most likely will burn bridges with University 1, since you crossed an ethical line which most of the Universities at least want to see being honored by their future employees. University 1 also told other candidates that the position is taken, but in reality, that doesn't make a big difference, if not a lot of time passed between signing the contract and you declining the offer.\nI would be as honest as possible, apologize, tell them about your reasons. If you have good personal reasons, most of the people would be understanding. Professional reasons might raise some temporary or permanent anger on their side. However, eventually they will let you do this, because they don't want a faculty working in their department who only is there because he legally has to be there.\nYou can do decline in writing or via phone. I would use the way they were communicating with you most of the time. \nAnd remember, by the end of the day, it's your gut feeling which decides. Don't let the other people scare you. Some folks are better listening to their gut, others aren't that good at it. It is good that you are competitive enough to get more than one job offer, and also Universities trying to get good people on the hook. \nAnd for the future you might consider a better negotiation ethics. For example it would be totally okay to inform University 2 that you have a written offer in hand from University 1 and you would like to know what your chances are. As long as you don't sign, it's not a massively big deal for any of the participating parties. You might get some good vibrations from University 2 and then it would be up to you whether or not you want to gamble or be on the safe site. But that's life, sometimes you just have to make decisions which don't always cover all you necessities. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38040",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24823/"
] |
38,053 |
<p>In some journals, "notes" are original research papers that are not significant enough to be a "regular contribution". If I've published a note, can I list it in my CV as if it is a regular publication (i.e., not mentioning that it is a note)? Could this be considered as dishonest?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38061,
"author": "Koldito",
"author_id": 12314,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12314",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I wouldn't consider it dishonest, if only because I personally don't list them separately. The fact that they are notes (\"squibs\" we call them in my field) can generally be inferred directly from the low page count.</p>\n\n<p>But then, the number of such very short publications is a very small fraction of all my publications. If it was a significant fraction, maybe I would consider a separate section.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38067,
"author": "Giacomo Alessandroni",
"author_id": 28699,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28699",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In my opinion, the best practice is insert in your curriculum a section \"Note\".</p>\n\n<p>I do not work in recruitment sector, but I like honesty.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38053",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28707/"
] |
38,054 |
<p>I wanted to know whether it is allowed and also plausible to submit two papers at the same conference? Does the acceptance or rejection of one affect the acceptance or rejection of the other paper?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38055,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I wanted to know whether it is allowed and also plausible to submit two papers at the same conference?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, it's generally allowed. (Unless the submission instructions explicitly forbid this.) </p>\n\n<p>It's also plausible - it's even common. If your work is closely related to the scope of a particular conference, it's not uncommon for you to have multiple pieces of work to submit. (This is especially true if there are not many conferences in your subfield; you might choose to \"save up\" publications for a particular venue, rather than submit them somewhere else where they will be on the edge of the conference scope.)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Does the acceptance or rejection of one affect the acceptance or rejection of the other paper?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, papers are generally reviewed independently and each submission of evaluated on its own merit.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38056,
"author": "user3209815",
"author_id": 14133,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There is nothing wrong or unusual in submitting two papers on a single conference. For specific detail you should refer to the conference author guide. In my experience, there exists an upper bound of papers (about 3-4), but I have never encountered a conference where only a single paper was permitted.</p>\n\n<p>The acceptance or rejection is individual, every paper is peer-reviewed on its own account.</p>\n\n<p>You should keep in mind that the conference will charge every paper separately. You should also watch the presentation schedule for any conflicts (though, they are very unlikely)</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38058,
"author": "Reuben John Pengelly",
"author_id": 13766,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13766",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Definitely check the conference website. For instance, one in my field (not CS admittedly) rejects automatically anything with the same first author.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.eshg.org/abstracts2015.0.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://www.eshg.org/abstracts2015.0.html</a></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 107280,
"author": "Mahi Rahman",
"author_id": 45663,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45663",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>My two little cents: \nIt is of course generally allowed. I personally, did that a couple of times (2 or 3 papers). I have different experiences. There were conferences where both of the papers were accepted. </p>\n\n<p>However, at one conference both of my papers were sent to one reviewer (though there were other reviewers). And that particular reviewer though that the underlying formulation of both of papers were same (!), which sounded as a serious accusation and the editor of the conference rejected one of the papers. I responded to the reviewers that the problems presented in two papers were completely different, though both of them definitely had some similar (15-20%) formulations. <em>I am a PhD student working in a single funded research project; so there will always be some similarities in formulation among my publications.</em> </p>\n\n<p>There is another point to consider (which is my personal speculation) - when the conference editor/publication chair sees a number of paper from the same author, he/she might think, just might, you are using the conference as a dumping ground or just trying to save money (as usually papers after the first one gets some discounts) and reject the paper when the reviewers' give neutral comments. I may be completely wrong though. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38054",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28811/"
] |
38,057 |
<p>I have just received my master's degree. And I am wondering, is it academically conventional to give a copy of my thesis to those professors that directly or indirectly supported me?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38059,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It is nice to do so (especially if you mention their support in the acknowledgement - which may even be the only things they'll read), but it is far from required.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38064,
"author": "410 gone",
"author_id": 96,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It can be a nice thing to do: but do ask them first whether they'd prefer to receive an electronic copy, or a bound hard copy, or both.</p>\n\n<p>Not everyone will appreciate a physical copy (seeing it as wasteful or just more clutter): some will prefer a PDF of it; some might prefer both formats.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38057",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18107/"
] |
38,065 |
<p>In one of the courses I'm teaching this semester, each student has to give a 20-minute in-class presentation of a paper relevant to the topic of each class. One of the students has approached me asking to be excused for this requirement, on the grounds that she is terrified of having to speak in front of others. She is willing to do an alternative assignment that doesn't involve a presentation; more significantly, I think, is the fact when I pressed her a bit about this, she seemed willing to straight up forgo this assignment and get a zero grade for this particular part of the course. Conversations I've had with other faculty who have had her in previous courses confirm that she is, in fact, a good enough student that she should be able to properly understand the kinds of papers we are reading in this course. So, this seems to be a genuine anxiety problem.</p>
<p>Given that I had my own mental issues way back when I was an undergrad, I know that a just-suck-it-up type of attitude on my part is likely to cause more problems than it solves. I'm willing to accommodate her request for an alternative assignment. On the other hand, there are two reasons why I'm in principle against this decision. First, it is unfair to the rest of the students (and also, it might get me a reputation as a lecturer that students can sway). Second, giving her an extra assignment effectively amounts to kicking the can down the road: the more she delays dealing with her problem, the harder it will become to solve, and chances are that the kind of environments she will encounter after graduation will not be as speaker-friendly as my class is. </p>
<p>How would you proceed here? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38066,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>First of all, any human being that I know, including myself, have public speak anxiety issue to some extend; at any level of their professional life. However please speak to the university students service in this matter; to make sure they offer the student to get the help he/she is needed, by referring him/her to a professional; and tackle any background mental issue he/she is having for public speaking.</p>\n\n<p>In general to tackle this public speaking anxiety issue for all the students, I would recommend the following; to equalize the preparation stage, from your end, as much as possible: </p>\n\n<p><strong>Before Presentation</strong> </p>\n\n<p><em>Make a Template</em>: Because they are undergraduate student, I would put a presentation template on the course websites with some guidelines. This will save you loads of time, both for you (how to judge and mark each student) and students (make them to focus on the content and not the cosmetics). So for a 20 minute talk about a paper, I would put up the following guideline: </p>\n\n<pre><code> Title: Name of the paper/author/speaker; with the university logo. \n Outline: The overview of the paper. \n Problem statement: What is the problem. \n Aim: Aim of the approach. \n Contribution: Contains the paper's contribution. \n Conclusion: What is the conclusion here, for the paper and the problem it tried to solve.\n Future work (Optional): What will be their future work; and if you do agree with the authors of the paper. \n Questions: Answer any question in the audience. \n</code></pre>\n\n<p><em>Time Allocation</em>: One fun thing I do before the students presentation, is to ask each student to write their name in a piece of paper and fold it. Then I draw the names, and start allocating the time to them. So they know there is no intention behind my decision on who goes first or last.</p>\n\n<p><em>Organizing the slides</em>: Tell students to send you their presentations 48 hours before the actual presentation. This way you can put all their slides on one laptop, so they don't need to waste time switching laptops during their presentations and destroying the flow; and creates unnecessary stress for students, because their USB can not be read by their machines.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Presentation Day</strong> </p>\n\n<p><em>Little More Formal Than Usual</em>: Before the presentation starts, tell the students to respect others and their effort to present a paper. This way, other students know better not to hackle or crack jokes while their fellow classmates try to explain something (I learned this the hard way). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38072,
"author": "Aru Ray",
"author_id": 948,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/948",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It sounds from your question that the students give a single in-class presentation in the entire semester. </p>\n\n<p>I like the idea of in-class presentations a lot, mostly because presenting is a very important skill going forward, particularly in academia and (I imagine) also in industry. Unfortunately in many fields (such as mine - mathematics) students don't really do much presenting in the course of their majors necessarily. This is of course an excellent reason to require in-class presentations! But since students don't get practice or training in this, your single in-class presentation might be the first one they ever give and that's understandably scary for many people. </p>\n\n<p>My solution to this in a class this semester was to include 2-3 short (5-10 min) in-class presentations through the semester leading to a final 20-min presentation at the end of the semester. The short presentations are meant to be low stakes and formative - the students will get lots of feedback from me and their peers (anonymously) and the topics will be easier (relatively accessible material from their textbook). The short presentations are also progressively stricter, e.g. In the first presentation I just want them to see what it's like at the blackboard, in the second I'm going to harp on timing more, in the third focus more on generating interest in the audience, and so on. They're low stakes in the sense that while they are worth a total of 10% of their final grade, they get those 10% as long as they present and give feedback (this allows me to be more nitpicky in my grading of their homeworks too...)</p>\n\n<p>The goal is that when it's time for the final presentations, which are worth a not-insignificant amount of their final grade, they'll have had a lot of practice and will be able to do themselves justice. </p>\n\n<p>(I should admit this is my first semester trying this and I've never seen this strategy used before, but I think it makes sense and I have high hopes, but also crossed fingers).</p>\n\n<p>In any case it's easier to convince someone to give a 5 min presentation than a 30 min one, and I believe that for a lot of people the anxiety in presenting comes from lack of experience. Many of us are also aware that presenting is an important skill and might appreciate getting feedback and the chance to improve. It is possibly too late for you to do this this semester, but perhaps something to consider in the future. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38074,
"author": "user28822",
"author_id": 28822,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28822",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Could you get her to do the assignment, where she still has to present her work, but to a much smaller group; perhaps even to just yourself and another lecturer? That way she is still tackling the problem, but in a manner that will hopefully not seem so daunting to her.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38078,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Fear of speaking in public is common. It is one of the major symptoms of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anxiety_disorder\">social phobia</a>. I'll work on the assumption that your student has diagnosed or undiagnosed SP (I used to work on SP data.)</p>\n\n<p>SP is very amenable to classical cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). You are a teacher, not a therapist. I would counsel <em>against</em> \"rolling your own\" therapy program. Instead, refer the student to on-campus counseling and strongly encourage her to seek professional help. As others write, the need to present will not go away; neither at college nor at the workplace. And college is probably the best place to start therapy. To repeat: this is a good point in time to start working on this; encourage your student to do so with a therapist.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>So, that's the long-term answer I'd give. However, even if CBT frequently shows effects rather quickly in SP, your student will likely not have progressed far enough in her therapy to actually present her paper by the time she should. So you will likely need to make some kind of accommodation. I'd recommend that you contact your university's student service. There likely are some sort of guidelines on how to deal with such an issue - you probably are not the first professor to be confronted with this.</p>\n\n<p>If you are afraid of getting a reputation as a professor who can be swayed, there are different ways around this:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>You could require an official diagnosis of SP, or whatever doctor's communication your local privacy laws permit. In this, you could let yourself be guided by what kind of paperwork is required for a student to skip and retake an exam for medical reasons. (Student services could again be helpful here.)</li>\n<li>You could make sure that the \"alternative assignment\" is not a bonus, but does add significant work to the student's workload. I personally would be careful here, since you don't want to penalize her for her disability.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>That said, if the student does take your recommendation and starts therapy, it is quite possible that her therapist would assign making at least some kind of presentation as a piece of \"homework\" for her. Apart from possible confidentiality issues (your student may opt for waiving these, so you could talk directly to her therapist), this could allow you to help her much more than just doing a short-term fix. It may be worthwhile pointing this out to her. After all, you are willing to go to an effort to help her - her next professor or her employer may be less accommodating.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38122,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<h2>If they are willing to forgo any marks from the assignment, give them zero and move on.</h2>\n\n<p>You are a lecturer, not a babysitter. If the student hasn't taken it upon themselves to speak to anyone to get a diagnosis, and is unwilling to attempt the project, then they deserve nothing more and nothing less. Note, I'm not suggesting that you don't offer an alternate assignment, just do not do so lightly and without proof. It seems like the student has done this previously to other lecturers, yet has no evidence of a condition that would prevent them from speaking publicly.</p>\n\n<p>Public speaking is unavoidable in almost all avenues of life, academic, professional or personal.</p>\n\n<p>If you give them an alternate assignment, other student can, quite rightly, complain about unfairness.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38127,
"author": "abathur",
"author_id": 5668,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5668",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I've dealt with substantive (not crippling) social anxiety as a student from middle school through the public presentation of my masters' thesis in front of a couple hundred people, as an artist, and as a student teacher. This is less of an answer than testimony. I will meander a bit, covering my experiences, what worked for me, how I applied to my own course design, and some ideas for dealing with your situation.</p>\n<h3>My Experiences</h3>\n<p>I had my first panic attack in middle school when I was called up to the front of the room to do push-ups after smarting off. I was a mess (bright red, heart racing, couldn't breathe normally, couldn't stop crying, sweating, shaking.) I've luckily never had it so bad again, but even up through undergrad I have big holes in my memory of presentations, speeches, or anything that left me in the spotlight. We are stuck in a paradox. We desperately need more experience giving presentations we're probably never going to feel like giving. The biggest point I can make is that, in my experience, the situation could go roughly 3 ways:</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>Despite my discomfort, I perform to the best of my ability, avoid completely losing my place or getting so nervous I can't speak/read/etc. I have no strong sense of how well I've done, because every little mistake, tremor and quiver in my voice are magnified in my body. Observers may or may not notice; I have no clue. Ironically, I desperately need people to engage (read: not confront!) me about the presentation's topic and what I've said afterwards. I don't need things like, "you did well!" because I can't trust you not to protect me; I need engagement I can use as a proxy to assess how well I communicated. As I absorb the event, I learn that future presentations of this complexity or easier are something I can <em>survive</em>.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>In my perception, I am overcome by the anxiety. I may have had to stop to compose myself, re-state something multiple times because my voice is quivering, transfer my speaking materials to an object more stable than my own hand. But, in reality I still managed to cover most of what I was there to say. I am alive, but the disaster I perceive to have happened is going to obliterate my ability to self-evaluate. When I calm down, meaningful engagement about the presentation, if it was indeed understandable, can help give me some less-biased data to stack against the first-hand experience. This doesn't really increase my long-run confidence in my ability to speak effectively, but it can help provide some small assurance that the world doesn't really care if I give a mediocre presentation.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>I hit the point where I am too overcome by anxiety for any emotional/mental/physical coping mechanisms or crutches to get me back on track before I spiral out into panic. I'm going to need to leave; my body is too far outside of my own control for me to regain my composure over any reasonable timeframe with other people around.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<hr />\n<h3>What helped and how I applied it as an instructor</h3>\n<p>I suspect preparation varies per person, but what has helped me the most is resisting the temptation to prepare and memorize a speech. While this is how I was taught to present, attempting to relay anything verbatim (aside from quotes or anything else I will literally be reading) is perilous, because no amount of prep will help me find the words once the anxiety starts taking over. All of my time will have been spent preparing to say something <em>a single fragile way</em>, which is the wrong task. I will never feel confident in this task, because I know how easily it can get derailed.</p>\n<p>Instead, my goal is to know what I need to say so thoroughly that I don't need to know exactly how I'll say it. I talk all the time with one or a few people about things I find interesting. Sometimes at great length. I'm trying to make presenting or giving a talk as similar as I can to this other thing I can do just fine.</p>\n<p>I usually write a short paper which covers everything I want to say, and then decompose it and other source materials into a single stream of documentation to lead me through my points. Sometimes this means taking a source text I'll be talking about and filling it with Post-it notes and notecards; sometimes this is just a single printed document with block-quotes, marginalia, and directions to myself. From here, I spend a few hours trying to ad-lib the discussion from my notes without reading from the original paper. It doesn't always come together, but my goal is usually being able to ad-lib the discussion at least three times without getting stuck or missing anything. In this phase I may end up phrasing the same points dozens of ways.</p>\n<p>When I got the chance to teach (freshmen!) I tried to apply what has helped me to my policy on presentations. I built three short/low-risk presentations into the course. The grading was quite generous. I permitted powerpoint, but discouraged it. I encouraged my students to come prepared to talk at slowly-increasing length about three different phases of their semester project without preparing a speech. The presentation counted as part of the grade for the assignment each was paired with, and the total number of points it contributed meant that the only way it penalized your assignment grade was if you didn't try; from there, presentations earned bonus on the assignment. In class, I let them know I sympathized strongly with not wanting to present, explained how the grading rubric was structured to give them a reason to present without the stakes being high, and assured them I was far more interested in rewarding them for talking to us about what they were working on than in penalizing them for how it went.</p>\n<hr />\n<h3>Addressing your problem</h3>\n<p>Others have well-covered encouraging the student to get help; I'll go in other directions. I try to shoot for policies that are flexible and anyone can take advantage of without questions. I would avoid letting the student off without doing anything unpalatable, but try to give them some agency in the tradeoff.</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Offer to hear and give feedback on presentations for all students during office hours, or at some other time before each presentation. You might even make them to talk to you about what all they plan to cover before they give it a go. Consider requiring all students who want any alternative accommodation you make available to take you up on this.</li>\n<li>Offer full credit for presenting to the class, X% (85?) credit for presenting to you and a smaller group of students, and Y% (70?) for presenting to you one-on-one. The group option can either be a pre-registered group of the like-minded, or can be folded into a group activity day that requires everyone to practice their presentations, while some students opt to let you grade them then.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38137,
"author": "Noah Snyder",
"author_id": 25,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As JeffE's comment alludes, In situations where a student has a disability that may interfere with their ability to do an assignment, you should tell the student to go to the disabilities office. The experts there can come up with a plan. That will also get the student in contact with people who can suggest help, and will help out down the road if this comes up for the student again.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38142,
"author": "vaso voo koh teach",
"author_id": 28860,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28860",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>For what it's worth, gradually approaching such \"obstacles\" can be a great way. You can split students into pairs, small groups, etc., until students are presenting to greater and greater numbers of their peers.</p>\n\n<p>Really, all presentations are one-on-one, even if there are 300 people in the audience, it's still one-on-one (just 300 times).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38144,
"author": "Ben Bitdiddle",
"author_id": 24384,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24384",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Most universities in the US have an office for students with medical issues (/disabilities), and they can go there to get academic accommodations. For instance, some students get extra time on tests, or are allowed to use a computer to write essay exams.</p>\n\n<p>Generally the policy is the student doesn't tell the professor what disability they have. Instead they go to the disabilities office, and get a note telling the professor which accommodations they need.</p>\n\n<p>If you teach at such a university, you should tell your student to go through the official channels, and provide the accommodations required by the school.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38148,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You question says the class <strong>requires</strong> a presentation. In my mind a class on public speaking might require a presentation as there is likely no way for students to meet a reasonable set of learning objectives without the presentation. From you description it sounds like the requirement is because of how you structured the class or decided on the grading. Most universities require reasonable accommodations to be made for students with known issues. In the first case, there may not be a reasonable accommodation. In the second case there are likely a number of reasonable accommodations.</p>\n\n<p>Making reasonable accommodations does not mean students will think you are a push over. In fact, when an alternative assignment is used as an accommodation it can be, and often is, much more difficult than the standard assignment. This is not because the student is being penalised, but rather because the primary assignment is the most efficient way to meet the learning objective and therefore the alternative assignment takes more work.</p>\n\n<p>When I receive a referral from my university's academic services asking me to make reasonable accommodations regarding presentations, I provide the student with an alternative assignment. For that assignment they must create the presentations slides, write a script of what they would say, create 5 potential questions and short answers, and write an extended structured abstract regarding the presentation. Then after I look at the presentation and script, they must write short answers on up to 5 additional questions that I give them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38192,
"author": "Scott Seidman",
"author_id": 20457,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20457",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The fear of public speaking to this extent is a medical disorder. You should treat it just like any other medical disorder that requires accommodations.</p>\n\n<p>We have an office that clears and manages all such requests. If it were my student, I'd ask the student to work through that office to document the situation, and then work with the student and that office to come up with a suitable accommodation. My preference might be to ask the student if a one-on-one presentation would be acceptable and not elicit a fear response, but I'd certainly take input from the pros.</p>\n\n<p>It isn't your place to encourage or discourage the student from seeking help. I would hope that through the documentation process that any counselor called upon to evaluate the situation would make it known what the options are for help.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38065",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12314/"
] |
38,068 |
<p>I have to do a review of a "symposium" that will take place in a major conference in the business / management field. The document I recieved for review consists of:</p>
<ul>
<li>Abstract + Overview of the symposium</li>
<li>Proposed format of the symposium</li>
<li>Relevance to divisions</li>
<li>5 Article summaries, each about 4-5 pages long</li>
</ul>
<p>I couldn't find any specific information how to do a peer review of a symposium and I only reviewed regular articles before. </p>
<p>My questions is: how should I review this symposium document? Do I need a separate review for each article summary? Do I need to comment on the information prior to the article summaries, i.e. overview of symposium etc.?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 42193,
"author": "docendo discimus",
"author_id": 28818,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28818",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I found the following guiding questions for reviewing symposia:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Does the proposal reflect the overall level of quality an audience\nwould expect when attending a symposium? </li>\n<li>Would the proposed session be of interest to a sufficient number of Division members and other Academy members?</li>\n<li>Does the proposal offer sufficient innovation and contribution to warrant program space?</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 84684,
"author": "OMGeeit'sOMT",
"author_id": 69007,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/69007",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This may be a bit late, but I'm a early-stage scholar in a management field that reviews similar proposals for our major conference. Here is how I approach reviewing symposiums (in no particular order):</p>\n\n<p>1- I review them holistically (i.e. as one document), because that is how the final decision is made (accept or reject the entire proposed symposium). To answer your question, you don't need a separate review for each paper and for the introduction. Just write one review of the proposed symposium. </p>\n\n<p>2- I structure my reviews similarly to how I review papers (summarize main points, strengths, areas for improvement, overall recommendation). I also treat them the same in terms of norms (conversational, developmental, includes what the proposed symposium does well, etc.) </p>\n\n<p>3- I also keep in mind that conference papers are qualitatively different than published papers --- and are supposed to in our field! Conferences are where we get feedback on our ideas, get new ideas from conversations and presentations, and, above all, for everyone to learn :-) In short, I'm much more generous and err toward inclusion and look for the golden nugget of a great idea that needs to learn how to shine to guide me in terms of acceptance.</p>\n\n<p>4- My advisor gave me these guiding questions as well to use in my review and these helped me out a great deal:</p>\n\n<p>Does the symposium look interesting? Are the arguments clear? Do the presentations fit together well? Do you think there would be an audience for them? Do the presenters look like they have a good idea of what they are going to say rather than just fluff? Are the proposed presenters well-published people with something to say? </p>\n\n<p>Hope this helps!</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38068",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28818/"
] |
38,073 |
<p>For certain undergrad classes, I assign a take-home exam, rather than the more familiar in-class exam. When I distribute the exam, I remind the students that this is an individual exam, and that they may not work in groups, and then I add "Believe me, I <em>can</em> tell when you cheat". This, however, is a bluff. Unless it is superobvious, I can't tell if students work together; I only tell them I can to scare them into honoring the rules. </p>
<p>Are there any ways, other than lying to the students, to prevent (or at least minimize) this type of cheating in take-home exams?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38076,
"author": "Davidmh",
"author_id": 12587,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12587",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>One way to do it: if the assignment has many small questions, you can make it more difficult taking a random draw from a bigger pool for each student, so they are all slightly different. So, any pair of students would have just a portion of them in common. This can appear unfair, but it should even out if you do it many times.</p>\n\n<p>But, if this were a fight, you would be on the losing side; for any strategy you can come up with, someone else would find the way to hack it. You should instead focus on making people <em>not want</em> to cheat.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Make the problems interesting challenges, not mechanical tasks. If it involves some creative thinking it is less likely that two students arrive independently to the same solution (and even less to arrive to the same solutions in each exercise).</li>\n<li>But make them approachable. If they look impossible, it is more tempting to cheat. In a course I took recently, we had to solve an easier version of a problem, and apply it to a more difficult one. We only had to hand in the difficult version, but handing in only the easy part gave also points.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>For what I have seen from a student perspective, the more advanced the course, the less likely cheating is, and the more frowned upon by the other students is.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38080,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is no fool-proof system so the task becomes how to make something that reduces the number of cheating opportunities. In my experience, I see take home's as a tool for advanced courses with smaller number of students and the rest of my response needs to be viewed from this perspective.</p>\n\n<p>A first consideration regards the type of questions asked. Simple questions with \"obvious\" standard answers are not generally suitable because the answers can easily be copied. Hence essay type answers where no obvious unique answer is possible is better. This hints at answers where the students understanding and knowledge has to be synthesised is the aim. In my field, I have used several images of landscapes asking students to chose one and identify and describe processes as one such type of question. It is quite difficult to cheat n this type since I would not expect two students to identify the same subset of possible observations to discuss. How this type of question can be transferred to other disciplines is a matter of imagination. another favourite is the following</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Asking relevant questions is a key aspect of academia. Formulate a key scientific question within \"<em>the topic</em>\" and provide an good answer to the question.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>With simpler type of questions, I believe providing a narrow time frame for replying can be part of a solution. Here there are two main ingredients, one is to provide questions in a random order to the different students so that question <em>n</em> is likely different for each student and then to provide a very narrow time limit for students to respond. Questions can, for example be made available through a server (of some sort) at a given time and then requesting answers to be submitted before a given deadline, either enforced strictly or by a, possibly incremental, reduction of credit by degree of lateness. An alternative is to release questions incrementally to each student and enforce a strict deadline before another question will be issued. I do not have suggestions for how to implement such an exam but it can be accomplished with simple learning platforms but may involve some work by the teacher to facilitate. I would not think it is useful for very large groups.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38107,
"author": "Spehro Pefhany",
"author_id": 23836,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23836",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Some of the MOOC (massively open online courses) such as MITx 6.002x appear to give each participant slightly different parameters for exercises. That prevents students from directly copying results, though they can, of course, collaborate on the solution methods (and that is encouraged via online forums). It would probably be too much effort to do this manually, but perhaps you could have a few versions and distribute the questions randomly (or not-so-randomly if you have specific suspicions). </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38128,
"author": "einpoklum",
"author_id": 7319,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The solution I've observed at my Alma Mater: Take-home exams are given only with very few questions, which are non-trivial and open-ended. Now, if several students work together on this exam, but every one of them manages to come up with an answer which doesn't read like a copy of the other students' answers - then, well, that means they have some sort of command of the material, even if they didn't come up with the idea themselves.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this is mostly relevant for more advanced courses. In more basic courses, there are never any home exams.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38164,
"author": "Ian",
"author_id": 9902,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9902",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Spend 10 minutes interviewing each student on part of their answer. You don’t tell the students in advance what part of the answer you will ask them about, and you ask students different interview questions depending on their answer.</p>\n\n<p>If the student can show they understand and can expand the answer, then do you care if they cheated? </p>\n\n<p>The interview is also lickly to help the student learn and provide you with good information on areas that lots of students are finding hard.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38180,
"author": "Michael",
"author_id": 28884,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28884",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I recently received a take-home exam with an interesting surprise: 50% of the credit was for a problem that required us to augment our solution to a previous homework assignment. There was no way students could work together on this problem because we had all previously turned in different solutions to that homework assignment, and our instructor graded the exam in the context of our previous homework submission. This may or may not work depending on the format of your assignments (the problems would obviously need to be open-ended).</p>\n\n<p>That said, most instructors at my school only give take-home exams when they do expect students to work together.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38190,
"author": "bwDraco",
"author_id": 9807,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9807",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Here's my position on handling cheating on take-home exams.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Make it clear that answers must reflect independent effort.</strong> I would put this in the syllabus:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You may consult your textbook, notes, and standard Internet resources when taking take-home exams, but <strong>your work must be original and you may not solicit or obtain assistance from or provide assistance to other people for any specific content on the exam.</strong> Activities considered cheating include (but are not limited to) copying or closely paraphrasing content from websites, discussing exam questions with other students, and asking for help with specific questions on Internet forums. <strong>All exams are checked for originality and copied content and anyone found cheating will be assigned a failing score for the exam.</strong></p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p><strong>Make sure questions assess actual understanding of the content.</strong> Simple multiple-choice questions are easy to cheat on in a take-home exam. Free-response conceptual questions provide a more effective assessment of student understanding. They can be made more resistant to cheating by using questions that cannot be easily answered in their entirety through simple Internet research. In addition, it is easier to determine if a free-response answer is original or copied compared to multiple-choice responses (more on that in the next point).</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Check exam results closely for cheating.</strong> In addition to checking for highly similar or copied answers among exams, I would check responses online to determine if they are copied from some online resource. You can use Google to do this—search for select phrases in answers in double quotes to find exact matches for the phrases. This can go a long way towards detecting cheating in take-home exams.</p></li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38225,
"author": "Jon Story",
"author_id": 23277,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23277",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Don't</strong>, maybe? They can't cheat if collaboration isn't against the rules.</p>\n\n<p>Do you care what the students know, or do you care how they learn it?</p>\n\n<p>Why not consider setting it as a coursework assignment, and taking away the restriction entirely? You open the door to them being able to collaborate, work together, come up with creative solutions. Tell them to declare who they worked with in a short section at the top.</p>\n\n<p>Education has this strange focus on separating people: when was the last time you did an assignment, research project or similar truly alone? In the professional world I've never once done a truly solo project: finding solutions as part of a team is a vital skill, and this sounds like a perfect opportunity to encourage it.</p>\n\n<p>Grading is important, of course, and there is a time for differentiating between students... that time is in the formal, controlled examinations. Everything else is a learning exercise, and if they learn it by working with a friend, fantastic.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38246,
"author": "Adam Davis",
"author_id": 11901,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11901",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Lock an RFID ankle bracelet to each student, and hand them a tablet and headphones. The tablet contains the test, and the headphones must be worn whenever they are answering test questions. The tablet's camera can verify the face and proper headphone placement. Further, it will determine if there are any other students from this class within visual range via the RFID ankle bracelets. The bracelets detect tampering or covering (such as in tinfoil). The headphones have microphones and detect if there are any nearby voices loud enough to penetrate the headphones, thus defeating using telephone or other means of vocal communication. The face recognition on the tablet includes eye tracking, if the student looks at anything other than the tablet during the test, the question in view is graded 0.</p>\n\n<p>Alternately, don't use take home tests where cooperation can alter the results.</p>\n\n<p>It seems that the only reason to give a take home test when cooperation would be a problem is if the time to complete the test is longer than a single class period. However, there are few times when this should be the case. Break such tests up into smaller quizzes, use a testing center, or any number of other solutions that will allow you to test without sending it home with them.</p>\n\n<p>So the correct answer is - you don't. If the test depends on non-cooperation, then you must have it supervised. If you can't supervise it, you alter it so cooperation doesn't pose a problem.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38267,
"author": "Al jabra",
"author_id": 28149,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28149",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>How do you mark the papers? \nDo you mark a paper in its entirety before moving on?\nIf so this is wrong. You should mark everyone's questions 1's first then all the question 2's etc...\nThis will help you too see any patterns and also keep consistency. \nWhat course do you teach? If it is maths/physics then it should be very obvious. I suppose it should be very obvious for essay style questions as well. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38272,
"author": "awsoci",
"author_id": 28324,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28324",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Take-home exams have always baffled me. I've never really understood their purpose when the material assessed could be achieved through a traditional or open-book exam, or as a time-sensitive (no extensions) class assignment.</p>\n\n<p>Regardless, I did complete a few during my undergraduate career, and looking up old submissions (that yes, for some crazy reason I still have on my hard drive) they tended to be essay style take-homes. This meant that the possibility for cheating was on the lesser side, since it would be easier to detect if a student copied another student due to the subjectiveness of the task.</p>\n\n<p>As others have suggested, exams that have very standard responses are perhaps not the best route to go for a take-home exam. You would be better to have a much more open-ended style that suits the subject you are teaching.</p>\n\n<p>You could have the take-home exam be perhaps a broad question that students have to answer <strong>through the development of a project</strong> using the knowledge they've gained in the course. After all, it's not the core material itself that is of the uptmost value, it's the level of critical thinking students develop when using said material to attempt to solve complex problems or issues. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38073",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12314/"
] |
38,077 |
<p>I have read that there are some good Computer Science conferences that are not indexed by Scimago or Scopus, but instead they appear in sites like ACM DL, IEEE Xplore or DBLP. I have tried to find information about those conferences, but not success at all. For that reason, I was wondering if anybody in the field knows of some good conferences in CS that do not appear in the aforementioned sites?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38082,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>That is correct: most good computer science conferences have <em>not</em> been indexed by the standard journal indexes (maybe this will change someday, but it hadn't last I'd heard). </p>\n\n<p>A good alternative for evaluating the quality of a conference or to search for decent conferences is to use Google Scholar's <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en\">\"venue metrics\" function</a>. For example, searching for <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=search_venues&vq=programming%20languages\">\"programming\"</a> finds top programming-language conferences, such as ASPLOS, PLDI, POPL, and OOPLSA. It is interesting to note that in these results, if one ignores the non-field \"Mathematical Programming\", the first journals don't show up until halfway down the list.</p>\n\n<p>Three caveats:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The search isn't currently very smart; it's very literal in its use of words. Thus, for example, searching \"programming languages\" doesn't find <a href=\"http://www.icfpconference.org/\">ICFP</a>.</li>\n<li>Only the top 20 venues for a given query are returned, and you can't look for more.</li>\n<li>Some decent but highly-specific venues still don't appear.</li>\n</ol>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38145,
"author": "al_b",
"author_id": 5963,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5963",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Euro-Par is an example of a conference which is great, but is not completely indexed by ISI</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38341,
"author": "Jacques Wainer",
"author_id": 28968,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28968",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As it has already been said by @jakebeal here are good CS conferences not indexed by Web of Science (WoS) or Scopus. But there are even more complex issues regarding how to evaluate the quality of a CS conference using these bibliographic indexers. </p>\n\n<p>For journals it is generally agreed that WoS is more restrictive than Scopus, and thus journals indexed by WoS \"should be better\" than the ones only indexed by Scopus. For conferences the things are less clear. I dont know the inclusion rules for conferences in WoS, but one of the reasons why conferences \"that appear in WoS\" are not that great is that WoS indexes the \"Lecture Notes in CS\" as one of its journals, and usually the conferences that publish their proceedings in the LNCS are not top of the line -they are usually regional or very focused conferences. But notice that there conferences are not themselves indexed in WoS, but their papers are!</p>\n\n<p>As far as I know DBLP does not make any evaluation of the quality of a conference to include it or not in its database besides some evaluation whether it is a CS conference or not (and I dont know how they decide that). DBLP also has some bias, a lot of conferences in different subareas of CS are not in their database (originally it was an index of publications in databases (DB) and logic programming (LP) thus the name).</p>\n\n<p>ACM DL and IEEE Xplore are also complex because they include the proceedings of not only conferences sponsored by the two associations, but also conferences that made publication agreements with them. In particular IEEE seems much less selective than ACM regarding these agreements and there are very likely really bad conferences indexed in IEEE Xplore.In particular, there was <a href=\"https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00641906/document\" rel=\"nofollow\">this paper</a> that identified more than 100 fake/computer generated papers in the IEEE Xplore database - these papers were published in the REALLY BAD - STAY AWAY FROM IT kind of conferences and they are/were in the IEEE Xpore. I think that ACM is probably more selective but I am not 100% sure (at least no one discovered fake papers in the ACM DL yet).</p>\n\n<p>Before I get to Scopus/Scimago let me discuss three reasons to ask the question you asked.\na) because you want to choose a conference to submit a paper to\nb) because you want to know if you can \"trust\" a paper published in one of these conferences you read\nc) for after-the-fact evaluation purposes - you want to argue that the paper you published in one of these conferences should still be counted even though the conference is not indexed.</p>\n\n<p>I will not expand on the c) line. As for the a) line - choosing were to submit -- there is no substitute for the experience of more senior researchers, unfortunately. There are subareas of CS that have large conferences with many topics, and the good ones among them will probably be indexed in Scopus (and IEEE Xplore or ACM DL). But there are subareas that hold very focused and small conferences and workshops and you need the experience of a senior(er) researcher to know which are the good and the not so good ones.</p>\n\n<p>As for line b) \"can you trust the paper for this conference\" I, myself, like Scopus/Scimago (I know that Scimago uses data from Scopus but I dont know the details). If I find an interesting paper though Scopus I tend to trust it, more than if I find it only though Scholar. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38077",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6144/"
] |
38,079 |
<p>I'm concerned about a scientific & tech. conference which has set the page limit to 3!</p>
<p>I'm wondering if that means the quality of submitted paper in this conference is considered low.</p>
<p>What do they expect from authors to put into 3 pages? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38084,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Usually this is referred to as an \"extended abstract\" which might not be peer reviewed. Based on this, you can't really tell the quality of the conference, though you can know that this is probably not a discipline where conferences are more important than journal articles. In my experience, conferences with extended abstracts can be very good (excellent talks to see and great side discussions), but the submitted materials are often not worth referring to as there will be existing or forthcoming journal articles that cover the presented material in better depth and detail. </p>\n\n<p>You have to ask yourself whether you're submitting to the conference to get a high-quality article to use for your CV or if you're submitting so that you can go and participate in a great conference. If the former, that's probably not going to be the desired outcome, if the latter, evaluate the Program Committee and see if you think a lot of high-powered people will be there.</p>\n\n<p>If you are trying to decide whether or not to cite a 3-page extended abstract from a conference, you might look to its references or other papers by its authors for a better treatment of the material by them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38085,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Do not confuse quality and quantity: the two dimensions are orthogonal.</p>\n\n<p>A 3-page limit means that the conference is really asking for extended abstracts, rather than full papers. You can't say much in a 3-page extended abstract, even in the highly dense IEEE two-column format, so it can't be treated the same as a full paper, but that's not reason for it to be bad, just terse. The conference might well attract very high quality 3-page extended abstracts. One thing that some such conferences do is have an associated journal special issue, where full papers are later invited.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38097,
"author": "A. Donda",
"author_id": 28829,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28829",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It understand it may seem hard to write anything substantial under such restrictions. However, how much can be fit into four pages depends on the subject matter. For example, one of the most respected physics journals, Physical Review Letters, restricts its papers to 3500 words, which they generally manage to fit onto <a href=\"http://journals.aps.org/prl/info/infoL.html#len\" rel=\"nofollow\">4 pages</a> (using a small font size and a very packed two-column layout). Part of the challenge of getting published in PRL is to figure out how to concisely say something relevant.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38079",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28084/"
] |
38,081 |
<p>I have a paper in linguistic which was written when I was in high school. I would like to mention it in my SOP. When I ask if I should mention it, <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/37788/is-putting-the-statement-conclusion-first-considered-to-be-cliched#comment83479_37788">xLeitix has raise this question</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What is the hypothesis that you proposed?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The hypothesis I proposed is in sociology, which I had when reading the book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Zoo_(book)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Human Zoo</a>. The problem is, it is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_science" rel="nofollow noreferrer">pop science book</a>, and the hypothesis only bases on this reference (number of total references is 7). However, since the author is reputable (he is listed as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_science#Notable_English-language_popularizers_of_science" rel="nofollow noreferrer">notable English-language popularizers of science</a> by Wiki), I think I have cited a reliable source. More importantly, if the PhD committees are interested in the ability of research, does this paper satiate them because I made it when I was in high school without any guidance? Does citing on pop science books make my paper less value in the eyes of:</p>
<ul>
<li>linguists?</li>
<li>biologists?</li>
<li>other scientists?</li>
</ul>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38254,
"author": "Nate Eldredge",
"author_id": 1010,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The main problem with citing a popular science book is that it is a <em>secondary source</em>. Almost certainly, the author isn't reporting on original research that he conducted himself; he's discussing research previously discussed and published by others (and possibly his own as well), and putting it in context for a general audience. He is one or more steps removed from the original work itself, and especially in a popular science book, there won't be complete details about how the results were obtained, which would be necessary to satisfy an expert.</p>\n\n<p>So if you want to support your own arguments using some statement claimed in Morris's book (e.g. \"baboons can use toothbrushes\"), you don't want to cite this book as your only evidence for that statement. Rather, you need to find the <em>primary sources</em>. You should look for who Morris cites, and if necessary, trace back a chain of citations until you find the original paper where this result was reported. This will be a paper written by the people who actually conducted the study that is claimed to show that baboons can use toothbrushes (call them Jones). Read Jones's paper, and make your own decision about exactly what hypothesis they tested, whether their methods were appropriate, whether their data is good evidence for their hypothesis, and in general whether their work convinces you that baboons can use toothbrushes. Then search for other papers citing Jones that may offer criticism of their work, reproduce their results, and so on. Take them into account in your decision as to whether to depend on this fact. If you decide it's reliable, then cite Jones and any other paper that offers something helpful to evaluating their work. </p>\n\n<p>(And if you decide it's not reliable, don't fall into the trap of \"But Morris believes it, and he's reputable, so I'll just cite him.\" Reputable people make mistakes too, and propagating mistakes like this is a major cause of bad science. Instead, look for other evidence to support or refute your argument.)</p>\n\n<p>You can <em>also</em> cite Morris, if you feel that he adds something to the discussion, or that the reader will find it useful to read his book. But a scholarly paper can't rely solely on secondary sources. A paper that does so will certainly be taken less seriously, by anyone.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edit:</strong> To address your comment, nobody here can really tell to what extent a PhD committee would view your paper as evidence of research ability; it will depend on how good they think it is, and only they know that. But citing popular science texts instead of primary sources is probably not a good sign, since it doesn't seem to show a familiarity with proper research practices. I wouldn't really expect a committee to be extra impressed because it was done in high school. They don't really care how advanced you were in high school, they want to know whether you are prepared for grad school <em>now</em>, and that decision will be based much more on what you have done in your undergraduate work. So unless the paper you wrote in high school was incredibly spectacular, I don't think it will affect graduate admissions one way or the other.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38456,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>There are really two entirely separate questions tangled together here:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Should a mature scientific writer cite a \"pop science\" book?</li>\n<li>Does citing a \"pop science\" book degrade the value of a work produced in high school?</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Let me start with the second, since I think that's the one you really want an answer to. I think that citing a pop science book will have little effect on an admission committee's evaluation of your high school work. You are not expected to have been doing well-supervised scientific research in high school. If your paper is actually published in a (credible) peer-reviewed venue, then that's a major mark in your favor, and clearly the peers had no objection to the citation. If your paper hasn't been published, then it's going to weigh much less in any case, and again the nature of one citation won't make a significant difference.</p>\n\n<p>Turning back now to the first question, citing a pop science book can sometimes be appropriate, even for a mature scientific writer. Something that is not often well acknowledged is that scientists are effectively just other members of the general public when it comes to evaluating material far outside of their domain. From a scientific perspective, then, it is best to think of a pop science book as a large survey paper that is written for very broad accessibility. Thus, a high-quality pop science book can be entirely appropriate to cite, if a broad survey paper is what is needed. Survey papers are <em>always</em> secondary sources, and yet they are quite scientifically valuable and highly cited (to the degree that they are often a focus of gaming in publication statistics). </p>\n\n<p>Some popular science books are very highly cited in just this way; to take a few recent examples, at the time of this writing, Google Scholar shows <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=11402035170196953669&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en\" rel=\"nofollow\">\"Guns, Germs, and Steel\" having 7000+ citations</a>, <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4236092588020399713&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en\" rel=\"nofollow\">\"The black swan\" has 4000+ citations</a>, and <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=10809617126996194703&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en\" rel=\"nofollow\">\"A Random Walk down Wall Street\" has 2000+</a>. Your example of <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6611755092702267666&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en\" rel=\"nofollow\">\"The Human Zoo\" has about 300</a>, so it has clearly been well appreciated, even if it is now quite old. </p>\n\n<p>The real distinction is this: if you want to refer to aspects of the synthesis constructed in the survey paper, you should cite the survey paper (or pop science book). If you want to refer to a specific fact or conclusion repeated in the survey paper from elsewhere, then you should find, <strong>verify,</strong> and cite the primary source that they survey paper drew from instead. Be sure to verify, because some survey paper and pop science books take dreadful liberties with their primary sources...</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38081",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14341/"
] |
38,083 |
<p>I sent two different articles to two different mathematics journal. The fist one review process is 6 months(accepted). The second one is still under review(14 months ago) and it may be rejected. A third one took 9 months and editor said<br>
"... the topic/content of your study is outside our journal's area of interest, we regret to inform you that we are unable to consider your manuscript for publication"<br>
<strong>My questions</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Is there any way to avoid time wasting in review process?</li>
<li>Are there journals with fast reviewing process?</li>
</ol>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38091,
"author": "GEdgar",
"author_id": 4484,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4484",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Are there journals with fast reviewing process?</strong></p>\n\n<p>The really quick ones are the \"questionable\" journals ... every paper is accepted, and published (for a hefty fee).</p>\n\n<p>The <em>Notices</em> of the American Mathematical Society publishes a survey once a year, which includes information on mathematics journals, including statistics on time from submission to publication (when available).</p>\n\n<p><strong>added</strong> </p>\n\n<p>\"Backlog of Mathematics Research Journals\"\n<em>Notices of the AMS</em>, Volume 61, Number 10,\nNovember 4, 2014, page 1268.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38095,
"author": "Dave Clarke",
"author_id": 643,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><strong>Is there any way to avoid wasting time in the review process?</strong></p>\n\n<p>Before submitted you can send the paper to the editor and ask whether s/he considers the paper to be in scope for the journal. This can be eased by providing a good, short overview of the paper, along with the paper itself. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38108,
"author": "Tommi",
"author_id": 13017,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13017",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>One option would be Peerage of science, <a href=\"http://peerageofscience.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://peerageofscience.com/</a>, which is a service through which you can request peer reviews (which are also reviewed) for your articles and review the articles of others. There are, however, two problems, one of them significant:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The review criteria are not a good fit for mathematics articles. This is a minor issue, really, but annoying. See below for more details.</li>\n<li>To my knowledge, the service is not popular among mathematicians. This can be slowly changed by using the service, but there is no immediate solution. The service is free for scientists.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Quality indices at Peerage of science are: question, data, methods, inference, writing. Of these, data is not relevant for pure mathematics, and both methods and inference require interpretation.</p>\n\n<p>The refereeing format is standardised and there is plenty of room for discussion, so one is in now way communicating only through the five indices.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Why it might become popular among mathematicians</strong></p>\n\n<p>The main users of Peerage are biologists (of certain subfields), but the benefits are common to all fields of science where one publishes articles: One can request a peer review and then, when submitting to a journal, tell that the article has already been peer reviewed, with a link to the review. The journal, of course, is free to do their own review, if that is what they would rather do. If the article is rejected, then one can send it to another journal and share the same review at Peerage.\nThis reduces the work load of referees and editors and speeds up the process for authors.</p>\n\n<p>The peer reviews are reviewed, so their credibility is also measured.</p>\n\n<p>The reviewers can get their work recognised. One can get credit as an excellent reviewer, for example.</p>\n\n<p>There are further benefits with respect to some journals that are linked to the service, but I don't think this is relevant to mathematicians at this point.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38244,
"author": "Kakoli Majumder",
"author_id": 9920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You can send a pre-submission inquiry to the journal editor with a summary of your research. Make sure you cover the following areas in your summary as these are some of the things editors need to know about your study to be able to judge whether they would be interested in it:\n1. the subject area of your research; \n2. its significance to your field of study and to the scientific community in general;\n3. some idea of the nature of evidence provided to support the findings; \n4. a brief explanation of what previous work on the topic has shown and what significant contribution this study makes.</p>\n\n<p>You can send pre-submission inquiries to multiple journals at a time, so you can save a lot of time this way.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38083",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28763/"
] |
38,086 |
<p>From my understanding many CS conferences are highly selective and the papers are peer-reviewed. The CS field also seems to publish traditional journal articles. I do not understand the difference between the two and in particular I am curious about the advantages of having two different publication streams. The type of things I am curious about are:</p>
<ol>
<li>What is the difference between a paper published in a top CS conference and a top specialist journal?</li>
<li>Is one more prestigious than another and if so how do they line up?</li>
<li>Why not just publish conference papers as a special issues of a journal?</li>
</ol>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38089,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I'm afraid this answer may be unsatisfying, but at its root, it just boils down to the culture of the field, as determined by early choices in its particular history. Now that it is well established, practices have developed that cement it in place, including clear distinctions between what goes in a journal and what goes in a conferences. </p>\n\n<p>Michael Ernst has a very nice write-up of <a href=\"https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/conferences-vs-journals.html\">the typical way a computer scientist thinks about conferences vs. journals</a>. In short:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Conferences are fast, higher status, higher selectivity, and higher visibility.</li>\n<li>Journals are where you put a review article or a final \"extended version\" of a paper (the typical threshold is \"at least 30% new material\"). </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Journals are also important for getting tenure at lesser institutions, which apply the same standards to biologists and computer scientists. This also further lowers the perceived status of journals, since the best departments are less motivated to publish there than the worst.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 39012,
"author": "Jacques Wainer",
"author_id": 28968,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28968",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>A good summary of positions papers and empirical research on conferences vs journals in CS is the paper by Bowyer <a href=\"https://www3.nd.edu/~kwb/Mentoring_Conferences_Journals.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">Mentoring Advice on “Conferences Versus Journals” for CSE Faculty</a> </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/jgrudin/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Grudin</a> also have a nice bullet-like summary and link to some 20 papers on the subject in <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/~jgrudin/CACMviews.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://research.microsoft.com/~jgrudin/CACMviews.pdf</a>. One of Grudin's paper is a history of how CS became so attached to conferences (I dont remember which onebut it should be among the ones mentioned in the pdf).</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38086",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/"
] |
38,103 |
<p>Should expository papers (e.g., in American Math Monthly) be listed in CV as if they are regular publications? These are usually not totally original research papers. For example, <a href="http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly#AuthorInfo" rel="noreferrer">this</a> is the description of articles to be submitted to American Math Monthly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Monthly's readers expect a high standard of exposition; they expect articles to inform, stimulate, challenge, enlighten, and even entertain. Monthly articles are meant to be read, enjoyed, and discussed, rather than just archived. Articles may be expositions of old or new results, historical or biographical essays, speculations or definitive treatments, broad developments, or explorations of a single application. <strong>Novelty and generality are far less important than clarity of exposition and broad appeal.</strong> Appropriate figures, diagrams, and photographs are encouraged.</p>
<p>Notes are short, sharply focused, and possibly informal. They are often gems that provide a new proof of an old theorem, a novel presentation of a familiar theme, or a lively discussion of a single issue.</p>
</blockquote>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38105,
"author": "Chris Leary",
"author_id": 11905,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11905",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I work at a small, four year, liberal arts school. Here, the answer would be most definitely yes. At schools higher up the food chain, I would suspect you should still list it. How much importance would be attached to it will depend on the institution. I will have to defer to the insight of others for this situation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38106,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, absolutely!</p>\n\n<p>I work in a research-oriented department and have been on the hiring committee for three years now. We care more about research articles published in prominent journals, but an AMM publication is unambiguously a plus.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38109,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I think that more than half of the articles and notes published in the Monthly contain original research. ("Totally original" does not seem like a useful standard, as many well-written seminal papers contain substantial portions which are not original research. I am currently translating Serre's 1972 paper on torsion points and am struck by the extent to which he was willing to be expository.)</p>\n<p>I work at a large research university, I have two Monthly publications (and article and a note; the former appears in the December 2014 issue) and I happily -- indeed proudly -- <a href=\"http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/papers.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">list them alongside my other publications</a>. There is definitely original research in both of these publications. (I apologize for the excessive horn-tooting, but it seems perhaps relevant to mention that Google Scholar finds a citation for each of these publications in a research paper written by people I have never met.) It is not the same species of research that I would publish in the <em>Journal of Number Theory</em> or <em>Crelle</em>, but since they occur alongside publications in these journals, I think their existence reflects positively on my research profile.</p>\n<p>If you clicked on my webpage, you may have seen that I do separately list <em>expository</em> documents. These documents do not contain new results (though in some cases they contain proofs that I at least have not found in the literature). But I think it is not a coincidence that none of these documents have been published, although three out of the four have been submitted. I don't seem to have a good handle on the genre of "truly expository journal aritcles"; in fact, I find that it is as much work or more to get these published and I do think that the value to me would be smaller. There are also surprisingly few avenues for the publication of mathematical exposition, so because I am less interested in the <em>certification</em> or <em>credit</em> that the formal publication process brings, I have for a while been content to "self-publish" these results on my own webpage and/or the arxiv.</p>\n<p>One default way is to list as research publications those which are archived and reviewed by MathSciNet. Alas I am not entirely clear on how these choices are made. It seems that in recent years, most Monthly publications get archived and many get reviewed. For the other MAA journals -- Math Magazine and the College Math Journal -- it seems to be rarer to have reviews. For instance my recent Monthly publication references a 2012 note of Kantrowitz and Schramm, but MathSciNet has no record of this publication. I just looked back at the last few years of CMJ, and I am a bit confused: I don't know why they don't list certain short articles (I think they should...) and how they choose to review the articles that they do.</p>\n<p>Upon further thought, here are two rules of thumb I like a little better:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>"Rule 1: Do not mislead". If your <em>Nature</em> publication is actually a letter to the editor correcting someone's birth and death dates [this is a totally hypothetical example; I have no idea whether this journal would ever publish such a letter] and you don't list this explanatory detail on your CV, I worry that you are trying to misrepresent yourself.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>"Rule 2: Subject to Rule 1, make the publication list an accurate reflection of your own views." Thus, notwithstanding what I wrote above, I might perhaps submit <a href=\"http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/wilson_easy.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this tiny note</a> for publication in something like the CMJ someday. Unlike most other stuff I've written, it is wholly and sincerely aimed at actual intermediate-level undergraduate math majors, and I think that it might actually help some people if it were published. But there is just no mathematical novelty here, and I think it would dilute my own record by listing it as a research publication.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38112,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes.</p>\n\n<p>And it holds for other mainly didactic papers (e.g. <a href=\"http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly\" rel=\"nofollow\">The American Mathematical Monthly</a>, <a href=\"http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp\" rel=\"nofollow\">American Journal of Physics</a>), but which are peer-reviewed and considered of high quality.</p>\n\n<p>While <strong>novelty</strong> is a crucial quality of most of research, it is not for all of publications. For example, review articles are highly valued even if authors \"only\" complied and summarized already existing results.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, people in your field know what profile of journals and will judge it accordingly.</p>\n\n<p>If you add a few such articles there is no risk of diluting \"more serious\" results. Of course, if you have mostly such papers, you can be viewed as a person mostly interested in didactics (which may be true in this case).</p>\n\n<p>(Side note: I have had an article rejected from AMM.)</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38103",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28707/"
] |
38,117 |
<p>I'm currently working towards a master's in mathematics, and I would like to continue with a PhD. I have good grades and I'm aiming at something equivalent to a first class honours, at a highly ranked university in maths.</p>
<p>The problem with applying for a PhD now (starting next fall) is that I have barely begun work on my thesis, and therefore wouldn't be able to get a reference from my advisor (at least not one that would describe my work on my thesis, the closest thing I'll have to research, and the crowning project of my master degree). I could try to solicit a couple of half-baked references now, send preliminary transcripts and detail my plan for my master thesis, but I feel my application would be much more convincing if I submit it after I get my degree. My transcript would be a complete diploma, and my references would be able to speak to the whole of my work, including the last (and most important) part.</p>
<p>Although this is what I'm inclined to do, it would inevitably result in losing a year. I would be ok with that: I could try to find a job/internship somewhere, prepare my applications with more time on my hands (including prepping for possible interviews) and maybe even work on a couple of independent research projects. However I'm afraid that time spent away from academia might be a big minus for my application, considering that if accepted, I would be starting my PhD at the age of 26, pushing 27 (and although this might not show up explicitly, it would be abundantly clear from my cv). I see that most of my class mates are applying before finishing their master, and I'm therefore also worried that my taking the extra year might be perceived as an unfair advantage to other applicants.</p>
<p>I'm also worried that submitting applications twice might also not work, since being rejected in this round might play against me next time.</p>
<p>I would be very grateful for any suggestions! Thank you :)</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38105,
"author": "Chris Leary",
"author_id": 11905,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11905",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I work at a small, four year, liberal arts school. Here, the answer would be most definitely yes. At schools higher up the food chain, I would suspect you should still list it. How much importance would be attached to it will depend on the institution. I will have to defer to the insight of others for this situation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38106,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes, absolutely!</p>\n\n<p>I work in a research-oriented department and have been on the hiring committee for three years now. We care more about research articles published in prominent journals, but an AMM publication is unambiguously a plus.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38109,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I think that more than half of the articles and notes published in the Monthly contain original research. ("Totally original" does not seem like a useful standard, as many well-written seminal papers contain substantial portions which are not original research. I am currently translating Serre's 1972 paper on torsion points and am struck by the extent to which he was willing to be expository.)</p>\n<p>I work at a large research university, I have two Monthly publications (and article and a note; the former appears in the December 2014 issue) and I happily -- indeed proudly -- <a href=\"http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/papers.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">list them alongside my other publications</a>. There is definitely original research in both of these publications. (I apologize for the excessive horn-tooting, but it seems perhaps relevant to mention that Google Scholar finds a citation for each of these publications in a research paper written by people I have never met.) It is not the same species of research that I would publish in the <em>Journal of Number Theory</em> or <em>Crelle</em>, but since they occur alongside publications in these journals, I think their existence reflects positively on my research profile.</p>\n<p>If you clicked on my webpage, you may have seen that I do separately list <em>expository</em> documents. These documents do not contain new results (though in some cases they contain proofs that I at least have not found in the literature). But I think it is not a coincidence that none of these documents have been published, although three out of the four have been submitted. I don't seem to have a good handle on the genre of "truly expository journal aritcles"; in fact, I find that it is as much work or more to get these published and I do think that the value to me would be smaller. There are also surprisingly few avenues for the publication of mathematical exposition, so because I am less interested in the <em>certification</em> or <em>credit</em> that the formal publication process brings, I have for a while been content to "self-publish" these results on my own webpage and/or the arxiv.</p>\n<p>One default way is to list as research publications those which are archived and reviewed by MathSciNet. Alas I am not entirely clear on how these choices are made. It seems that in recent years, most Monthly publications get archived and many get reviewed. For the other MAA journals -- Math Magazine and the College Math Journal -- it seems to be rarer to have reviews. For instance my recent Monthly publication references a 2012 note of Kantrowitz and Schramm, but MathSciNet has no record of this publication. I just looked back at the last few years of CMJ, and I am a bit confused: I don't know why they don't list certain short articles (I think they should...) and how they choose to review the articles that they do.</p>\n<p>Upon further thought, here are two rules of thumb I like a little better:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>"Rule 1: Do not mislead". If your <em>Nature</em> publication is actually a letter to the editor correcting someone's birth and death dates [this is a totally hypothetical example; I have no idea whether this journal would ever publish such a letter] and you don't list this explanatory detail on your CV, I worry that you are trying to misrepresent yourself.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>"Rule 2: Subject to Rule 1, make the publication list an accurate reflection of your own views." Thus, notwithstanding what I wrote above, I might perhaps submit <a href=\"http://alpha.math.uga.edu/%7Epete/wilson_easy.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this tiny note</a> for publication in something like the CMJ someday. Unlike most other stuff I've written, it is wholly and sincerely aimed at actual intermediate-level undergraduate math majors, and I think that it might actually help some people if it were published. But there is just no mathematical novelty here, and I think it would dilute my own record by listing it as a research publication.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38112,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Yes.</p>\n\n<p>And it holds for other mainly didactic papers (e.g. <a href=\"http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly\" rel=\"nofollow\">The American Mathematical Monthly</a>, <a href=\"http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp\" rel=\"nofollow\">American Journal of Physics</a>), but which are peer-reviewed and considered of high quality.</p>\n\n<p>While <strong>novelty</strong> is a crucial quality of most of research, it is not for all of publications. For example, review articles are highly valued even if authors \"only\" complied and summarized already existing results.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, people in your field know what profile of journals and will judge it accordingly.</p>\n\n<p>If you add a few such articles there is no risk of diluting \"more serious\" results. Of course, if you have mostly such papers, you can be viewed as a person mostly interested in didactics (which may be true in this case).</p>\n\n<p>(Side note: I have had an article rejected from AMM.)</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38117",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28775/"
] |
38,126 |
<p>I am a PhD student, and am being asked to do increasing amounts of non-thesis work. Some of this is general lab paperwork and small extra projects, which I'm happy to do and expect to lead to opportunities to present or publications. However, one project is run on clinical samples as patients present to the hospital, so is very unpredictable and time consuming (about a day's work per sample, split over 2 days). When originally asked to take part, I was told I would have to run samples only when my PI or the main student on the project was unavailable. I am now running almost all the samples, and frequently being phoned or emailed late at night to help with the project, as well as being told to come in to run samples at weekends. This project will be presented by a resident who recruits cases (but I actually collect and process most of the samples) and it is unclear if I will be on the paper. </p>
<p>How can I gently point out to my PI that this is interfering with my thesis work and my family life, without risking endangering her future reference?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38131,
"author": "RoboKaren",
"author_id": 14885,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Are you being paid as a GRA? Usually your contract should specify how many hours you are being paid for. This is 10 hours a week for some fields (20 for others, as seen in comments), but it can vary. You need to find out what your GRA limit is.</p>\n\n<p>Note that your letter of acceptance -- if it included a GRA package -- may also specify your contractual obligations. If not, check your graduate handbook.</p>\n\n<p>If you have concerns, you should bring it up with your advisor, your Director of Graduate Studies in your department, or your department head (in that order of ascension).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38136,
"author": "Patricia Shanahan",
"author_id": 10220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The first step, as indicated in @RoboKaren's answer, is to find out how many hours a week you are supposed to spend on GRA activities.</p>\n\n<p>If you think you are spending more time than that, try keeping a log for a couple of weeks. If that shows excessive work, and especially if it shows excessive weekend and night work, you should discuss it with your advisor. The log will put the discussion on a quantitative basis. The advisor may not consciously realize how many samples you are processing, and how much time it is taking.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/02
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38126",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28846/"
] |
38,132 |
<p>I went into an engineering graduate school interview totally unprepared today and may have totally wrecked it. </p>
<p>The interview began like any other interview. The professor introduced his area of research, then I discussed my area of interest and academic background. I asked him a few questions regarding funding, number of graduate, thesis topic.</p>
<p>Then he said we should discuss some technical questions, which was not unreasonable, although I have never been asked to discuss technical questions with any other interviewers. </p>
<p>To begin he made me cite a number of theorems from linear algebra, I had some difficulty remembering the terminology but was in the ball park. Then he made me recite some theorems using formal proof "there exists...such that..." which really caught me off guard. He gave some other questions, but I had to ask him to clarify some of the terminologies he used in these questions which I don't think he was very eager to give out. Lastly, he made to write the closed form expression of some matrix operation which is a pain because I had to perform a bunch of mental calculations.</p>
<p>To be honest, I think I took too long to answer most of those questions and had trouble distinguish between the questions that should be addressed using intuition or mathematical derivation. The interviewer did not give obvious signals after I had answered a question correctly, this made me beat around the bush several times until he said my original answer was correct. Also, these questions were out of my current focus, despite having studied them at some point.</p>
<p>Can someone give me some tips on how to tackle questions in a graduate interval setting for which you think you will have difficult answering? What does the interviewer want to know in this case? How I can think step by step, how fast I can do this or if I was intuitive or made good use of analogy?</p>
<p>This may also be applicable to thesis deference, software interviews...</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38221,
"author": "Mr_road",
"author_id": 28914,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28914",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Relax it is the most important thing; if you are stressed it will show. Also people ask tough questions not only to see if you get the answer right, but also see how you get to the answer, and to see how you respond to the answer you gave being challenged and questioned.</p>\n\n<p>Also If you don't know something or are unsure but think you could have a stab at it say so. Some people may not appreciate this but other really do. I have left a couple of interviews (I got the role) where people commented on my honesty. The person asking the question generally knows the answer, so don't BS them.</p>\n\n<p>Talk of people knowing the answer, I worked with one guy who used to want to know the answer to esoteric or difficult technical stuff, so asked the same question to at least 2 candidate, and had a set of 5/6 questions. They would design chunks of the system in the interview, and then he'd pick the best guy. He had no idea what the answer should be, but figured if two people gave the same answer it was probably in the ballpark.</p>\n\n<p>As I said at the start relax, one way to get a second to think is take a sip of water before answering. It allows you to get your thoughts in order after the shock of the questions. Also ask for clarification, even if you understand the whole question, again 5 seconds can be enough to pull you head back to the task, and dredge up those critical facts.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 60824,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>Get stuck productively. Talk everything through aloud. There's a big difference between a candidate who gets stuck for 2 minutes and sits there in silence and one who gets stuck for 2 minutes and tells you 7 ideas they rejected and one they're still working on in the meantime.</p>\n\n<p>I really think that's the most important skill in technical interviews besides the acumen you get in your research and study itself.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38132",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20070/"
] |
38,133 |
<p>One of my faculty position applications requires me to write a student success statement. I'm unsure what such a document should contain. Is this similar to a teaching statement? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38156,
"author": "Anonymous",
"author_id": 11565,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11565",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I would recommend e-mailing a contact in the department and asking them. I expect that the answer would be \"It's just a teaching statement\", although it could be different.</p>\n\n<p>Another thing you might do is search the university's website for \"Student Success\" and try to get a sense of what particularly the university means by this buzzword. Keep in mind that this requirement was possibly imposed by higher administration, and the people reading and evaluating your application might or might not have high regard for the intent behind it.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edit</strong>: (too late for OP, but perhaps still of interest) From what I can tell, when universities talk about \"student success\" they are usually talking about efforts to make sure that students don't fall through the cracks. So in a \"student success statement\" you might talk about how you've gone out of your way to help students who are struggling.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 97277,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This would be a (vague) request for some sort of documentation of your students' meeting some (ill-specified?) goals either within your course itself or in subsequent coursework... With \"success\" being defined in who-knows-what way. Most people would have no serious way to \"prove\" that they'd \"benefited their students\",... even while, perhaps, being asked to prove that.</p>\n\n<p>It is never clear to what extent such unlikedly-to-be-truly-documentable claims play a role in hiring and such. Higher [sic] administrators obviously will love such concepts, because they make good PR, while are so vague that they could be used as excuses for fairly capricious acts.</p>\n\n<p>E.g., it may well be that the hiring department is simply required by the central administration to request such a thing, even while fully realizing the dubiousness of its sense. Would not be at all surprising.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38133",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28850/"
] |
38,138 |
<p>One of the comments I received on my journal paper was that it lacks a "running example":</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the paper would benefit much from a running example that could be used in the introduction to motivate the idea and referred to in later sections to illustrate algorithms</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I understand the idea of an example that works like a backbone throughout the paper and connects all the ideas and sections in order to make them easier to understand. </p>
<p>Now my question is, do we call it "running example" or does it have any other term? I would like to add a brief on the example at the end of the introduction, but I'm baffled with what should I call it.</p>
<p>Note: my field is computer science, but I believe this applies to some other areas too. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38139,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>When I use a running example (as I frequently do), I just call it a running example. I don't know any reason why that wouldn't be a good enough term.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38154,
"author": "lithic",
"author_id": 23449,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23449",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"CASE STUDY\"</p>\n\n<p>Having done a quick search across peer-reviewed papers and so on there aren't many examples of 'running examples' jumping out...</p>\n\n<p>Notably, the only paper in the search to feature 'running example' in the title clarifies its meaning (as a 'case study', which is the term I'd use and which is surely more readily understood...)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A Running Example for Use in a Class on Design of Experiments</p>\n \n <p>by Kowalski, Scott</p>\n \n <p>Classroom discussion is an effective way for students to interact and\n learn. A class on design of experiments usually covers many related\n design strategies. It can be useful to have one running example\n (<strong>similar to a case study</strong>) that can be used throughout the class to\n extend earlier topics to later more complex topics. This article\n presents one such running example that studies plant growth mostly in\n a greenhouse. The greenhouse experiment begins with a simple t-test\n and ends with response surface methodology. In between, most of the\n standard topics covered in a one-semester design of experiments class\n are discussed. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You can also see, although it pertains to books more so than publications, that according to <a href=\"https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=running%20example%2Ccase%20study&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Crunning%20example%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Brunning%20example%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BRunning%20Example%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BRunning%20example%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Brunning%20Example%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Ccase%20study%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bcase%20study%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCase%20Study%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCASE%20STUDY%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BCase%20study%3B%2Cc0\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Google NGRAM viewer</a> a \"case study\" is by far the more common term.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38138",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6416/"
] |
38,143 |
<p>I am a mathematics Ph.D. student who are in my final stage of completing my Ph.D. programme. My advisor is visiting an institute for a few months. The institute that he is visiting is in another country; because of the visa requirements and many other practical reasons, I cannot go there with him.</p>
<p>Now my progress is, I have all the main results ready (most of them have been written down) and I need to finish writing my thesis in about three weeks. My advisor has guided my through all the mathematical difficulties; now he left me behind to write the thesis all by my own. Furthermore, he has clearly indicated that he will NOT help me with the writing process. </p>
<p>Now I need to figure out many things all by myself, from LaTeX to the organization, from the usage of languages to drawing pictures, etc. Also I need to verify the correctness and validity of all the results; he mentioned that he will not carefully read my draft. And I do not have much time to finish everything. I am feeling somewhat stressed and overwhelming. </p>
<p>In this situation, should I seek assistance from other professors/lecturers who do research in a similar field, or should I try to figure everything out by myself? Should I hire someone to proofread my thesis when the draft is finished? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38151,
"author": "Danny Ruijters",
"author_id": 28830,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28830",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You are about to finish a PhD thesis. Somebody who obtained a PhD title is supposed to be able to organize and conduct reasonable projects independently. I think that your adviser is not being unreasonable in his demands.</p>\n\n<p>Part of organization is also arranging to get more time, if your current time frame cannot be kept, or leads to serious degradation in quality and rigorousness. In some cases that might lead to working on your thesis without being funded. Personally, I would still advise to value doing a good job higher than meeting a deadline, but of course I cannot oversee all the consequences.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38152,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Now that you have number of weeks left for the submission deadline; you have two options: </p>\n\n<p><strong><em>Write up and Submit the Thesis</em></strong>: Finish the thesis as soon as possible. At this stage you should be able to write your Ph.D. thesis; without any supervision guidelines. Don't fall into 'what if' scenarios. At the end of the day the thesis and your defense on that day will grant you a Ph.D. </p>\n\n<p><strong><em>Possible Extension</em></strong>: Don't submit a very poor thesis if your thesis lacks the required material. You will put the examiners at the very difficult and unpleasant situation; because if the required material is not there you be more likely failing your defense. I suggest you to print out your latest version of your thesis and discuss the extension issue with an academic. You can send an email to your supervisor and ask for a name of an academic to discuss this issue. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38143",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24832/"
] |
38,155 |
<p>I am contemplating creating a scientific journal. How many editors should I try to get on board?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38158,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This will depend on your field and on how specific you want your journal to be. If you concentrate on one <em>very</em> narrow specialty, you will be able to work with very few editors. If you want to cover multiple specialties, you will need different editors with different areas of expertise so each submission can be assigned to an expert in the field.</p>\n\n<p>You may be able to learn more by browsing the editorial boards of journals in your field, and noting whether anything is said about specialties of the different editors.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38165,
"author": "Peter Jansson",
"author_id": 4394,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Apart from the points made by Stephan Kolassa, I would enter the number of articles to be processed as a variable in the equation.</p>\n\n<p>If you start a journal you probably are aiming for a certain number of articles to be put through review per year. Note that the number of articles processed can be substantially higher than finally published since not every submitted article becomes accepted. Rejections rates vary but 50% is not unheard of and higher rates are not uncommon.</p>\n\n<p>So you have a certain number of articles to handle. I then assume that your editors are working for free outside their normal work hours. You have to consider how much work load you want to put on these persons. In the journal I \"run\" I have set a goal of 4-5 articles per year for each editor and have tried to adapt the editorship to that number. I am not saying 4-5 is a norm but you have to judge what is reasonable. You can ask potential editors what they can consider. Obviously they need to put some effort in so one paper per year is perhaps not optimal. The work load I consider concerns finding reviewers, getting the reviews back and recommending reject/revisions/accept (and completing additional rounds of reviews) to a Chief Editor for final decision (the latter decision process can be done in different ways and reflects \"my\" journal).</p>\n\n<p>The scope of your journal also plays a role in that with a wide scope you may need editors with very differing specialities. You then have to balance the number of reviews for each sub-topic so that editors will handle the flow without overworking any one editor. With a narrow scope, all editors can probably handle all manuscripts and the problem is then \"just\" to distribute work fairly.</p>\n\n<p>You can expect there to be difficulties achieving a balance from the start and assessing the likelihood of attracting papers and maybe how many, although largely a guessing game, will be important. This is where the answer becomes closely related to the question of <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/36570/4394\">how to start a journal</a> because many considerations involved in making sure people publish affects the editorship of the journal.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38155",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28868/"
] |
38,157 |
<p>I heard this suggestion from a mathematics professor:</p>
<p><strong>In writing a mathematical Ph.D. thesis, it is far more tolerable to be tediously-lengthy than having a gap in the proofs.</strong></p>
<p>I think what he means is that whenever in doubt, adding more details to make the argument clearer is always better, even if sometimes doing this may make the proof too wordy.</p>
<p>Now if I really follow his advice literally, it seems there are too many details for me to write. For example, I don't even feel safe to write "the case n=1 is trivial" when proving by induction, or "by a direct calculation we have the following result". Another example is, whenever writing a commutative diagram (some of my diagrams are 3-D), I doubt if I need to prove that every small triangle or rectangle is commutative. (Actually I have asked <a href="https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1115910/checking-that-a-3-d-diagram-is-commutative">this question</a> but have received no answer so far.)</p>
<p>Thus my question is: How detailed should be the proofs be in a mathematical Ph.D. thesis?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38159,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": -1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>In general there are two aspects to this: </p>\n\n<p><strong>Overkilling It</strong>: You do not have all the time in the world. Therefore, you can't spend years on the thesis. As Long as you backed up the assumptions during the introduction and background section of your thesis; and you are able to connect the dots, during your contribution section, you should be fine. Because you did provide enough information (e.g., background material, citations, etc.) and then pointed out your contribution, so the reader can follow and do more readings on this based on your direction points. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Fault Assumptions With no Backup</strong>: In this case, you just wrote something to fill the papers; with assumptions that you didn't thought it through while writing your thesis. The experience academics look for these faulty parts of the thesis and will \"grill\" you during your defense, because they know you didn't thought it through; regardless how good the other parts of the thesis are. </p>\n\n<p>So the rule of thumb here is as long as you know how to defend these 'gaps'; you should be fine and don't overkilling it because the clock is ticking. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38161,
"author": "Dirk",
"author_id": 529,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/529",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I usually give the following advice:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If something is clear, just write it down clearly.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Of course, there is a caveat: What is "clear" clearly depends on the reader, and also what is considered a "clear explanation" certainly depends.</p>\n<p>But the message is: If you are tempted to write "The case $n=0$ is obvious." think a minute about the explanation and how to write it down. If you then think that writing down the explanation does not add anything, leave it out.</p>\n<p>But in general, I would say, being more verbose is the better option.</p>\n<p>Another test you could apply is: Write down "obviously…" but note down a longer explanation somewhere else. After a week or two reread that part and try to recover the result again. If you don't have any problem then you are probably fine without a longer explanation.</p>\n<p>Some resource that may be helpful for your proof-writing skills is the talk given by Leslie Lamport on proof-writing last year at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum: Here is a <a href=\"http://www.scilogs.com/hlf/writing-for-mathematical-clarity/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">blog post</a> about it and the whole <a href=\"http://hits.mediasite.com/mediasite/Play/29d825439b3c49f088d35555426fbdf81d\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">talk is here</a>.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38167,
"author": "paul garrett",
"author_id": 980,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The useful distinction is <em>not</em> between \"long-winded\" and \"concise\", etc. Verbosity per se is not helpful, nor is succinctness bad (it's good).</p>\n\n<p>Wordiness does not automatically prevent gaps in arguments. If anything, it may merely obscure them. Terseness in arguments is not the same thing as \"gaps in reasoning\".</p>\n\n<p>Yes, discussions can be shortened by deliberately omitting the least-interesting fragments of proofs or explanations. For experienced people, who trust themselves or are trusted to be able to fill-in \"standard\" gaps, this doesn't matter. Perhaps a novice should doubt to some degree their own capacity to distinguish \"standard\" from \"critical\" issues, and this distinction is exactly what other people will wonder about. In fact, a typical thesis may exactly be a protracted exercise in making sure that one <em>can</em> carry out all those (often eventually boring, not too dramatic) routine arguments \"once in one's life\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38174,
"author": "gumbo",
"author_id": 28878,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28878",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You must be wary of \"COIK.\" Clear Only If Known. In a thesis (dissertation?), one is generally too close to the content to spot jumps. Too much is better than the committee sending it back for multiple edits, i.e., they get lost at point A, so they send it back, you edit, now they get lost at point B, you edit, etc.</p>\n\n<p>If some of the material is too tedious for the main text, however, one option is to dump that stuff into appendices.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38187,
"author": "Matthew Leingang",
"author_id": 5701,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5701",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Think about who is going to read your thesis. My thesis had four audiences: me, my advisors (2), and my mom. Unless you're Tate or Serre you probably have a pretty similar number.</p>\n\n<p>I wanted all the details in it so that I wouldn't have to sweat over them again when I rewrote it into a journal article. I knew my advisors could skim past what they thought was obvious. I knew the whole thing was going to be incomprehensible to my mom and so it might as well be long to be impressive. So I wrote it long.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38209,
"author": "Ken",
"author_id": 28428,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28428",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This, as everything else, is going to depend on context. What role is this result and proof going to play in your document? Have you already published the proof in question elsewhere? How cool is it really? These are some questions that can drive your approach.</p>\n\n<p>If this is as yet unpublished material, you can't afford to leave the details out, so they're going to have to go somewhere. If your whole thesis is this one result, put your proof(s) in the main body. You can still break the more tedious parts off (say by impromptu lemmas) and put them in appendices, if that helps your flow, but all the details should appear. If the things you think are trivial really are explainable with a few words, use those words. </p>\n\n<p>If the thesis is about more than the result (how the result applies to other areas, how it applies to solve some other class of problems, did you just create a new branch of mathematics), then you can try to describe the proof in a way that relies more on intuition (or give an overview), not just so that laypersons can get a better grasp of it, but so that everyone who wants/needs to read it can get a good feeling of why it must be true, and then it becomes easier to explain its importance. Then you can put the hard, dry version elsewhere, possibly in another chapter (\"Chapter 9: The Nitty-Gritty\") or an appendix, but the details still must appear somewhere. Contrary to Big T Larrity in Code Monkeys, this is one occasion where you <em>never</em> want to leave 'em guessing.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 47817,
"author": "gented",
"author_id": 36339,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36339",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Whenever a proof, a theorem or any other such thing can help the reader to understand any single step of the procedure then do write them down fully and even verbosely, if necessary. On the other hand, whenever it is only about mere technicalities that do not add any deeper understanding or insight it is best practice not to be too pedantic, for the sake of readability.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"Things must be made as simple as possible, but <strong>not</strong> any simpler.\" (A. Einstein)</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 175170,
"author": "Ben",
"author_id": 87026,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/87026",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Saying it is "far more tolerable" does not mean it is <em>desirable</em>. Proofs should not be tedeously lengthy if they don't need to be. You supervisor is telling you that there is more tolerance in the assessment of a dissertation than in the assessment of a paper submission, which is true. This certainly doesn't invert the normal principles for giving a clear parsimonious proof.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 175171,
"author": "FourierFlux",
"author_id": 110698,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/110698",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>It should be stronger than the Italian geometers who made entire theories which were false.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 175172,
"author": "Noah Snyder",
"author_id": 25,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Detailed enough that you could have followed it when you were a third year grad student.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38157",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24832/"
] |
38,160 |
<p>How do you say in your paper that "due to a limited number of pages allowed, I'm not going to discuss the details how and from where this equation is derived..."</p>
<p>It is a conference paper, and they "might" ask us in future to publish our papers in more details in a dedicated special issue of journal X. I need to skip some calculations as I'm limited by pages, and no reference I have to refer, just some derivations.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38162,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Details are omitted to conserve space.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Terse. Because you don't want your explanation to cause you to go over the page limit.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38166,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think this is a bad approach. Telling the reader that there is something important, but that there is no space to say it, just seems rude. Either the statements for which there is no space need to be said or they do not. If they need to be said, then you need to publish the work some place else that will provide the needed space. If they do not need to be said, then you do not need to tell the reader about them.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38247,
"author": "cbeleites unhappy with SX",
"author_id": 725,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>For details, see supplementary material.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38260,
"author": "Jukka Suomela",
"author_id": 351,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/351",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"See Appendix X for the proof.\"</p>\n\n<p>\"See the full version [1] for the proof.\"</p>\n\n<p>There is no need to explain <em>why</em> the proof is in the appendix or in the full version; it is self-evident in the case of page-limited conference papers.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 54893,
"author": "ResearchEnthusiast",
"author_id": 28389,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28389",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Usually, the appendix length is unlimited (but it is noted that the conference reviewers might not read it) so what I always do is writing something like \"straightforward calculations lead to ..., for details see Appendix [A]\".</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 54894,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>\"An in-depth discussion of X is beyond the scope of this paper.\"</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38160",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28084/"
] |
38,175 |
<p>Recently, I have worked out a solution manual for a book. </p>
<p>I have not found on the Internet any existing complete solution manual for this book.</p>
<p>Since the solution manual of mine contains every exercise given in the book,
my question is: In order to publish or distribute publicly this manual, do I have to first request the consent of the publisher of the book?</p>
<p>[Editors note: A solution manual is an accompaniment to a textbook that provides the answers and/or techniques to solve the exercises given in said textbook. Other names for these include: answers keys and teacher's handbook.]</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38176,
"author": "Compass",
"author_id": 22013,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22013",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p><em>I am not a lawyer.</em></p>\n\n<p>You should talk to a copyright lawyer before getting into contact with the publisher, as the lawyer may be able to provide additional insight. Having someone who knows the ins and outs on your side helps in such a case, and will protect you from any issues that may arise.</p>\n\n<p>As it stands, this does seem like a copyright issue, and you definitely need to talk to someone on the publisher's side before you do any publishing or distribution on your own.</p>\n\n<p>The material is originally the publisher's, and there's probably legalese already included in the book that indicates <em>the content may not be reproduced in any form without permission.</em></p>\n\n<p>I'm sure it'd be less of an issue if the exercises themselves were not included, but even then, there's a lot of red tape you'll have to navigate.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38181,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>I would like to offer a viewpoint that dissents from the typical conservative safe take-no-risks-and-get-permission view. Yes, the publisher most clearly owns the copyright and the right to create derivative works. Your work, however, is probably still be protected under a reasonable interpretation of fair use.</p>\n\n<p>In many ways, creating a solution key is actually a very similar activity to writing <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction\">fan fiction</a>: you like the original so much that you're adding you're filling in the gaps that the creator left with your own additions. As such I would expect that your solution key <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction\">falls into a similar legal grey area</a>. You are creating a derivative work, but:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>You're distributing your solution key as a public service, and making no money from it.</li>\n<li>You're not using much of the text (assuming a normal content-to-problem ratio)</li>\n<li>Your work enhances the value of the original, rather than detracting from it.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Right now, without having talked to the company, you can in good faith put your solution key online, with appropriate attribution and making sure to point people to the original textbook, and trust that it's a reasonable interpretation of fair use. From here, the most likely scenarios are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The company either doesn't notice, doesn't care, or decides to turn a blind eye, and everybody benefits.</li>\n<li>The company notices, and asks to make your work official in some way: great!</li>\n<li>The company notices, and tells you to take it down; you apologize, explaining that you acted in good faith, and comply. Nobody is any worse off than if you hadn't posted it in the first place.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It is <em>very</em> unlikely that the company would do anything more than ask you to take it down: it's not worth the money to them and it would look very bad for them to be so mean-spirited.</p>\n\n<p>If you do approach to the company, however, you force them to take official notice. Their lawyers are not paid to make good things happen: they are paid to take safe and conservative actions. Where they might have ignored it as being beneath their threshold of caring, if you force them to pay attention, the default answer is \"no,\" because \"yes\" probably takes a lot more work, and it's probably still not worth their time.</p>\n\n<p>Put more tersely: \"never ask a question that you don't want to know the answer to.\"</p>\n\n<p><em>Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.</em></p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38205,
"author": "Dewi Morgan",
"author_id": 27663,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27663",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>IANAL, but to me, looks like the important part here is \"the solution manual of mine contains every exercise given in the book\".</p>\n\n<p>Now it feels safe to assume that, without the exercises, the book would be considerably less useful as a teaching aid. In which case, the exercises are a \"substantial portion\" of the work.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, reproducing them and their solutions as a separate work would require reproducing a \"substantial portion\" of the work. It could reasonably be argued that anyone who bought the book in order to do the exercises (for a textbook, this is anyone who is studying for an exam) would be more likely to purchase your derivative work, so you would have harmed their market by publishing.</p>\n\n<p>If, instead, you only gave the question numbers, and not the questions themselves, then I'd guess that no copyright issue could be argued, any more than publishing a walkthrough for a computer game.</p>\n\n<p>However, it would be in the publisher's interest to change some of the questions in their next edition, and then sell their own solution book, so odds are your book would only work for a single edition.</p>\n\n<p>The publisher is more likely to go to the original author and ask if they'd provide an answer book, than to accept one from you, even pre-written.</p>\n\n<p>[Edit: if it is a textbook, odds are very high that there already IS a teacher's guide produced by the publisher, with all the answers. In which case, yeah, you'd be essentially competing directly against them, and they will come after you, whether or not they have a case. Defending yourself might work, but odds are their tactic will be to keep suing and appealing until you give up or run out of money. A publisher WILL have bigger and better lawyers than you, and wILL defend itself from a direct attack on its revenue like this - if they let one slide, then there'd be nothing to stop you bringing out a second, for another book, and so on.]</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38175",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/18107/"
] |
38,177 |
<p>I sit on my department's academic misconduct committee. Today we had one of those cases where it wasn't clear what the right answer was. The assignment was for the students to design an experiment based on a previous experiment of their choosing and to write it up like a research proposal. The student took large blocks of text from the article describing the original experiment and tweaked each sentence to fit with the new experiment. After every sentence the student fastidiously added a reference to the original article. Has the student committed an academic offence?</p>
<hr>
<p>The committee decided that it was not an academic offence and that the work should not be penalized for plagiarism, but that it would likely receive a very low grade due to a complete lack of originality and a failure to show any understanding of the key concepts.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38183,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>It is often remarkable to me just how much work a person will put in just to avoid doing a different piece of work. In this case, it sounds to me like the committee made exactly the right call: it sounds like rubbish work deserving a terrible grade, but certainly not plagiarism.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38189,
"author": "awsoci",
"author_id": 28324,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28324",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>This happened to me with one of my students, who wrote a research paper that was just basically, the exact same as an article I had published (and had been included in the list of recommended readings for that research topic). </p>\n\n<p>While they had cited everything it was not considered plagiarism, it was still an issue. I spoke with the program convener who reviewed the essay, agreed that it was just a copy of the article I had published, and we marked the paper down accordingly. They were a good student, and I don't think it was a case of malicious intent or laziness. Rather, I think the student just used too much material from the one article as opposed to formulating their own original insight. </p>\n\n<p>The committee is correct in that yes, it is not a case of plagiarism because the student has cited everything. But they are also correct in marking down the student for lack of originality/direct copying of someone else's work. It is not really an academic offense under most university faculty policies and procedures because they cited the work, but it is perhaps a rising practice that might need addressing, especially if students are not entirely aware that what they are doing is considered bad form. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38242,
"author": "Kakoli Majumder",
"author_id": 9920,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9920",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While I agree that this is not the right thing to do, this is clearly not a case of misconduct. I also feel that the reason behind copying large parts could be attributed to lack of confidence rather than laziness. Sometimes, young researchers are unsure of what they write and resort to copying or closely paraphrasing parts from trusted sources as they are afraid of making mistakes. Possibly, the student in this case does not have a clear understanding of the concept or has a difficulty with expression. This is especially true of non-native speakers of English for whom expressing themselves in English is a problem. I agree with the committee's decision that this is not a case of plagiarism as the student has cited everything. Of course the student deserves low grades, but could possibly be encouraged to be more confident and not be afraid of making mistakes.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38177",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/"
] |
38,179 |
<p>I am most likely leaving my permanent position at my current university for a permanent position at a new university. I have been given an unofficial offer and we have agreed to terms. I have been told it could take over a month to generate an official offer and contract and that I should not give notice until then. I would prefer not to broadcast the news widely since nothing is set in stone until I am given the contact. Obviously I do not care that much since I am asking here.</p>
<p>In the few days I have known, I have told:</p>
<ul>
<li>My current department chair since he wrote a reference and my other references</li>
<li>A couple of close colleagues since I valued their opinions</li>
<li>A collaborator in my department since we were beginning to to write a grant together since the move, it is international, would cause major problems</li>
<li>I am now faced with having to turn down a prospective graduate student which would require me to tell at least the head of our graduate admissions committee and maybe the whole committee</li>
</ul>
<p>I am clearly failing at keeping it quiet. How do you not screw over your colleagues, but still keep the job change quiet until it is official?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38184,
"author": "Bill Barth",
"author_id": 11600,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11600",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>This is common in academia. I think you have to be honest with everyone who might rely on you being at your current job in the future, let them know what stage you are at, and ask them to keep it to themselves until you get the official offer. You can only control what you say to others while asking others to respect your privacy in the meantime. </p>\n\n<p>Suppose that you told everyone in your current department exactly what you have told us, and for some reason your new position falls through at this late date, what's the worst case situation you're worried about? It seems to me that, assuming your current job is held for you, your worst problems will be interpersonal with other faculty that resented your desire to leave. Is that it, or are you worried about some specific ramifications if word got around?</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38191,
"author": "Aaron Hall",
"author_id": 9518,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9518",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>\"If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.\" - Poor Richard's Almanack </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The wheels in academia turn slowly but with momentum. Nevertheless, I think it would be wise to not tell a single other person going forward that you want to leave for any reason.</p>\n\n<p>If you need to turn down others, you should do so expressing your concern about your availability, or a desire to put what you can on hold for personal reasons. This weakens your position should you stay, but at least you don't give away your intentions to leave.</p>\n\n<p>But you've already told your department chair. You mentioned in a comment that you are not sure what you are worried about. You're worried that you may not actually get the offer! And having set everyone else's expectations for the end of your continued work there, you possibly lose face and certainly have some difficulty resuming your relationships. And meanwhile, your department chair, who was perhaps anxiously searching for your replacement, now may be in a difficult position.</p>\n\n<p>What's done is done, but going forward, I would not mention it to a single other person.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/03
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38179",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/"
] |
38,196 |
<p>I have a PhD from a reasonably good program in pure math, but I had no support from my department or adviser and so went into industry afterward. I'm unhappy with the situation, and I'd love to return to academia. The situation is a bit tricky, though, and I was wondering if a second doctorate (whether again in math or in another related area like mathematical physics) would help at all. Further complicating the issue is the fact that I've been in industry for the last decade, so my CV has hardly gotten any better than it was when I applied, or even left, grad school the first time. (The situation may be different in other areas, but there's very little you can do in industry that looks appealing to an admissions committee in pure math.) So, would applying to PhD #2 be a waste of time, or is this a weird but possible means of clawing my way back into academia? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38210,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think it will be very difficult -- perhaps prohibitively difficult -- to get a PhD in mathematics (or mathematical physics, which is all but mathematics) in the US given that you already have a PhD in mathematics from the US. It came up within recent memory in the math PhD program at my university that we had an applicant (from outside the US) who already had a PhD. We went so far as inquiring to the graduate school whether it would be against the rules to admit such a student. It wasn't. Nevertheless, suffice it to say that the student was not admitted to the program, and if this happened again I highly doubt the outcome would be different. </p>\n\n<p>Maybe it will help to look at it from our perspective. We are trying to train future academics. (It is true that some PhDs leave academia, but for graduates of my department this is a minority: probably less than 1/3. Moreover, no matter what they go on to do, it is only fair to say that we are training students for academic jobs.) We want to spend our limited resources on people that want to say in academia and are capable of doing so. Someone who wants to get <em>another math PhD</em> ten years later is getting the horns of that dilemma: if you are actually capable of continuing on in academic mathematical career, then one math PhD ought to be sufficient. A US math PhD is not meant to be merely an apprenticeship in a certain specialized subfield of mathematics: it is meant to train you to do <em>teach yourself new mathematics</em> and <em>do research independently</em>. By attempting to enroll in a second PhD program, you are signalling that you didn't acquire these skills the first time around....or maybe you did but chose not to exercise them for so long that they atrophied. Either way makes you a poor candidate.</p>\n\n<p>What can you do? I would have to say that getting a PhD and spending a decade away from mathematical research and teaching is closer to a \"lockout situation\" than most others I can think of. If I'm honest, I don't completely understand the story as you frame it: you write</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I have a PhD from a reasonably good program in pure math, but I had no support from my department or adviser and so went into industry afterward.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You lost me: awarding someone a PhD is a highly non-negligible level of support. If you have a PhD from a reasonably good program in pure math, then you can get some kind of academic job: maybe an adjunct position, but some kind of job. You chose not to and went with that choice for ten years. If you really loved academia, wouldn't you have done some academic activities in that time? I'm afraid it sounds more like: you don't like either academia or industry. This is not a contradiction: there are more things you can do than that!</p>\n\n<p>But let me give you the benefit of the doubt that for whatever reason you spent ten years away from the thing that you really want to do. What can you do? Well, what I said before about having a PhD getting you some kind of academic job is <em>still true</em>: in fact, at certain institutions, \"even\" in pure math your industry experience will be a big positive. A community college teacher may be a \"pure mathematician\" in her own private time, but those skills are very unlikely to be drawn upon in her work. Someone with industry connections of any sort would be preferable.</p>\n\n<p>So I think you claw your way back into academia by taking a job at a community or regional four-year college: quite possibly a temporary job. If you play it right, you might be able to do this for a time while still keeping your industry job: I certainly recommend this. After you build up a teaching portfolio, the ten-year gap in your CV will recede into the background, and -- assuming you do well, work hard, and so forth -- you should eventually be able to land a permanent teaching position <em>somewhere</em>. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to break back into mathematical research: go ahead and do it, you don't need to leave your job for that. Go to some conferences, read some papers, start contacting people in your intended field...just do it. It will be slow going at first, but because you already have a PhD in mathematics you do have the capacity to learn and acquire mathematics. So learn and acquire mathematics. Have fun...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38215,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In order to return to academia, you will need to satisfy certain requirements.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Most academic jobs require holding a Ph.D. in the relevant field. You already have one. A second Ph.D. won't help you here.</li>\n<li>Teaching jobs require demonstrated teaching experience. A second Ph.D. won't help you here. You could certainly try to build a track record of successful teaching by getting in touch with a local community college and offering to teach a few courses - possibly even while holding your industry day job. If you are serious about returning to academia, this would be an <em>investment</em>, not a source of income, so you could offer to teach for little or no remuneration.</li>\n<li>Research (and teaching) jobs require publications. A second Ph.D. won't help you here. Instead, get up to speed on current research, find a good open problem, work on it and publish some papers.</li>\n<li>Finally, contacts will be invaluable. A second Ph.D. won't help you here. Instead, attend conferences, give presentations, get to know people, leave a good impression and hint that you would like to return to academia.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Note the common thread going through all these points: <em>a second Ph.D. in the same field won't help you.</em> Instead, invest your time in building the kind of portfolio (teaching, publications, contacts) that you do need.</p>\n\n<p>This will likely be an uphill battle, but if you are motivated enough, then go for it. Good luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 68350,
"author": "Patricia Shanahan",
"author_id": 10220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While considering a more recent question by the same OP, I came across an alternative solution that seems more on-topic for this question.</p>\n\n<p>I checked my memory of the <a href=\"http://www.ucsd.edu/catalog/front/GradStud.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">graduate student admission requirements</a> for the school where I got my PhD, UC San Diego. Unfortunately, my memory is correct and there is no option for duplicating a PhD in the same subject.</p>\n\n<p>However, it also mentioned \"Nondegree Study\", coursework only study for a year, with a possible extension for a second year. You could look whether any schools in your area with good math departments offer that option. If you could get into a suitable department, taking pure math graduate courses, for a year or two you could aim to do several things:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Refresh your pure math skills.</li>\n<li>Demonstrate aptitude for pure math.</li>\n<li>Reconnect to current research.</li>\n<li>Find a mentor.</li>\n<li>Find people to write letters of recommendation for a postdoc.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It is unusual but it is more likely to fit university regulations than the second PhD idea. You don't need any more degrees. You do need a pure math academic network.</p>\n\n<p>You would probably have to self-finance, either keeping a day job or first saving enough money for a year or two of tuition and living expenses. You might be able to get paid work as an adjunct professor, teaching the material you know from your industry career.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38196",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17411/"
] |
38,198 |
<p>There are journals which employ double-blind review. Suppose I want to submit in such journals but my paper to be submitted depends on another paper of mine which was already accepted in another journal but does not appear in its issue. In my view, this might reveal my identity and hence defeats the purpose of the double-blind review? Do these kind of journals allow such submissions? I read the authors' guidelines but seems this particular concern is not stated. </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38210,
"author": "Pete L. Clark",
"author_id": 938,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think it will be very difficult -- perhaps prohibitively difficult -- to get a PhD in mathematics (or mathematical physics, which is all but mathematics) in the US given that you already have a PhD in mathematics from the US. It came up within recent memory in the math PhD program at my university that we had an applicant (from outside the US) who already had a PhD. We went so far as inquiring to the graduate school whether it would be against the rules to admit such a student. It wasn't. Nevertheless, suffice it to say that the student was not admitted to the program, and if this happened again I highly doubt the outcome would be different. </p>\n\n<p>Maybe it will help to look at it from our perspective. We are trying to train future academics. (It is true that some PhDs leave academia, but for graduates of my department this is a minority: probably less than 1/3. Moreover, no matter what they go on to do, it is only fair to say that we are training students for academic jobs.) We want to spend our limited resources on people that want to say in academia and are capable of doing so. Someone who wants to get <em>another math PhD</em> ten years later is getting the horns of that dilemma: if you are actually capable of continuing on in academic mathematical career, then one math PhD ought to be sufficient. A US math PhD is not meant to be merely an apprenticeship in a certain specialized subfield of mathematics: it is meant to train you to do <em>teach yourself new mathematics</em> and <em>do research independently</em>. By attempting to enroll in a second PhD program, you are signalling that you didn't acquire these skills the first time around....or maybe you did but chose not to exercise them for so long that they atrophied. Either way makes you a poor candidate.</p>\n\n<p>What can you do? I would have to say that getting a PhD and spending a decade away from mathematical research and teaching is closer to a \"lockout situation\" than most others I can think of. If I'm honest, I don't completely understand the story as you frame it: you write</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I have a PhD from a reasonably good program in pure math, but I had no support from my department or adviser and so went into industry afterward.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You lost me: awarding someone a PhD is a highly non-negligible level of support. If you have a PhD from a reasonably good program in pure math, then you can get some kind of academic job: maybe an adjunct position, but some kind of job. You chose not to and went with that choice for ten years. If you really loved academia, wouldn't you have done some academic activities in that time? I'm afraid it sounds more like: you don't like either academia or industry. This is not a contradiction: there are more things you can do than that!</p>\n\n<p>But let me give you the benefit of the doubt that for whatever reason you spent ten years away from the thing that you really want to do. What can you do? Well, what I said before about having a PhD getting you some kind of academic job is <em>still true</em>: in fact, at certain institutions, \"even\" in pure math your industry experience will be a big positive. A community college teacher may be a \"pure mathematician\" in her own private time, but those skills are very unlikely to be drawn upon in her work. Someone with industry connections of any sort would be preferable.</p>\n\n<p>So I think you claw your way back into academia by taking a job at a community or regional four-year college: quite possibly a temporary job. If you play it right, you might be able to do this for a time while still keeping your industry job: I certainly recommend this. After you build up a teaching portfolio, the ten-year gap in your CV will recede into the background, and -- assuming you do well, work hard, and so forth -- you should eventually be able to land a permanent teaching position <em>somewhere</em>. </p>\n\n<p>If you want to break back into mathematical research: go ahead and do it, you don't need to leave your job for that. Go to some conferences, read some papers, start contacting people in your intended field...just do it. It will be slow going at first, but because you already have a PhD in mathematics you do have the capacity to learn and acquire mathematics. So learn and acquire mathematics. Have fun...</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38215,
"author": "Stephan Kolassa",
"author_id": 4140,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4140",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p>In order to return to academia, you will need to satisfy certain requirements.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Most academic jobs require holding a Ph.D. in the relevant field. You already have one. A second Ph.D. won't help you here.</li>\n<li>Teaching jobs require demonstrated teaching experience. A second Ph.D. won't help you here. You could certainly try to build a track record of successful teaching by getting in touch with a local community college and offering to teach a few courses - possibly even while holding your industry day job. If you are serious about returning to academia, this would be an <em>investment</em>, not a source of income, so you could offer to teach for little or no remuneration.</li>\n<li>Research (and teaching) jobs require publications. A second Ph.D. won't help you here. Instead, get up to speed on current research, find a good open problem, work on it and publish some papers.</li>\n<li>Finally, contacts will be invaluable. A second Ph.D. won't help you here. Instead, attend conferences, give presentations, get to know people, leave a good impression and hint that you would like to return to academia.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Note the common thread going through all these points: <em>a second Ph.D. in the same field won't help you.</em> Instead, invest your time in building the kind of portfolio (teaching, publications, contacts) that you do need.</p>\n\n<p>This will likely be an uphill battle, but if you are motivated enough, then go for it. Good luck!</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 68350,
"author": "Patricia Shanahan",
"author_id": 10220,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>While considering a more recent question by the same OP, I came across an alternative solution that seems more on-topic for this question.</p>\n\n<p>I checked my memory of the <a href=\"http://www.ucsd.edu/catalog/front/GradStud.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">graduate student admission requirements</a> for the school where I got my PhD, UC San Diego. Unfortunately, my memory is correct and there is no option for duplicating a PhD in the same subject.</p>\n\n<p>However, it also mentioned \"Nondegree Study\", coursework only study for a year, with a possible extension for a second year. You could look whether any schools in your area with good math departments offer that option. If you could get into a suitable department, taking pure math graduate courses, for a year or two you could aim to do several things:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Refresh your pure math skills.</li>\n<li>Demonstrate aptitude for pure math.</li>\n<li>Reconnect to current research.</li>\n<li>Find a mentor.</li>\n<li>Find people to write letters of recommendation for a postdoc.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It is unusual but it is more likely to fit university regulations than the second PhD idea. You don't need any more degrees. You do need a pure math academic network.</p>\n\n<p>You would probably have to self-finance, either keeping a day job or first saving enough money for a year or two of tuition and living expenses. You might be able to get paid work as an adjunct professor, teaching the material you know from your industry career.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38198",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28899/"
] |
38,201 |
<p>I was a final year PhD student (into the last quarter of year 4) in cancer research (passed my qualifying 2 yrs back) but was let go thereafter due to 'unsatisfactory progress' as my data is not sufficient for a PhD thesis. I have to admit here that I've gradually lost my enthusiasm in the project and kinda burnt up after year 3. I've completed all required modules with a decent GPA (4/5). My supervisor was lenient enough to recommend me to graduate with a MSc instead but am facing some 'cross-deparmental red tape' at the moment to say the least (no news of my MSc transfer after 2.5mths of appeal). I'm in the midst of preparing my CV for future job hunt but decided I should just state my current qualification as a 'BSc'. How should I address this 'failure/ 4-yr gap' in my CV?
I have no intention of applying for any academic research jobs but felt it's best that I stay in a relevant field (bio/pharma?). Any advise given would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38203,
"author": "Compass",
"author_id": 22013,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22013",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Rule #1 in resume writing is to <strong>never lie on your resume</strong>. Never, ever, ever. That doesn't mean you're doomed with a scarlet letter, of course.</p>\n<p>I had a similar situation in the past, and worked with quite a few people to hammer out the singular line of that issue. It is quite hard to write, and you will want to talk with someone who has resume-reading/recruiting experience to make sure it sounds okay. Make sure you account for all the time you can.</p>\n<p>Here's an example:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, Foo Baz University, BB, (Performed four years of studies in pursuit of PhD before exiting program) August 2011 – March 2015</p>\n<p>B.S. in Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, John Doe University, DD, June 2011</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Try to avoid using words with negative connotation, such as "dropped out" or "failed."</p>\n<p>Regardless of how you write it, people <em>will</em> ask you about it. However, it's much easier to defend your situation in an interview, especially knowing it's a question that will come up. I basically indicated that I no longer found it reasonable or practical to continue my pursuit of a medical degree and decided to focus on something that I was equally, if not better at, suited for, when I interviewed.</p>\n<p>Since I don't know what your situation is regarding your MS, I've left that out, but if you're sure you're going to get it, you can add a line for that saying that it is tentative and to be awarded at a future point for work done during the PhD.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38214,
"author": "Kenyakorn Ketsombut",
"author_id": 28907,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28907",
"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>The top answer is already good. I'm providing an alternative that I use. I'm simply declaring the time period instead of the achieved academic degree.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>PhD student of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, Foo Baz University, BB, August 2011 – March 2015</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Edit: To make it clearer: you can put \"work experience\", \"studies\" and \"academic degrees\" in different sections of your CV. That way it will be clear, that you have been a PhD student for a long time, but your highest archivement it your Bsc/Msc degree.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38201",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28900/"
] |
38,213 |
<p>I was recently invited by Springer to publish a book: I proposed a table of contents, it was internally (in Springer) reviewed and accepted to be published as a monograph. I am at the stage of finalizing a first draft.</p>
<p>The content is mostly based on previous peer-reviewed publications (around 15 journal and conference papers in the computer science domain) along with more introductory material, state-of-the-art survey, and use-cases.</p>
<p>Is there any academic value in publishing a book that is based (approx. three quarters of it) on existing (peer-reviewed) material?</p>
<p>Also, as I am considering applying for assistant professor positions (I am currently working on contract basis), I would like to ask how is this book monograph viewed at by hiring committees? Is it considered vanity or a plus?</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38216,
"author": "xLeitix",
"author_id": 10094,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Is there any academic value in publishing a book that is based (approx. three quarters of it) on existing (peer-reviewed) material?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If well done, this seems like a useful book to me. Bringing together various related papers, adding some expository material for readers not yet intimately aware of the field, providing some perspective through use cases ... why not? Remember that in CS, the point of books is almost never to have original material. Books in CS are meant as a collection / introduction to a topic, not as a venue for new research contributions (that's what we have conferences for).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Also, as I am considering applying for assistant professor positions (I am currently working on contract basis), I would like to ask how is this book monograph viewed at by hiring committees? Is it considered vanity or a plus?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Springer isn't a typical vanity press outlet, so I can't see a hiring committee outright discarding your publication there. I guess it will be a small plus (or a bigger plus, if the book turns out really good and becomes better-known in the field). However, your actual original research will probably be much more significant.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38218,
"author": "Maarten Buis",
"author_id": 14471,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14471",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>When it comes to the \"value\" of a book for a hiring committee, the value does not have to be soley academic. A significant part of the job of an (assistant) professor is usually teaching. If your book can be used in an (advanced) course, then that could be an advantage. </p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38213",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21766/"
] |
38,229 |
<p>I am working on my Master CS project. I would like to have this published as article before my Master ends. </p>
<p>Now I see 2 options:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>I try to get it accepted and published at my own (not a affiliated with my university/supervisor, more as a independent scholar). I will use a ghostwriter (Master CS, native English) to get the English correctly. In this way I will be the only writer. </p></li>
<li><p>I will try to get my supervisor on board (eg. for advice/editing). This will result in a paper with at least 2 writers.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>What are the pro/cons of each choice? Is it worth to get it accepted alone? Does it happen more frequently that students try to get its work accepted prior to finalizing the master program? </p>
<p>If you try to get your supervisor as second writer, does this not looks like 'student did research but supervisor wrote the article?'.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38232,
"author": "o-0",
"author_id": 21552,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/21552",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>As a master student, or even Ph.D. student, there is nothing wrong on writing a paper with your supervisor(s). In fact, it shows your group work ethics. You should be delighted an experienced academic put his/her name next to yours on a publication. It adds value to the publication, because your supervisor is more well known than you and others will discover your publication faster. </p>\n\n<p>You should think about being an independent researcher; at the later stages of the research (e.g., as a postdoc or an academic).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38239,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>You did the work at the university, so you must publish as affiliated with the university. To do otherwise would be straight-up lying.</p>\n\n<p>Likewise, your advisor should almost certainly be a co-author, unless they truly contributed almost nothing to the work and your field has very tight authorship guidelines. If you avoid including a person who should be a co-author, that is a serious academic offense.</p>\n\n<p>These offenses will be compounded by the fact that this is your Masters project, and so the thesis document will likely be readily accessible by anybody on the internet, with essentially the same content and making it blatantly obvious what you have done.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38229",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28916/"
] |
38,236 |
<p>Should a figure/table go before or after the first paragraph that references it in an academic paper? I cannot find a definitive answer on this. The general advice is to place the figure/table as close to the reference as possible.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38240,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>There is no hard and fast rule. This <a href=\"http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/resources/handouts_apa/TablesFigures1.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">reference</a> says:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>According to the APA (2002), the “typesetter lays out tables and figures closest to where they are first mentioned”\n (p. 155).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I do not have the APA style guide to confirm. The author, as opposed to the typesetter, guidelines for APA style require the figures to go after the references and hence nowhere near where they are referenced. To the extent that LaTeX typesets things \"correctly\" figures and tables (or in LaTeX terminology floats) are placed as soon as possible (while preserving the layout) following the first call out. LaTeX will never place a float before the call out. I am not sure if this is a technical limitation or a stylistic limitation.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38241,
"author": "Aru Ray",
"author_id": 948,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/948",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Journals usually have their own preferences on this, which can be found in their 'Instructions to authors' document. </p>\n\n<p>The most common preference I have found is for figures to be at the top or bottom of pages, ideally on the same page as where it is first referenced. Rare exceptions to this rule occur when the figure is being actively used in a paragraph, for example in a mathematical proof, in which case the figures are much like equations and are reasonably placed exactly where they are used. </p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38245,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 5,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Assuming that you are laying things out yourself, as opposed to working with one of the journals that will do it for you, think about the layout from the perspective of a reader: if you are reading text and looking at a figure, it's a pain to be flipping back and forth. Thus, ideally, you want both text and figure to be on the same page. Where, exactly, on the same page is not so important. Sometimes this will be specified by the layout, and in many cases it is stylistically preferred to have figures above text on a page (this is standard IEEE style, for example).</p>\n<p>Sometimes, however, it is either awkward or impossible to get them on the same page. If this is the case, then, in my opinion, it's slightly better to have the figure come after the first reference in the text. Figures draw the attention, and if you have the figure before the first mention in text, then it can interfere with your narrative.</p>\n<p>This is a fairly weak constraint, however, and I often violate it myself when there are overriding reasons of paper narrative to put the figure in front instead, such as:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Spreading out figures through the text, so that you have less pure-text pages.</li>\n<li>Getting a figure onto the first page of a paper, so that it can serve as a visual "icon" for the paper. <em>Example: in <a href=\"https://jakebeal.github.io/Publications/SASO12-ColorPower2.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this paper</a>, the figure on page 1 is not referenced until page 2.</em></li>\n</ol>\n<p>Most of this, however, is stylistic preferences, and should not be taken as hard constraints unless the particular venue that you are submitting to provides explicit specification.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38236",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14861/"
] |
38,237 |
<p><em>This is a special community wiki 'canonical' question that aggregates advice on a frequently-asked question. See <a href="https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1560/what-should-we-do-with-the-can-i-get-into-x-program-with-3-xx-gpa/1563">this</a> meta discussion. Please feel free to edit this question to improve it.</em></p>
<p>When applying to a PhD program in the US, how will applications be evaluated? If an applicant is weak in a particular area, is it possible to offset that by being strong in a different area? How can an applicant estimate the probability that they will get into a PhD program at School X?</p>
<p>This question and its answers assume some basic familiarity with how the graduate admissions process works in the US; for information about this, please see <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/176909">this canonical answer</a>.</p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 38238,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929",
"pm_score": 8,
"selected": true,
"text": "<p><em>Please feel free to edit the answer to improve it.</em></p>\n<h3>Can I get into school X with my {grades, test scores, research profile, personal story, etc.}?</h3>\n<p>There is <strong>no formula</strong> by which we can turn your "statistics" into a probability of admission. Things vary from (sub)field to (sub)field, school to school, year to year, and person to person. If you posted a question asking us to evaluate your profile and your question was closed as a duplicate of this post, this is why. We appreciate that even a "rough," buyer-beware formula would be very useful to applicants, but we are simply unable to provide one. Nonetheless, we hope the information contained in this answer will be useful to you.</p>\n<h3>How do programs decide who to accept?</h3>\n<p>Generally, PhD programs in the US have many more applicants than they can accept. The number of positions is limited by finances (a department can only afford a limited number of RAs and TAs), space and resources (students often need offices and access to equipment), and the ability to supervise the students (there is a limit to the number of PhD students a faculty member can effectively supervise). The admissions committee must decide which of the qualified applicants are most likely to be successful researchers while taking departmental needs into consideration. These needs include things like the start-up package for Professor X including a funded PhD student and a particular resource being already at capacity.</p>\n<p>The admissions committee bases its decision on a number of pieces of information including GPA (Grade Point Average), GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) scores, statement of purpose, references, interviews, and, for international students, TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores. Again, there is no formula (e.g., 6×GPA + 1×GRE + 2×references + publications) by which applicants are ranked, but some universities and/or departments set minimum requirements (e.g., GPA over 3.0 or a TOEFL over 85). The admissions committee looks at the entire application to make an informed judgment. This means that being strong in one area can, and does, offset being weak in another area.</p>\n<h3>How are GPAs evaluated? Can I get in if I have low grades? Do I have a chance if I didn't major in the subject I want to pursue?</h3>\n<p>When admissions committees consider the GPA, they are considering a number of factors including the grades: the strength of the school and major, the types of classes, and trends. An applicant who did poorly in first-year general electives will be looked at very differently from a student who did poorly in advanced specialized classes. The major is not nearly as important as the relevant classes. For example, an engineering department might look more favourably on a math major who took and did well on, engineering and applied-math electives than an engineering major who took humanities electives. As with everything in the admissions process, the admissions committee is trying to judge the potential for research success.</p>\n<p>A low GPA can be offset by a strong research record highlighted in the SOP and letters of reference. The SOP and letters of reference can also be used to make the admissions committee aware of any extenuating circumstances that may have lead to the low GPA. Similarly, the SOP and letters of reference can be used to address how your major and background prepare you for research in the field that you are applying to. Strong GRE scores can also help offset a low GPA, and a strong GRE subject test can compensate for mismatches between majors. The best way to offset a low GPA or a mismatch in the area of specialization is to consider enrolling in a terminal master’s degree and getting a good GPA in difficult classes.</p>\n<p>An excellent way of improving a low GPA is by taking a senior thesis course, which is almost always available. Not only is this a proven way of building close ties with one or more faculty members (who will supervise you in your thesis) and getting those strong, personalized recommendations, but it could lead to a publication, or at the very least, a technical report published by the department. In terms of grades, getting a good grade on the senior thesis course is usually not difficult (especially since you’re not evaluated on an exam performance), assuming you put in the effort.</p>\n<p>It is also important to think honestly about why certain grades are low, and what you would do differently in graduate school. Learning from failure is a crucial skill (see, e.g., Dweck’s <a href=\"https://profiles.stanford.edu/carol-dweck?tab=publications\" rel=\"noreferrer\">research on growth mindset</a>, as well as <a href=\"https://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">her widely-read book</a>). In fact, almost all academics have been rejected by some of the programs, fellowships, grants, and journals that they have applied for or submitted to, and <a href=\"https://captainawkward.com/2018/03/27/1093-urgent-im-scared-to-ask-my-professor-for-help/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">many have even failed classes</a>. Finding constructive ways to deal with negative feedback, rejection, and failure is crucial in academia.</p>\n<p>Examine why you struggled or what went wrong and how you can address a problem like that in the future. How have you developed the knowledge and skills that would have helped you then? Depending on the kinds of problems you faced and the extent of their impact on your record, they may not be appropriate to mention in your SOP and through your recommenders’ letters, but the steps you take to address them might tell their own story. (For example, perhaps you failed a class but then did research with a professor of the same subject, or perhaps you had a rocky college record because you were immature or bad at planning, but you have now worked for five years in a responsible position at a lab.)</p>\n<h3>How are GRE scores evaluated? How bad is it if I did poorly on the GREs? Can a good GRE score save an otherwise weak application?</h3>\n<p>First, we should distinguish two things.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>The general GRE is like the SAT you took in high school: it contains a math section (very easy; these are literally middle school math problems), a verbal section (much harder), and a writing section.</li>\n<li>Some subjects (math, physics, etc.) offer, and some schools require, a subject GRE exam. These are short undergraduate-level questions. Note that the math subject GRE includes abstract math (e.g., abstract algebra, number theory, real analysis) and is therefore unlikely to be appropriate for non-math majors, even those with a strong background in "computational" math.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>There are a number of limitations to both GREs in terms of predicting research success, but this is the only standardized metric admissions committees have access to. The weight given to the different sections of the GRE and the subject tests can vary substantially among departments. For example, in STEM subjects, near-perfect math scores on the general GRE are not at all unusual, while near-perfect verbal scores are very unusual. That said, it is unlikely that a super-high score on the general GRE will have much impact, though a strong score on the subject GRE may have some impact (if your field has a subject GRE).</p>\n<p>A low GRE score can be offset by a strong research record highlighted in the SOP and letters of reference. The SOP and letters of reference can also be used to make the admissions committee aware of any extenuating circumstances that may have led to the low GRE scores. A strong GPA can also help offset low GRE scores.</p>\n<p>A particularly effective way to offset a low GRE is to retake the GRE. In many regions of the world, the GRE General Test is offered year-round via computerized administration at a testing center, and your scores are given to you immediately upon completion. Upon receiving a lower-than-expected GRE score, you can, and should, immediately register for another GRE exam and begin preparing. Because of the short turn-around time, any preparation you did for the previous GRE should allow you to prepare much more quickly this time.</p>\n<p>You are technically permitted to take the GRE General Test once every three weeks, or five times a year. However, repeat testings are detrimental to your schedule, morale, and finances, so it might be best to keep taking the test only until you receive a satisfactory score that you feel will represent your target school's applicant criteria, <em>not until you receive the best score you believe is possible for you</em>. In particular, improving your GRE scores is a time-consuming and tedious endeavor, so you should carefully consider whether there are other areas that may be a better use of your energies.</p>\n<p>Once you have received the score you are satisfied with, the ETS offers a service to allow you to selectively determine which scores you provide to schools you are applying to, called <a href=\"https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about/scoreselect\" rel=\"noreferrer\">ScoreSelect</a>. This way, you can present your best cumulative score to the applications committee without being concerned about an older test, or one where extenuating circumstances made you perform worse than expected.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>After test day, you can send additional score reports for a fee, and select from these options for each report you'd like to send:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>Most Recent option — Send your scores from your most recent test administration</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>All option — Send your scores from all test administrations in the last five years</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Any option — Send your scores from one OR as many test administrations as you like from the last five years</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>You will select by specific test dates, so your scores are all from the same testing session.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This applies to both general and subject GREs:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The ScoreSelect option is available for both the GRE® revised General Test and GRE® Subject Tests, and can be used by anyone with reportable scores from the last five years.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Again, the GRE (particularly the General GRE) is a ‘filter’, nothing more. In many cases, even applicants with low GREs will be considered and not automatically discarded. Most top admissions panels do not accept one candidate over another simply based on GRE. Some grad schools don’t even require candidates to submit GREs.</p>\n<p>In some fields, the Subject GRE is given significantly more weight than the General GRE, and so a low Subject Test score can be more harmful to a borderline application. Since the Subject Test is usually offered twice in the fall (September and October), it can be to your advantage to register for both sittings. This way, you can mitigate a poor showing on the September sitting by a stronger showing on the October sitting; and if the September sitting yields a satisfactory score, you can simply cancel your registration for the October sitting. This tactic can also be used for the General GRE in those regions of the world where computerized testing is not available.</p>\n<h3>How are Statements of Purpose evaluated? What should I say (and avoid saying) in my statement of purpose?</h3>\n<p>Make sure you understand the conventions and expectations around statements of purpose in your field. Talk to professors in the field you trust -- and consider searching our archives, we have lots of historical questions about statements of purpose that maybe useful.</p>\n<p>Note that your SOP is a <em>professional</em> document that should explain your goals in pursuing a PhD. The SOP is <strong>not</strong> the document where you should get too personal. Don’t waste too many words discussing your childhood, or random thoughts you've had, or your theory of life. It's fine to state interests and hobbies and unrelated accomplishments, but make every word as objective (and verifiable) as you can. This is generally true, but especially so for STEM programs. Academics are impressed by crisp, concise writing.</p>\n<p>The SOP is also your chance to explain negative experiences, such as poor grades, letters, or lack of research experience. This is a tricky balance. It is important to candidly and directly address your weaknesses: it looks very out of touch if you write an aggressive SOP but never mention your awful grades, for example. At the same time, the SOP is not the place to do a lengthy post-mortem on your failures. You should tell a very simple, clear narrative: "I had personal and medical problems during my junior year, but my performance during the other three years was very strong." If you want to give a concise reason ("my father died"), you may, but don't overdo it.</p>\n<p>The SOP is also your chance to show that your application to this program is well-motivated. If you have already spoken to a professor and there is mutual interest in working together, you should definitely mention it here. If you are deeply familiar with a professor's work -- or have deep experience in the same niche area as a particular professor -- this is a great time to mention it.</p>\n<p>If you are not a native English speaker, you should consider hiring a professional editor to help you with your essay. If you have poor writing skills generally, this will be a major problem even beyond your GRE, so you should consider ways to build these skills.</p>\n<h3>How are Letters of Reference evaluated? What does a good one look like? What should I do if I can't procure strong letters?</h3>\n<p>You’ll want at least one very strong reference for a top-ten program and in many cases two strong letters (three is actually quite a stretch). As noted above, doing a senior thesis is a great way to secure a letter of recommendation. Try also to aim for at least one research internship during your undergrad. This could lead to a second strong letter from a researcher in your area. Letters from industry don’t usually have the same appeal for academics, though if you have a strong background in industry, a letter from a senior research scientist at your company may be appropriate.</p>\n<p>Ideally, a strong letter will describe your accomplishments, complement the rest of your application, and state high confidence in your ability to complete a strong PhD and have a successful career.</p>\n<p>Most applications require three letters of reference, so you absolutely must secure these letters; there is no way to proceed without three. In the worst case, these letters could simply say "Student took my class and got a B"; this is a very weak letter that will not help your application at all, but it will at least allow you to complete your application. Alternatively, you could pursue additional research or coursework experiences so that you can get a PhD.</p>\n<h3>Will I have to do an interview? How are interviews evaluated?</h3>\n<p>Most STEM positions (physics, math) do not require an interview.</p>\n<p><em>Limited content here - please help Academia.SE by filling in your expert knowledge!</em></p>\n<h3>If required, how are TOEFL scores evaluated? How much does it hurt if I have a poor score on the TOEFL?</h3>\n<p>TOEFLs are extremely important. Generally, schools have minimum TOEFL scores, and these minimums can be rather high. If your score is low, you should improve your English and retake the test; there are unlikely to be many options otherwise; taking a student whose English isn’t good enough can be a huge headache. Some schools in the US will do phone/Skype interviews with prospective international students to get a sense of their English (regardless of their TOEFL score).</p>\n<h3>Meeting the minimum requirements</h3>\n<p>Every university/department handles the stated minimum requirements differently. Sometimes a hard threshold is used such that if an application fails to meet all the minimum requirements, it will not be considered at all. Other times, the threshold is soft, and applications that do not meet all (or some) of the minimum requirements will still be considered. If you do not meet the minimum, only the department you are applying to can tell you if you are eligible to apply.</p>\n<h3>How does it affect things if I have a master's degree? If I don't have a strong application now, will a master's degree help?</h3>\n<p>If you have a poor undergraduate record, getting a master's degree might make sense. Good performance during a master's might make up for poor performance during undergraduate. On the other hand, master's degrees rarely provide funding and often require the student to pay tuition. Further, some doctoral programs prefer or require that students join right out of undergraduate. So, you will need to determine whether pursuing a master's makes sense given your goals. The other option is to take another year of undergraduate to retake coursework/exams and pursue research opportunities.</p>\n<p>If you do decide to pursue a master's degree, some <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/131717/phd-applications-can-a-good-academic-record-in-my-masters-compensate-for-a-hor\">tips</a> are to: pursue a research-based masters (not coursework-based), find an advisor who will be able to write you a strong letter of recommendation, and carefully address your experience during your own statement of purpose.</p>\n<h3>How does it affect things if I started (but didn't finish) a Ph.D. somewhere else?</h3>\n<p>Sometimes, everything goes right and it is still necessary to transfer graduate schools. Programs understand this and will give your application the corresponding consideration. In this case, a letter of recommendation from your advisor will be very helpful -- and in some cases, your advisor can even proactively help to secure your position through networking.</p>\n<p>If you have a poor record during graduate school, it can be very difficult to transfer graduate schools. As reported <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14971/academic-dismissal-from-phd-program-what-next\">here</a>, you must report your experience at the other graduate school; concealing your attendance could end your career. Beyond that, most of the advice above applies; however, it is even more important to craft a clear narrative that explains what went wrong and why things will be better at the new institution. You should definitely consider schools that are (generally speaking) less competitive than the school you are leaving.</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 38292,
"author": "M.Dax",
"author_id": 28944,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28944",
"pm_score": 6,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Note that, in many of the top STEM PhD programs (I speak from a Computer Science perspective), research experience trumps everything else. So even if you have an average/slightly-below-average GPA, you can always try and compensate by (1) being extremely active in research in your last one-two years of undergrad, and hopefully getting a publication or two out (2) doing extra work (this could overlap with (1)) so that you have excellent recommendations. Finally, it is often the case that a lot of 'brilliant' students have no idea who they want to work with or what their research focus is. This is a major weakness in applications. You can always gain a competitive edge by identifying potential advisers early and initiating contact. Read the papers that come out of the group you would be interested in joining. This will enable you to objectively validate your interest in your statement when you submit the application. No adviser would trade an enthusiastic, energetic, focused candidate for someone clueless (and often arrogant, on account of merely having superior grades).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 118041,
"author": "theoreticool",
"author_id": 98934,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98934",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>Short answer: Admissions is similar but not quite the same at each graduate institution and thus you should follow the guidelines as outlined by each school and department you are applying to. Dates and requirements may vary, but not by much. Yes, you are correct - the general practice in U.S. schools is that if a certain aspect of your application is weak, the strong components have the capacity to \"offset\" the weak areas. However, this is highly contingent upon whether the graduate school requires a minimum GPA and/or GRE score, as well as what parts of the application matter most to the program you are applying for.</p>\n\n<p>Elaborating on the short answer:\nMost U.S. undergraduate and graduate programs take on at least somewhat of a holistic approach, i.e. a focus on the overall prospective candidate, whereby one's application is considered for its overall content. For example, if your statement of purpose is very strong, it could offset a less-than-stellar GRE score. Within the U.S., it is often the case that your admissions application (as well as conditions for timely progress in your program after being admitted) have two different sets of requirements that must be followed: that of the graduate school and that of your prospective department. Therefore, when applying to schools, it is important to read up on both the graduate school and the department. The general graduate admissions application requirements might differ from your department's requirements in minute ways. For example, your application might not ask for a writing sample, but the department website states an expectation for a writing sample to be sent to the graduate coordinator's email.</p>\n\n<p>Keeping in mind that each school (and program within the school) might consider applications differently because it is typically based on admission/approval from both the graduate school and the department you are applying for, many institutions not only state the application components but moreover will tell you the extent to which certain factors are weighted. Some graduate schools emphasize that they would prefer students with a GRE score of x or higher, typically with an asterisk that states that the GRE is one factor of many and students are still encouraged to apply even if they do not meet the desired score. This information is generally listed in the admissions FAQ section of the graduate school and/or department website(s). If the information is not provided, you can contact the department's graduate coordinator and/or prospective adviser on the matter. </p>\n\n<p>Within the social sciences, the statement of purpose and letters of recommendation are arguably the most important components. If the program is writing intensive, it is likely that the verbal reasoning and analytical writing portions of the GRE might matter significantly more than the quantitative reasoning section. (I have also been told that some programs do not require GRE scores, but it seems this is mostly the case for Master's programs rather than Ph.D.'s.) </p>\n\n<p>Again, the extent to which each component of your application matters will vary greatly amongst schools and programs, but the general rule to follow is that if your undergraduate grades/transcripts are not very good, you should excel in the other parts of your application and communicate relevant strengths to your recommenders so that they know to highlight these more positive aspects within their letters of recommendation.</p>\n\n<p>On another note, thankfully many Ph.D. applications in the U.S. now reserve a section for you to explain any \"blemish\" on your record; this could be anything from explaining a bad grade to elaborating on a particular skill that the application did not allow you to do. Think carefully about how you would like to word the weaker parts of your application, but this section is indeed reviewed and considered. If your application does not have a place to state this, I have found that emailing the graduate coordinator works just the same, for they might be able to add a note to your file for you (just make sure to ask nicely!). Lastly, communication with prospective advisers (if applicable) is key; not only can they (potentially) vouch for your strength as a prospective candidate in ways that an application cannot, but getting to know you ahead of time could also assist them if they are from an institution whereby advisers can nominate their incoming students for awards, funding, etc.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929/"
] |
38,243 |
<p>My adviser asked me to come up with a research topic for a PhD student. As I'm expected to graduate in early 2016, my mentor considered this a good "exercise" for a tenure track career. Of course, this is not intended to be final, I am supposed to propose to my adviser this topic and then it will be decided whether it is good enough to suggest a direction of a student's research. </p>
<p>Based on the field of interest, I intend to propose a problem which I find interesting (and would gladly research myself, if the time permitted). To that purpose, I defined a number of milestones, covering some likely scenarios in the research progress. I also prepared around 20 papers, some of which serve as an introduction to the problems of the field of interest, while others are state-of-the-art approaches closely related to the topic.</p>
<p>This is basically more than I had when I begun my research. So, in that regard, I'm confident that I did a reasonable job so far. Of course, if you have any remarks, don't hesitate to add them.</p>
<p>My problem is that it would currently be very hard for me to come up with more than 2-3 topics prepared in that way. </p>
<p>Also, I can't help but wonder whether the topic I would suggest is "good enough" to lead the student to conduct quality research and eventually to a PhD. In this particular case, my mentor will shape the topic and guide the student so there is no worry. Besides that, I am confident that the suggested topic is a problem in the field, as I thought and investigated it a long before the request came from my adviser.</p>
<p>I find it a bit hard to believe that I'll always have such problems ready in my head, so I assume that I'll have to start from somewhere in forming one.</p>
<p>So, what methodology should I follow when defining research topics? </p>
|
[
{
"answer_id": 41745,
"author": "Todd Booth",
"author_id": 26573,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/26573",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I'm just a new PhD, so be careful of my advice. (I have been teaching about 10 different MSc courses though).</p>\n\n<p>I disagree with your adviser. IMHO, it should be the PhD student who picks the detailed topic (which maybe you will reject). Of course, you may provide some very strong constraints, such as that it must be relevant to the funding projects you have, etc. If you don't like their choice, you can always steer them in your direction. However, force the student to think and express what they have a passion for (again, based on your strong constraints). With my approach, perhaps the student will come up with a topic, that in your opinion, is better than what you came up with.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think you should prepare 20 papers for the student. Force the student to do the Scopus, ProQuest advanced searches. Perhaps you will not like the results of their searches. If so, just steer them a little bit, in the right direction (perhaps with a added keywords to the search). If a student's search is rejected by you, they will be more in the listening mode, whereby they can gain knowledge from you when you explain exactly what they did wrong. For example, you might reject their search and inform the student that their search results included papers with no citations (which you will perhaps not allow).</p>\n"
},
{
"answer_id": 42104,
"author": "jakebeal",
"author_id": 22733,
"author_profile": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22733",
"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "<p>I think this is a great exercise. One of the hardest things to cope with in the transition from graduate student to PI is broadening your focus as you move from a \"worker\" role toward a \"manager\" role in research. This doesn't mean you're not going to be continuing to research, but you'll likely have a lot less time to do it than you think, and you need to prepare for how you will supervise where previously you would execute.</p>\n\n<p>That said, I think you're currently approaching this too much like you are going to be the one <em>doing</em> the research, rather than their supervisor. I would suggest limiting yourself to finding a topic, milestones, and rough criteria for success: the rest is what you want to coach a student as <em>they</em> look into the background, compare in depth with alternate approaches, etc.</p>\n\n<p>The other thing I would advise is that you need to separate <em>your</em> research goals from the goals you want the student to work on. Every student is a gamble: some work out well, while others drop out, burn out, should never have been in the program to begin with, or just plain aren't a good match for you or your research area. For this reason, I believe you should never have a student be critical path on an aspect of your research that deeply matters to you: that will put you in a position where you are likely to be trying to push them and micromanage them, because you are worried about the success of the work, rather than the success of the student.</p>\n\n<p>Instead, think about the \"paths not taken\" on your research, the things that you think would be interesting and scientifically valuable, but that you aren't going to do, the sort of stuff that pads out many papers' \"discussion\" and \"future work\" sections. These sorts of \"sibling projects\" to your critical path are likely to be a rich vein of seeds for student projects.</p>\n"
}
] |
2015/02/04
|
[
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38243",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14133/"
] |
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