text:
How does a (junior) faculty member ensure prior promises are being kept?
Background:
I'm in my 4th year on a tenure-track position. In June, I received an outside offer for associate professor after applying at a university where a former colleague of mine had moved to. When bringing up this offer with my current chair, he told me that, if I stayed, he would make sure that I can be reviewed for early tenure and promotion at the end of the current academic year, and my case will have no issues passing. He reiterated the same thing during an email exchange after our meeting. As the uncertainty of getting tenure was what triggered me to seek the outside offer in the first place, I was happy enough and declined the other offer. (I'm sure you can see where this is going...)
Well, now the year has ended and, after inquiring about the tenure review process, I found out it was decided that I'm not going to be reviewed for tenure this year. No more information was given to me, as the chair is still on leave for a couple of weeks.
I've discussed my situation with some senior colleagues at other institutions and the sobering advice was that I shouldn't have relied on anything that a chair/dean assured me, even if it's in written in an email, as only a signed contract has any real significance. Thus, there is basically nothing I could do. Also, I was advised to better avoid rocking the boat, as I wouldn't want to be derailing my tenure-review next year...
My questions:

Anything I should/could do about the current situation? E.g., should I bring this up with the dean or even the provost? (One friend suggested this but it's unclear to me what this would achieve.)
Did I make a strategic mistake during this process that could have avoided this outcome? Is it generally considered to be a risky move to bring up an external offer with your current supervisor?

Additional context:
I believe to have reasonable chances of eventually getting another position elsewhere, and I'm not too worried about burning bridges. However, it is very likely that I would still need to spend (at least) the coming academic year at my current institution.

I have no answer for your actual question, but based on how you were treated, I would be submitting applications now.

If you made a mistake, it is nothing except trusting the word of those above you... this is not always wise, but it isn't also wise to expect betrayal everywhere... depending on how you feel you have been treated, I too would recommend you flee as soon as possible. I would clarify with your chair first what happened. Maybe he tried and failed to do exactly what he said he would

I do not understand the value of that promise b/c "review" != "grant".  What if they decide to keep the promise, review you for tenure, and deny tenure?  If you are comfortable with the possibility that tenure will be denied, you can at any time demand a tenure review (without having obtained the tenure review promise).  If you are uncomfortable, then you can never enforce a tenure review promise.

@emory: no: while it's true that anyone can, at any time, request a tenure review, in my case, the chair explicitly said he would strongly support my case. (Without your department's support there's virtually no chance your case will go through afaik.)

"it was decided that I'm not going to be reviewed for tenure this year": at my institution, we have a contract that says that faculty members get the final decision about whether they go up for tenure in a particular year. I suggest consulting your Faculty Association (whatever it might be called at your institution) for clarification on this point

@TroubledTenureTrackProf that is my point.  You chair promised to "strongly support your case for tenure" not "grant you tenure."  He can satisfy the promise by "doing his best" which as you have observed "may not be good enough."

@emory: I disagree. There are two separate things here: (A) Being invited for tenure-review. (B) Actually getting tenure. The chair assured me that (A) is absolutely going to happen as such an invitation can be issued by the chair directly (and promised to provide strong support for (B)). So I do believe that the promise for (A) was broken from his side.

Your senior colleagues are correct, in a way. In academia as well as in industry, a "promise" (independently of whether it's an oral promise or written down in some way) isn't a hard guarantee. People forget, people change their minds, people go on leave or step down, and sometimes a chair has simply promised something that they were then unable to push through administration. It sucks, but there is simply no 100%, fool-proof way to ensure that a promise made now for a time in the future will actually still hold when that time arises.
That does not mean that a promise is worth nothing. Most people will try to keep their promises, after all, and I have no doubt that most promises are actually kept. But it's not the same thing as a hard guarantee, and it never will be. Hence, if you are faced with a decision whether to take a different offer with tenure now or stay at your current place with a promise of tenure, you should take into account that the promise of future tenure always comes with a certain margin of risk. Whether that's worth it depends on the positions, the trustworthiness of the people making the promise, and how bad the "fail case" would be for you (e.g., I generally recommend postdocs to take a faculty position "now" over a promise of a slightly better faculty position later, because "no position" is a pretty severe risk; but if the fail case is "I got tenure a year later" the world will not end).

How does a (junior) faculty member ensure prior promises are being kept?

You mostly can't. Getting things in writing certainly isn't a bad start, and I generally try to recommend people in time of their prior promises, but in some cases (e.g., changing responsibilities, dean has overstepped their authority, etc.) really nothing is sure to work.

Anything I should/could do about the current situation? E.g., should I bring this up with the dean or even the provost? (One friend suggested this but it's unclear to me what this would achieve.)

I would certainly bring it up with the dean. They most certainly screwed up, one way or another, and a decent dean will try to fix it (and if that's not possible at least compensate you in some other way). Going above the dean is probably not very useful - a provost isn't going to see a promise made via email as binding, and this may indeed be seen as "rocking the boat" by your senior faculty since it doesn't exactly paint them in the best light (maybe correctly so, but prior to tenure you are still very much dependent on their goodwill).

Did I make a strategic mistake during this process that could have avoided this outcome? Is it generally considered to be a risky move to bring up an external offer with your current supervisor?

I don't think you necessarily made a mistake. As I wrote above, there is always "risk" to accepting a promise, but that doesn't mean it's always a mistake to take this risk. As poker players always like to point out: just because a play didn't win doesn't mean it was a mistake. I probably would have done the same as you did, unless the other position was also more attractive.
That said, I would bring it up with the dean as I would be expecting some sort of compensation for the broken promise. And I would look at future promises made by the same people or organisation through the lense of them having a track record of not keeping their word in important matters.

I think you are making a subtle mistake in thinking about this situation as a case of “a promise isn’t being kept”, where in fact the issue is not that the chair isn’t keeping his promise, but that he had no authority to be making it in the first place.
The granting of tenure is not within the purview of a department chair, but happens after review by multiple university committees and administrators outside the department. People cannot meaningfully promise that something will happen when it is outside their control. Thus, the statement “only a signed contract has any real significance” is misleading, since the chair has no more authority to sign a contract that says you will get tenure than they had to write an email that says the same thing.
I cannot advise you on what to do, but it’s important to understand what your mistake was, so that you don’t repeat it. Promises that are documented in writing are generally reliable even if they don’t carry the legal force of a contract, since most large organizations know they cannot hope to have any credibility with their employees if they throw around empty promises and then don’t honor them. However, when an official promises you something, it’s an obvious red flag when the promise involves decisions that are beyond the power of that particular individual. You should never trust such a promise, but instead seek to get confirmation of the promise by the people who actually have power over the relevant decisions.
Moreover, on the specific matter of granting tenure, no one who actually has the power to promise you tenure will ever make such a promise. The only way to be completely confident that you will get tenure is to go through the tenure review process, cumbersome and time consuming though it may be, or to accept a tenured job offer elsewhere.

Your answer provides important context, but I'm not sure if supports the verdict that OP made a mistake. It seems that OP's chair clearly overstepped professional boundaries here by making a promise he couldn't keep.

@lighthousekeeper It's certainly possible for multiple people to be at fault in different ways in the same situation. "Fool me once" and all.

@BryanKrause
That's absolutely possible, but it's still unclear whether OP is at fault in this case. It's not unreasonable to trust a supervisor, especially if it's in a renowned institution and if the supervisor's abuse of trust would clearly inflict permanent damage to the relationship, as is the case here. One way for OP to be clearly at fault was if the supervisor behaved in a fishy way before - note that the saying actually goes "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me"

+1 for " the issue is not that the chair isn’t keeping his promise, but that he had no authority to be making it in the first place." Also, pulling the tenure decision ahead does not guarantee tenure (even if it looks good, there are so many ways it can go bad).

@lighthousekeeper  I am absolutely not saying that OP “is at fault”. The mistake I am referring to is a misconception about the nature of their situation that is implicit in the question, making it based on what I see as a false premise. The issue is that if I promise you that someone else will give you a million dollars and you end up not getting them, it’s misleading to say that “I didn’t keep my promise”. What actually happened was that “I made a promise that I had no authority to make”. Both of those things are wrong, but they are different wrong things, and the distinction is important.

Exactly (+1). I would have been curious though to hear your opinion on the 2 questions asked in the bullet points: (1) should I talk to the Dean?, and (2) should I bring up external offers? Personally, I say “no” to (1), and “yes if done delicately” to (2), but tend to value your responses here.

@gnometorule the answers depend many specific details I don’t know, so I can’t say for sure. Roughly I would say about (1) that whether to talk to the dean depends on what OP hopes to achieve. If they just want to share valuable information about their chair behaving inappropriately, then sure, the dean would probably find that helpful. But if they are hoping that the dean would want to honor a promise that was made by the chair without any authority, I think there’s a very slim chance of that happening, and there’s a risk that they might regard the request as inappropriate and/or clueless.

… about (2), similarly there’s a risk that mentioning outside offers when OP doesn’t actually have one pending will come across as an empty boast, clueless about the nature of workplace negotiations, etc. But it might be useful, I really can’t say — that depends on the personalities involved and other specifics of the situation.

@gnometorule exactly, OP had an outside offer, but doesn’t currently have one. Some people would regard this as useless information in a promotion negotiation. Others wouldn’t. As I said, there’s no telling what’s the correct course of action based on the information given.

Certainly they can’t promise to grant tenure. But from OP’s paraphrase, it sounds to me like they were promising “I will put you forward for early review, and support your case” (which often are largely in the chair’s authority), and then in saying “…and I’m confident you’ll be successful,” that’s giving their judgement/advice, not a promise.  So it sounds to me like they made a realistic promise, but failed to see it through.

@PLL yes, exactly: the chair didn't promise I will get tenure, but promised to strongly support my case for early tenure.


text:
Removing old GRE scores when applying to PhD program for a second time
I would like to apply to a PhD program for a second time, but without my old scores being imported from my first application. I had sent my GRE (and subject GRE) scores to the institution when applying the first time, but I did not send them a second time since the GRE requirement was waived due to the pandemic. However, the old scores still appeared in my new application, even though I did not self-report the scores or send in a new score report. I also tried selecting the application option specifying that I had not applied to the program before, but the scores were still present.
I recognize that the department faculty may remember the first application (and scores), but I would like to see if removing the scores from the online application is practically possible.
N.b., this occurred for several PhD programs, so it is not an isolated incident (otherwise I would contact the single department directly to request that the GRE scores be ignored in lieu of the pandemic). This may be related to how most applications seem to use the same/similar website portal and index the applications based on applicant name/birthdate.

There may not be a general solution.

At the PhD level the number of applications may not be large. People will remember your recent prior application. And I suppose your GRE scores are still in their system.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Regarding no eventual contribution in collaboration
I am an early mathematics researcher. Last year I was approached by a contemporary  for collaboration. We started discussing the problem  with possible approaches, I read all literature related to the problem. I had some failed attempts. But it was him who eventually solved the problem. And the level of creativity from his side, never came from mine.
I wanted to ask if I should back out and ask him to publish it alone?

Did your failures contribute to your partner better understanding the problem? Or were they just abortive without real contribution?

Both actually.....

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/121521/68109

If you didn't make a tangible contribution to the result being obtained and they do not wish to include you as a co-author, then you can't really argue.  We don't know the actual circumstances or how you contributed.  The lit review by itself probably doesn't entail co-authorship.

Slightly different situation, but the same philosophy applies: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/73480/19607

Here is a question about a similar situation, but coming from the other contributors' point of view:  https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62978/how-to-deal-with-an-author-who-worked-on-an-analysis-that-never-made-it-into-the/

I still remember a talk given by an Engineering Director to a group of new recruits to the R&D section of a large international company (one of whom was myself). He several times repeated the comment that "you will have to come to terms with the fact that 90% of your best work will end up in the trash and never be seen by anyone." I don't suppose academia is fundamentally different.

terry tao: 'However, the process of discovering new mathematics is much messier, full of the pursuit of directions which were naïve, fruitless or uninteresting.
While it is tempting to just ignore all these “failed” lines of inquiry, actually they turn out to be essential to one’s deeper understanding of a topic, and (via the process of elimination) finally zeroing in on the correct way to proceed.' relevant?

I believe that if you contribute ideas towards the solution and also take an active part in writing the paper, you should be a co-author.
In your case, you believe that your discussions didn't contribute to the solution. However, often false-leads are crucial steps in solving the problem- and hence your contribution was perhaps not as trivial as you think.
I would suggest you to volunteer to type up the paper. That way, you shall understand the proof better, and also have a nontrivial contribution towards the final form of the paper. While typing, try to think if the proof can be "polished". Or maybe, you can get some nice corollaries of the main theorem. Or, some examples where your theorem applies. Often times, the main theorem is just the "start" of the paper- you can still get more results by applying the main theorem to various examples. This part, in my opinion, elevates a paper.
Finally, don't be too harsh on yourself regarding your "contribution" as yet. You still have time to contribute more to this project. Good luck!

I agree with a lot of this, but "typing" the paper, even polishing the wording, doesn't make you a co-author. Discussions that lead to insight is a different matter, of course, even if one person's false lead results in the other person's insight.

I definitely agree that just typing and polishing isn't enough for a co-authorship. I believe that contributing ideas and typing should be enough not to feel guilty about being a co-author, for an early career researcher.
I suggested polishing the proof  mainly- to see if the hypothesis can be weakened- or the conclusions strengthened etc :).

terry tao: 'However, the process of discovering new mathematics is much messier, full of the pursuit of directions which were naïve, fruitless or uninteresting.
While it is tempting to just ignore all these “failed” lines of inquiry, actually they turn out to be essential to one’s deeper understanding of a topic, and (via the process of elimination) finally zeroing in on the correct way to proceed.' relevant?

@BCLC: I think the quote due to Tao is somewhat relevant. Of course, the "failed" attempts need to fail in nontrivial ways to provide insights.

Let me suggest a slightly different approach. Tell him that you understand all the work is his and that you don't expect co-authorship and will understand completely if he wants to do that. You could also say that you would appreciate any acknowledgement in the paper for any contributions you might have made.
In other words, make a statement about your understanding, not a question.
It would be good if you can keep the lines of communication open for the future. Some future collaboration might be more fruitful.

Edited to add, based on a comment stream.
This is valid, I hope, in the case in which you made no real contribution to finding the answer amongst yourselves, but not otherwise. Other answers here explore some of the subtle issues of math insight and should certainly be considered.

I disagree with this answer. In fact, I opened an account just to say so. It is very likely has his wrong ideas contributed - even contributed greatly - to the finding of the idea that eventually worked. If this is the case, he 100% deserved to be a co-author.

@Rob, I don't deny that, but you are speculating, and the OP says otherwise. I can only answer based on that, not on a guess.

The OP said in the comments that their failures contributed to their partner better understanding the problem.

@Rob, I'm pretty sure that comment hadn't been made when I wrote the answer or I would have considered it. Perhaps the OP will say more. If so I can make an update. See my comment to the answer of Darth Vader.  And, welcome to the site.

I see, that's crucial information indeed. In any case, I'm sorry if I sounded harsh (was not my intention). And thanks :-)

@Rob, actually, I was wrong about the timing. But I recall that part of my thinking, not expressed, was that turning it into a statement, would give the other person a chance to push back.

In any case I think it's important information... So maybe consider taking it into consideration in your answer? In my opinion, coming up with wrong ideas is very often a considerable part of the way to solving a problem (in mathematics at least); at times, it is even the main part.

@Rob, one reason I haven't edited it is that I don't like to "step on" the answers of others. I also consider future collaboration possibilities much more valuable than authorship on any given paper. And so my answer is valid in the case when no "real" contribution was made, but not otherwise. I think the OP understands that.

I see. In this case I agree with your answer, in principal. But in practice, I think it is problematic, since it is very difficult to tell whether he made real contribution or not - it ignores the delicate nature of working together on math, which makes it very hard to ever tell how much a person contributed to the solution. OP may not even realize that he contributed to the paper, simply by helping to eliminate possible courses of actions.

@Rob, but you and I can't resolve that. Only the participants can. We just provide some context in which they can work it out. Perhaps we will learn in time how it ends up.

There is a lot more to a mathematical paper than just the new ideas. There's also the work that goes into exploring the avenues that never lead anywhere, surveying the literature, checking that the argument is correct, writing the argument down, etc. A rule of thumb that I've heard repeated multiple times is that each author should contribute at least 10% of the work done in the paper (although, in the long run, it should even out). It's perfectly possible to have this level of contribution without being the one who came up with the new ideas, so - assuming your collaborator is willing - there is nothing wrong in publishing jointly. If they do prefer to publish alone, though, you shouldn't insist.

It is very difficult to say, when working on a mathematical problem, how much each person contributed. It is only through failed attempts that one reaches a solution to any problem which isn't completely trivial.
In the comments, @CaptainEmacs asked you a good question: "Did your failures contribute to your partner better understanding the problem? Or were they just abortive without real contribution?" You answer was that both things are true. But, so long as your failed attempts contributed to your partner's understanding of the problem, you certainly deserve to be a co-author.
Observe that this is very much an issue of culture. These things are different between different fields. In mathematics, what you describe is usually considered enough to be a co-author. But it might also be different in different subfields of mathematics, and in different places in the world. I would suggest consulting with your PhD advisor (if you are still on good terms with them), or some other older researcher that you feel comfortable asking such questions. And then I would discuss this with your partner.
I also agree with @DarthVader that it's a good idea to put it more work on the writing of the paper, to feel less "guilty" about this. But it's just the way it is; the work in joint papers is very often not divided 'equally'.
To summarize: It seems to me like you very much deserve to be a co-author. I would discuss this with someone with more experience than you (perhaps your PhD advisor), and then discuss this directly with your partner.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How does the Dutch academic culture compare to other countries in Europe?
I am Dutch, but have only studied in the Netherlands for my undergraduate degree. I am now applying to assistant professorships. The places where I have been for my PhD and afterwards were quite relaxed; essentially there was not a worry in the world. Obviously that changes as you get loaded with more and more responsibilities in a faculty job, but that is not what my question is about.
From the popular media, I get the impression that Dutch academia is tough: pressure to publish, pressure to get grants, internal political games, etc. Is this indeed the case? How does it compare to other countries in Europe? How should I weigh this into the equation when applying for assistant professorship?

I posted an answer in the hope that it may help you, but I also voted to close this question because it is nearly impossible to answer clearly (see answer)

What you write could also be written about an R1 in the US. It sounds familiar.

The answers below give some very clear information, which is much appreciated! The point where I am coming from is reading news websites in both The Netherlands and the UK, where in my experience problems in academia (amongst faculty) gets vastly more attention in The Netherlands compared to the UK. But I am genuinely positively surprised with the experiences shared below, and they also give me a good handle on what to discuss with a potential future employer.

Im Dutch and moved to US. The salary is really low however you are required to publish in Q1 each year. So difficult if you dont have funding

@looktook Comparing US and Dutch salaries means to compare apples and oranges, since both countries have very different costs of living. By European standards, the Netherlands pay well (with the exception of PhD students, whose pay is really not that great).

@lighthousekeeper Is the pay for PhD students in the Netherlands really that bad compared to other European countries? I thought that the legal minimum in the CAO (See here, in column P, the rows roughly correspond to the year for PhD students), isn't that bad. I believe that e.g. in France, postdocs are at times paid less than this.

@Discretelizard 2.4K€ entry salary is not catastrophic, but not great either. My personal reference points are Germany and Sweden. In Germany, the entry salary is around 4K€ (assuming a full-time position, the chances for which are admittedly field-specific). In Sweden, it's around 3K€. The Netherlands also have the highest taxes of these three (although all three are in the same ballpark).

What are you talking @lighthouse keeper ? Netherland is 100x times expensive than USA

I'm an assistant professor in the Netherlands with previous experiences in other European countries. I fully agree with everything that @Louic writes in his answer. I can especially emphasize the point that the culture between different universities and even departments in the same university can vary a lot.
Additional points:

Hierarchies in departments can be particularly "pyramid-like". In particular, the term "assistant professor" is often taken more literally than in other countries, and it's quite common that people stay at the tenured assistant professor level for their whole career. One aspect is that assistant professors often cannot supervise their own PhD students, but need the formal involvement of a full professor who gets the main credit for the supervision.

On the positive side, the overall funding situation seems to be particularly nice compared to other countries, especially with regard to the direct flow of money from the country to the universities. For example, the newly hired assistant professors at my department got a package with a PhD student included, which I have not seen in any other countries.

The teaching year is relatively long compared to other countries. There is hardly any break between fall and spring semester, and with about 6 weeks, the summer break is relatively short as well. Many professors take 3 or 4 weeks of summer vacation, which can give the impression that things are particularly relaxed.

Overall, if you find a position in a good place, you can absolutely have a very positive experience. As a tenure-tracker, I benefit from a very comfortable teaching load (20% in the first three years!). My tenure criteria are very clear and quantified, which reduces the potential for arbitrariness, and I have a department head who's a genuinely good person.

The restriction in the first point was weakened in 2017: Assistant Professors can now also be supervisors for PhD students, as long as the examination committee finds them qualified enough. I don't know how common that is, but it is in principle possible nowadays.

@AlexanderWolters Does this apply to all of the Netherlands? I've heard that some universities/departments have recently allowed for Associate Professors to be PhD supervisors, but there are still universities/departments that don't. I have never heard likewise for Assistant Professors.

The possibility does apply to all universities: https://www.eerstekamer.nl/behandeling/20170717/publicatie_wet_2/document3/f=/vkfyb4i7plzl.pdf
See the bottom of page 6, Article 7.18.4. As I said, I have no idea whether any University actually makes use of that though.

What is the tenure-track system in the Netherlands?  I didn't think the tenure-track system was common in Europe.

@Kimball That could easily be a question of its own. Within the last 15 or so years, the tenure-track system has been widely established in Europe, but the countries differ in their degree of adoption. In the Netherlands, it's indeed the standard setup for new assistant professors. In contrast, German universities are notorious for offering fixed-term, non-tenure-track assistant professorships.

I think this question cannot be answered with a clear answer, but I will try to help because I think my experience may be useful: I am from The Netherlands and got my MSc there. My PhD and Postdoc experience was in France (2 universities) and the UK (2 universities).

Cultures vary per university, not only per country
Political games are everywhere
Pressure to publish and to get grants is worldwide
If anything, I think there are less political games in The Netherlands compared to most other European countries, but I may be biased a little.

You should probably be happy with an assistant professorship anywhere: they are hard to get throughout Europe, even with an excellent CV and publication record, although (obviously) positions in less prestigious universities are less competitive.

From my subjective experience the Netherlands does very well in genuinely trying to find the best applicant for the position advertised. There are less situations of say a generic postdoc advertisement but internally it is already decided that the position will go to professor X's lab regardless of quality of applications or even positions that are publicly advertised although in practice it is already decided who is going to get it.


text:
Will Chinese students applying for PhD in the U.S. be affected by the relationship between China and the U.S.?
I am Chinese, and I plan to apply for the 2022 Fall PhD in the U.S. I am confident with my research caliber and experience. However, I am worried about whether the terrible relationship between the U.S. and China will affect my application and other Chinese students, especially those in engineering and science majors.
I am not a CCP member, neither my spouse is (we don’t favor them at all), and I don’t have any relation to military-linked universities [1]. But I did have a working experience in a company that falls into the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List (not Huawei) [2]. Currently, I am working in a U.S. company.
I know many people sharing similar concerns with me, and your opinion could matter a lot to us. Thanks for your help.

[1] https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-ban-chinese-students-military-links-divides-experts-impact
[2] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/10/09/2019-22210/addition-of-certain-entities-to-the-entity-list

Duplicate, although the linked question doesn't have a good answer either: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/155084/has-it-become-harder-for-chinese-students-to-be-accepted-into-graduate-programs

That is a good reference. Thanks @Allure. This question indeed could be unanswerable. Let's see what might have changed a year later from that question.

@gnometorule Thanks for your help. The non-security-sensitive looks like a vague term which can be interpreted differently in various contexts, which is exactly the thing troubles me. But I will still be giving my best effort and hope.

You need a visa. If you can get that, then you are just like any other international student. I doubt that any program would discriminate, though some individuals might. So, ask elsewhere if you are eligible for a visa to study.

Relevant with regards to the visa situation: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6555/608

Australia government apparently misconstrue the 'military' exercise undertaken by all Chinese students at their university as being linked to the military.  A number of students' visa was cancelled for that reason.  Then again, they may just use that as a convenient reason.

So I would distinguish between this affecting your application and your enrollment: in general application/offers are handled by universities. The enrollment depends on visas, which are a government decision.

In addition to the issue of obtaining visa, you may find that you're ineligible to work on certain funded research projects because of your nationality.  This is particularly an issue with research projects funded by the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense.

Tensions between China and America are having a profound effect on Chinese students in America. Chinese students' conduct is scrutinized very carefully these days. In addition, it would not surprise me one bit if their calls and email messages were being monitored very carefully. In addition, Chinese students - and especially those in science and technology fields - are being regarded with increasing suspicion by many people in the United States. To be honest, I think all of this is understandable when you think of all the Chinese citizens (residing in America) who have been arrested for espionage in recent years.


text:
Would it be cheating to say we did things we didn't in teamwork project report?
I am studying an undergrad CS course about agile project management. We are supposed to create a project using agile techniques and document how we did it.
The project is finished, but some people on my team want to say we did things we didn't do to gain extra points, like write user stories we didn't use or produce low fidelity prototypes and say we used them to get to our solution.
The course is not the best. There is little instruction or direction. The only reference to agile is 1 chapter in the assigned reading, so we had to learn ourselves agile while creating the project. From what we have learned we now see we missed things.
Would it be cheating to do this? It feels dishonest. I would preferably say what we relly did, what we missed and what we would do differently, but they don't want to. We can submit individual reports instead of as a team, but I would be throwing them under the bus if I did that and was honest.

It would be dishonest, as you well know. Just play the hand you are dealt and move on and up.

I assume that your professor would treat any form of dishonesty as cheating. And, your colleagues seem to understand that or they wouldn't be suggesting it.
I would tell the team that you intend to be honest with the professor. They may not be happy, but the "stick" held over their head may be enough to get them to "do the right thing".
You can describe what you did. But you can also describe why you didn't do some other things, including no real guidance or insufficient understanding. You aren't intended, in a first course, to be able to perform like professionals. If you lie about what you did, then you learn nothing. If you are honest then the "retrospective" on the project is a learning experience.

Note that Retrospective is one of the typical agile practices. Not every agile project in the real world turns out well, often because people didn't really follow agile practice.

This is a good solution. I don't want to hurt them but if I do what you say I have given them the choice.


text:
How to list affiliation if work was done independently but between institutions?
I'm in a bit of a specific situation and wanted to hear everyone's thoughts. I worked on a personal project in my undergraduate with no collaborators. This was just a one-off thing I decided to try for fun and worked on it on my senior year and the summer after my senior year. However, it ended up giving really good results. If nothing else, I would like to put it up on ArXiv. I have published papers during my undergrad but this project was different as I did not have an advisor or work with anyone. Now I am at a new institution doing my PhD.
My question is should I list my affiliation as independent research, as my undergrad institution or my new PhD institution. I don't want to accidentally commit an academic faux pas!
While this question: What to list as affiliation when work spans multiple institutions? is similar. I feel it doesn't quite answer my question as I'm not sure if it's fair to list either institution as technically I wasn't supervised for this project.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/171418/etiquette-for-institutional-affiliation-if-you-changed-institutions-during-the-r/171446#171446

Since you have started the doctoral program already, then your current affiliation is that institution. If you hadn't started, then you would still be an independent researcher and would list yourself that way. But, you are no longer affiliated with the undergraduate institution and so it wouldn't be proper to list them.
However, it is also appropriate to put a short note in the paper clarifying and giving any credit due. In the case where you list the doctoral institution as the affiliation, the note could perhaps say that the work was begun (independently) as a student at -name of institution- and completed as an independent researcher.
Listing your current affiliation lets people find you in the short term and makes it easy to track you down later as needed.

Note that the philosophy here is that the affiliation is about the person, not the work. In some cases, usually involving employers, they will have specific rules about what you can and cannot say.
And if the work was financially supported by some institution you need to clearly indicate that somehow. Some use affiliation and some use a note with the same spirit as the one suggested here.


text:
How do I find mathematics PhD programs that have faculty within a certain field?
So I'm interested in a PhD in math, and my research area is in set theory. Kind of a niche place to be. Forcing, large cardinals, determinacy, etc. I know that the biggest schools (Carnegie Mellon, Ivies, MIT, etc.) have these researchers, but I'm not sure where to start searching for these programs? Is there any place to search for PhD programs by the fields of mathematics they sponsor? If you know anything about contemporary set theory, you could chime in, but even if not, let me know what the best ways to search for faculty are.

Apart from other things, UC Berkeley has a great tradition in set theory, if by some chance you didn't know. And/but not really all the Ivies. Styles change...

That list wasn't supposed to be all-inclusive, and also was just a general "I'm looking for not-top-25 schools" sort-of thing. But yes, there's some excellent faculty at Berkeley. I'm looking for places that are safer "in"s for me, if that makes sense. And a systematic way to check this, if possible.

A good idea is to email one of those researchers and just ask them.

Assuming this is for U.S. schools (based on your examples), can't you just visit the web pages of the "not-top-25 schools" and look at their research areas and faculty interests? I can't imagine this would take more than a few hours at most. I did this in Fall 1985 and Winter 1985-86 (well before the internet; same field, also non-top schools), and I think I just flipped through journals and books like this, looking at author affiliations. Of course, I was already familiar with where many such people were from (continued)

set theory books on the library shelves (not just the books' author(s), but also the authors of the references in the books). For what it's worth, two that I recall finding this way were UF and UCLA, and both still seem to qualify. UCLA I definitely knew about (Moschovakis, Steel, etc.), but UF I didn't know about until I started looking.

Look at the authors of set theory papers in mathsci.net and arXiv.

The American Math Society does publish something about recent PhD's, but I'd be mildly surprised if it were searchable.
The math genealogy project has an "advanced search" that can indeed search with many different filters. I'd look for "set theory" PhD's in the last 5 years (or so), and see where they were granted. Then filter those places on "exclusiveness" if that is a concern... which is entirely reasonable, after all.
Faculty at your current place should have some idea about that exclusivity, even if they don't know current events in set theory.

There are two basic approaches that I think might yield good results for you.
My first suggestion would be to try and find some relatively recent publications in the field of study you are interested in pursuing. This would give you some specific faculty to consider/contact. Even more importantly, these faculty are active researchers in the field and if they have grad student co-authors, that bodes well for the students who study under them.
The second is that research areas tend to be small communities. If you happen to have a contact in that field, perhaps one of your professors at your current institution or one identified from publications as described above, they likely can give you names of others to contact. Most educators are interested in helping out students and would be willing to share their expertise, but do spend some time doing research on your own beforehand that you could share. E.g., "I saw publications by Dr. X at School A and Dr. Y at School B, but do you know of anyone else I should be considering?"
Keep in mind that not all professors are taking on new graduate students and not all "big names" in the field are active researchers. I'm sure there are a number of other questions on here that talk about how to pick an advisor. But that's a problem to tackle once you know what your options might be.

The AMS has a "Find a Graduate Program" website that lets you search by very broad categories.  See
https://www.ams.org/find-graduate-programs?prog_type=PHD
Unfortunately, the categories are relatively broad and none of them mention Set Theory.  This says something about the current level of interest in Set Theory.

Well, it looks like Set Theory would be looped into the Discrete Math/Logic/CS category.  But do you know how the AMS determines these categories?

Departments self enroll themselves on this web site based on their own ideas about what areas they support.  The AMS isn't saying anything about the strength of the programs in different areas.

If you want to find top schools, US News and World report ranks graduate programs in math, and it lists top schools by discipline.  In particular, one of the disciplines it has is Logic:

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/logic-rankings
These rankings don't necessarily match too closely with expert opinions, but it gives you one place to start looking.

For finding more schools, Math Departments often have Faculty Research Interests pages, so can just do a web search for something like

mathematics departments faculty research interests "set theory"

My search engine of choice results in a lot of different schools/faculty.

If you know active faculty in the area, ask them for suggestions.  Or if you don't, you can look websites of recent conferences in Set Theory and see where people are from.


text:
submitting article with currently no access to data used
Say one works on a scholarly article with data that were available at her institution. Then, she leaves the institution (data is no more accessible), but wants to submit her article to a scientific journal. Imagine the article is accepted, can there be issues related to the data usage?

Check with the journal. All the journals I work with require that either (1) the data be deposited in a public data repository, or that (2) the data be available to other researchers upon request.
But regardless of what the journal says, I see a couple of issues:

How are you going to answer reviewer's comments without access to the data?
If it's your data, how come you don't have access to it? Are you trying to publish someone else's data? I assume you have good answers to these questions, so be prepared to provide those answers.

Maybe she is overthinking it. She still has the data she used to have access to, but she doesn't have a subscription to the data provider anymore. But sure, checking with the journal it's probably the best

I wouldn't see a problem with one possible caveat. If a review suggests major revisions for which you need access to the data, then you will need to find a way to obtain it. If your leaving was amicable then that can probably be arranged, if only via a former colleague or supervisor.
A more serious case would be that a reviewer suggests the work is fraudulent, though that is unlikely.
It would be hard for others to validate the work on the same data, of course, but that would also be true if the author were still there. And, good science suggests that a "replication" should be independent and likely on different data.


text:
Is it possible to work as an apprentice during a phd?
I am currently an undergraduate student in Japan hoping to major in Psychology in the second year. I am thinking about studying Clinical Psychology for a Ph.D. to become a forensic psychologist in the future in Canada or America but I am wondering if I can study and work at the same time. Is this possible even for an international student? Thank you.

What do you mean by 'work" and "apprentice"? Most countries limit what sort of employment is open to those on a student visa, I think.

Except for internships that are part of a program, as an international student you are not allowed to work outside your studies in the U.S. I assume it’s the same in Canada.

Beside legal arguments, but just to show a point of view: doing my PhD (chemistry and physics environment) would have been impossible.

I am sorry I probably made a mistake (cuz english is not my first language), I meant whether I can get a job related to the pdh that I take. Is that impossible?


text:
How to cite (results of) a competition held in conference venue?
I want to cite results of a competition that is held in a conference venue. I've seen a related question here of citing Kaggle competition results. An answer suggested to do general citation because of the anonymity and the changing nature of the results in Kaggle competition. However, differing with Kaggle competition, results of a competition in venues such as a conference cannot change with new incoming method/answer submission. Therefore, what's the proper way to cite this? is there a bibtex entry for this?

Do you want to cite results in general or that of a specific method?

results of all the method to all of the problems

The important thing about citations is that a reader can follow your citation to check what you say and potential background. So this depends on where something is written down and later retrievable about that competition.

@ChristianHennig so we could just cite the url of the competition results page? or make it a footnote?

Only if you have nothing better. URLs can become defunct, so it's not optimal, but better than nothing.


text:
What is the most rigorous math graduate school in the world?
I am planning to go to graduate school for mathematics in a few years. I want to know which math graduate school(s) have the most rigorous math courses. I live in the USA, so I would prefer an USA math graduate school. By rigorous, I mean that all the statements, except the axioms, are proven.

I doubt any decent graduate program in mathematics is less rigorous than any other. The differences might be more along the lines of competitiveness, pace, expectations.

You seem to be under the impression that graduate school is a place where you learn a subject in more depth.  That's not really the point of graduate school; it's supposed to be a place where, at least in part, you learn to do research in a subject, to create new knowledge, not just to learn what's already known.

If you are implicitly assuming that “most rigorous” equates with “best”, you are deeply mistaken. The best math graduate programs certainly don’t think their mission is to “prove all the statements except the axioms”. Beyond a certain, far from complete, level of rigor such that you will find at any R1 university math department, covering the material with additional rigor will only serve to produce less good research mathematicians, not better ones.

... or, if by "rigor" one means "pedantic attention to every detail, giving them all equal weight", then that's a recipe for self-sabotage...

Along similar lines to many of the comments and answers here, I strongly recommend this blog post by Terry Tao on the role of rigor in mathematics: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/theres-more-to-mathematics-than-rigour-and-proofs/

This question is an example of an XY problem. Also, it cracks me up how often the word "rigorous" is misused.

I think this question is misguided. It turns out that if you want to prove "everything from the ground up", then mathematics is actually exceptionally boring -- because you will never get very far. At least as a student, you have to be able to rely on statements others have proved and for which you may or may not understand the proofs to do interesting things, or at best you sometimes have to go through a proof in some sort of cursory way without dwelling on all of the details (and without wondering whether this step might rely on the continuum hypothesis and/or might only be valid based on some system of axioms but not another).
This isn't to say that mathematics should be all handwaving. But mathematics becomes a lot more interesting if you allow yourself to use tools you haven't developed yourself and might not actually be able to develop yourself. The point being that just because you don't understand doesn't make the theorem it proves any less valid: Someone else has already done the work for you, and you should feel free to use it.
This perspective is really not so different from saying "Yes, I could try to learn everything about cars and build my own. But my road trips will be far more interesting (and be able to cover far more ground) if I allow myself to buy a car from an established car company whose cars are known to last for a couple 100,000 miles." You don't have to be able to build a car yourself to drive one!

Strange as it seems, there are people who genuinely like the idea of being able to build a car.

@lighthousekeeper And that's good, because someone has to do it. But it's not necessary that the vast majority of people know how to build a car from the ground up. It's useful that we also have people who know how to do the aerodynamics, deal with the materials sciences for the tires, the battery charging infrastructure around the country, all without being specialists in the chassis and the engine. They're all working on cars, though.

I doubt you will find such a place. In part because "proof" is somewhat in the eyes of the beholder. But any decent graduate school in the US or elsewhere will serve you well.
However, you will find some professors scattered around at those schools that require more from students than the average. There are still some folks around who studied with Robert Lee Moore at UT Austin, though they are mostly my age (i.e. retired).
The Moore Method of teaching is to forbid students from reading mathematics, but to develop it completely on their own. He didn't develop everything from the axioms, but his students did.
Some other younger people still carry on that tradition, though I suspect it is fading. It is a very hard path, though some people like it. But some of his own students have rejected it, also.

OOPS, Most, perhaps all, of Moore's direct students are now deceased. So look for their students, who might be carrying on the traditions. A place to look is in the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Somewhat as @Buffy says, your concern about careful, complete proofs in graduate school is probably misplaced. The top 100 or 200 graduate programs in math in the U.S. are staffed with good mathematicians who know how to really prove things, etc. :)
More to the point: there are many textbooks and on-line notes that fill in many, many details of many, many things, so there is no obstacle to you finding good proofs of nearly anything you want.
Especially nowadays, as opposed to pre-internet times, but already if a good textbook was available, lectures might not explicitly cover every detail, since it could be looked-up. Further, indeed, a lecture is a different medium/format/vehicle than written things... and one need not attempt to be a bad copy of the other. There is not much reason for a lecturer to copy onto a blackboard (or overheads, or ...) from their notes, to be copied by students... if/when an accessible type-set document exists. So, for me, I do not prove everything in class, leaving some to my typeset, on-line notes.
Especially, delicate arguments that are not very conceptual are probably better communicated in writing, with live discussion addressing just the delicacy, but not attempting the execution.
(For that matter, "in real life", mathematics is not actually lined up in impeccable logical order. First, because there is no unique such order... )
Anyway, I think you'll not find any real problem of the sort you fear. As in a comment, the aspects in which grad schools (in math, in the U.S.) differ are more in terms of the local culture, your peer group, etc.


text:
How should you respond when a professor answers your question with "It's obvious!"?
I had a math question and I went to my professor's (now a professor at Harvard) office hours (this was a really long time ago). I asked him and he said, "It's obvious!" I sort of said, "OK." I never did figure out the answer to the question...

Heh heh. "It IS obvious!" https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/7247/in-a-popular-anecdote-who-took-20-minutes-to-decide-that-a-thing-was-obvious

Anecdotes, answers-in-comments, advice, and other assorted chit-chat has been moved to chat. Please see this FAQ before posting another comment.

Any chance he was just messing with you?
If I were a professor, that's the kind of answer I'd give, and I'd expect the student to respond back with equal levels of sarcasm.

You can act in two alternative ways:

Tell the professor: "Sorry, maybe it's obvious, but I cannot really get it: could you please explain it to me anyway?"
Accept that the professor might want you to understand this independently, and go home and bang your head over it until you understand it, whatever time it takes.

About the second point, sometimes students think that if they cannot understand a concept in a few minutes, they have to ask. I sometimes ask my students when they come with a question: "How long did you think about it?". When I was a student, I'd chew over certain concepts for weeks before grasping them, but the reward was a better understanding of those concepts, something that I wouldn't have achieved if I had gone to the professor as soon as I couldn't understand.

Option 2 does not necessarily have to be followed alone, fellow students can be ideal discussion partners.

about the second point, imo "chewing over concepts for weeks" is a massive waste of time. it's a lot better (but i guess a lot more difficult) to find someone that can help you understand (rather than just know) the concept - in other words, a good teacher

@somebody If you gain understanding, it's not a waste of time ;-) Note that it doesn't mean thinking about it 24h a day, but dedicating some time every day, even when doing something else. E.g. I used to do it while having a long walk, cooking, driving or watching a movie.

@MassimoOrtolano right right, but if you can gain as much (or more) understanding in, say, a hundredth of the time...

it's like playing a game on a higher difficulty - you can do it that way, but if you lose nothing by doing it the easier way, is there any advantage to doing it the harder way?

@somebody Some things don't have shortcuts.

@DRF sure, but some things do. and this is one of them.

@somebody Surely "it depends". For me, I can learn pure facts and some rote processes from being taught but if I want to use that to generalize I have to actually study on my own. It might also depend on which proof it is, if it's some basic proof you probably shouldn't struggle for weeks. If it's a proof of the Ramanujan conjecture, you might want to allow more time.

@user3067860 my point is, you absolutely do not have to be told facts to learn/be taught. people do not have to give you the answer all done up nicely, to teach you. it may be difficult, but it is entirely possible to guide someone's way of thinking, or even better, somehow let them find their own way to a solution while introducing as little bias as possible (or, well, as little as is needed)

tl;dr learning facts and rote processes isn't "teaching" imo (well... not in this context at least). that's more cramming than anything. gaining knowledge, and gaining understanding, are completely orthogonal

@somebody I think we may be talking at cross purposes. My understanding of what this answer refers to in point 2 is, literally, students who genuinely are unwilling to put in ANY effort, or approach any problem that isn't exactly like one previously shown. It's not limited to students, either, as a developer I have coworkers who would be happy if we would tell them what changes to make on what line for every task (1, I don't know, 2, if I take the time to figure it out, I might as well take the further five minutes to make the change and check it in, and then why are we paying you?)

@user3067860 note however, the answer mentions spending weeks thinking about a question, which my first comment quotes... plus like i've said in my other comments, spoonfeeding and teaching (by guiding) are completely different. it's entirely possible to guide someone without giving them the full answer, for most problems. (tl;dr: i'm not sure why you're automatically assuming the student is for whatever reason unwilling to learn)

I have always been amazed how I can pass an entire day on certain topics without understanding them, and then wake up the next morning with the solution coming while doing breakfast, sleeps brings answers. I remember perfectly how the morning after an exam I waked up realizing immediately that I had put a plus instead of a minus in a problem.

After realizing this, now if there is something I don't understand even after really trying to get it, I just pass to the next topic, the answer sooner or later comes, just give time to the brain to work on It in background.

There is an old-standing notion in mathematics that "trivial to see" things take up to 15 minutes with a paper and a pencil.

@user3067860 Yeah, 'few minutes' vs 'weeks' is a long range. When I used to teach (couple of months, high intensity courses) for awhile our course had a policy where we told students that if they were stuck for longer than 15 minutes they should ask for help. Help meant guidance, not answers. Help never meant telling a student "It's obvious". This was rooted in the idea that 'solving' a lot of problems/exercises was a better pedagogic use of time then the slow discovery process of being 'kinda stuck'.

@somebody So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the ideal path is think a little bit about the problem, then be guided (but not be told the answer outright) by someone?

@DavidMulder That sounds like a very good pedagogy, how did it turn out?

@Ovi I am 100% in favor of it. Although to be fair it was mainly a tool to be able to give meaningful feedback to people who asked either too quickly or too little. Since then I have used it when supervising juniors as well. Maybe mathematics is different... but I doubt it. If anything I would the bar for being 'stuck' to be raised bit by bit.

@Ovi well... the "ideal path" would depend on the learner. imo it would be whatever helps them improve their problem solving skills the fastest. as david has implied (?) above, spending several weeks for (relatively) almost no improvement is far from an effective use of time... even though it may not be very many hours in those weeks, a learner would be required to either a) halt all other progress on the subject, or b) continue on to other topics while still pondering the one they were stick on... neither of which sounds ideal.

re: guiding, it's also quite important to stress that it's not ideal to guide them towards one specific path of solving a problem - that's essentially giving them the answer. (but of course, if there are disadvantages (or advantages) of doing it their way it'd probably be good to mention those)

Your professor was a jerk.
When someone comes to me with a question they seek an answer to - I do my best to answer it. I may skip some parts and highlight the need to review them (from this we get X, you can check by yourself with the Mologof conjecture, but let's assume that we do have it now. From there ...) but I always guided the student, "bootstrapping" his journey to the solution so to speak.
Now to your question about how to answer that: there is no good way. The bad way is what I did once in a very similar situation (It is obvious for very intelligent people like you, but for the more stupid ones it is not. I am not sure, though, that they are intelligent enough to be able to explain it - or something like that). We had a complicated interaction afterward.
If you really want an answer I would go to someone else because at this point the conversation won't go well.

@theonlygusti: my answer was basically that there is no good answer to such a person without getting into a conflict. The prof is obviously not good at teaching (he may know a lot but this answer shows he is not fit to teach). The actual solution is to ask someone else.

Although "jerk" or "not good at teaching" might be a bit harsh, since there's no context to make a personality judgment, but definitely the professor seemed inconsiderate towards that student in that moment from what was given. Still yeah, good answer.

@JasonC: sure, this is one case, he may have had a bad day or something.

-1 The professor was not a jerk, they are a human being. Maybe they had a bad day, or maybe they were irritated because they were busy and constantly being bothered with questions that they believe that the students should be capable of solving on their own. Maybe there is more to this story than this short question shows. In any case, your judgemental comment gets my downvote - it is not helpful, and your suggested answer to the professor (degrading yourself) sounds ironic and will most likely be understood as such and therefore have a negative impact on your relationship with the professor.

@Louic: of course they are a human being, this includes being a jerk. But this is obvious! (I am surprised you do not get it)

@Louic: sorry, but I wanted to just play the professor here - I am sure you did not appreciate like the OP did not either.

There are a few contexts in which I can imagine seeing this answer given in a non-jerk way. Example, in an analysis course: "Professor, don't I have to check that the function f(x)=x^2 is continuous to apply the intermediate-value theorem?" "Yes, but it's obvious".

@Louic The whole point of professional context is to keep such private things to oneself. If someone is too stupid or short tempered to do that - that's a "jerk". I've seen many times people snapping and I've snapped on others. That was me being a jerk. To un-jerk oneself, apology and explanation follows. Here, it's clear that the professor didn't followed up, because the question remained open.

I went to an engineering school, one of the primary things we were taught was how to find the answer to problems and not ask unless you are really stumped. The justification was "you might be the expert someday with nobody to turn to but yourself." The professor might have been right the the answer was obvious - that means keep thinking about it, and if you can not figure it out, then explain why to the professor. Part of learning is not just memorizing facts but also how to think and work through problems. When I interview programmers, I give them an impossible task just to see if they think.

@user3481644: I also went to an engineering school and the best teachers were the ones who managed to get you interested in something. It was often with what I call "bootstrapping" - helping with that one step that helps you go further. This landed me with a PhD at the end. And then I went to industry and I hired plenty of great (and not that great) people over the years (technical and research).

@user3481644 (cont'd) I specifically tell them that there are no hidden traps during the interview and that I want to check how much of a match we are. This got me to hire extraordinary people with whom I worked for years (two of them I am quite sure you heard about if you work in software engineering). Setting such traps is certainly not what I would do because if that was done to me I would not be happy - an interview should be a two-way conversation. YMMV.

It probably means: "You should be able to figure that out by yourself". Whether the professor is right about that or not, we cannot know. In any case it looks like they do not wish to answer, so your best bet is to ask your question elsewhere.
Of course, instead of responding with "OK" you could have tried to get an answer by responding with:

"It is not obvious to me, could you put me on the right track?" (indicating that you really need a hint), or something like:
"I read X, Y and Z, but could not understand the part where they derived A from B." (demonstrating that you did your best and have a very specific question)

But, obviously (pun intendend), it is impossible to tell from here how they would respond.

Your second option has the added advantage of possibly demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding. If it turns out that X, Y and Z are all chapters about heavy ion physics and the question is about electron positron collision then the confusion may just be an overloaded word or symbol. These sorts of confusions can bamboozle people over things that are genuinely obvious.

Deep knowledge in mathematics (and I suppose other fields) depends on insight, not just facts. What is "obvious" to someone with insight may not be to someone else who hasn't yet gained that insight. This was always my experience studying math. And it takes a lot of hard work to gain that insight. Some of it frustrating until you can say "A Ha".
Perhaps he is suggesting that you think deeper about the issue and come up with your own solution.
You can also, perhaps, tell him that it isn't obvious to you and would he give you a hint. A hint is better than an answer since it might lead you to the insight you lack.
Of course, he might also be wrong.

See this for an apocryphal story about what is obvious/trivial and what is not in math.

I am late to this question and the other asnwers are great. However, I had a friend who shared with me a realization he had that I think might be helpful to you. If a mathematician thinks something is truly obvious or trivial, they will state it as fact. When they say something is "obvious" or "trivial" what they really mean, is that it is obvious and trivial, now that you know it is obvious. That is, you can show it by doing something naive. So it is okay that you don't find it immediately obvious. Your professor just thinks that if you attack the problem with the fundamentals, you can figure it out. So go back to definitions, basic properties, and/or key theorems, and you'll be able to figure it out!

I would certainly agree with this comment about how "trivial" is used, but I would say the usage of "obvious" varies more from person to person, and some mathematicians think others use such terms too glibly.  (I occasionally like to use "obvious" for false statements, before explaining why they're false.)

Indeed, in its best sense, "obvious" is like a hint saying "don't overthink this".  If you've been trying to solve it by some really deep or complicated method, then step back and see if there if there is something simple that works better.  On the other hand, it's possible that what is simple to them is still deep and complicated to you.

Your last sentence is the goal - "... go back ... figure it out". Learn to do that in school and you can do it in the workplace.

First of all, the professor should not have said that.  It can sometimes be helpful to indicate in a paper or lecture that something follows directly rather than following in less clear way (there's still probably better words for this than "obvious"), but it's never appropriate to answer a question by saying "it's obvious."
That said, I think the best follow-up question to ask here that's most likely to get a good answer is to simply ask:

Why is it obvious?

Hopefully this will not only get you an answer to your original question, but will also get an explanation of what bit of meta knowledge you're missing that's supposed to make it straightforward to work out.  It's good to learn why it's true, but it's even better to learn why it's supposed to be obvious.

This is the best answer by far. From my personal experience, refereeing papers, "it's obvious that" tends to be a place where mistakes in proofs happen.

It is totally okay to answer a question with obvious. If a student asks you to, say, simplify 2/4 or spell "honey", would you be patient with such people?

Grow a Thicker Skin
I know how that answer sounds, but hear me out: I've been in that same situation.
Early in my undergrad, I struggled with basic chemistry. The large-lecture freshman chem was taught by a kind, energetic, and engaging man who consistently won awards for "best professor" from students. For mostly-extracurricular reasons, I flunked.
The off-cycle class was instead taught by a professor who was, shall we say, significantly less well regarded. He clearly spent more time doing research than teaching, and his lecture skills had atrophied. In retrospect, I think he didn't look at any examples ahead of time either. Instead, he would show up to class, talk (briefly) about something current that he found interesting, explain the theory of what he was covering, then spend a large portion of class solving the first half of each of a series of example problems diligently and with careful detail. Often he made some remark like "...and from there the answer is obvious" when he stopped.
In a subject which I had previously found difficult, this approach was somewhat distressing.
What I did after a few weeks was, essentially, what the title says: grow a thick skin. When he stopped solving a problem halfway through, I would (politely) ask him to show us how to solve from there. He would give this look, like I had asked "But Professor, how do you solve '2x=4'?", but he would also solve each one out, with the same diligence and detail as the first half.
It felt terrible to be asking those questions, and to be subject to those looks. But I couldn't afford to repeat the class again, so I had to keep asking. After doing that for a while though, a few things became clear. One, everyone else was struggling just as much with his style, and were very glad to have me (or anyone!) asking for more details. Two, he simply didn't know what parts were hard. I assume that basic chemistry had just been part of his professional life so long that it was all trivial. Either way though, I think he was struggling with what to emphasize as much as the class was struggling to learn.
Ironically, that ended up one of my favorite classes. The initial hump of asking those questions was very difficult (at least for me). But ultimately, it was also empowering to participate much more actively. And once I was already demanding explanations for the examples I didn't understand, asking for explanations of the material was no harder. So, because I was forced to constantly ask for clarifications, the second half of that class ended up being among the clearest and easiest to understand classes I have taken. Learning how and when to push for more details also helped immensely in future classes and in my professional life.
Assume your professor is operating in good faith, and that he wants to teach, and be polite and persistent until you get a satisfactory answer.

This is good advice, but I don't think "grow a thicker skin" is the right idiom here.  "Growing a thick skin" refers to not being easily upset or offended by criticism; but there is no criticism here.  Really it's about courage to ask for help.

@cowlinator it originally meant something like "stupid", in that someone might be too much of a "thickskin" to understand insults. Somewhere around two hundred years ago, it turned into "insensitive." It still holds that meaning, but with a more positive connotation. Having a thick skin comes up often with respect to criticism, but the meaning is still broader.

@cowlinator, "It's obvious" is—in some contexts—assumed to have a tacit, critical "...and you therefore shouldn't need to ask."

One explanation that other answers here have not raised I believe, is very common:
Intimidation as a defensive mechanism. People who do not know why something holds, or have a difficulty articulating a clear argument, usually defend themselves by saying things like: "it's obvious", so to intimidate others from questioning them or demanding an explanation.
The professor might be well accomplished in his area, but this doesn't mean he knew the answer or how to explain the argument. Some scholars are good and quick intuitive and effective thinkers, but completely lack the ability to rigorously understand some arguments from first-principles.
In this case, you should simply insist on an explanation, but not too much, as this may offend the professor who is probably trying to conceal their deficiencies. A slightly provocative answer may be: "Yes, this is probably obvious, so I bet it should be very easy to explain!".

I would reword what XavierStuvw has already said more strongly.
Obvious means easy to explain.
To expand on this... Landau and Lifshitz' Course of Theoretical Physics is INFAMOUS for the overuse of "obvious" to the degree of spawning an entire barrage of meta-jokes. I could offer several takes on it:

(Professor teaching us QED, rather strong scientist in their own regard): What was obvious to Landau is not obvious to us mere mortals. If you can not explain it in simple and accessible terms, it is not obvious.
(An amazing professor of analytical mechanics, answering my inquiry about whether I should use Landau's book on the subject as the main course material): Those are books which are good when you already know the subject to gain deeper insight. Do not use it for your first exposure.
(My own experience studying QM using their books): Feels like attacking a brick wall, you sit there perplexed staring at a single page for quite literally several hours until it indeed becomes obvious to you as well. It feels like a major victory; in hindsight, though, you are not quite sure if it is just your brain tricking you into being convinced just to end the torture. I do believe it actually worked for me, but for me, intuition beats rigor so it is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. But at least at the end of the day I could explain it to others without resorting to "this is obvious".

So this is a judgement call, after all: if your professor thinks that sitting in front of the textbook meditating and becoming one with the subject is THE way to master it, you are out of luck here and would be better off seeking help elsewhere (your peers taking the same course, other professors or even the Internet). Looking it up before bothering other people is a habit you start developing by the end of the university, so if this exchange happened on your 4th year or some such, it might be they are just expecting you to work it out on your own (and that "obvious" is a politesse for "not worth spending my time explaining it to you").
If this is not their general demeanor, well, just ask to elaborate; there are many ways to do so such as "In this case, I am obviously missing something trivial" or "I don't see it" or "Could you outline the actual proof, please?".
I know I parrot Louic and Massimo quite a bit in this answer as well but uh, your question just so happened to attract personal experience-style answers not fitting into comments :)

Answers to questions addressed to a professor are in general only "obvious" to people who have the relevant background. The professor is being rude and unprofessional and a terrible teacher with that response, but a diplomatic follow up would be something like

It's not obvious to me, so it seems like I am missing some of the prerequisite perspective needed to see the obvious answer. Could you help me identify and fill in that gap in my understanding?

How does your advice differ from that given in the most upvoted answer a few days ago?

"Exactly because it is obvious, would you mind it to show me that?" or, at the meta level, "Would you explain what obvious means in this context?".
Explaining obvious things should entail an easy explanation, otherwise it is not obvious.
Consider also the meaning 1 of the entry https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professor.
My two cents.

How does your advice differ from that given in the most upvoted answer a few days ago?

@FedericoPoloni Because of the references to the dictionary, for example. Also because it introduces the idea of defining what obvious is in a specific context. And because it simulated another contribution https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181227/73304 that the most upvoted answer did not.

@FedericoPoloni Also, The author of most upvoted answer (MUA) elaborates, rightfully, on students banging their heads, an aspect which I am bound neither to endorse nor to refute and that I do not consider essential to an answer. All in all, there are several aspects why this answer differs from the MUA, although apparently this is may not be as obvious as I thought.

My bet is the answer was obvious to any student who should proceed with a mathematics curriculum and you were being evaluated. The fact that you never figured out the answer speaks volumes about whether you should be hired. You might not like that and I'll probably get downvoted, but employers want people who can solve problems even if they can't ask somebody. I was just on a job during which I solved a problem in a day that the rest of the existing team could not over the prior few months. The team had actually solved it, they just didn't know it and did not execute on it - the answer was "obvious".
Anyway, if you want answers from somebody smarter than you, you need to ask the question in such a manner that they feel its worth their time answering.
And lastly, just read through a lot of SO Q&A and enjoy the answers that are like "google is your friend" and "already answered here" and "vote to close as a duplicate" and ... and ... The more you think and that thought is evident in your question (which can be more than one sentence), the more likely you'll get an answer.
[Edit]
The subject matter here is mathematics, I didn't see anywhere stated that it was Calculus, trig, or whatever, but math (it is singular) is a "head game", its thinking, its learning how to think. The best way to learn anything is by doing, so the best way to learn how to think mathematically is to think mathematically. The instructor knows this and wants to see it in his students.

Your answer is irrelevant to the question, because the student was not a job applicant. 2) Even if the OP is a job applicant, you failed to explain or prove why the fact that he/she didn't understand one argument means they wouldn't understand future arguments,  better than others. 3) And even if they are slow to understand in general, you failed to explain why would they not excel in their job by other means using other capabilities, even better than their peers.

@Dilworth - A student learns many things in school, including being prepared to be a valued employee. Its not a matter of understanding "arguments", it is the ability to solve problems without having to run to the instructor. I've got 35+ years in the industry, those excel would have made a better effort to explain to the instructor why they needed help and would not have given up. Remember the OP said he never found the answer? The instructor probably saw that in him and was trying to coax him into finding the answer. Then the OP comes here and whines about it, as are others. Good luck to you

The goal of university is research and education. Not to prepare "employees". Almost every worthwhile scientist knows that the ability to ask "stupid" questions is at the heart of serious research and learning.

@Dilworth - "and education" - And what will you do with that education? Sit at home and stare at the walls? Or will you use that education to GET A JOB? There was never any comment about the OP's question being stupid, but every "worthwhile scientist" knows that "every worthwhile scientist" needs to be able to find answers on their own, otherwise, they are nothing more than a lab assistant. The instructor was telling the OP that he could find the answer himself, but the OP gave up, saying he never found the answer. Higher education prepares you for working, in all aspects.


text:
If someone doesn't get into a graduate program/postdoc, or a grant, etc, how are they supposed to know why?
So that they can do better next time. There's usually no transparency or explanation of why they were rejected.

Did you try to ask?

These are different things. For a grant proposal, you usually get reviewer reports and often a score, so there's transparency.

If you don’t get a job offer, how are you supposed to know?

So that they can do better next time - This is less of an issue for grad school/postdoc applications, as many (most?) applicants will just take their best option and not reapply the next year.

In my field, postdoc is the easiest of the three: your market value is essentially a function of your published work (quality and quantity).

It is like the game Mao card game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game))  "The game forbids its players from explaining the rules, and new players are often informed that "the only rule you may be told is this one"."  "Part of the traditional experience of Mao is a new player being forced to learn some or all of the rules of the game through observation and trial and error."

Doing research is about figuring out what you don't know from the clues you have.  Consider it part of the challenge.

You generally won't know. That's frustrating because you don't know what to improve. All you know from rejection is that your application “wasn't good enough compared with the other applicants”.
The usual way to figure out what you need to improve is to give your application documents to someone who has been on the selection committee a few times and can give you feedback on what they see as your deficiencies.

Worthwhile remembering that sometimes there is just an amazing candidate that was better.  So I would say sometimes there is nothing that really should be improved, or not worthwhile improving because 9/10, you'll come out on top.

Also, "good" is to be taken in the context of the particular call one applied for, and also with regard to the weight that the deciders assigned to the different evaluation criteria. If the decision is made by a committee, social factors and politics may play a role as well.

Don't forget that in some programs where the number of applicants is orders of magnitude larger than the number of available slots (e.g., medical schools), there aren't enough resources to review all the applications.  Many will be filtered out by an automated system or even discarded at random until the number of applicants is manageable.  There's a chance you were rejected because nobody ever looked at your application in the first place.

Ten years ago, towards the end of my first year as an Assistant Professor, I applied for an NSF (National Science Foundation, the main US grant funding agency for natural and social (but not health-related) sciences) grant.  It was rejected.  I got some comments, but they weren't really all that helpful.  As another agency funded a similar grant (albeit at a much lower funding level), I did not apply for a grant the next year.  This gave the NSF a perfect opportunity to give me feedback; they invited me to sit on a panel evaluating grants.
What I learned from sitting on that panel is that I simply don't have good enough ideas and haven't done sufficiently groundbreaking research to get funded given the competition and the funding rates, even if I could propose research that would be, in an ideal world, worth funding.  I have never applied for another NSF grant since.
Sometimes the only feedback is that you're doing all the things you should and can, but you're just a third-division footballer trying out for a first-division team.

I'm sorry to hear that you don't think you have the ideas or background to apply. But I do agree that sitting on panels is the single most important factor for learning to write consistently competitive proposals.

How do people who come up with good enough ideas do that? Maybe they talk to more people and get ideas that way.

@cgb5436 if you can fit that question in StackExchange format/style, it is worth asking as separate question

@cgb5436 If anybody had a simple answer to “how do people come up with groundbreaking research ideas” the world would be a very different place. But really, it’s a contradiction in terms. If there’s a method to come up with it, it’s not groundbreaking. The ground you’re breaking is supposed to be fresh.

@cgb5436 - Asking good questions is far more challenging to.do, and more impactful when done, than answering with good answers.....

It makes me wonder if just handing the grant proposal to a more prestigious person to present could help its chances, even if the content doesn't change.

@Crazymoomin: It can and should make a difference.  A proposal from me to prove the combinatorial invariance of Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials is a lot less credible than a proposal from Geordie Willliamson to do the same, even if our proposed strategies are identical.

@AlexanderWoo would it be a suitable strategy for early career researchers though? Get some big wigs name on the project even if they contribute little to nothing in the end. Sure, the young upstart has to swallow their pride a little, but they can still be first author on publications, and it's better than not having it happen at all.

@Crazymoomin: Mathematics is a little weird, because it has no lab work; knowing all the details of how to do a piece of research is equivalent to having done the research.  It also has no concept of 'first author'.  I won't opine on how things can or should work in less theoretical subjects.

@AlexanderWoo I expect funding matters even more in less theoretical subjects, if you don't get a grant, the research doesn't happen, end of.

I disagree slightly with Wolfgang Bangerth's answer that a rejection always means your application "wasn't good enough." The question also assumes that it's theoretically possible to have transparent rankings--and improve them.
Merit certainly matters, but decisions are often subjective and not under your complete control.
Hiring
For example, in many departments, students are selected by an admissions committee. These committees certainly consider recommendations, grades, etc but they also try to select students that will fit in well with department, balance the cohort across subfields, etc. If your (prospective) advisors doesn't have money/room for more student--or is just on the outs in departmental politics--there's not much you can do. Consistent with this, I think many people find that their "success rate" for grad school apps is only somewhat correlated with the ranking of the department. While these matter less for individual positions, interpersonal factors might matter: someone may fit in well with one group, but not get along with another. Having or being eligible for outside funding can certainly tip a decision. Finally, you may just get unlucky and face particularly tough competition.
Feedback isn't usually offered for PhD and postdoc applications, but if you've spoken to an individual prof, you can certainly ask (I would not bother if it was at the committee stage). People do sometimes get useful feedback. The other common option is to ask a mentor to look over your application. If you can, I would ask several people and focus on common themes.
Grants
Grants are a bit different in that you often get some kind of feedback or summary statement, but these can be tricky to interpret. A sufficiently motivated reviewer can find a flaw in almost any proposal: it's impossible to forestall every possible criticism in the 6-12 page format. As such, you need to read between the lines to determine whether the reviewers are making a specific technical critique (that you can fix) or are merely justifying their overall lack of enthusiasm for the proposal. Feedback from others can help, and you may be able to get some information from the funder's representative (e.g., the SRO at the NIH). Seeing other successful grants, either by asking colleagues or serving on review panels, is really helpful.
Still, the process is incredibly noisy. The primary reviewer may love your proposal or hate the entire subfield with a fiery passion. As with grad school apps, people have stories of a proposals that went from "not discussed" to top-ranked.

I like this answer. Often not getting in is not some sort of judgement on you, it can literally come down to luck.

"not good enough" = "not good enough given the criteria applied by those who make the decision".

The first point is so important. My wife didn’t get a post-doc she wanted at a place she’d been doing an internship, and she was told definitively that the only reason she didn’t is because there was someone in another specialty in the department who hadn’t gotten a post-doc in a couple years and it was their “turn” so to speak. She would have been a lock if they got no applicants from that specialty, but they did so that was that. (Worked out well for her in any event, which may also be worth hearing for anyone going through similar.)

@WolfgangBangerth, The phase "good enough" implies, to me, that there's something that could feasibly be improved. That's often true, but sometimes it's just a mismatch in interests, funding, etc.

@Matt I guess that's a fair interpretation. The way I meant "not good enough" was "someone made a ranking of candidates based on their criteria, and you didn't end up on top".  There may not be anything you can do about that because you just didn't fit their criteria: You may be Usain Bolt, but if the discipline is the hammer throw, you probably won't win the gold medal -- you're just not good enough (in this way of measuring who is or isn't good).

My answer is specific to Grants:
I don't fully agree with Alexander on classifying scientists into leagues and those of the premier league deserve funding. Like in football or in soccer, this categorisation is very subjective as the selection. This applies also to research papers, where borderline papers (which in my opinion represent the majority of submitted papers) need luck more than anything else to be accepted.
A few years ago, I was working with a professor with an outstanding profile and I used to write proposals for him and under his name. The quality of these proposals is bad and both the content and desired outcome are vague but most of them got funded (millions of €). The review comments are usually around:

The applicant seems to have all ingredients to make this proposal successful.

The outcomes of most of these projects were very modest.
I decided to write my own proposal after that, which took me one year to write and I wrote it more carefully than one would write a paper. I sent it to top experts in my area and they loved it in terms of writing style, content, motivation, planned outcome, etc. However, the proposal got rejected without any justification. I presumed that not my proposal which was not competitive but my profile, which is completely normal I think.

About 30 years ago, I sat on a grants advisory committee for the university's science faculty (physics, chemistry, math, computer science). We would not make the formal decision (that task lied with the board), but our recommendations were usually followed by the board. (Most of the board consisted of professors, but there were also two seats for ph.D students, one of them I occupied).
The major deciding factors on whether you are rewarded a grant? 1) How much money is available in this round, and 2) how many applications are there. Typically, we'd filter out applications which were below par (not many would be below par), then sort the rest. Where the cut-off point would be depended on the amount of money available (but that would be determined by the board).
As on how to sort applications? Lots of bickering and superficial things. People from the chemistry/physics department: "nah, he isn't good enough, he's never been a first author". Math/CS people: "that's because his name starts with a W, and in our field, we tend to sort authors by name" (Yeah, that discussion we had each and every meeting). People had the tendency to count number of publications (because that's easy), but that's just quantity, not quality. And number of publications would favour older applicants over younger ones. People would look far more into what an applicant has produced than look at the application itself.
And people on the committee would be far more favourable to applications from their own department than to applications from other departments. Let's just say that this was because it's easier to understand an application from your own field than a foreign field, and it has nothing to do with "the more money which flows to our department, the better".
Feedback was not given to the applicants. And I think they were better off.


text:
How do I transition out of the stuff I worked on in my PhD thesis?
One piece of advice I've gotten is to try to work in a different area from the thesis. "Don't keep squeezing and milking out one paper." I started reading papers in a different field but I don't know what the important, interesting questions are and what problems people haven't thought about yet and that can be answered by someone who is not an expert. How do I branch out in a new direction? For example, one idea would be to e-mail someone and ask directly.

Often that is what a post-doc at a different place is about. Have you graduated? Are you somewhere else?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/changing-fields

It is very hard to do if you are working alone. But if you are employed, especially in a tenure track or equivalent position, you are probably surrounded by people who can help you. Find a colleague and start a conversation. Ask to collaborate with them.
Even better, and available lots of places, is to join a small "seminar" with a few faculty and some graduate students who are interested in an area.
Collaboration at a distance is possible these days, but you have to make contact and show that you have something to offer. Meeting people and having conversations at regional, national, or international conferences is a good way.
Your old advisor probably has ideas that go beyond the work you did as a student and they probably have a circle of collaborators in the field. Perhaps you can join that circle.