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Guidelines for creating/designing an exam?
Are there (general) guidelines for creating an exam? I am a TA, and one of my tasks is it to design a written exam for the students. The students know that it will be based on one book, and on which chapters. I am using the questions after the chapters as guideline (and modify them). Course theme is (from nature science) derivation of formulae (which are also done in the book) and calculation of values by using formulae from the book.
Now my problem is: How many points should I award to which part? The students can choose between either using a hand-written cheat sheet or nothing. In the first case the formulas will not be awarded with points, in the latter they will. But I am not sure how much points I should give to a specific formula. 1 Point, if correct, 0, if not? 5, if completely correct, 2.5, if partly correct, 0, if not?
Thus, is there a general way of doing that, or do I have to experiment with it?

It would be much helpful if you mention the course, is it a design course? Analysis course? History course? etc

Nature Science course, calculation of different material parameters and derivation of formulae

I'm not familiar with such a course, but for my engineering courses I like to do the following. I try to ask questions that has answers with multiple independent steps. I break the points based on the importance/difficulty of each step (avoiding carry-over steps). I try to design the course based on solved examples and end of chapter questions from other different books (other than the one the student use) taking into account the a similar level of difficulty. Also, try to ask colleagues for previous exams and to go over your exam. Remember to solve it and time yourself while doing that.

They had no homework in that course, and the course is a first-time course, i.e. nothing before. If I can solve the exam within 15-20 minutes, how much can I then assume for the students (90 minutes atm)?

I would say for a one hour exam, you would need to be able to solve it in 40 min. Remember you are accounting for the time needed for an average student to solve the exam. Not an A student.

Just as a sidenote, since this is the first time the course is being taught and you don't have any reference materials, be absolutely ready to curve the exam if the average is much lower than expected. I've had bad experiences with TAs and professors who made exams too long and had to eventually succumb to curving the course grade lest half the students fail. At the end of the day you're probably not going to get it right your first try, so trial-and-error is important throughout semesters as the course evolves.

In my opinion the most important question is what should the exam measure?
Depending on the institution, the type of exam, and the course this can vary a lot. Basically, exams are to learning what thermometers are to temperature. You want to have it as precise as possible, and not to build a barometer instead.
Once you know what you want to measure, check it once more: are these expectations realistic given the course and training given to the students? Are they enough to ensure that passing students will benefit from the follow-up courses? Here you will usually need some coordination with other courses.
I advise not to adapt the exam to the level of effort actually produced by the students, but to the expected level of effort. Since my students seem to produce much less effort than I expect, I usually give quite low grades (I always warn them of this fact). This may seem harsh, but in fact I think I am doing them a favor not to blind them with artificially boosted grades that let them believe they will do great with little effort in the following years, which is usually a lie. I have seen too many students stuck in third year with no hope to go forward, after hardly passing the first two years thanks to very generous grades. Of course, this point of view is hugely dependent on the environment.
An exam should be too short rather than too long given the allowed time. If it is too long, you will have to boost the grade to be fair, but that will probably give too high grades to students who master only a small portion of the course. If the exam is too short, you can still measure the level of mastery they achieved. The only exception is when you really want to measure their speed, but it is rarely relevant. My personal guideline is that I let my students three to four times as much time than I take to write the complete solution to the exam (I have been trained to take exams quickly all along my studies, your preferred ratio may differ but it is useful to establish a ratio in a way that ensures that time is not too much of an issue).
I advise against always giving more points to more difficult questions, especially for numerical grades (a note is in order : in France we grade on 20 points and the passing grade is always 10, and in higher education one can almost always compensate a grade below 10 by better grades in other courses, even in minors). The point is to have a grading scheme which actually matches what you want to measure. I thus usually assign about 8 points to very basic or classical questions, 8 points to questions that are easy but necessitate some understanding of the material (as opposed to reproducing a method seen ten time without the need to actually think), and only 4 points to more sophisticated questions, even if they are long to solve. I try to make this clear to students, so that they first solve the easier questions. The more sophisticated questions thus only serve to do the difference between student with a correct mastery on the course, from truly bright ones. I also want to prevent students who don't really understand what is going on in the course but manage to reproduce standard exercises to get a passing grade. This grading scheme is not necessarily appropriate in other systems, but the important point is that your grading must be tailored to your goal, without letting other principles getting in your way.
Another point to think about is whether you want to have your exam very close to the course itself (which is what student prefer and what gives the highest grades) or on the contrary to have parts which are significantly different, but rely strongly on the course material. This later choice is in order if you want to measure how much your students are able to use what they learned in another context. Be warned that results are often disappointing, and choose this option with care.
On the long run, try to adjust your exam depending not on the percentage of passing grades (unless you are forced into it, which often happens), but depending on the correlation between passing grades and future success of students. The information is often difficult to obtain, but if you realize that your students struggle to get a passing grade with you but have good success in follow-up courses nonetheless, you should be more gentle in your questions or grading. On the contrary, if many of your passing students struggle a lot with standard follow-up courses, you should probably be harsher.

In education, it is normally advisable to develop assessment prior to teaching. This allows the teacher to be sure that he or she is teaching to the assessment that they designed. When the assessment is made after teaching there is a risk that you will assess things you did not cover thoroughly or even assess things you never taught. Many scoff at this but it is common.
In terms of how much weight to give to various sections, this again is base on what you consider most important. Skills that are more important for students to show mastery should be worth more and lesser skills should be worth less. This is a modified application of bull's eye curriculum.
Lastly,all students should face the same conditions during the assessment. This means everyone has a cheat sheet and their formulas are marked or no one. If the conditions are different you cannot compare the results of one student to another, unless you are conducting an experiment and want to see if a cheat sheet makes a difference. If you can't compare results it is difficult to know who learned something and who didn't

Overall your advice seems fine, but this sentence didn't make much sense to me: "When the assessment is made after teaching there is a risk that you will assess things you did not cover thoroughly or even assess things you never taught." I quite often adjusted test questions and content emphasis (from tests I gave when previously teaching the same course) to account to variations in what I ACTUALLY covered in the present class.

fair enough, but many teachers fail to make adjustments because the forget or get distract.

Yes, there are general guidelines for creating an exam. As a TA, some of the guidelines aren't under your control, but here is how the instructor of record goes about things:

Determine the goals for the course. One goal might be "students should be able to apply these 10 equations appropriately in new situations."
Provide regular opportunities for students to practice the skills needed for this goal - practice applying equations in new situations. This can be done via homework or quizzes where students get feedback.
Design an exam that appropriately measures student ability to complete the goals. Each goal should have a number of questions that match the importance of that goal. The number of points for the full exam is usually determined at the start of the class.
Make each part of each question worth points of appropriate difficulty. If there are 100 points for the exam, and each question/equation requires roughly 10 minutes for a student to complete, then there should only be 4-5 questions for a 1-hour exam, and you would divide the points to match the difficulties of the questions. An easier equation problem might be worth 5 points, a harder problem might be broken into parts but be worth 25 points total.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is to "take" the exam yourself, and make sure you can easily award points to each appropriate answer or partial answer. Adjust the question parts so that the student answers are easy to grade (0 for poor or missing to partial credit to full credit). Ideally, you find a colleague to also "take" the exam to warn you about vague instructions or likely errors.
It surprises me that there are no old exams for you to look at. At my university, it is standard to make an old exam or a "sample" exam available to students (and new TAs) so everyone knows exactly what is expected. You may wish to look for graduate students who have taught the course before and ask to see an old exam.

A few tips based on my experience teaching undergraduate students for almost 20 years now:

Make the first exam "easy."  First-time teachers are usually the ones who make the most difficult exams.  If your experience is the same as mine, you will be surprised at how many will fail your "easy" exam.  Make the second exam "easier."  Again you will be surprised at how many will fail it.  Keep on making it "easier" until you find an acceptable percentage of passing students.
Answer the exam before giving it and time yourself.  Give the students three times the amount of time to answer it.  So, for example, for a 1-hour exam, you should be able to answer it in 20 minutes (under the same conditions as the students').

I don't think the exams should be tailored to match a given percentage of passing students. In certain situation (e.g. student have been appropriately selected in the first place and have worked appropriately) the passing percentage should be huge, and in others (e.g. students are not selected and everyone complains about the level of students the year above), it would be better to give harder exams. The student may vary from year to year, but the goal of a course should be more stable than that, and the exam should accurately reflect the mastering of the material.


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intellectual property during paid research
I was working on a project as a researcher. The whole project was financed by an external grant from a private foundation (nonprofit organization) and my salary was paid through this grant during my work as a researcher.
During the project, I faced a problem that I had to solve it numerically. I had my own license and I paid for the software, the software that I used to solve the problem, I have not asked the principal investigator (PI) of the project to refund my license payment.
I solved all the numerical problems, I sent the results and outputs to the PI and we wrote the manuscript out of our findings.
Now at the end of my contract, the PI of the project asked me to send him all the data that I have produced during my work and I said I will send all the data except that I cannot send him the input file of the numerical solutions using my software; I mean the method that I used to solve the problems. He said I have to send them as I was paid to work on project. I said I sent you the results, but the method of solving the problems is my intellectual property and I have paid for the software by myself, but he insisted that does not give me any right to keep them.
Who is right? Are these my intellectual properties?
I have to mention that in the contract that I had signed there was nothing about the copyrights and intellectual property.
The solutions are not a big deal, but the point is, there is a possibility that they use them in their future research without mentioning my name.

@Saturnus, Thank you. As there is no information in my contract, I thought to have some information before asking them. I will try to approach them indirectly.

@Saturnus, No, we just reported the results, we only mentioned the closed form of the equation that we solved in the paper.

I'm no lawyer, but in in the absence of a contract, I still tend to think that 1) the organization that brought you in to work on this is entitled to all the work product, even if the funding came from some external agency; 2) they should definitely credit you for the work, should it lead to other things like publications; 3) it's very strange that if some organization brought you in to work on this, you would have to pay for the license out of pocket; 4) whether you paid for that license doesn't change the answer to the other question of ownership.

In which country did you work?

@FredDouglis, Thank you, I will definitely consider your comments before talking to them and claiming anything seriously.

@FuzzyLeapfrog, In Sweden.

It would be hard to argue that you are in a position to withhold the fruits of your paid-for labor from the university. The PI cannot publish unless he knows the methods.   You did what you were paid for, whether you paid for the software license or the school did.

Did you get prior permission from your supervisor to use software you paid for? If so, did you explain your view of the IP implications before getting permission?

@ScottSeidman, Thank you, I did not withhold the fruits :D Actually I sent him all the results, but I think it is not fair if they use my efforts in future without my consent. It is like I, who is not a musician, pay a composer to compose a song and then claim that I did compose that!

The method is part of the package.  Withholding credit for the development of the method is failure to cite.   They will most likely continue to cite the paper you publish in future works.

@PatriciaShanahan, Unfortunately not, I did not discuss anything; at that time I could not imagine that one day I will face such situation. I paid for the license of the software before joining this group.

In the meantime, while you hash this out, you are a "problem" for the research group.  Reputation will follow.

@ScottSeidman, LOL! Right, I agree :D

I am not sure what discipline you are in, but I have been working on software development with a team of health, social, and computer science researchers and from what I have learned, maybe this can help.
Basically, since the grant paid for your salary it is the institution that has the most stake in for the intellectual property, which covers the PI. For instance, I helped develop and test the software I mentioned at University A, but since then have transferred to University B. I still work with the same team from University A, but any work we do with the software at University B (even when collaborating with the same team from University A), I have to pay University A a licensing fee for use of the software. They do not charge me a lot, granted, but they still require it, because they view it as theirs. Even though, I was a major contributor to the software.
By extension, the PI should have the right to any materials associated with the project. When you mentioned that you used your own software for the calculations, were you asked by the PI to purchase this or did you go out and get it on your own? If the latter, I suggest that in the future, when materials are needed for a project, simply explain to the PI that resources are needed for the work. You shouldn't pay for them out-of-pocket. If you still have questions about ownership of the work, the institution has lawyers that deal with intellectual property that can help you figure out what is who's. I have had to work with them for our software project to make sure that we are in the clear for doing work outside of University A with our product. Hope this helps!

Thank you! Well, by explaining your experience, you made it clear that I am on the weaker side. I wait for more comments, otherwise yours is the answer.

I am not a lawyer, and if you are serious about not turning over some of your work product, you should consult one to check whether doing to is legally OK.
When choosing techniques and software for paid work, you have at least a moral obligation, if not a legal obligation, to your employer to avoid choices that will affect the employer's intellectual property rights.
If what you think is the best way of doing something would limit their rights to your work product, you should discuss it with your supervisor, in this case your PI. They need to decide whether the trade-off is a good one, and permitted by their contracts with the institution and the grant authority.
That would apply even if the IP transfer were to a third party. Making a decision that gives you rights to some of the project IP also has elements of self-dealing, and needs especially careful prior discussion and authorization.
It seems to me it is far too late now to tell the PI that you have unilaterally made a choice that gave you IP rights to some of your project-related work product.

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Does anybody have some research papers writing advices?
I am writing a biology research paper. My topic is related to organs transplantation (current issues, ethical problems etc). I have written a draft and showed it to my professor. She was satisfied with the content and research, but she told that I need to work on my writing. According to her, I didn't follow the structure, but I have no idea how am I supposed to build my research paper. Can somebody give me suggestions or recommend me articles about research paper writing?

Best thing to do is read some published papers in your field and see how their structure works.

See also: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/108626/is-it-plagiarism-to-copy-the-form-and-structure-of-an-article

Does your school have a Writing Center?

Structure
For a research paper in the biological sciences, you’ll often have the following structure:

Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion

Some journals, especially the wet lab heavy ones, will have the following format:

Abstract
Introduction
Results
Discussion
Methods

A reason for this is that the methods can be very long, technical, and detract from the big ideas that came from the research.
For a literature review, the format is more flexible, but here’s a fairly common one:

Abstract
Introduction
Interstitials
Discussion

For a meta analysis, the following structure is also common:

Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results or Interstitials
Discussion

Interstitials are essentially topic dependent headers that are central and specific to the paper and area of research it explores.
Section Headers
Abstract
A brief account of the research, methods used, results, and maybe a sentence on impact. For a literature review, a description of ‘why now?’ For example, has it been a long time since the last literature review in the field, have new tools or experimental results provided added context to historical results? This is generally around 200 words.
Introduction
For an experimental paper, introduce your topic, follow it with a brief literature review of prior publications that have influenced or led you to develop your research question, then state your research question. Depending on the journal format, this can sometimes also include a brief account of the methods and core results. For a literature review, introduce your topic and provide a more thorough account of why you’re writing the literature review now.
Interstitials
For a literature review, following the introduction you can usually dive into the research you reviewed. These ‘interstitials’ will be multiple sections titled in a way that explains core ideas from the research or hints at individual stages of development in the line of inquiry your covering.
Methods
Generally, you can write this with the following audience in mind: a researcher who has picked up your paper and is contemplating reproducing your experiments. If you conducted any experiments, this is where you give an exhaustive, detailed account of the techniques, tools, and approach - generally without discussing rationale. If you’re writing a literature review or meta analysis you may discuss how you searched, selected, and honed in on the papers you decided to include. For example, what framework did you use for finding, selecting, and analyzing publications? That said, literature reviews often omit the methods section altogether.
Results
This can be a simple account of the results you got or, if the experiments were run iteratively and sought to hone in on a very specific mechanism, an account of the logic and rationale between each experiment and the results. For a literature review this section is generally omitted, but omission is less common for a meta analysis.
Discussion
For a literature review, this is where you’ll summarize, enumerate the gaps you’ve identified, and discuss future research directions. For a research paper or meta analysis, this is where you’ll discuss your results, their implications, the limitations, and propose relevant follow-up experiments.

You went to your professor for at least a reason.
If you want to follow her advice,
go read her own published papers and emulate their structure.

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Masters at a local uni or job
I am a final year undergraduate (Computer Science; decent uni in a third world country) and one of my long-term goals is to pursue a Ph.D. (preferably at a top 20 uni).
For some reasons, I didn't apply for Masters abroad this year. I have a decent job lined-up. I have the following choices:

Join the company and apply for Masters next year (Fall 2019).
Join a Masters program at a local uni and then apply for Ph.D. after two years.

What would be the best option? (I have some research experience but no publications yet).

Since you are in a dilemma, I would suggest that you join the company and experience it. They are usually two different things. Once you experience working for a company, you will know what is best for you. Staying in academia or not will be a rather easy choice for you.
This is something only you can know.
And if you can work it out I suggest you to find a company that allows you to do Masters while working.

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Paper contributions and first authorship
Twelve months ago I started working on a project (which began at that time) with my advisor.
Six months ago another student (refered to as A in the following) joined the project.
We are now publishing a paper on our results. My advisor asked me if I would find it reasonable that A’s name was put before mine in the article. Our advisor’s reason is that she believes A has contributed a lot more to the publishable results and making figures for the article.
I agree with this latter part: student A has definitely been the working horse behind these results and made the graphics for the article. However, my contributions were in the first 6 months of the project, laying the foundations for the setup, etc.
I’m not sure how to feel about my advisor’s question. Is my contribution worth less because they are further back in time? And does making article-figures count as “ammunition” to be put first in an article?

Authorship questions are among the most difficult aspects of academia and where feelings may run high. First, it seems you have a reasonably good working relationship with your advisor, it is good that she asked you. Some would tell you, some would just do it. So from this perspective, your advisor does what she (in this case) should.
The question of ordering of names is tricky and there are no simple rules, or actually there are simple rules, but they may be difficult to apply in the individual case due to a variety of reasons, including anything from personality clashes to just simple difficulties to asses who has done most. There are examples of point systems where authors are given points depending on what they have done and how much. In one case, the study design and writing (discussion) had much higher weight than aspects of experimentation and data analysis. the problem is that one should agree on such matters before starting on the writing.
So, to assess your and your co-author's contributions, you need to split the project down in at least four parts:

Who came up with the original idea and designed the study (high credit)
Who did the experimental work (equivalent) that generated the data
Who did the analysis (equivalent) of the data
Who contributed to interpretation and discussion towards the conclusions

Each of these have some weight with 1 and 4 most often larger than 2 and 3. Then when several persons split a chore you need to figure out roughly how much of each point each person has contributed. This would then give you a profile of who has done the most (important) work etc. I completely agree with anyone who would say this is easier said then done but you probably see the principle.
So to the question(s). If you have work earlier or later on this is of less significance, it is what type of work you have done and of course how much. figures can be extremely important. Good graphics convey the message in condensed form. plotting data is, however, in most cases not much more than a technical issue. Creating conceptualizations of processes, events etc. can be key to the paper so making figures can be a considerable input to be counted.
You can also check the text on this link for a text on authorship. An example of how authorship can be determined is given on AuthorOrder

Don't forget to also ask: "Who wrote the majority of the actual paper?"

Fact is that the advisor came up with the idea behind the experiment, the theory, did the data analysis and wrote most of the paper. So all that was left was the experimental work and making figures (roughly speaking!). Even if I am equal with regards to the experimental work with student A, student A at least made the figures....

Peter gave a good summary of the types of issues encountered in determining authorship, maybe I can answer some of your more specific questions:
“Is my contribution worth less, because they are further back in time?” — It’s neither less nor more. There is no unique scale to weigh the different important requirements of authorship, and except in clear-cut cases, it is somewhere between a judgment call and a negotiation.
“Does making article-figures count as “ammunition” to be put first in an article?” — The typical standard to judge authorship issues is the intellectual (or scientific) contribution of each co-author. Having the ideas, setting the foundations for the work is very important. But obtaining the results, analyzing them, presenting them in a convincing manner (which includes making figures, writing the paper, etc.) are also crucial: without it, there would be no paper!
“I’m not sure how to feel about my advisor’s question.” — We can’t answer that for your, as it also depends on your relationship to your advisor. She has more experience than you in makings such decisions: do you trust her to do the right thing? (at least according to her) Or do you suspect her of trying to screw you over?

Finally, a solution may be to used footnotes to indicate equal-coauthorship, if that is something the journal accepts. This is typically indicated by a sentence like

“The first two authors contributed equally to this work”

or

“The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors”.

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Which tools should be used to produce charts in computer science research papers?
What are good choices to produce charts in computer science research papers? For example, I think Figure 8 from
Staring into the Abyss: An Evaluation of Concurrency Control with One Thousand Cores (pdf), included below, is great. What tools were used to produce it?

Source: Xiangyao Yu et al., ibid., p. 215.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1095/31940

You could ask the authors of that paper what tool they used to produce the figure you like.

I don't care for questions like this, as they'll elicit meaningless laundry list.  I'll throw in R.

ANother option: R. http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/pub/Main/StatGraphCourse/graphscourse.pdf

You can use TIKZ and PGFPLOTS packages in latex to produce beautiful figures, see these pages for some examples, TIKZ examples and PGFPLOTS examples.
Matlab and python are powerful software for producing nice plots.
Barchart creation using Matlab, Barchart Matlab examples, and Python example, Python matplot example.

Matlab plots look quite bad if one exports them without significantly tweaking the default settings. The lines are too thin, the characters are too small, the font is different from the one in your paper, and up to a few versions ago the colormap was not printer-friendly.

And, to answer the second part of the question: figure 8 in the paper OP mentioned does not look like Tikz at all.

(That said, +1 for the Tikz suggestion -- I don't want to seem too critical of this post.)

@FedericoPoloni by Matlab you can produce high-quality plots but it needs to set the parameters carefully (I agree that the default parameters are not good.)  Also, the true point on Tikz and barchart creation using it!
I just mentioned it for the first part of the question.
For barchart creation, Pgfplots is a very good tool.

@FedericoPoloni Matlab's default fonts are Helvetica (TeX interpreter) and Computer Modern (LaTeX interpreter), but you can easilly change the font to, say, Palatino or Times - compatible with exportfig. Default setup and default export produce awful grapics, but it is not that difficult to make them look nice. You have to know what you want to do.

@FedericoPoloni  Matlab + Inkscape = a good solution.

@FedericoPoloni The overall look of matplotlib plots can be improved by importing seaborn (another python plotting lib building on pandas). You do not need to use any seaborn features, just importing the package overrides the standard matplotlib style to look somewhat like this.

To add to other answers that will probably suggest some nice, specific software:
Use whatever you are comfortable with. I personally don't think this figure 8 is that special, and I don't even think it has any features that cannot easily be done with something as common as Excel. As also mentioned in some comments: even the potential graphical powerhouse Matlab will produce crappy figures if you use the standard settings. The same for some other "go-to" software packages. But you have to be able to use them.
In almost all of the mentioned software you can adapt (almost) everything, and some default settings look better than others (one of the reasons why Excel has such a bad reputation).
The most important thing is that you decide how a graph should look, and actually make it look like that. Don't settle for default colors / font sizes and line widths! Whatever software you use to get there is your choice.
If you're fluent in MS Office: probably you should just use Excel. If you like to write scripts and use commands instead of clicking everywhere: Matlab might be an option. If spent 3 years getting good at using Graphpad but don't like how the graphs look? Just adapt them to fit your tastes, don't be limited by the default settings.
And when exporting them use the right settings. Many journals accept vector graphics, which will always look better, but the journal has to accept those. Figures also need to be the right size. Everything can look perfect printed 12 cm wide, but when your graph has to fit one column (8.5 cm), the same graph will look too small with unreadable fonts.

+1 Design is so much more important than software.  You can make terrible design with the best software.

I'd actually go far enough to reverse the theme of your last paragraph. Ideally authors should (re)read the journal guidelines/conference guidelines for figures before they actually start producing plots to check what output formats are acceptable. It's also nice to give a little thought to what they'll look like in black and white, for those few still more comfortable with paper.

Adding to the other answers for the sake of completeness:
gnuplot
Gnuplot is always an option if you do not want to use Python or R. It is freely available and can be used on most platforms. Also plotting can be automated using shell scripts.
Inkscape
Inkscape is a vectorgraphics tool that can be used to create nice graphics. While it provides a rudimentary function plotter and can render TeX code I would advise against using it to create graphics.
In enhancing plots however, Inkscape can be invaluable. You can use Inkscape to edit svg and pdf files created by other plotting tools, like matplotlib, gnuplot, etc. I use this for grouping, recoloring, editing and adding labels, and other fine tuning tasks.
Inkscape is also available on most platforms. To edit a pdf file just open it with Inkscape (File -> Open).
Off Topic: Literature
As others have mentioned, it is not the tool, it is what you do with it. While this might not be a direct answer to the question, I would like to recommend the  Edward Tufte's book Envisioning Information. It explores several facets of what makes a good visualization of data and how to highlight what you actually want to show.

Currently, the ggplot package in R is the best for producing very clean plots. matplotlib is fine, but it's not as easy or as flexible as ggplot. seaborn is another python package that wraps around matplotlib to make it a little easier.
But ultimately, as @VonBeche says, do what's most comfortable for you.

PGFPlots
@Habi mentioned it already, but I thought I would go into more detail about why PGFPlots.
Here is what might happen over the course of a particular piece of work.

I do some work, gathers some bulk data, simulate some things
I have an analysis Jupyter Notebook that loads up the raw data, and a Subset it, and analysis it in jupyter, using what ever plotting tools I like.
(or 2b.) I export the key data from jupyter into a CSV (that I version control along side my latex documents)
I write up code to plot it using PGFplots into my paper

Then stuff happens.

A university event wants me to talk about my current research -- got to make a slideshow

copy paste that pgfplots description into a Beamer presentation, change the colours to match my university theme. And adjust the scale. (Takes only a few minutes)

I need to have a poster for a conference

Copy paste the the plot description, tweak the sizing. Use the poster color scheme. Again minutes.

I screwed up the analysis, the plots in my paper are wrong (hopefully not too wrong).

Click "Run All in Jupyter"
Click Compile in my LaTeX editor
Done

Vs if I was exporting a Plot (and a png, of even svg or pdf, rather than CSV data) from a plotting tool (like matplotlib). I would have to mess around trying to get the size, resolution and color right for all the different versions of the plot -- I find that is much easier to do in latex.
And I would need to manage all those different plot files.
It is still automatable,
but now my presentation settings (style), live with my Analysis (in Jupyter), rather than in with my writeup (in LaTeX).
Side bonus is that Plots produced with PGFPlots use the same font as the rest of your document, and can use named colours you have defined in your document. And the text ends up highlightable (rather than as a image of text).

VonBeche's advice "Use whatever you are comfortable with" is best, no shame in using excel if it works.
That said, may I suggest Plots.jl? It has one of the simplest, but most flexible apis I've seen. The biggest advantage over others is it tries to display something for whatever data you throw at it. It can be as simple as:
plot(rand(10,5))

More complex examples such as animated gifs:
can be easily built with only a few more lines of code
Best of all, it is a front-end to many of the packages mentioned here (PGFplots, TIKZ, Matplotlib, others such as Plotly), so you can always change your final output format later
It is available as a package for the Julia language - which is a similar system to matlab


text:
Qualifications needed to teach math/statistics at US university
A friend with a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Statistics would like to teach math/statistics at a US university which is not research oriented as a full-time faculty member. To do so, it seems like it might be necessary to have a PhD. However, my friend is not interested in statistics research, so she's thinking instead about trying for a PhD in Math Education. Is this viable? Are there alternative routes?

A PhD in Math Education will most likely be research into how to teach math (and maybe, how to teach it to 5-year-olds, not to university students!). That is not at all the same thing as training to be a math teacher.

@alephzero: Research into mathematical teaching, learning, cognition....at all levels, yes.  I was trying to get at this in my answer.

A friend with a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Statistics would like to teach math/statistics at a US university which is not research oriented as a full-time faculty member.

I have some questions.  First, do you mean a specific university, or will any university do?  Second, do you really mean "university," or could it be a "four-year college" or a community college?  Third, by full-time do you really just mean full-time, or do you mean tenure-track?
A few data points:

In my department (mathematics, UGA) we have faculty with master's degrees who are teaching full-time, but they are not tenure-track.  Some of these positions are "permanent" by any reasonable standard -- e.g. some of these faculty have been there for multiple decades.  A friend of mine just got hired into one of these positions, so I know a bit about them and I don't think they're going away anytime soon.  In fact my friend has a bachelor's in math and a master's in statistics.
At my PhD program's Visitation Day on Friday, I met with a woman who is a faculty member in the math department at a four-year college relatively nearby.  She has a master's degree and has been teaching there for about five years.
In some regions of the country (e.g. New York City) even community colleges tend to hire people with PhDs.  But there is a lot of variation.  You can read e.g. here for more details.  My understanding is that even in the community college scene having a doctorate makes a difference in your job titles and responsibilities.

However, my friend is not interested in statistics research, so she's thinking instead about trying for a PhD in Math Education.

The "so" confused me.  This makes as much sense to me as saying "physics" or "computer science" in place of "math education."  In other words, these are all academic fields that are closely connected to mathematics but distinct from it.  So far as I know (and I do know about the math ed PhD program at my university, although I also know it's one of the best in the US and therefore is probably not representative of all departments) being a math ed PhD student is much like being any other PhD student: you are being trained in research and implicitly/explicitly groomed for an academic research career (though many graduates will end up elsewhere).
So getting a PHD in math ed is an excellent idea if your friend is deeply interested in math ed research.  Well, and also if she can find funding: in my experience, one of the main differences between math and math ed PhD programs is that the former are much better funded than the latter.  But since you didn't mention any prior training in that area, I'm a little concerned that you are viewing this as some kind of degree for people who are interested in teaching rather than research.  That might be true for certain people and/or certain programs, but it's not true for all.
The idea of someone joining a PhD program in field X because they don't like field Y makes me very nervous.  I would certainly encourage your friend to learn as much as she can about post-secondary academic jobs available to people with master's.  A combination of math and statistics sounds rather valuable to me, and it may well be that your friend is employable now.

Many people with math ed doctorates end up in positions at teaching-oriented institutions where the job is to implement new pedagogy and to supervise and train other instructors.  If you actually want to teach at a community college, then a doctorate in math ed is arguably a more useful (attractive to employers) credential than a PhD in mathematics.

@Brian: I agree with your comment.  A lot of straight up math PhDs end up at teaching-oriented positions as well, and obviously all other things being equal, you are going to be better prepared for math-related teaching experiences if the topic of your PhD research concerned math education than straight up math.  My point is that a PhD program in X is an intense, protracted immersion in the research of X.  Just because you like teaching math does not mean that you are interested in math ed research.  (I am a counterexample!)

Thanks for the reply, @PeteL.Clark! (As an aside, I really enjoyed your write up of real induction.)
In response to your initial question: We're not looking for any particular school--any would work. It needn't be a university itself (despite the title I wrote!), a college or community college would work just as well. The position doesn't necessarily have to be tenure track, and we were thinking that it may not even be possible to get a tenure track position.

In our experience, it seems like colleges/universities are not often willing to hire full time instructors without a PhD, and faculty members at community colleges either have a PhD or somehow have other experience. This makes us feel like we need to find a route of least resistance into a teaching position. Of course, a PhD offers a lot more than just the 'qualification' to teach at most colleges/universities, but the position that my friend has in mind is one that exclusively teaches.

Concerning your comments on getting a PhD in field Y instead of field X. It doesn't seem to us (and we understand that we may be mistaken!)  that math education is as removed from math as computer science given that the end goal is teaching math. Although, it certainly may be in terms of research.

Also, perhaps I should explicitly mention our experience so far in terms of qualifications: she was offered an adjunct position at a highly ranked college in new england, but can't get a call back from community colleges. This, together with some vague prior evidence, gives us the feeling that someone with a master's degree is recognized as able to teach, but, unfortunately, most universities/colleges prefer to hire people with PhD's.

As others have also said, the field of mathematics education is very different from either mathematics or statistics. This should be clear after glancing at some research papers in a few of the standard math education journals, such as The Journal of Mathematical Behavior and Journal for Research in Mathematics Education.
On the other hand, the job market is quite a bit better for candidates in mathematics education than for candidates in mathematics, at least this was the case about 15 years ago:
More Jobs Than Job Seekers in Mathematics Education by Gabriela Montell, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 February 2002. [Freely available text copy here.]
If your friend is mostly interested in teaching mathematics at the college level, and not in researching the teaching/learning of mathematics, she may want to consider a Ph.D. program in mathematics designed for those mainly interested in teaching college level mathematics, such as the following:
Ph.D. in Mathematics with a Concentration in College Teaching at Central Michigan University (Mt. Pleasant, Michigan)
Ph.D. in Mathematics with Teaching Emphasis Requirements at Washington State University (Pullman, Washington)
There are probably other similar programs, but I didn't find any in the amount time I spent searching. I recommend asking about such programs in the Mathematics Educators StackExchange. Make sure that when you ask the question, and also when you talk to your friend, that what is desired is a program designed for those who want to teach mathematics, and not for someone who is interested in research about the teaching/learning of mathematics.

I have such a teaching position for statistics in the sociology department in Germany rather than the US. The route I, and others I know in similar positions, followed is to get a PhD in a substantive field we care about (in my case sociology), but give it a methodological/statistical focus.
So with this logic the PhD in Math Education would be a viable option if (s)he is interested in research on teaching mathematics and wants to give the statistics classes at departments in the field of education/pedagogy. If (s)he'd rather teach statistics at say a political science department, I would recommend getting a PhD in political science and give it a statistical focus.

That's an interesting route that we hadn't at all considered. Thank you!

Commonly universities are able to hire some "instructors" or adjunct faculty type positions. Many times such positions are open even to people with only an MS in stats or math.
These positions are good options for both parties: The university gets a "cheap" teaching option for lower division courses, and the teacher can get a job with only a master's degree.
A PhD in math education is another option. Depending on the school, math ed is a program focused on teaching in a secondary school setting ( Jr high, middle school, high school). These programs require much less graduate level math. Many times undergraduate math topics would be the highest type of math they cover. The math ed professors at my university probably would be unable to teach even a senior level math class on a topic like abstract algebra or complex analysis. Their research focuses on topics like using computers in a pre-algebra class, or the benefits of group projects in learning high school geometry.
One program I would look for is a PhD in collegiate math teaching. This type of program teaches students graduate level math, but with an emphasis in teaching.

I should have mentioned in my question that we were looking for full-time positions. Adjuncting is nice, but the pay is quite small.
Your last paragraph is really interesting. I've never heard of a PhD in collegiate math teaching. Could you provide some links to such programs?

My experience with the math education field is certainly limited, but I'm not sure you're describing it accurately.  You write: "Depending on the school, math ed is a program focused on teaching in a secondary school setting ( Jr high, middle school, high school)."  I wonder what you mean by that. The math ed PhD programs that I know focus on...research in math education.  So secondary math education is certainly a research topic, but I don't know of any PhD program in any subject whose goal is to produce secondary teachers.

@PeteL.Clark I've taught at two schools where "Math Ed" focused on secondary education almost exclusively. Sometimes they also researched things like introductory freshman calculus at the collegiate level, but they certainly did not research mathematics much above that. I am not indicating that the focus of a math ed PhD is becoming a secondary teacher yourself, but rather on how to produce such teachers. I know of several programs that primarily research just such a topic.

@Vladhagen: Thanks for clarifying that you meant research into secondary mathematical education.  I'm also confused about why you bring this up -- why does this matter any more than whether a math PhD program specializes in analysis or algebra or whatever?

I'd be interested in statistics on the number of full time regular instructors with master's degrees vs. PhD degrees.  Our institution doesn't require a PhD, but all of our instructor positions for the past 10 years have been held by PhD's- there's no shortage of PhD holding applicants.

@PeteL.Clark the OP specifically asked about a Math Ed program. Hence the reason I spoke on it. It was in direct reply to the OP question. There is nothing wrong with math ed, I was just sharing my experiences on that end.

@Vladhagen: I'm not confused as to why you brought up Math Ed -- indeed, the OP asked about it.  I'm confused by the way you describe it, (e.g.  "There is nothing wrong with math ed." Right -- who said there was?)  I just can't extract the intended moral from the long paragraph in your answer.  But let me move on:  "One program I would look for is a PhD in collegiate math teaching." That sounds very interesting.  I am not specifically aware of any such programs in the US.  Could you include some links in your answer?

@Pete L. Clark: A couple of examples are Ph.D. in Mathematics with a Concentration in College Teaching at Central Michigan University and The Ph.D. with Teaching Emphasis Requirements at Washington State University. There are surely other examples, but I only tried one google search and I only looked at the top few hits on the first page hits for that search.

@Dave: Thanks, that's super helpful.  I need to run to teach (!!! -- well, a graduate course on schemes) soon, so more later.  Your google search was better than mine.  I notice it also picked up http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/36498/is-it-possible-to-earn-a-phd-in-mathematics-with-emphasis-in-teaching.  Would you consider leaving an answer to this question with (at least) the links you found?  It seems to be a contribution.

@Pete L. Clark: FYI, I originally mentioned that I had taught 4 years at Central Michigan University, so I knew that such programs exist (knowing this makes it easier to search for them), but I was over the word limit for a comment and decided to just drop that part (rather than do some rewriting to get everything to fit).


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Can I put my NSF fellowship on reserve in order to investigate leaving academia?
I'm currently a PhD student in mathematics at a well-ranked school. Unfortunately, after a few years of increasing frustration and self-doubt, I'm considering leaving academia and trying to start a different career.
I currently have an NSF graduate fellowship. As described in the information guide for fellows, one's "status" with regards to the fellowship can be either

Tenure: Tenure is the period of time during which Fellows utilize
the fellowship to pursue an advanced degree in science,
mathematics, or engineering...
Reserve: With prior Foundation approval, Fellows may reserve any
two years over the five-year period to use an alternative means
of support, or to engage in activities other than graduate study... (emphasis mine)

(There are also options for medical or military deferral. The full description of Tenure and Reserve status are in the linked document.)
Does this mean I can request to reserve my fellowship for the 2015-2016 academic year, using that time "test the waters" on another career, such that if I decide to stay in – or rather, go back to – academia, I would still have my NSF fellowship?
Of course if I do something like this, I would want it to be with my advisor's approval, though I haven't brought up this specific idea with them yet. Let's assume they are okay with it.

There do not appear to be any reservations on the purpose for requesting a deferral in the linked guide. You need to tell them in advance of filing the "Declaration To Utilize, Reserve Or Terminate A Subsequent Year Of A 3-Year Graduate Fellowship Award" and get their approval, but I don't think that there are many reasons for them to deny it. You might want to have something lined up like an internship, other job, or visit to a foreign university rather than just saying that you're taking a year away from studying. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if the latter happens, too.
Edited to add: You need to start talking to your supervisor and eventually the NSF Program Officer in charge of your fellowship.


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How to request an extension for submission to a conference?
I am writing a few research papers for an upcoming conference and things have been going decently. But I could really use more time to analyze my papers.
I am new to writing and this entire conference process, however - How should I e-mail the organizer requesting a deadline extension?
Hi Dr. Bobster,

I would like you to extend the deadline for the
international conference on procrastination.

Sincerely,
Procrastinator

Also if it helps: I should make this extra polite because this is also someone of high influence.
Updates

It looks like for the past versions of this conference, they gave at least a week extension. This is a fairly well known event, though it doesn't usually end up presenting any ground breaking research.

It looks like the past few events had extensions, its a well-known event but not too crazy. There's no way I can finish this with the other things I have..

If anyone wants an update, I cut the paper short, finished it on time and submitted it.

I asked for an extension. I didn't get a reply - so I thought that they thought I was being stupid. BUT.... they extended the deadline! Phew!! Maybe I didn't have to cut it short..

Perhaps rather than procrastonating more and going onto stackexchange, you should knuckle down and finish your paper before the deadline rather than trying to get an extension.

Yeah Toby you are so right.. Time for some sleepless nights ahead.. blahh

The words you propose are reasonable, but unlikely to have much effect. Usually, you just plain cannot affect the deadlines of a significant conference. If it is a small conference, however, there is a good chance that you can get a one week extension, and even that they may give a blanket one week extension to everybody.

It is very unlikely that there will be any extension due to your request. If you are "new to writing and this entire conference process", you are presumably not well-known / important enough that a conference organiser will make exceptions/changes to accommodate you specifically.
However, that does not mean that there certainly will not be an extension. In my field, many conferences (especially smaller ones) have the annoying habit of always extending their deadline for a week or more. Contrary, the largest and most prestigious conferences in my field make it a point to never, and for nobody, extend the deadline.
Whether your conference is likely to extend can be predicted pretty accurately by looking at the past. Check out the previous web pages of the same conference - if they extended the last one or two times, they will likely do so as well this year.

you are presumably not well-known / important enough — In my experience, neither is anyone else.  The deadline is the same for everyone.

@JeffE You live in a more ethical world than me. In Applied CS, small conferences make exceptions all the time.

@xLeitix I don't think it's a particularly significant ethical issue---it's just that different communities have different practices of flexibility.  I have never known a conference with flexible deadlines to discriminate in who they give flexibility to.

Though, if Einstein wanted an extension to my event - i'd probably give it.

It looks like the past few events had extensions.. its a well known event I believe - but fairly medium sized.. I'm going to e-mail an organizer.. Hopefully this goes well.

The wording you propose is ambiguous: do you want an extension for yourself or for everybody.  It only makes sense to ask for an extension for yourself if the request does not waste the time of the PC member to whom you send, and the PC will be usually be most busy in the timeframe around submission.
And the PC is only likely to grant an extension for the whole conference if many more people will fail to meet the deadline than they expected: to do so is embarrassing for them -- although not as embarrassing as failing to have enough speakers to fill the promised number of days.
The PC for workshops and more informal conferences are likely to be generous in granting individual extensions, but there is only a point in asking if you give them some information that is relevant to them: the minimum should be (i) some information about what kind of thing you will hopefully submit, and (ii) name a deadline that they can grant with the one-word email "Sure" or decline with "Sorry". And (iii), something to say why you are attracted to the conference is often appreciated.  So for asking for an individual extension, I recommend that your email looks something like:
Dear $PCMEMBER,

I won't be able to submit all the materials required by $DEADLINE - does it make any sense
to submit later?  I attach the short version of my abstract below, and will provide the
rest of the materials by $IMUSTREALLYFINISHBYTHISDATE.

I hope that it will still be possible for me to present my work with you at $CONFERENCE.

Best,
$ME

And something along the lines of $PERSONRESPECTEDBYPROGRAMCOMMITTEE spoke highly of $HISorHER experiences at your past conferences and I would greatly look forward to the chance to present my information with you would be appropriate for the third point.

thanks - it looks like the past two events had extensions for some reason.. i could definitely use this time!!


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How likely is it for an international student to secure graduate funding for a subject like Psychology?
I am international student who will be commencing an undergraduate degree in Psychology at a top-ranking university in the UK. I know it's a little bit early in my "academic" career, but I have been aspiring to become an academic for some time and due to personal circumstances, I have come to a crossroads where I have to decide whether this dream is worth pursuing, or if I should give this dream up permanently. One of my main concerns is finances, as due to the steep cost of my undergraduate degree, I will most likely be unable to continue onto graduate studies without funding.
It is my understanding that graduate funding for non-British and non-European students in the UK is rare. What is the profile of an international student who secures funding (particularly in Psychology or Neuroscience) in the UK, and is there anything I can do now or in the years ahead to improve my chances? At the same time, how likely can an international student with only a 3-year British undergraduate degree secure funding for graduate studies in other countries, such as the US, and again, is there anything I can do to improve my chances?

Don't worry about a UK degree being "only" 3 years relative to 4 year US degree. UK A-levels approximate US freshman/sophomore years. When I did an exchange year in the UK, I was 2 years into the US degree and studied at the year 2 level in the UK.

My former UK Psychology department ran a neuroscience program. At the PhD level we had funding from outside grants, school funding, and university funding. Typically only the school and university funding could be used for international students. Technically, this means maybe 1/3 of the available funding could go to international students, but the school funding was almost always ear marked for special cases (i.e., a new faculty member or a supplement for getting a grant, or a reward for doing extra teaching). More typically only about 10% of our funded PhD students were international.


text:
Math PHD program with no GRE scores
I'm a fresh graduate from a B.S. in mathematics program and am looking to go to graduate school. I have a strong cumulative GPA of 3.7 and have secured 3 letters of recommendation for the future.  Despite this however, a mandatory 1 year military service program prevents me taking any GRE exams before most application deadlines. I was planning to apply during my service and start the following fall (2019). But I'm afraid that not having GRE scores will significantly hurt my chances. Should I just take all my GRE exams during my service and apply for the fall 2020 term?

Short answer: yes. Many schools require the GRE and will not waive it.

Why does military service prevent you from taking the GRE?

This depends what country (and sometimes even the subject area and institute) you plan on applying in. For instance, for mathematics in Canada the GRE is not usually required and most students don't write it.  Which country are you planning on applying to graduate school in?

I'm thinking US, Canada, UK, and maybe France or Germany. Outside the US though, I'll need a masters degree to apply for a PHD. That's what I've heard.

As for Glen' s question, during this mandatory service, you pretty much have no freedom. So I'd be forced to wait.

GRE is more or less compulsory for graduate admission in the US. You will need better reason than 1-year military service for not taking it in your application.
Please take the exams and apply for the fall 2020 term.

Take the GRE now. Scores are valid for 3-5 years after taking it.


text:
Assuming the rest of your application is solid, is a gre score of 160Q and 155V good enough for a math phd?
I plan on applying to graduate school school soon and I'm confident the rest of my application will be pretty solid. However, I'm worried that a quant score of 160-163 will put me below the other applicants. Most have quant scores of 165+. I could break this, but I have a huge problem of making silly mistakes when under pressure and trying to keep a good pace.

Every school is different in how they view this, but I think the consensus now is that such scores are not as important as they once were. On the other hand, you have a negative piece of information about you, and you want to balance it, or overcome it, with lots of positive pieces of information.
I suspect that most places, with the possible exception of very large programs, take a more wholistic view of their incoming candidates. If your total application package is strong, I wouldn't worry about it, but be prepared to discuss it in an interview.
In fact, exams of that sort favor certain kinds of learners and disfavor others. This is, I hope, fairly widely recognized. The tag on the question suggests you want to study mathematics. Lots of mathematics isn't about "quantity" at all, and requires a different sort of thinking. Spacial, for example, or highly abstract thought.
But knowing that you make silly mistakes under pressure, you might want to find a way to address that directly, though I can't help you there. I assume there are academic counsellors who have the expertise to give you a start on it, at least.
You will find a lot of pressure in grad school, of course. A lot of pressure. You will want to find ways to both lessen it and to deal with it. On the other hand, not everything is like a high-stakes test, so the pressure is of a different sort.

The wisdom (?) of the internet suggests: https://www.thoughtco.com/do-you-have-a-good-gre-score-how-to-tell-1686221

Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify on the thing about pressure, I meant the time pressure of having to finish in 35 mins or less. I am also very aware that advanced mathematics has very little to do with "quantity" or raw computation. The extreme competitiveness of some programs just had me really concerned. They always compare your scores to those of other applicants.

@Abd123 What is your GRE Math Subject score? If it's good enough, you don't need to worry about GRE Quant.

I plan on taking it this October, and suspect a score of around 700-750. How would that hold up?

As an update, just ignore this thread. I took the exam today and got 159V and 166Q.

Actually, questions and answers here are not just for the person posing the question, but for future visitors who might also have a similar issue.


text:
Where can I get graduate level "tutoring"?
I'm a practitioner who is struggling with techniques from some difficult academic papers (computer science & mathematics). How can I find "tutors" (graduate students perhaps?) who are willing to work on an occasional basis to help me understand specific papers?

I would contact the math department at your local university.
I would be prepared to pay them well, they have lots of responsibilities and demands on their time as it is and it can be quite a lot of work to work through an academic paper, not to mention the effort involved in compiling background material to essentially teach this material to someone else.
If I were a graduate student still, I wouldn't do it for less than around $75 an hour, because the time I would have to put in to give essentially 2 hours a week of this kind of tutoring would be closer to about 6 hours, so even then it starts to sound barely worth it.


text:
How to Reference Items Related to Paper
I'm not sure how to reference two items related to my current paper. The first is a CSV giving the entries of a 200x200 transition matrix. The second is a web application I developed.
Obviously, the results in the CSV won't fit in the paper. So should I provide a link to it somewhere? If so, how should I go about doing that? And for the web application, should I just provide a link to the website? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Can you upload supplemental material?

I would assume that uploading the CSV somewhere is a must. The matrix itself had to be estimated and is an important result. But I'm just not sure where to upload it and how to reference it. Would Github be ok along with a passing reference?


text:
How can I gain professional experience for PhD application all by myself?
I love astrophysics and wish to pursue a PhD in a good institute outside my home country India. I did a master in physics (2014) and got a summer project in astrophysics. After my master, I took up teaching. I regularly applied to PhD vacancies but haven’t got any positive reply yet. This may be due to low grades in few subjects (I got an E in quantum physics). I am aware that work experience speaks volumes; so I mailed many professors for non-stipendiary internships but it didn’t work.
I want to know if anything is there that I could do all by myself and which can be counted as a “relevant professional experience”. What other measures I could take up?

oh no. The title should be 'PhD in Astrophysics'. Sorry guys

@ligthseeker: Welcome to Academia SE. Note that you can edit your question yourself. Anyway, I edited it to a title that fits your actual question better.

First option is going to be finding an actual job connected to astrophysics. A quick Google search brought me this job postings in Indian Institute of Astrophysics, located in Bangalore. While I cannot tell you if this institute is thriving (living in India, you possibly know that better than me), you could give it a try. Doing actual work as an engineer surely qualifies as a relevant professional experience when you apply for your PhD next time. Explore the job markets while you are still in your home country.
While you can be applying for a job in India, go on and send several more PhD applications to other institutions outside India. It never hurts to try, and you will possibly become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses in the process.
Next, there are online courses (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) that you might take to reinforce your knowledge of the subject. People argue if online courses should go to your CV, but they are definitely worth taking for the sake of knowledge. Moreover, if you have had some bad grades in quantum physics in the past, a better grade in an online quantum physics course will be beneficial for your CV.
Inspired by these Quora answers: if you are thinking of a PhD studies outside India, pass the required examinations beforehand. For USA, this will likely be a Physics GRE test, and you should have that ready almost a year before your PhD program starts.
From the same Quora answer: taking part in a volunteer computation project (see a list of BOINC projects) may help you learn more about astronomy, how the actual research can be done, and (why not?) get to know some researchers outside of your country.

authors: Евгений Карпиков


text:
Where should I put the "Definition of concepts" section in a Research Paper
I'm writing a research paper and there are some concepts which I think would help a reader to understand the study better. However, I'm not sure where to put this section. Should I put it right after the Introduction? Or before Literature Review?

I decided to put it below the introduction since in this way it helps reader to understand the experiment better.

I would put the section in question before the first section, where the concepts you want to define are mentioned. However, note that, generally, you have two options, in my opinion. The first is to collect definitions (potentially, with brief explanations) under a separate section, which is usually called "Definitions of Terms". The second option is not to have a separate section, but to present the concepts' definitions and explanations as your paper's story line unfolds. While the benefit of having a separate section is clarity and ease of use for less advanced readers, the advantage of embedding concepts' definitions and explanations into the paper's main text is an opportunity to provide much more detailed explanations as well as smooth integration with the rest of material.

@MajidHassanpour: You're welcome.

I agree with this answer, If you do choose to include a "glossary" or "Definitions of Terms", it should go at the beginning of your paper.

Conventions like this vary between fields.  Look at other papers in your field or subfield, and do what they do.

Definitions of key concepts are important to the understanding of your paper. Hence, it is preferable to have them as a separate section under the title "Definition of terms." This section should be be placed towards the beginning of the paper, before you start with the major content. I would place it in the introduction, immediately after the statement of the problem at hand and the purpose of the study.

Right in the introduction / Background.  That's where you introduce everything, including concepts the reader needs to know.


text:
Suggestions for working effectively with international students from a non-western culture
I am a Masters graduate student studying finance at a large public university located in a major city. Recently, I accepted a job as a teaching assistant. A significant number of students are from non-western cultures, with East Asia being especially heavily represented(China, S.Korea, etc). In leading discussion,I have found communication to be a problem and I strongly sense it has cultural roots.
Encouraging participation through questions does not seem to help and the students seem to be painfully shy. I attempt discussion that builds upon the text, but the students seem to have trouble expressing themselves and finding their voice.  I use mainly open ended questions with some close ended questions for clarification. At the very first session, I explained my expectations:

Respect is crucial. While attacks on ideas are encouraged, personal attacks are inappropriate.
Creativity of thought is encouraged
That I am open to feedback about the students opinions.
Acknowledge wish to speak by raising hand

I feel its important for students to have their own ideas and to actively engage in these smaller discussion sections as it applies the concepts taught in lecture. In addition, I want feedback regarding what I can do better and students' opinions are valuable.
Some relevant background

English proficiency: Understandable but mediocre with accent
Most present in the USA less than 1 year
No  family present in the US.

Coming from a western culture (USA), aside from leveraging the professor, what else can I do to improve the efficacy of these discussion groups?

How are their English?

@scaaahu I am able to understand them, but mediocre at best. Most have been here <= 1 year.

Is the discussion counted as part of their grade/marks?

Is their written English stronger than their spoken English?

I have found communication to be a problem and I strongly sense it has cultural roots.
I think this is the first point to start with: Try to find out if your sense is right here and try to identify what kind of cultural difference may be the cause. In fact I am not sure if cultural differences are really the only (or most important) problem, but you may well be correct. However, there are very different cultures also in east Asia and also in the same country.
One thing that I have heard of is that in some Asian cultures it is impolite to ask questions to a professor (because it somehow shows that she did not explain things well). It may well be considered impolite to try answer questions for which the answer has not been well prepared in advance. (If this would be the case, you could, in principle, think about preparing questions in advance and hand them out a week early.)
If discussing of unprepared ideas is really important for the class, I am not sure what you could do. You may consider collecting different styles for the class such as

participants present prepared thoughts on homework questions in written form as a hand-out or orally (or both),
prepare handouts for some topics and distribute them in class, then let the participants work on them alone (or in groups), let them prepare statements and collect the statements,
have open discussion (prepared or non-prepared).

In any case, communicate the different modes clearly to the students, i.e. explain what they have to do, what you expect them to deliver and what (besides the actual content) they should learn in class. In this way you may get the message across, that "discussing" (and comparable skills) is really something that you expect the students to learn.

Its not just that asking question means the professor didnt explain well, it is the fact you are acknowledging you do not understand something, which makes your peers and professor think you are not smart.

I am not sure if cultural differences are really the only (or most important) problem. Agree. I was surprised to hear that students from China (from mainland?) have this problem. My impression was that many of them are very aggressive. +1 for catching many possible cases.

You don't really explain how you try to get these discussions started. Do you ask open-ended questions (such as, "Does anyone have any questions?") or pointed questions (such as, "Who can explain why X did not work in this case?").
You also don't explain your protocol for letting students answer questions. Do they just chime in? Raise their hands first? Do you call on them individually?
Also, what mechanisms do you use to prevent a few extroverted and knowledgeable  students from dominating the conversation?
Lastly, how do you encourage classwide participation? What expectations have you set?
The problems you discuss (students who are introverted, intimidated, embarrassed, or hesitant to talk), are not unique to any one culture, although certain cultural backgrounds or language barriers can exacerbate those problems.
Here are a few tricks that might help:

Call on certain students individually. Try to get all your more taciturn students speaking more often, and your more vocal students giving others a chance to talk. (If a few students have already answered a couple questions, tell them that they are "done for awhile," and they need to give their classmates a chance to answer some questions now.)
Let the students work in pairs for five minutes or so, and then call on those teams to share their thoughts. This may help students feel more confident as they realize they are not the only ones in the room who may be a little unsure about something. Also, even if a quieter student says very little in class, under this arrangement, they are still articulating their thoughts to a peer. (In your specific case, you might considered pairing up an international student with a native English speaker.)
Use polling tools (a.k.a. "clickers"), if they are available at your institute. These will get everyone into a mindset of participating. You can also use your poll results to steer the conversation in a certain direction (for example, "Someone who answered (b) – please tell us why you thought that was the best answer.")


text:
Is not providing lecture notes to math students really beneficial to them?
I have attended several lectures in analysis, linear algebra and "higher mathematics for computer science students" in two universities in Germany. None of the professors giving these lectures provided lecture notes. Therefore the students had to copy what was written on the blackboard while at the same time trying to understand the material.
The sequence of a lecture was usually:

Professor arrives and gives a short salutation and very brief recapitulation of the last lecture
Professor immediately continues where we left off and starts writing proofs, lemmas, etc. on the blackboard while explaining the material in parallel. Rarely he stops to clarify something.
When he has filled all three blackboard, he stops to erase one or two of the blackboards while usually continuing to explain what he just wrote down or introducing the next concept.
He continues with the now empty blackboard.
The whole process repeats from step 2 until 1.5 hours have passed.

I found it impossible to copy the blackboard and at the same time understand the material he was trying to teach. During the few breaks (question or blackboard cleaning) that we had I was frantically either trying to understand the proof or was squeezing my eyes trying to decide whether an index is i or j and was making sure to not copy i instead of i+1 or i+j by accident.
Although he did encourage us to ask questions and did answer them when someone did, the general pace was so high, that it hardly gave me some time to catch up.
When asked why there are no lecture notes, all professors said something along the lines of: "You can learn/memorize better if you hear and write the proofs yourself." While I agree that having multiple input channels helps memorizing, in practice, all that most students could do was to barely copy what was written on the blackboard, there was no time to understand. I felt like the students were "demoted" to human copy machines because this is all what most could manage to do.
Considering all this:

Is there really proof that not providing lecture notes and forcing students to frantically copy the blackboard is beneficial for learning math?
OR Are these professor just too lazy to create proper lecture notes?
OR Is my perception warped and I was in the minority and just too stupid to study math?

I predict you will not find studies supporting the effectiveness of the approach you describe.  However, you might find the opposite.  You could try looking into learning styles, e.g. visual learner, auditory, kinesthetic, mixed. // When I was a student, that teaching style drove me nuts.  Nowadays, you can take a picture of the blackboard, and take it easy with the frantic copying.

Is there really proof that forcing students to frantically copy the blackboard is beneficial? No. There might be proof that forcing students to thoughtfully copy the blackboard is beneficial. From my point of view, the pace was the real problem. How did the professors react when asked to slow down?

Are you by any chance in the first year of studies?

@svavil: I don't rememeber anyone asking for that. The professor hinted several times that time is tight and he was already forced to skip some parts due to lack of time. So I don't think anyone was brave enough to ask.

@Walter I was back then, but this happened several years ago.

I think laziness is never an issue. This is just prioritization. A professor will constantly have a long list of tasks and a limited amount of time, so it is just a matter of how important the professor considers each task with respect to the other tasks. That is very different from laziness.

There is a technological fix for this . Bring a digital camera to lectures. Whenever the professor fills a section of board, photograph it. That limits the time when your attention is not on listening and thinking to a few seconds per board section. In the evening, review the photos and make notes if, and only if, you find writing things out helps you learn.

When I was teaching mathematics, almost always there was a textbook that the students were required to buy, which contained all the material for the course.  Even better than lecture notes, perhaps.

Before throwing around offensive words like "lazy", have you ever written lecture notes (for someone else to read)?  I have found that creating lecture notes that are suitable for my students to read is many times more work than just writing something I can lecture from, and there are other things I could do with that time that might be more important.

Couple years ago I prepared well written notes for the seminar my TA was doing, and gave them to the students. The attendance suddenly dropped, and I got the feeling that the students got a false confidence and many of them didn't even bother to read the notes....

The "learning styles" thing was debunked almost 10 years ago. Studies have found that while students may have a preferred mode of delivery, that delivery mode does not yield greater actual learning success than other modes of delivery.

WRT the OP, your experience was the prevailing style of lecture 30 years ago. It was even more fun with sliding chalkboards, which had two fixed sections and a rolling section that was always covering one of the other two sections. Students learned how to listen, extract the meaningful nuggets of information, and only write down the important stuff. Either that, or they were weeded out, which I gather also doesn't happen anymore.

+1 to @NateEldredge (I've taught in a system where I lectured the way he describes, and I now lecture in a system where I do create lecture notes that are distributed to students)

@Bitwise: The same could arguably be said of most situations in which people are regarded as being "lazy". For example, the only real distinction between a "lazy" student who prioritises doing something other than class work with their time and a "lazy" professor who prioritises doing something other than writing lecture notes with their time is the assumption that the other thing that the professor is doing is somehow "worthwhile", whereas the other thing that the student is doing isn't. If that judgement call is made by the professor, it's easy to see how it arises :)

@shoover - When I was studying math, nothing was guaranteed to get me all tied up in knots than this: the instructor writes a couple of equations on the board quickly, then, before I've had a chance to copy them into my notebook, he's standing smack dab in front of what he's written, blocking the equations he's talking about.  I am emphatically not an auditory learner.  If I can see what's being described or discussed, I take it in much, much better.

I think there might be a cultural issue being overlooked here. In Germany, the Skript (lecture notes) are often the only “textbook” for a course. So it may be the case that when there are no lecture notes in advance, the students have no idea what’s going on.

@PatriciaShanahan: The camera solution may not be okay for the professor.

@user111388 True, but I always ask in advance and so far none has objected.

@PatriciaShanahan: Interesting. This is probably culture-specific. I studied under some of the "students must copy lecture notes and should not use written notes"-professors and in the rare instances when someone mentioned a camera (or if lectures could be recorded), they were really offended.

Writing something down absolutely does help you remember it, as more different aspects of your brain are engaged with the material at once.  See, for example, this CogSci.SE post on the matter.
The cognitive benefits of engaging multiple channels, however, can certainly be outweighed by the detriments of poor lecturing technique.  The problems that you describe having do not actually seem to be about the availability of notes, however, but about the pace of the lecture being too fast and with too little explanation for you to comprehend the material --- writing things down slows you own partly because you have to be thinking about the material and summarizing as you go, rather than just letting it wash over you.
From what you have written, it is not possible for we strangers on the internet to distinguish between two common cases:

The professors you've had were going too fast and not explaining enough to teach effectively.
The pace felt too fast for you because you had inadequate preparation or some other issue.  For example, a dyslexic student would likely need a slower pace.

You may be able to tell which it is by seeing whether most other students are experiencing the same issues as you.  If they are, it is likely a problem with the teaching; if they are not, it is more likely the problem is on your side.

I think your three points for consideration may all contain some truth. Let's see.

Is providing lecture notes beneficial? According to my own experiences (as lecturer), there is no clear-cut answer. In an ideal world, lecture notes should be very helpful and most students appreciate access to lecture notes, but providing them does rarely improve the exam results (though I have only anecdotal evidence). Presumably, this reflects the fact that students tend to switch off from attending the lecture with their full concentration, knowing that they could rely on the lecture notes as back-up. But this is a fallacy, because once they are no longer on top of the material, they will be unable to follow subsequent lectures.
Are these professors just too lazy to create proper lecture notes? Almost all material taught to undergraduates in mathematics is extremely well covered in many textbooks (often generated from some lecture notes), often much better than lecture notes can do it. So why should the professors take the time consuming burden to write their own notes? What they should do is to recommend a number of textbooks.
Is my perception warped and I was in the minority and just to stupid to study math? My first weeks a Uni (also attending a first-year math lecture in Germany) was quite a shock: the speed at which the material was disseminated was completely different from what I was used from school. So, welcome at Uni! The difference is mainly that at school you are given all sorts of explanations and examples, while at Uni you must look after yourself to learn the stuff.

Advice: always keep on top of the material. Nobody expects you to fully understand the content of a lecture then and there, but you must make sure that you have understood the content of the previous lecture before you attend the next one. IMHO, this is the single most important rule for studying math-related subjects at Uni. You should go over your notes, complete them, compare them to textbooks, and do the course work assignments as soon as possible after each lecture. You can do all this on your own, or in a group of peers, but don't let it slip!
----added in edit----
To answer your further question whether writing down the proofs improves your learning: Yes most definitely. And the professors will have had the experience that by providing lecture notes the students actually no longer write out the material (at least not to the same degree).

While I appreciate the helpful tips, the core of my question is whether the statement made by the lecturers, that copying the blackboard would help me learn math. I understand and agree that it would be redundant for them to provide lecture notes for undergraduate subjects but then why don't professors simply advise you to come to the lecture and listen and understand. It seems that all three of them were convinced that copying the blackboard was an integral part of learning math.

Getting back to the core of your question, it’s very difficult to say if that statement is universally true, but it seems to be a widely-held belief, and t’s probably a sound generality. I know more than one math professor who tried using slides but found that students as a whole didn’t seem to learn as well when they weren’t copying from the board. In math in particular, the step of writing things down seems to be helpful to a good number of students. RE: "During the few breaks .. I was frantically trying to understand the proof...” When the prof asks if you have questions, ask something.

@problemofficer - You could add the reference request tag to your question, and edit out some of the context stuff, since it's getting people off on a tangent from what you are asking.  At this point it might be easier to start fresh, though.  If I were you I would ask on Academia Meta whether it would be better to edit the question or start fresh.  If you need help editing out the stuff that's getting people off track, you can ask for that at Meta too.

I'm going to add to the other answers that it is a very German thing for professors to provide lecture notes, and for students to expect them. I have never really understood this practice, because it requires professors to write lecture notes for something for which almost certainly there already are excellent text books.
There may be other shortcomings in the professor's teaching, as the other answers already suggest, but I think not providing lecture notes is not one of those. He/she probably pointed you at one or two textbooks on the subject -- go to the library and check it out, use it in place of lecture notes instead!

Many American classes have lecture notes as well.

No doubt, but many professors teaching undergraduate courses in Germany have essentially a textbook of their own for their students. I've rarely seen this in the US, unless someone is intending to eventually make those into a book proper.

Not really a direct answer to the question, but extended comments on the context:
As other answers and comments have noted, to make publicly-presentable lecture notes requires much, much more effort than the kind of sketchy notes adequate for an experienced person to give coherent lectures. Thus, given the priorities of not only faculty themselves, but of deans and funding agencies (which can affect those of faculty), it is not surprising that faculty would choose not to invest their time in polishing lecture notes.
Also as noted, "frantic" note-taking is not so useful, but with a more positive adjective it does (in my own experience, and in my observation of others, over several decades, in mathematics in the U.S.) create a more intense engagement with "the moment".
As recently (!) as 35 years ago, it was not so easy to create typeset lecture notes, for technical reasons, apart from the possibility of photo-copying hand-written notes. In particular, especially for more advanced courses, the tradition of skimpy notes-to-self amplified by the lecturer during the lecture, written down by students as their main source, is still vivid in senior faculty's minds. And, as above, endorsing this does rationalize avoiding the effort that writing-up serious notes would entail...
I do claim that thinking in these either-or terms is misleading, though. I started thinking about this in 1974, while attending lectures of a very eminent mathematician: he obviously had very carefully prepared his lectures, writing everything out in long-hand (=cursive) on lined paper, and very carefully copying it onto the blackboard, without saying a word. :) Eventually, when typesetting mathematics became much easier, I realized that written material and "live" material (with blackboards or whiteboards) are very different mediums, and do not successfully/usefully imitate each other.
That is, the typeset notes or text should be one thing, and the lectures another. Lectures as a vehicle to impart written material fails... Written material to convey personal excitement, or to interact with audience questions... possibly steering the whole course of the discussion... fails.
So I do attempt to provide respectable notes for my courses, though they do not pretend to echo my lecture/discussions, and in lecture I do not necessarily pretend to "follow" the notes, since I pointedly attempt to react to questions and general audience reaction (which, obviously, notes cannot do).

One thing that many of these answer leave out is the effect on students with specific learning difficulties (SpLD), such as dyslexia and developmental coordination disorder (DCD). I would say that around 30% of my classes have a diagnosis for one SpLD or another. Provision of material to these students is more or less mandated by discrimination legislation where I am.
As a suffer of DCD, I can speak to that specific problem: DCD (which sometimes falls with in the category of dyspraxia). People with DCD absoltely cannot process information from multiple sources at once. They cannot read and listern, and certianly cannot read, listern and write at the same time. It also means they can't read or listern AND consider/understand at the same time. The lecturing style of your lectuerer here sounds like it would be dreadful for such students. But also students with dyslexia, ADHD, ASD etc.
There is however a trade off to be made. It is definately the case that if you provide detailed notes, many students simply stop attending your lectures and studies show that these student do not perform as well in exams.
I tend to compromise. Instead of providing proper polished lecture notes, I provide the slides and the speaker's notes I use for my self. Of course, all our lectuers are recorded (which is common these days) as well.