text:
Can you give an example in a formal definition?
I would like to give an example in a formal definition. My concern is, by giving an example, I am implicitly demonstrating that the definition is not precise/clear enough.
Is it acceptable to give an example in a formal definition?

Actually, formal definitions, say in mathematics, usually require some additional explanation.

And definitions in maths would be very different from those written in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.

Note that the word "formal" has different meanings to different people. To Math persons, it refers to a precise mathematical definition. In less pure fields, definitions might be less precise, since natural language is inherently imprecise. But examples should generally only be used to illustrate definitions, not to specify them (as pointed out in vonbrand's answer).

In the definition itself, no. It just should be that: A definition. You should add examples and/or motivations in the surrounding text, so your reader (a befuddled human being, not an automaton!) sees what is going on, and where you want to go.

In mathematics, the definition of a concept is an essential ingredient of all proofs involving that concept. The definition must therefore be sufficiently clear and precise to serve that purpose in rigorous proofs.
The goal of precision may conflict with other worthwhile goals, for example ease of understanding, motivation, and hints about the role of the defined concept in a broader theory.  Nevertheless, I'd insist on precision in the definition itself, and use examples (and other sorts of information) outside the definition, if necessary, to serve those other goals.


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Can I put the proofs to my lemmas/theorems/corollaries in my appendix?
I have proofs that run on for up to 10 pages. To aid in readability, I would like to discuss my theorem, and the lemmas that support it, without the noise of these lengthy proofs. Can I move the proofs to my lemmas, theorem, etc., into an appendix? Or somewhere else more appropriate?

Is this a paper in mathematics?  In that case, I would say "no".  A paper in some other field?  Ask your advisor ; follow the customs of that field.

@GEdgar it’s computer science, but maths heavy.

Can I move the proofs to my lemmas, theorem, etc., into an appendix?

Yes - this is often done in journal articles. You might want to put a sketch of why your claims should be believed in the main text, with a pointer to the full proofs in the appendix.
But, you have tagged this thesis, so it would be worth discussing this with your thesis advisor, as they may have a different opinion for your particular field or their particular preferences/style.

Personally I feel that the appendix is only a place for the busywork kind of proofs. Examples would be something like long, tedious, but unsurprising calculations, or a specific variant of a well known theorem you need, that can't be found anywhere but is immediately obvious from some simple modifications of the original proof. In short, only the stuff that everyone would believe to be true from the get go and that just needs to be there to form a foundation for something more important somewhere else in your paper. In short, the stuff that generally no-one reads.
Conversely, if there is any "novelty" in your proof, it should never be in the appendix.
That being said, there is still no need to put proofs directly after the statement. It is quite common to discuss a set of theorems, lemmata in one section and then only do the proofs in the following sections. If you look at research papers, you will often find a section called "Proof of Theorem ...", where the Theorem number is smaller than the number of the section.
But if you do so please take care to minimize confusion, i.e. clearly reference forward and backwards. If it is badly executed, this style can be extremely annoying, as one always has to hunt for the theorem statement or the proof.

If you have "ten page proofs", perhaps you should see if it makes sense to break them up into shorter lemmata that can be reused or at least help structure the mess. Some detailed, case by case checks, other tedious busywork or programs to do the above can be relegated to an appendix, but ask your advisor beforehand.

Of course this is good if possible, but sometimes there are proofs which really can't be broken down very much.

@NoahSchweber, everything can be cut into pieces... perhaps explain a repetitive step once only, see if e.g. computer algebra can do much of the work, ...

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text:
Reusing another faculty's material
Is it rude to ask another faculty member if you can reuse their slides, notes etc?  I am new to teaching in a 4-year college and I am not sure if I can even ask my new colleagues this question.  It pops up when they help me and add me to their course pages they have taught a previous semester.  I see that their material is good and prompted to ask if I can reuse them.

They might say no, but of course you can ask.

The culture in different departments is different. I've been in departments where the expectation is that everyone develop their own teaching materials. I've also been in groups and departments where if you asked whether you can use someone else's material, the answer would be "of course".
In general, reusing someone's materials without their consent is poor style. But I would suggest to all young faculty that they ask older colleagues what the culture of the department is. If the answer is "Yes, of course we help each other", then if you want to reuse someone's materials, the right approach is to ask them whether they'd be willing to share their materials.

It pops up when they help me and add me to their course pages they have taught a previous semester.

If you're already getting this kind of help and access from a fellow teacher, then it sounds totally fair (and perhaps expected) to request using their other materials (slides, etc.). I find most of my colleagues fairly flattered when I want to borrow their materials -- less a "get your own" mentality, more "glad to help".
If you get to borrow materials, you'll undoubtedly find yourself altering and adjusting them to fit your particular needs. If you add to them in some way, be sure to offer the updated files to the original author. Then voila -- you're the one sharing that great thing!
However, be prepared for a "no" from some. That's fine, though, and you should decide in advance to not take it personally.

tl;dr: It depends on your University practices and regulations.
There are (at least) two questions to consider:

Who owns the materials? In some Universities, the teaching materials produced by academics as a part of their contract belong to University, so when you inherit a course from another academic, you also inherit the materials. In some Universities, materials remain the property of academics who created them, but you still can ask nicely.
Can you teach with their materials? Some courses are very standard, but some are based on specific expertise of particular staff. Some materials may be easy to reuse, and some really tailored to a particular teaching style of a  staff member. If the course ran well with these materials in hands of another staff member, can you also make it work for you? Simply saving your time on preparation may result in confusion during the class because you did not design these materials and don't know how to use them efficiently.

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Is Bsc from Netherlands in Computer Science eligible for M S from USA
Hi My son will be joining Bsc in computer science from TU Delft Netherlands after completing 12 years of school education from India. Will he be eligible for MS after his graduation from. US universities?

That is probably dependent on the institution.  You may have to check with each college or university you apply.  Also, check with the department too, don't ask general admissions.

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Can I use bullets and sections in a teaching statement?
My question is: Can you write your teaching statement so that it is divided into parts with bullet items and sections (without writing paragraphs and lots of texts).
Here is an example of a teaching statement:

                                Teaching Statement

                                      Dr. XY

                                  May 12th, 2021

Teaching Pedagogy
My pedagogy in teaching is as follows:

I opt for a student-centric approach
I use interactive presentation
...

Teaching Methodology
My methodology in teaching is as follows:

Prepare for each lecture;
Define clearly the objective of each lecture;
...

Teaching Experience
During my past experience, I taught several classes, including:

CLASS1: ...
CLASS2: ...

Sure you can. This is a good idea! Do it!

I would hate it if I was on the search committee, because I want to see narrative explaining why you teach the way you do, specifically tying your practice to your philosophy.  Others might like it.

My own teaching statement is bulleted, but each bullet is a short paragraph.  As a member of a search committee, I would rather see more details about some specific things that you do than a long list of very vague things.

On further thought, I'm voting to close as 'opinion-based' - there are no answers other than the opinions of potential search committee members (who have reasons for their preferences), which will vary wildly.

I would expect they would want to see some actual meat on those bullet points.

You are asking the wrong question. The right question is "How do I best convey the information I want to present?". If bullet points is the best way to do so, then Yes! you should be using those, regardless of whether this is for a teaching statement, a research paper, a grant application, or a newspaper article. On the other hand, if bullet points are not the best way to do this, then you shouldn't be using them wherever it is that you are tempted to do so.
How you typeset things should not be dictated by some abstract rules that are defined and kept my some monks in a monastery at the top of a mountain surrounded by a desert. Instead, how you explain things should be dictated by what is the best way for you to explain things to your audience.

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Is it enough to use a proposed method from the literature and apply it to solve another problem?
Say, there is a recently proposed machine learning algorithm that you applied to another dataset and you found high performance results.
In general, you found a method that was proposed to solve some task and you apply it to solve another task.
Is this enough for a contribution? Isn't this plagiarism?

It is not plagiarism as long as you properly cite the paper. There are tons of papers titled as follows [task] of [dataset] using [method]. For example, A, B and C (2077) Estimating parameters of a stochastic cell invasion model with fluorescent cell cycle labelling using approximate Bayesian computation. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. xx, xxxxxxxx.
If this is classified as an act of plagiarism, then most research papers are just a product of plagiarism. We more or less stand (rely) on the shoulders of "giants".

It's not plagiarism.
However, if you submit it to a good journal or good conference, it will likely be rejected as not being sufficiently novel for their journal/conference.  A sufficiently low-ranked (but still legitimate) journal/conference will accept it.
(Notice: Novelty is NOT a binary variable.)


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How should a series of articles be represented on my CV?
I authored a series of three articles that were published in the same source over the course of a month or so. Each article has the same title with a different subtitle. Due to the identical titles, I find that the publications look somewhat awkward when listed separately on my CV:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet: Quot tota id pri. Research Institute Magazine, Nov. 30, 2017.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet: Ne vim delenit laoreet dissentias. Research Institute Magazine, Nov. 16, 2017.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet: Id cum fugit voluptua voluptatum. Research Institute Magazine, Nov. 1, 2017.

Is there an elegant way to group them? To my surprise, I have not found this issue addressed elsewhere.

The way you do it is just fine. It allows the interested reader of your CV to find the articles in question and peruse them, which is exactly what you want to achieve.
(As a side note, it is not uncommon for people to publish sequences of articles that start out the same, then have a roman numeral, and then some further text. For example numbers 34 and 47 on my list of publications are of this form: http://www.math.colostate.edu/~bangerth/publications.html#x-reviewed . Here is a much longer sequence by one of my teachers: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C6&q=heywood+rannacher&btnG= .)


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How can corresponding authors protect themselves from academic spam?
Almost immediately after becoming a corresponding author, my academic email account quickly become inundated with unsolicited communications from predatory open access journals and “conferences.” My spam filter does a fairly good job, catching maybe 50-75% of these messages. But now that I will be using a new academic email address, I’ve thought about what I can do to prevent this problem from recurring. My idea is to publish the following text in the corresponding author field:

Email: myname9@university.edu (remove digit “9” for correct email address)

Will journal editors let me do this? To my surprise, I’ve never seen another author try something similar. I’m confident that no one has (or will ever have) the “fake” email address indicated above, so there is no risk that the spam will go to an innocent third party.
Previous questions on Stack Exchange relate to email forwarding; none addresses the spam issue.

I doubt you can do that in a published article!

Anecdote: I'm corresponding author on a few dozen articles published over the last 15 years, and I find that (with a good spam filter) the volume of such messages is not problematic at all.  They're a tiny fraction of all the email I receive.

I mostly see repeated offenders, which can be filtered i.e. by subject or sender real name field. Of course you will need new rules from time to time, but probably you're meaning like at most 1 message per day and not like 100 and a lot of work to sort the inbox. So setting up rules until (almost) nothing gets into the inbox anymore is often possible.

I have not been a corresponding author yet, still, I get the same spam. Conference participation, posters that can be found online... an academic email address seems to spread like wildfire in general. Filtering it out sounds like the only reasonable option.

@corey979 I was about to propose the same. This is how my university stuff posts their addresses online:
firstname[dot]lastname[at]university[dot]edu
Don't know if it helps a lot or even at all though..

We all deal with this curse. Sad as it is, I suspect that your only option is to endure it -- my take is that papers ask you to provide an email address of record in some sort of official way, and playing games like the one you suggest would look inappropriate in this context.

In that case, would it be appropriate to try something like “myname[DeleteThisBit]@university.edu” or “myname @ university.edu”? I’m sure that there are ways to prevent email harvesting that would be acceptable in a formal publishing environment.

@Maroon In what way do you think that prevents harvesting?  If people make a habit of doing that it's a trivial matter to account for it in a script.

@Maroon: That's precisely the point. I've seen lots of my colleagues write the email addresses as name (at) institution.edu on their websites. You can bet that no harvester has even been annoyed by this, but lots of colleagues who want to send emails have.

I sometimes read these spams, for the purpose of finding key phrases/words that can be used to filter them out (not delete, in case they are legit), I've noticed the following wording/phrasing:

Dr [your entire name] or reversed your first + last name, or your initials followed by your full name
"Greetings of the Day!" or "Greetings and Good Day!"
followed by "Hope you are doing well"

so far it's working okay for me, it's not fool proof, but it helps cut down clutter a bit.

to add a few: "Dr Colleague", "Dear Researcher", "Dear Colleague", "Dr httporcidorg" (my personal favourite), "M Mark" (initial + Firstname)

I swear, if I ever get some downtime I'm sorely tempted to write something I can forward emails like these to and have it sign them all up for each other's conferences. Fight fire with fire, and all that.

@EdDaniel It's hard to imagine that being a productive use of your time. They can much more easily dump their email address and start again than you can dump your university address.

@DavidRicherby, but it's fun and probably a good release for Ed Daniel to imagine doing it. :)

If your email server supports this version of email aliasing, you could set up:

myname+Journal@university.edu

Alternately, if you have your own domain name, you could host your own email:

correspondingauthor@myname.com

These are legitimate email addresses for correspondence, and so the journal should not object on that front. You would just know to expect a lot of spam there.

This might prevent a lot of spam from reaching your primary inbox, but it also makes it much more difficult to sort out any real emails you would receive at that address.

@DavidK Set up an autoreply: "Dear writer, it appears you've tried to reach me through an email alias set up to catch automated email. In case you are in fact a human trying to reach me, please re-send the email to me, removing the +alias from the email address. For example johndoe+springer@example.com would become johndoe@example.com."

If this is really important to you, I think the only reasonable thing to do is to contact the journal's managing editor and suggest that they implement such obfuscation across the board.  Journals tend to pay a lot of attention to publishing all their papers in a consistent format, and I don't think they will want to allow obfuscation for your paper alone.  I suppose you could ask, but I don't think such a request would be well received.

Any obfuscation applied consistently across the board would be relatively easy for the spammers to script around, while increasing cognitive burden for humans.

The emails I get tend to bypass my Bayesian filters by including the full title of our paper and sometimes our abstract in their email text (and I don't want to train-spam on this in case I get legitimate mail about it), but most of them so far have started with Dear Brown, S.S. or even Dear Brown, S.S.,Chen, Y.W,Wang, M.,Clipson, A.,Ochoa, E.,Du, M.Q..  Our paper was in fact published with the full versions of our names (in both PDF and HTML); I'm not sure which third-party data sources abbreviate the names in this way while also giving abstracts and emails, but it has so far been a useful 'red flag' for the filters (at least to file in the spam folder to be checked infrequently).  I have to be lenient to the possibility of being written to by a human who really does not know how English names work, but I can combine that rule with one that looks out for American Journal of (very commonly used as part of predatory journal names) or peer-reviewed international journal (it seems they can't resist saying this), and includes the word unsubscribe (obviously I wouldn't trust a spam 'unsubscribe' link to work, but the fact that it's there is a hint): I can say in my ImapFix configuration that if it matches these criteria it goes into the spam.  No false positives so far.  (your unpublished is also a common phrase)


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Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions scholarship reserve list
I applied for the Marie Curie Global Fellowship, and I was placed in the reserve list. Does anyone have experience of people placed in the reserve list who eventually got funded?

So, what happened? When I applied to  Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (Individual Fellowships (IF), Call: H2020-MSCA-IF-2014), I obtained a Total score of 83.60% (the threshold: 70.0/100.00), but I don't even think there is a "reserve list" for that grant.

there is a reserve list, because I was officially told so. As far I knowit is not for people who reached the minimum threshold but for those who were very close to get funded. In my case the threshold to get the scholarship was 93.0/100. I scored 92.4.
I asked info to MC national delegates. If someone renounces to the MSCA I could get it. But it is really hard that this is going to happen.


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How to reference self-collected corpus
In the writing of a research paper, I've collected a large quantity of public blog posts and ingested them into a LDA and a word2vec data model. When I'm using terms from within these models, how can I reference the data source both to make it clear that this is analysis of my corpus but also to avoid plagiarism ambiguity?
As I don't know the specific location of these terms within the blogs (because the terms I'm dealing with are coming OUT of the data models) I cant cite the specific article.
What's the general consensus on citing a self-created corpus, particularly if the terms and language has been disconnected from their original articles.

I would publish the corpus as a separate data entity, probably as a supplementary material to your paper. You seem not to have a copyright problem, do you?

@OlegLobachev, Thank you for your advice. I had planned on making the corpus and data models available on a github, referencing the terms and phrases produced from the data models from that would clear up the confusion? No, there's no copyright issue.
Thank you for your help

You are welcome. If the volume is high and no changes are in sight, a data repository like Zenodo might be more fitting the purpose.


text:
how to stop working for other people's thesis?
Last semester, I took a course with my supervisor and he assigned me a project. This project is part of one of his student's theses. I did the project and passed the course.
Later, I was asked to upload my code for use in a paper. It turned out that the data the grad student had generated was not appropriate, and he needed to do other experiments. It later turned out there were other problems with the underlying model, and I redid a lot of that work as well.
The problem is that this other student is not really contributing at all.

Sometimes he does not come to work at all
On one occasion the professor assigned us to do something, and he immediately told me he had no idea how to do it
In one of our meetings with the professor, he talked 2 minutes with the prof with no slides; I talked for the other 58 with slides.

What should I do in this situation? I could not work like this, I have my own project and my thesis and stuff. I cannot dedicate my self for another student's thesis.
Question 1: how should I make this student understand this is his thesis and he should work more than me?
Question 2: How can I get off this project? I am taking another course with my supervisor, he again assigned me a term project with the same system and same grad student. I do not want to keep going like this. What should I tell to my supervisor Due to the problems we found, I think this current system is a bit of a dead end. But, I do not want to lose my connection with my supervisor; he is a good man.

I cleaned up this question a lot; feel free to edit if I deleted anything important. You may want to take a course to improve your writing-in-English skills; you've had several posts now that required substantial clean up. Good luck!

how should I make this student understand this is his thesis and he should work more than me?

You don't.

what strategy should I take?

You talk to the professor. Tell him clearly that there are two issues:

Working with the other student is untenable, and
Your have technical concerns about the project.

Try to agree on a strategy where either:

the other student is removed from the project completely, or else
you and he are working on two totally separate things, and the requirements for "your piece" are well-established and entirely within your control.

If you communicate this clearly (hopefully more clearly than your post here!) and the professor is still uncooperative, you should look for another supervisor.

could you please elaborate part two? I did not get it.

Not sure what about my answer was unclear. You have no leverage over the student, so no point arguing with them. Instead, either get the professor to make the necessary changes, or find a new professor to work with.

This part is not clear for me:   "(2) your technical concerns about the project. Try to agree on a strategy where either the other student is kicked off completely, or else you are working on two totally separate things, and the requirements for "your piece" are well-established and entirely within your control."

OK, I tried to reformat, maybe it is clearer now? If not, maybe there is a language issue -- I speak a handful of European languages, can try to translate if you are more comfortable in Spanish/French/German/Italian/etc.

could you please tell me what should I do with another project that he has just assigned me (for another course)? Did you mean also that project as well? I think you did not response that part of my question.

Did you read what I wrote? I said you should talk to the professor. About all the problems and all the projects.

yes. I just want to make sure that I am not talking in a nasty way. I wanted to talk indirectly.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

I was wondering if you could edit the letter with me? I need to change some parts.


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How to remind a professor (for the third time) about providing a letter of financial support?
I have received my admission letter for a graduate program from a Canadian university. However, the letter contains no information about funding. I have already talked to my professor about the availability of funding by this email for two times.

Hello Professor,
I am writing to follow up on the letter of financial support we had discussed a while back. I was wondering if you had a chance to write it, or if you needed more documentation from me. Please let me know if I need to do anything on my end.
Best, Nikki

each time he said that he will send me a letter of financial support. So far he has not sent me said the letter. What should I write to ask him again for this letter? Could you send me a template of an email which shows my concern about visa process? any other suggestion? I am fed up with sending so many emails and I really don't know what to do...
I will miss the winter semester if he doesn't send me the letter in 2weeks.

Have you tried giving him a call? Some people are simply not very good at responding to emails.

I am an international student. He doesn't use any applications like internet free call. so I can not call him.

Why not spend a few [insert unit of your currency] and call him using a normal phone?

Did you try to ask the administration at his institute/department, instead of the professor? Also check if he has a secretary and go through this route, if he does.

How about,

Dear Prof,
I am an international student and need to apply for a visa to come to the University. I will miss the winter semester if I don't have the letter of financial support in 2 weeks.
Best regards, Nikki.

Be polite but straightforward and always explain why the deadline is real. Don't hesitate to chase people - it might be that the professor is simply too busy and he keeps forgetting things which are not urgent. Note also that his understanding of urgency can be different from yours.


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Is age a factor when applying for federally-funded pre-doctoral fellowships (such as NIH's F-31 grant)?
I have seen a number of postings along the lines of "Am I too old for tenure track?". While the consensus was "no," I am suspicious of the meritocracy holding for F grants. These are training grants designed to develop the next generation not scientists. Someone who is applying for an F31 at 40 has less runway than  a person who is 22 or 23. Does this aspect get baked onto your scores on some fashion?
Is there an unwritten rule? What's the oldest F31 recipient you are aware of?

Nobody knows how much "runway" they have, let alone what they end up doing with it.

The NIH offers a bunch of comparison data of NRSA recipients.  I think you should  pay considerable attention to figure 2.9
Only about 55% of fellows receive Ph.D.'s by 30.
There is more data to be mined from the entire report -- and it shows that about 10% of NRSA recipients received their degrees at 36 or older.  Given what I think the applicant pool must be, I suggest that age is likely not a bias.
Also, the mission statement for Kirchstein states that:

The overall goal of the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research
  Service Award (NRSA) program is to help ensure that a diverse pool of
  highly trained scientists is available in appropriate scientific
  disciplines to address the Nation's biomedical, behavioral, and
  clinical research needs. NRSA fellowships support the training of
  pre-and postdoctoral scientists, dual-degree investigators, and senior
  researchers.  More information about NRSA programs may be found at the
  Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) website.
The purpose of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award
  (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (Parent F31) is to enable
  promising predoctoral students to obtain individualized, mentored
  research training from outstanding faculty sponsors while conducting
  dissertation research. Applicants for this F31 program are expected to
  propose a dissertation research project and training plan in
  scientific health-related fields relevant to the mission of the
  participating Institutes and Centers. This training plan should
  reflect the applicant’s dissertation research project, and facilitate
  and clearly enhance the individual’s potential to develop into a
  productive, independent research scientist.  The training plan should
  document the need for, and the anticipated value of, the proposed
  mentored research and training in relationship to the individual’s
  research career goals.  The training plan should also facilitate the
  fellow’s transition to the next stage of his/her research career.

As with any grant, you should ask yourself whether your situation matches the institutional aims.  I would think the more "atypical" your application package is, the more you need to consider this.
Age is a balancing act.  The older you are, the more mature you are, and the better you should be able to describe your aspirations and career goals.  If you look like you're putting off hard decisions, your application will suffer.  This is true regardless of age, but probably especially true for older applicants.

I am not aware of any section of the F31 application that explicitly asks for your age. Your date of birth may be required to obtain an eRA Commons account, but if it does, it is not made available to reviewers or program officers for funding decisions. The only two places that I think your age might become know to reviewers is if it is mentioned in the letters of support or from your bio sketch. If you are worried about it, you can mention it to the letter writers to not give away that detail.
As for the bio-sketch, it does ask for dates of degrees and positions and years when courses where taken. Depending on your trajectory (i.e., if the gap was between high school and undergrad or undergrad and PhD), they may actually think you are younger than you are. If the dates denote gaps, you can always ask a program officer if you can leave the dates out and just list duration. For the courses, you might want to say what academic year (freshman, sophomore, etc) the class was taken.


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What are strategies for dealing with negative course evaluations?
I recently saw my ratings on RateMyProfessor.com and it's very disheartening to see all the negative reviews from a course for which I worked so hard. Comments like "sh***y professor" are very difficult to accept. It's taking a toll on my mental health for sure. What are strategies for dealing with such comments?

Closely related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101009/do-professors-care-about-their-rating-on-websites-such-as-ratemyprofessor-or-koo

Ignore these ratings. Just like most people who go online to write reviews of restaurants and other places go to write (sometimes baseless) criticism and vent, students who go online to write review of their professor go to write (sometimes baseless) criticism and vent. This is heavily skewed against the professor. Add to that the fact that ratings can be made anonymously and that people tend to behave like complete idiots anonymously (including posting multiple bad reviews just to mess with the professor), and you've got a recipe for disaster.
If you want to know better what your students think of you, take some time to do an anonymous in-class survey with pointed questions that go beyond rants and points on arbitrary scales. There are already questions about this on this website, you can look them up.

I think the only way you could counter this is for you to produce a few introdutory video productions of what you are teaching and post them online or YouTube , that way students who have seen your bad reviews have an opportunity to make up their own minds


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Do master students stop getting funding after 2 years?
I have started my master in September 2018, I am still working on my thesis to finish the writing of it so far I have one paper published and one other under review. I am completing an research internship related to my thesis. My research started from May 2019.
Since July 2020 I have not recieved any funding from my prof, do they cut funding after 2 years? What is the reason for this?

This is a question for your professor.

Please do not vandalize your own post. See here for an explanation, and some other options.

There is no general rule that graduate students get funding or that the funding has to stop after two years. This is university- and lab-specific.


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In what sort of department can I pursue a PhD in fan behaviour?
I'm planning to do PhD on the Fan culture to be specific - A comparative study on the effects of Digital media on Football Fan behaviour on supporters of European football clubs in Indonesia and India. The core basis for comparison is the origins of fan culture in India and Indonesia, where for India it was non-existent and for Indonesia it was already robust before TV arrived.
I want it to be a statistical analysis on a large sample data collected over questionnaires (internet) identifying variables which drive incentives psychologically and economically and also want to include focus group interviews. The point of origin of research is the influence of the introduction of Cable TV and the Internet.
However, I'm really confused as to which subject department I should apply to, am most likely to get funding in and would be the best fit for such a topic. Fan behaviour has crossovers from psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology and Media.
I have a masters in Economics and have 6 years of experience working in Analytics mostly in statistical modelling for FCMG Brands. Following which I spent the next 4 years trying to document football in Asian.

Are you aware of who is doing this kind of research currently? If you use Google Scholar and can find who is publishing and what institutions or departments they are part of, that'll give you a good idea. Additionally, at least in the USA, the funding tends to dictate what you work on. One way to ensure you work on this is to apply to the institutions that are involved in this research.

What do you want to do after your PhD?  What sort of PhD to people who do those things now have?  That should guide your choice of department.

Perhaps https://fanmakers.com/ might advisee.

The project you describe (questionnaire + focus group) seems to me to fall under sociology, but really, you know better. See kjacks21's comment; I assume you have read quite a few papers on the subject while working on that proposal (right?).


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What to do about students who miss my lectures and then want me to repeat entire material?
I teach at a top undergraduate college of a highly ranked university in India. We have a centralized system where the syllabus is designed at the Central level (with some input from teachers) and exams are set and evaluated centrally as well. We have an attendance policy, wherein students are required to attend at least two-thirds of the classes to sit for the exam (for all courses).
Some students are engaged in extra-curricular activities and miss a lot of lectures. While a lot of students don't bother, some want me to "teach" the portion they missed, by meeting them separately. Is it reasonable for them to ask me to teach everything from scratch because they couldn't attend the class? I teach a rigorous microeconomics course.
Edited:
I forgot to explicitly mention: since it is a centralized system, teachers can't specify their own attendance policies for a course. Moreover, I teach a compulsory course, and it can't be dropped/taken in any other semester. Further, students go for competitions scheduled outside college during lecture hours, and I have no control over that. We are not a residential University, so extra-curricular activities can't be held after class hours.

Who is scheduling extra-curriculur activities during lecture time? That's absurd. Also, "attend at least two-thirds of the classes" sounds like a very permissive standard, if it's as rigorous as you say. I would set a very clear expectation on day one "This is a hard course, and you'll need to attend 95+% of lectures, take notes and do homeworks to have a chance of doing well. If that conflicts with your schedule, please drop this class right now."

@smci That is a pretty ridiculous suggestion. There are people who can learn without attending any classes at all, that sounds discouraging. I would rephrase it as "Attendance greatly improves exam performance on average in this course", without resurging to intimidatory statements.

@smci I did specify on day 1, and have repeated throughout the semester, that this is a difficult course and it is of utmost importance to keep up with the lectures and course material since the concepts are cumulative.

@Lonidard: that's a better wording, but it sounded like many students weren't taking it seriously. Parul, what's the fail rate? and what are the attendance rates and fail rates in other courses? Is some group actually scheduling extra-curriculur activities during lecture time, or is this time off to travel for those events?

@smci It doesn't work in any systematic fashion here. Student groups decide on their own when to meet for practice. Practice times are sometimes scheduled during lecture hrs. There are safety issues in my city, and I teach at a women's college, so students can't practice late into the night. Even if practice times are not scheduled during lecture hours, students often travel to other cities for competitive events and miss at least 2-3 days of lectures (for all courses) for each event they attend. Sometimes students miss as many as 15 out of the 70 scheduled lectures (per course) in a semester.

Parul, well not that you're in the least obligated, but if you want to go the extra mile in integrating their extra-curriculur activities into your course schedule, you might ask them for their schedule at the start of the year, and as far as practical schedule review sessions (or other stuff they can easily pick up) for the dates there will be many missing. Or, assign reading well in advance of the dates they'll be missing. But what is the pass rate among students who miss 15/70 lectures? Do they drop the course instead of failing, fail and repeat, or fail and dropout?

Sorry if this is beginning to sound like a rant, as if everything wrong and unsystematic happens at my University/country! As far as I know, students don't have any practice schedule decided beforehand: they usually schedule additional hours when an event is coming up. Moreover, we have several activities, including but not limited to, performing arts, sports, debating and others. It is impossible to track all practice schedules: everyone misses a different set of lectures. We don't have any "add/drop" period, there is no system of online registration. In any case, mine is a compulsory course.

Further, since examination system is central, everyone ends up passing mostly (doesn't reflect very well on the University, I guess).

If one doesn't attend, it is her/his responsibility to make it up. Maybe you can recommend textbooks, notes for people who miss a class, or setup q&a hours for people. Repeating entire lectures seems unrealistic expectation for me.

To clarify: Is the grading done centrally? Is the determination of exactly who passes done centrally? Do you have any other components to course grade other than the uniform final exam?

@DanielR.Collins Only 25% of the grade rests with me: 20 for tests/assignments set and graded by me, 5 for attendance (if student attends more than 75% classes). Final exam carrying 75% of the weight is prepared and evaluated centrally.

Is it possible to record the lectures?

"Is it reasonable for them to ask..." Sure it is. Asking doesn't cost much and you could say yes. But of course this would not give you anything and is hopefully outside of your duties so the chances you saying yes should be extremely low. So, taken everything together, they can't reasonably expect you to agree to their proposal.

Are these people coming to you before they've missed to make arrangements? Or do they come after they've missed and want you to make it up. I would find it much more amenable to go out of my way to someone trying to preempt a problem due to a scheduling conflict than otherwise.

@Lonidard It's not that crazy, the college I went to required 90% attendance of classes or you'd get dropped from the course (which happened to a few people). There were even signs up in the halls to remind everyone.

My first thought is “youtube”. Record your lecture and play that at the make-up session.

Is it reasonable for them to ask me to teach everything from scratch because they couldn't attend the class?

No, it's not.
If a student wants to engage in extra-curricular activities during lecture hours, they had better be able to keep up with the course material independently.

Do I risk appearing as "unapproachable" or "unhelpful" if I specify in my class policies that those who miss lectures will be responsible for the course material on their own? Should the same policy apply to students who miss several lectures due to illness or other circumstances? In my country, unfortunately, students submit "fake medical certificates" to make up for the lost attendance, and we can do nothing about it.

@Parul I don't know about India, but I was under an impression that it is already specified, or at least implied, in course policies, that students are responsible for material they miss due to extracurricular activities. Where I'm studying, people are responsible for material they miss even if they have a documented health issue. So no, if a students deems an extracurricular activity more worthy of time than lectures, then it's their problem.

Yes, you risk being perceived as unhelpful and unapproachable by students who are used to taking advantage of their instructors. So what?

Students have to learn to prioritise. Extra-curricular activities are fun, and can teach many valuable things, but when all is said and done, you don't get a degree for doing extra-curricular things; that's why they're called "extra-curricular". A student who misses material because of something out of their control, such as poor health, might reasonably expect some consideration. A student who chose to take part in another activity rather than attend the lecture on the material that they hope to earn a degree in has only their own choices to blame. Which is a useful lesson in itself.

As a former student who wasn't a lecture learner, but rather a book learner, I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to have to repeat the lecture. What is reasonable is for you to tell them which topics you covered, and provide access to the reading materials independent of course attendance.

@anaximander: +1, but I want to point out to any students reading this that on the rare occasion, it's okay to prioritize extracurriculars ahead of a lecture. There are some things you just can't learn in a classroom. (But those occasions should be few and far between.)

@tonysdg Absolutely. The point is that it's the student's choice to do so. If they feel that the extracurricular event is more important, than that's ok - the idea of university is that you're an adult now, you can make those choices. It's just that if the course material is so vital that you really can't afford to miss it, then perhaps you shouldn't skip it. If that means you miss something you really would have loved... well that's a shame, but it can't always be helped. You can't always get everything you want. And that's also a useful lesson.

Have you considered recording your lectures?
Doing so and giving free access to your students allows them maximum agency in trading off attending lectures with other social/academic activities, and obviates the concern of having to repeat yourself -- simply refer students to the video/audio and move on.
(Moreover, personally, I've been through courses where this allowed me to learn more efficiently by skipping familiar units and/or watching lectures at, e.g., 2x speed to save time)

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I like this idea. OP could even make his course content available as OCW.

Easier said than done - recording a class requires much more preparation, focus, etc. Although it's a good advice, it is not a solution for most cases.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned recording could be forbidden by the university/faculty. Where I study, lecturer has said he'd really like to record his lectures, but faculty does not allow that.

Is it reasonable for them to ask me to teach everything from scratch because they couldn't attend the class?

In most cases, the answer is NO. Furthermore, it would be good if you can find official university policy on this issue, stating something like that students should not participate in too many extra-curricular activities unless they are also able to cope with their work.

Do I risk appearing as "unapproachable" or "unhelpful" if I specify in my class policies that those who miss lectures will be responsible for the course material on their own?

You can avoid this problem by telling your students that you would be glad to answer any specific questions that they may have about the course material (assuming you prepared notes for them). In particular this means that they cannot just ask you to teach all the content, but are expected to go over the material themselves and ask to clarify their understanding about specific points. Doing this has the significant advantage of making students aware of exactly what they know or do not know, and helps you to be aware of and able to address common or serious misconceptions with the rest of the class as well.

Should the same policy apply to students who miss several lectures due to illness or other circumstances?

I would personally be very lenient with students who miss lectures not due to any fault of their own. To accommodate such cases, you could always add to your default policy that students who need any further help are welcome to ask, and you will see what to do about it on a case-by-case basis. This of course requires some subjective judgement on your part to differentiate between the truthfully sick and the pathological liars.

But there may be exceptions, for example if the students are officially required to attend certain training sessions at a level beyond university activities, like say the national level, then they may reasonably request one or two sessions to skim the material. They should still be responsible for going over the material themselves prior to any meeting with you, since after all learning is their responsibility, not yours.

I just saw your edit, and yes my last paragraph was specifically to cater for such exceptional cases.

Thank you! Unfortunately, the University/College doesn't have any clear policy on extracurriculur engagement--in fact, our college encourages participation and most students are involved in two or more activities.

@Parul: Well then you have to distinguish between those that are 'optional' (just for fun type) and those that are 'more serious' (like international competitions). You probably should be lenient with the latter type since even going for such contests would be significant achievements for the students. Basically it comes down to whether encouraging students attend all your classes would discourage them from participating in activities that may be of higher value (in the long run). This is subjective, but a simple guideline is whether it is national level or not.

@user21820 At my place (and the places I went to school or did postdoctoral work) those those major competitions are school sponsored activities and their is a framework for participating students to get access to schedules, notes, and other materials. But even then they are suppose to work with those materials first and come to me with requests for clarification afterward.

@dmckee: Indeed, hence my last sentence. I try my best to catch all the cases. =)

I was part of the faculty volleyball first team. We had a lot of trainings, competitions etc. These were extracurricular activities and we were at school to become engineers, not volleyball players. It would not have come to my mind to request a special treatment because of that. This was in Europe, it seems that in the US someone who does sports at school is some kind of a celebrity so YMMV depending on the country.

@WoJ: Yes that is why I said in a comment above that I have a precise but subjective criterion (based on long-term value), and that a simple but not necessarily accurate guideline is that national level events are more valuable than school classes. Even then, it is still the students' responsibility to learn the missed material on their own and ask the teacher for focused help with what they cannot grasp. I think this is reasonable even if the teacher has already specifically addressed similar questions in classes that they have missed. Do you agree? =)

@user21820: well, I don't :) but it does not matter. As you mention everyone has his own subjective criteria. The cultural context also means a lot - there are countries where "school is school, basta" and others where "the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem is important, but not as much as this football match for our university". My criteria as a student did not change when I was teaching (sorry for the sports/art students).

I would tell them the truth, honestly and openly:
"This is the real world.  And as such there are consequences to your actions.  You come to a fork in the road and you have two choices.  You can take the path of desires, or you can take the path of responsibility.  If you take the desires path, the path the what was covered in the lecture (responsibility) is closed.  You are not children any more."
Sure you could record your lecture, but that is in essence saying that skipping class time is not important.
My generation (I was born on the leading edge of the Millennial generation) has this idea that everything needs to be made easier for them, if not handed out on a silver platter entirely.
This all started with the notion of "everyone is a winner" in the late 1980s, and has gone downhill since.

There is a seed of truth. I would say that the problem is more about how everything is seen as a fault of the teacher. While this may be true in lower levels where the teacher has a part in upbringing, it should be made clear that this does not continue in the university. Telling them that is not. For adults you should not need to tell them that there is consequences for their actions because they are adults; there just is.

@user3644640  While I agree you should not need to tell students that as adults they are responsible for their actions, it seems that in today's real world, more and more of what are legally considered adults, still have the mindset of children.  They still expect mommy and daddy to bail them out of any problem that may arise, and expect whichever path they choose to walk to be free of any obstacles.

Yes, but telling them does not cure this. Failing a course is not a big deal, but will teach them to mature quite quick. I do not know whether that would have negative consequences for you depending where you are and who. But the students will graduate and go to industry. If they are children, it will reflect badly on the university. I guess that paying student are different to government subsidized.

skipping class time is not important. If i student is given the course material (books,notes recordings, whatever), does not attend a single class, but aces the course, was attending classes important?  in the real world companies engage more each year into objective oriented work, instead of "sit here 8 hours pressing keys", and that's an important lesson to teach students, "if you think you can organize your time better than we do, do it, but face failure if you can't.".

With your flawed reasoning, every single quality university degree offered fully online is a failure, because they're not attending classes.

What a condescending and patronising thing to say. Don't use that paragraph to your students, please.

LOL, I am not an instructor.  But If I were you can bet I would not be sugar coating reality, or treating them like children.  I follow the George Carlin method: Call it what it is.

You could try what one of my current professors does. He specifically points out that he does not have the time to re-teach his hour long lecture to multiple people when they miss class, and that if someone anticipates missing class then they should read up on their own and ask someone else (another student) to share notes with them. If you say at the beginning of the year that you do not have the time nor the patience to re-teach a lecture you won't appear rude, especially if you also mention that you have no problem answering questions for the people who missed class if they brush up on the subject material in their own time.

Doesn't work if your target audience isn't there when you say that ;)

I am a big believer in textbooks.  Find an affordable textbook that matches your material reasonably well.  One way to ensure affordability is to choose a textbook that is one or two editions old.  There are some classics that can be bought for $0.01 plus shipping.  Make sure the library has several copies for check-out and a couple for use in the library only ("on reserve").
Create a simple blog where you post basic information for each lecture, stating what portion of the textbook will be (or was) covered, any additional notes that are not in the textbook, and what the homework assignment is.  By this means, you will be making it easier for students who have missed a class to keep up.
Let your students know that your office hours are such-and-so or by appointment.  Schedule your office hours at a couple of different times.  For example, don't schedule them on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the same time.
Encourage the students to help each other.  There are a number of ways of doing this.  For example, assign a small group project early in the semester.  Allow students to form their own small groups, but also assign groupings to those students who have not formed their own.  This will encourage the formation of student groups.  Also, if a large number of your students come to office hours, you can ask one of the stronger students to work with a small group of students.  This delegating wouldn't just give you a break, and wouldn't just enable you to get more students serviced during your office hours; it would also help the students who are in the helping role.  They will solidify what they learned; and they will gain experience in teaching and tutoring.
You might also want to organize a walk-in tutoring service on campus.
It is through your efforts, and the efforts of other dedicated professors, that the educational system in your country will improve.  You are helping hundreds of today's students to achieve greater rigor.  When the best of them are teaching and continuing in your footsteps, they in turn will also reach hundreds of students.
You have to start somewhere.  Hopefully, at some point in your lifetime, your university will figure out how to schedule the extracurriculars in such a way as not to interfere with attendance at lectures and labs.
The university I attended in Mexico was so disorganized, at least a third of our classes were canceled, with no advance notice, because of an instructor just not showing up.  So -- things could be worse!

This rather invalidates the importance of having an instructor there at all.

@Wildcard - That wasn't my intention!  Some people learn best through a combination; once the instructor has facilitated the formation of study groups, students will be free to continue with cooperative learning, or choose to work more independently.

Well actually, students not attending invalidates the importance of having an instructor there.  I suspect that if they had to pay (out of their own personal earnings, in advance) for the privilege of attending the school, attendance problems would evaporate.  Those who could learn by self-study would just do so and not bother about the cost of tuition.

@Wildcard - I'm not in a position to defend the system OP works in. // I have been assuming the absent students do not miss all the classes.

Many, many years ago I got my master's degree in CS through an evening class program. Most students had full time jobs as programmers or in related occupations. Many of us had to sometimes travel or work late for our day jobs, so the lecturers expected some missed lectures.
The main accommodation was to provide lecture notes that contained the material covered in the lecture. They were useful for study and review even if I got to the lecture, but really helpful if I missed a lecture. At the time, they were distributed on paper, but now would probably be on-line.

Tell them about the importance of networking, and especially of having contacts in the class who can go over missed material with them.  Point out that this is a life skill they will need long after college.  Tell them you will not just repeat the lecture.

I would give them an "outline version" of what was discussed that day -- reciting, if my guess is correct, the lecture notes you use yourself to give the lecture.  One minute maximum.  While not giving them the entire lecture, you are at least telling them what they missed
Once they know that, they know what to look for to find out about the topic themselves; either from books or asking another student for their notes.

Why would you give help to anyone who feels that skipping class is fine?

@NZKshatriya I feel a distinction between someone missing lecture due to a scheduling conflict and someone who felt like sleeping in instead. I think the key is when someone is asking - if they ask ahead of time and say "my team has a tournament during next Wednesday's lecture. What can we do about this." versus someone coming into office hours hungover demanding you go over material.

Yes, but it is the policy of this particular institution that you MAY miss up to 1/3 of the lectures without penalty.  This the lecturer cannot change, and may not want to if he could.  As to WHY the student didn't come to a particular lecture, that is completely irrelevant.  Some accommodation of a student wanting to know what they missed is a good idea.  There are two questions here: one is repeating the lecture, the other is simply listing the topics covered.  I think the first is not reasonable, the second is.

RE: As to WHY the student didn't come to a particular lecture, that is completely irrelevant. I disagree. I have a lot more sympathy for students who miss lectures due to illness, car breakdowns, genuine family emergencies, or military deployments than I do for students who miss because of laziness, sleeping in, or just generally not feeling like coming to class. As such, I'm generally inclined to do more for students in the first category than for those in the second.

"irrelevant.  I disagree"  The main reason it's irrelevant for this institution is is they already have a policy that the instructor cannot change.  Perhaps a major reason beyond the student's control, like a military deployment or a hospitalization could be exceptions, but someone who has the flu and misses lectures can simply see to it that they do come in for most of the lectures they don't have to miss.

But all that ignores what really counts -- if the student can learn the material without showing up for class, why shouldn't they be entitled to miss all the lectures if they feel like it?  (This wouldn't apply to subjects like Law or Phys Ed.)  In one CS class, I didn't even register for the course -- I just showed up for the final exam, aced it, and left before the time was up.

I'm going to disagree with people here.
I assume they are asking during your office hours.
If so, then yes, do explain anything they want to them. But make them your lowest priority.
After all, your office hours are meant for students to take advantage of. Some of them might need entire lectures repeated to them. The reason should be irrelevant. Prioritization is something you can and should do, but your hours are dedicated to the students; you should be helping them.

I'm not sure I agree with the assumption of the second sentence.  As a college instructor, I didn't even have Office hours.  If there were office hours, this answer makes a lot of sense, but I would not say that's a fair assumption (especially in a school that crams extra-curricular activities into school hours because they don't want after-hours activity, which is what I'm understanding from this school's description)

If I were to follow this advice, I would be giving a condensed version of the lecture during my office hour. I disagree that “the reason should be irrelevant.” During my teaching career, I’ve seen two ways students skip class. One group does so very flippantly; the other group rarely misses a lecture and often informs me via email if a family emergency comes up and they won’t be able to attend. I’m likely to work more diligently with students in the latter group.

@J.R.: "If I were to follow this advice, I would be giving a condensed version of the lecture during my office hour." OK, and that's wrong because... why exactly? "I’m likely to work more diligently with students in the latter group." Thanks for sharing, but you still haven't given a reason why what I said is bad or wrong. Like I said, they're last priority. So that doesn't contradict what you said.

I didn't say it was wrong or bad. I didn't mean to imply either one. I was just making a comment about how I'd implement your guidance.

Is it reasonable for them to ask me to teach everything from scratch
  because they couldn't attend the class?

No. Students need to take responsibility for missing classes. You are required to teach during scheduled days/times, probably hold office hours during the week, and respond to student emails. You are not required to repeat lectures on your own time because students missed your class.
Do you make your course materials available online (e.g. Edmodo)? Do you have teaching assistants who could help these students during recitation hours?

Course materials such as syllabus and e-books are available to them through a class Google group. If I use slides in a lecture, I post that online too. So, yes they have access to these materials. We are not provided with teaching assistants for recitation or grading.

What if you tell them: " If you want better knowledge then you need to come in time. And if you want to learn something you missed 5 minutes of googling wont kill you." Otherwise you ar letting them use you.

the cheap tool comment is not needed.


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Finishing PhD early and becoming my PI's postdoc instead
I'm PhD student beginning my third year. I plan to graduate at the end of my fourth year, leaving me with about another two years in the program. However, at the end of a productive summer of research, my PhD supervisor has mentioned that I'd be on track to finish considerably earlier if I want to. My program uses the "three papers" dissertation model, so at any given time, it's pretty easy to gauge how close we are.
In fact, I do not want to finish early because I am really enjoying doing research with my supervisor and feel that I'm receiving outstanding mentorship from him. Additionally, four years is already fairly short for my program (which is usually done in five years), so it doesn't seem that there is much additional benefit to finishing before year 4.
Instead, I'm considering asking my supervisor if I should defend early and then become his postdoc for whatever remains of my planned four years. I imagine the benefits would be:

Since I plan to apply for faculty positions after this, I would have nominally "done a postdoc" instead of being fresh out my PhD.
I'd be off the hook in terms of departmental responsibilities, like TAing, for my fourth year.

Are there other advantages or disadvantages to defending early to become a postdoc? Also, are there advantages or disadvantages for my PhD supervisor?
More notes / responses to questions:

I have reason to believe that postdoc funding would not be an issue, so perhaps let's not focus much on that.
It may be relevant that my PhD supervisor and others believe my publication record (from before my PhD, totaling around 17 papers with ~7 first authorships) to be competitive for a faculty position without doing a standard postdoc (i.e., not the truncated version with my PhD supervisor that I'm proposing).
I had an early start with research and didn't go straight from undergrad to PhD

UPDATE: 2 YEARS LATER
After weighing the various pros and cons pointed out here and in live conversations, I ultimately did follow through with the above plan. It worked out great. I am a few months into a faculty position now. It's too early to say if I'll secure successful grants, etc., but I am having a great time and feel very well-prepared. Of course, YMMV, and there were certainly multiple elements of luck, but my n=1 experience with this unusual plan, at least, has been excellent so far.

There is some relevant advice on Secret Blogging Seminar: "Don't graduate until you have to."  "The longer you stay in graduate school the stronger you will be on the job market at every point down the road. If you have the luxury to wait then do so. You’ll have more publications, you’ll be better prepared to publish a lot as a postdoc, and you will get a better job. As my advisor told me once “It is like a fine wine, you want to go on the market more mature.”

If you do not want to TA, just ask your adviser how to get funding so you do not need to TA.

Thanks for posting an update! Glad things worked out.

I know it's more than 2 years ago. But I think it depends on the line of research. In physics, at least, the younger you are when you finish your PhD, the better many universities like it when they look for faculty.

You don't mention the country/field, but I'll give my 2 cents because I did my PhD in 3-4 years (depending how you count it).
IMHO and experience, there are virtually no upsides to rushing this:

If you don't have a postdoc position guaranteed, you would be competing against people that spent 6 years padding their resumes. You have 3 papers, they will have about 10-12, or at least 5. The last years tend to be more productive.
Postdocs usually have limited duration. Effectively, you would be reducing the amount of time you have to "pad" your resume for a position after the postdoc. Think of someone with 6 year phd in their belts + 2 year postdoc...
Postdocs can teach as well. It is good for your CV and can help financially.
Postdocs are shorter. It always takes a while to get your bearings at the start, so the scientific production will likely take a hit.

Of course, you might have personal factors that I cannot account for (like lack of funding, two body problem, etc), but in general, I would advise any student of mine to take all the possible/necessary time, assuming that they want to get a TT position somewhere good. If you want to teach in the back of beyond, or go to the industry (in a non-research position) then ok, rushing can work.

TLDR; If you think you are good enough now, you could be even better in a few years, which would greatly increase your chances for a good TT position.

It should be noted that such an "in-lab" transition is usually noted in the US as a temporary employment-related issue and a continuation of grad studies, rather than a true independent postdoc, particularly if the time period is a year or less.

Depends on the country. In Australia, 4 years for a PhD is standard, and universities try and get you finished in 3 years. The wage discrepancy between PhD and post-doc is also much larger (25k vs 75k AUD), which gives a significant financial incentive to finish earlier.

@AndrewGuy same thing in Brazil, but that's rather shortsighted, IMHO, as it increases you immediate pay, but restrains your future position. Granted, it might be necessary, but would probably create a bigger problem later. Of course, I'm assuming average researcher, rockstars don't get those problems.

Thanks for this thoughtful answer. In terms of being competitive for the postdoc, though, I assume this would be basically between me and my PhD supervisor, right? I'm specifically considering turning into his postdoc partway through my 4 years, rather than applying to outside labs.

@half-pass But you are still thinking only near term. You might have this postdoc "in the bag" (mind the comments about posdoc in the same place as the phd), but when that is done, then what? Think about the end goal, which isn't a temporary internship position

10-12 papers during the course of single PhD?

6 years, that's 2 papers/year. Granted, 1 or none at the first year, but 3 at the last year is doable, in CS at least. When you achieve "critical mass" in the group, each phd candidate can be first author on one paper/year, then middle author in a couple others. One of "my" students (2nd year phd) had two papers as first author this year (TVCG and CS&E).

Regarding potential downsides for you:
"Time since obtaining the PhD" is often taken as the academic age, so by graduating early, you make yourself appear older. This can have a formal impact, for example, many grants meant for postdocs come with age restrictions, so are only available in the first n years after obtaining your PhD.
[Side note: This wouldn't matter for you if you get a faculty position straight away, but at least in my area, this would be quite unusual.]
The academic age can also play a role informally if people have to judge your productivity. (Number of papers)/(Years since PhD) is a formula I've seen a few times in this context.

Number of papers without taking the quality of the papers into account seems rather strange to me.

@Mitja Think (number of good papers)/(years since PhD) then.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of this.

For advisors, there may be a big change in how grad students and postdocs are paid, and what charges are being assessed to their grants. These may be helpful or hurtful to your chances of getting a postdoc position.
For instance, your advisor may be currently paying tuition charges that he would not have to pay if you were to become a postdoc. On the other hand, he may have to pay you a substantially higher salary as well as overhead to support you as a postdoc. So it's really a factor of what the rules are at your school.

The big question is if the advisor has to pay tuition charges. At the school where I did my PhD, the advisor had to cough up $35K per year for tuition, which made grad students just as expensive as postdocs!

@ZeroTheHero Some schools in the US require tuition be paid out of the advisor's grant (if RAing and not TAing). This can be in the 20-40k range! and is in addition to the stipend. At other schools this "tuition" money isn't "real" money and gets waved by the university. In the former school a grad student costs as much, if not more than a postdoc, where as in the latter school the grad student is far cheaper. Cornell is an example of a school where grad students were sometimes more expensive than postdocs, but I believe this it in the minority.

Moving up through the levels of academia brings more responsibility and less support. Being an academic is not easy (try looking up stress levels among academics). I would personally not recommend rushing if you can afford not to.
In terms of your suggested benefits:

In most fields it is (very) unusual to go directly to a faculty research position. Going straight to a teaching position is possible, but it doesn't sound like that's what you're hoping for. When you apply for postdocs as a PhD student, you are measured heavily by your references. When you apply as a postdoc, you are measured much more by the papers you have produced. Also, in my field at least, the new-postdocs are considered for jobs before the repeat-postdocs.
In a faculty position you will almost certainly be expected to teach. Avoiding teaching is therefore not necessarily a good move. Also, depending on the terms of a postdoc position, as a postdoc you could get landed with admin duties that count for less on your CV (as well as being less interesting).

In my case, somewhat unusually, I have my eye mostly on non-tenure-line, research-all-the-time faculty positions. But, +1 because I think this is generally sound advice.

@half-pass What do you mean by 'faculty position' if you don't mean 'tenure-track'? Also, it's not unusual to want to not teach, but it's unusual to get to not teach.

In my field there are NTL positions in which you only do research, with the usual teaching duties replaced by collaborative research.

I'm curious how easy it would be to get a paper published saying stress level among researchers is high, especially if the conclusion of said paper would be the pressure to publish would be the cause for that stress. ;)

@mathreadler I don't think that's the conclusion you'd come to. It's not solely or uniquely the pressure to publish. It's more generically the pressure to achieve far more than can reasonably be expected in the available time.

And what drives that pressure if not the pressure to publish and the standards which are set there?

@mathreadler Your boss.

Pressure to get results maybe. But that's not the same thing.

I would recommend doing your postdoc in a different research group from your PhD.
 For PhD students who are pursuing an academic career, in the United States the usual route is to stay a PhD student until you get a job offer.  If you accept a postdoc position in your PhD advisor's group, it may be interpreted as meaning you were unable to get any other job offer.  You will not have as many different experiences as someone who has worked in two groups.
In Australia you would be expected to finish in 3.5 years, so you would not have a choice of waiting for a job offer.  You also would not be finishing early.

In the summer between my second and third years (we got funding for 3.5 years, so 4 was the norm for those wanting to stay in academia) I had a conversation with my supervisor that went (roughly): 'You could finish this year if you wanted to.' 'Then what?' 'Good point, you'd struggle to get a job.' 'Ok, so what do I do instead?' 'Travel?' And that's what I did (thanks to a Cecil King scholarship). An alternative CV-builder would be organising a conference.

The answer depends on your goals. Two common goals:

Do you want to maximize the time you can do research?

Then it's probably good to linger on the PhD studies. Once you are a PhD you will get more and more "responsibility" (double-speak for irritating side quests which eat up your time to do research)

Do you want to maximize your income?

Post docs usually get paid more.

Also the PhD degree is a stamp of approval that you can do research independently.
Ending up postdocing at the same place where you did the PhD... does not really confirm that.