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How to Approach Students with Different Expectations on Coding Lab Sessions as a TA
I am a TA for undergraduate Introduction to Programming class at freshman level. I usually have around 30 students per semester who have two hours of lecture earlier during the week with their professor then the applied three hours of lab hour with me. The labs start from how to compile and run code to variable assignments and arithmetic operations, flow control, arrays and very brief introduction to object oriented programming.
My problem stems from the fact that my university does not admit students into particular departments. They start as engineering students and select a diploma programme at the end of their freshman year. Furthermore, only computer science has a class for freshman year, all other departments start their department courses after students have picked their programme. This creates a bias for students who will pick other majors, such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering, even electrical engineering. I often get asked, "Why am I taking this course?"
During my lab hours, I have a quarter of the students who are eager to learn and want to discuss programming with me, mostly composed of those who will pick computer science programme. The rest feels like they don't even want to be there, will get vocal when the assignment challenges them, disrupting the entire class (they are in the majority anyway). A lot of cases of cheating happen regularly which is automatically handled and they get a zero grade, after which they find ways to cheat the similarity detection by altering the shared code. My solution, which I am not definitely happy with, is giving into their demands, spelling out or sometimes typing the solutions. While they distribute the code among themselves and alter it to avoid cheat detection, I have enough time to tend to the first portion of students who actually benefit from the lab sessions.

This is my third semester, all of which were almost identical regarding this issue
As a TA, I have very little control over the content of the course itself, I do prepare lab material but according to guidelines set by the lecturers.
The professors are aware of the issue, I have brought it up numerous times. they are not happy with the universities policy either but the problem is often brushed away
It feels like discrimination towards students, which is a concept I don't want to have in my classroom
I know what I'm doing is not ethical and I'm not happy with it, yet there doesn't seem to be a better solution.

My questions then would be: how can I approach the class and handle this issue. I really would like to reach the majority of students who think programming is not beneficial to them as well as help the minority of the students to prepare them for the upcoming (and much harder) classes.

This problem should be put squarely on the department's shoulders.  And if the department refuses to address it, I suggest you request a different TA assignment.  Do you have a grad employee union?

@aparente001 I don't have a union, the department passes the issue to faculty and then the entire university. Faculty because other departments request this course to be given and university because the policy towards admission to faculties not departments

so can you at least request a different TA assignment?

@aparente001I dont't want to, necessarily. I want to improve myself and the general atmosphere in the classroom

I often get asked, "Why am I taking this course?"

There are some courses that are required regardless of major. Similar questions could be asked of mathematics faculty. However, it turns out that not only math majors are obligated to attend calculus courses.
I come from a institution that is similarly organized, namely, the first year is the same for all engineering students, which afterwards chose their respective major. This common year contains introductory courses: math, physics, computer science and electronics.
The school's curriculum is as it is, it can be good, it can be made better, but neither you or the students are in a position to influence it, let alone change it. So, stop thinking badly about you or your course, there is nothing wrong with either (at least nothing deducible from the question).
My advice to you is to stick to a medium curriculum, i.e. one that upholds the criterium of the course but is of reasonable difficulty for the average student,  and, if required by your TA agreement, make yourself available for (again reasonable) office hours, where struggling students can find help. And by help, I don't mean that you solve the problems for them, but to help them understand the material.
Students that are on a more advanced level can be motivated with additional assignments, projects or literature, while those "dissatisfied" need to provide the bare minimum effort for passing the course or fail. The same as with any other course.
The same approach is applied to cheating. The fact that someone doesn't want to attend a compulsory course does not entitle them to cheat and such behavior should be reported to the proper authorities.
In short: Don't give in to guilt or sympathy, you have a course to TA and nothing to be sorry about. Uphold the institution standards in teaching, grading, helping and maintaining discipline.

You could take a different approach by lowering the bar. Create a course that is adequate for the students that do not want to go to Computer Science. However do discuss with them that, regardless of the chosen course, they will need programming skills because all the engineering fields will end up using tools like MatLab or Octave and they need programming for that.
To be fair with the Computer Science students-to-be you can provide a set of optional tasks, challenges and study content. This way only the really interested students will go through this and, being optional it wouldn't need to be graded so they would take this in a more light way which could make the learning experience even more powerful. Of course you will have to discuss with this students that if they plan to take Computer Science they shouldn't think of this part as optional.

I should mention that I have no control over the course content (apart from suggestions to higher-ups) and very little control over lab material (I prepare them but they get reviewed)

@Drocan I get it, but anyway this could be a way to present a solution to the material responsible/owner because this strategy is totally within your department, it does not need any higher hierarchy intervention nor policy changes.


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How to approach supervisor about running a start-up along side PhD?
I have had a good opportunity to begin a start-up that would be providing SaaS to Universities. The start up is not related to my PhD topic, other than it also relies on my programming skills. As it has reached an inflection point it has started taking about 5 hours a week to manage it, but I can easily put those hours in by working a different schedule (Late or at weekends). I have a co-founder which means if a busy time hit in the PhD they could take more burden temporarily.
Institutional factors
My university is very supportive of start-ups  with several different initiatives and programmes to ensure this happens.
Early on in my PhD I asked my supervisor about how I should be spending my time during my PhD and they said I should keep side projects to my personal time and devote the working week to the PhD.
Context

1st Year PhD student in UK
Funded by UK Research Council
Had idea for project during undergraduate.

Other Questions related
Is it possible to work on extra activities (start-up project) during PhD? :
Very in favour of proceeding but advises caution if not in related field.
Responsibility/ethics of startups during graduate studies
Quite against the idea if it is not related field. Also asks about disclosure but does not answer regarding how to do this.
My dilemma
This idea has been pitched to people who are on a similar managerial level and could mention it to my supervisor.
They have thoroughly got behind the idea and want me and my co-founder to develop it.
I would rather tell my supervisor myself than them find out 2nd hand but am conflicted by the universities stance on supporting entrepreneurship versus my supervisor encouraging me to focus on the PhD for normal working time.
I'm aware that somewhere down the line the start up could take off meaning I might have to go part time, if allowed. Should I mention this?
How should I go about bringing up the start-up to my supervisor?

Be aware, of course, that taking on two such large projects means you have a non trivial possibility of failing at both. And expect a response like that from your advisor.

I'd go further than @Buffy and say each project is all-consuming

First, make sure this is allowed at your institution.  Then develop a solid plan for how you will handle both projects before taking it to your supervisor.  To the first point, it seems that you already have, but make sure that you understand your institution's rules.  For instance, is it allowed to use school resources?  What does that mean in your institution?  It could mean something as obvious as using a school computer to run a simulation for the business, or something as subtle as taking a phone call in your school office.  You need to be 100% sure that you are not violating any institutional policies.
Some institutions are hands-off when it comes to external projects as long as they aren't done on campus, others aren't.  For instance, where I did my masters, we were not permitted to make income outside of the school without losing an equivalent amount of funding.   Where I did my PhD this was not the case.
Next, make a clear plan for your advisor to understand.  As was pointed out in the comments, both projects are going to take a LOT of time to do well.  Your PhD should be the priority.  You need to make sure that your advisor understands precisely what working on the business and working on the PhD mean.  Be realistic.  It's very likely that you will check your business email while working at school, so don't pretend that you won't.
Your advisor has already stated that you should keep your side projects to your free time.  You need to be very clear what that means.  PhDs aren't necessarily like jobs.  You might not be able to get much research done one morning because the ideas aren't there, then work well into the night to make huge progress.  Does that unproductive morning count as free time?
Have a strong plan for what you want from your advisor. "I want you in on this" is not helpful.  "I need a support person in the role of algorithm development.  Here are the specific responsibilities I was thinking.  What do you think?"  is much better.
Finally, make it clear how much freedom the advisor has in this business.  Is he a co-founder, making equal decisions?  Is he an employee?  A contractor? A board member? Will you pay him?  What happens if he decides to hire a few co-op students and bring his long-time collaborator on board?  Who retains control of the business?  Who has ownership?  These aren't unique questions to student-advisor businesses, but they are important to get straight up front.  The worst thing that can happen is you both have different ideas for your responsibility and the business gets away from you.

Thank you, it should be noted that my supervisor would remain completely unrelated to the business. By advisor do you mean my co-founder?

Advisor was used to mean supervisor

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Should the listings be included in the contents page
I have a thesis template that does not put the List of Figures, List of Tables etc. in the contents page.
What is the normal practice and what is the normal order for the front matter?
Currently it is:

table of contents
list of figures
list of tables
list of listings
list of symbols

Follow any institutional guidelines.

Don't use a template blindly (you are doing right thing to question it, police it).  Check any directions for your thesis.  ALSO, look at a few actual completed and approved thesises (go to the library and touch the paper).  See if there is a common practice and/or variance.
For what it is worth, I don't completely understand your question.  By "in the table of contents", do you mean TOC lists a page that has each list?  Or that the details of the list itself is part of the TOC?
My thesis (and I think common practice) was for the TOC to list a page that had each list (but not the contents of the list).  Like below:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright....ii
Abstract.....iii
Acknowledgements....v
Table of Contents....vii
List of Figures....xii
List of Tables.....xvii
Chapter 1  Introduction....1
1.1. Background.....2
(etc. etc.)

The list of figures and list of tables (I didn't have a list of symbols) are sort of TOCish.  But are different things on different pages.
Note some people say table of figures, table of tables, etc versus "list of".  That's fine too.  But they are their own TOCish entities.  Not part of the TOC itself

I don't know that there is a "normal" order over different fields (or even within a field). My only suggestion is that if you need to symbols to understand the listing, then maybe symbols should come first.
Otherwise, what you have should be fine. But for a thesis, let your advisor give you the best advice.

Or consult with the dreaded 'Thesis Secretary', they-who-should-not-be-named, who will go over the thesis with a fine-toothed comb looking for any deviation from what is deemed acceptable at that university (font, margins, line spacing, ...). Are they a thing anymore?

Ruler lady!  Ahh...the memories.

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How do you decide how to categorize a new idea? Patent? Present at a Conference? or Publish in a Journal?
I came across a patent that proposes an idea for a device, and in the background section of the patent, other similar devices that were published in conferences (not even journals) were cited. Seriously nothing unique about the proposed design - not a jaw-dropping.
So consider the following scenario. You are sitting on a front porch, and you come up with an idea.
How do you know if it is worth to be filed as a patent, submitted to a journal, or presented at a conference?
Also, I came across a number of patents, and they were merely theoretical, without proving if the concept works flawlessly. So, how does this concept convince the people in the patent office? I’d like to know what elements make a patent too.

this question is too broad and big - a first step is a thorough patent literature research and then there are different reasons/strategies to file a patent or not. A patent does not prove something scientifically, it's rather a concept with a distinct purpose.

@user847982 Why is the question too broad and big?

@user2768 you answered the why, not the when...imho ;-)

@user847982 That seems like the crux of a the queston

I voted to close because this question has nothing to do with academia.  Perhaps law would be appropriate.

@AnonymousPhysicist Academics produce patentable research

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/18142/do-patents-have-to-be-original/18143#18143

@user2768 Academics also exhale carbon dioxide, but that doesn't make questions about breathing on topic.  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14470/what-is-the-boat-programming-meme-about

@AnonymousPhysicist (I could ask an on-topic breathing question, but I digress) Academics are funded by bodies that expect commercial breakthroughs; the relationship with IP seems intrinsic.

@user2768 Some academics might be, but many are not; and this question is not about funding bodies either.  Similarly, some academics are funded by bodies that expect them to use boats, but questions about boats are not on topic.

@user2768: I agree!

@user847982: it is not broad at all!

I think the body of it needs work also.

Ronnie, you need to familiarize yourself with how this site works, or else you will continue to have the majority of your questions closed.

How do you know if it is worth to be filed as a patent, submitted to a journal, or presented at a conference?

To commercialise, file a patent. To disseminate, publish a journal article or a conference paper.*
* Distinctions between journal/conference publication is dealt with elsewhere and, given the context, is seemingly out of scope.

[Many patent ideas] were merely theoretical, without proving if the concept works flawlessly. So, how does this concept convince the people in the patent office?

US patent law demands usefulness
...an invention is "useful" if it...is capable of use...the doctrine prevents the
patenting of fantastic or hypothetical devices...

and European patent law demands industrial application
...a patent can only be granted...for an invention which can be made...

These requirements should prevent granting patents for theoretical ideas.


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find the right journal to publish my manuscript
I'm about to publish my work in a journal,
I'm searching for those having an impact factor, indexed and non-paying.
I used Elsevier finder,  Springer suggester, DBLP,...tp pick up a list of journals in my research area then, I send it to my supervisor, who shocked me with another criterion which is 'open access', he said that a journal having an open access option is a paying journal and I'm not allowed to publish in it.
Could you please tell me what is this open access option?
how to find the right journal with the criteria that my supervisor and I want?

See the article on open access on Wikipedia for what it is.
You can find open access journals in the Directory of Open Acces Journals, the Free Journal Network, and by searching the websites of the publishers who are members of OASPA. That said, I'm honestly rather surprised that your supervisor doesn't simply suggest a journal to publish in. Directly asking him would be the quickest way.

You can find information about open access publishing in various online places such as the wikipedia article linked here.
Note the section on funding, however. Since readers of open access materials can do so without charge, the costs must be covered by other means. Often this means that the authors are charged a fee for publishing.
Perhaps your advisor is objecting to the cost of publication. But perhaps he is confusing it with predatory journals that also usually charge authors for publishing. The difference is that open access journals are often completely reputable (as are the ones you list), but predatory journals are not.
I believe that some reputable journals will publish either with or without the open access option. You can then avoid the fees (perhaps), but readers will need to subscribe or otherwise pay the publishers for access.
However, even without open access, most university libraries can obtain access to scholarly materials through sharing arrangements, so researchers can get access without fee. And when a journal is published by a scholarly society, the articles may be accessible to members for reduced (or no) fees.

Just to add, some open-access publishers like Frontiers or Plos offer publication waivers I believe. Otherwise, I would always recommend uploading preprints or accepted manuscripts to repositories (e.g., university repositories, arxiv, academia.edu, researchgate) for people not affiliated with any scholar body to find (depending on whether this is normative for one's field).


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Recommendation letter from an Emeritus Professor
I am applying to a PhD programme and am planning to take recommendation letter from an Emeritus professor who has known me for past 5 years. However, the professor does not use college id any longer and has asked me to provide his gmail account for electronic submission of recommendation letter. Will using such id harm my prospects as a PhD candidate? Should I use some active professor instead?

I sincerely doubt the Gmail account will matter to the reviewers. However, your bigger problem might be services that don't take non-".edu" emails (or ".ac.uk" since  you seem to be in Britain)

No, the form of the email address won't matter. You want letters from those who can best support your candidacy, so don't bother with others. If they are the best choice to support you, then get the letter from them. Someone with emeritus status has had a long career and is probably well known.
Of course, a former professor should identify them self as such in the letter, naming the institution.
I doubt that electronic systems will block you, as not all letters come from academics in any case.
Some of us still maintain university hosted web sites and are listed among emeritus faculty.

I believe it is also possible to have a proxy system with department secretary. Granted the secretary can not reply to any additional questions in the reccomendatition submission page but he/she can verify that the letter and contact information in it are legitimate.


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How to interpret being told that there are no current PhD openings but I should "keep in touch" for potential future opportunities?
A newly appointed professor in Computer Science from an European institution informed me that there is no available PhD position right now and suggested "keeping in touch as there could be potential opportunities in the future."
I'm extremely eager to seize this opportunity. How often should I check on the possible vacancy? What additional actions can I take in this regard?

From my experience as the one who is hiring, this is a polite yet very non-binding and rather "no" reply. This is a standard reply rather than an opportunity.
For me, if your CV looked super-valuable I'd:

have an online meeting with you to know you better
try to open a position from some extra funds (if this is CS and professor is good they often have some spare money to hire extra PhDs)
set a reminder for a next opening to inform you about position when it opens (if you are really good fit).

... otherwise I'd just reply: "keep in touch as there could be potential opportunities in the future."

I think it's just as likely that there is no position available and so the person contacted has not even seriously read their CV, because doing so would be a bit of a waste of their time given there is no position.

+1 for @BryanKrause's comment. #2 is harder than it seems and there are lots of other constraints too: office space, advisor's time/schedule/mental bandwidth, etc.  As for #3, some people might do so, but you'd need to make quite an impression. I'd expect most promising students to be snapped up within an application season or so, so it'd likely be a waste of time.

When I get an unexpected, exceptional candidate, I will do the following: (1) check with my post-award person to see if there is a way I can make it work (2) ask my Dean and VPR for an internal fellowship to make it happen (3) look for a co-PI whether for money or space issues (4) if I cannot have them, I refer them to my colleagues or top-level people I know at good places (people have sent me great students in the past, I am happy to send awesome students to them).... (5) if I say apply next cycle, it means I am just being polite mostly but would consider them under other circumstances.

This may be very dependent on the culture. In Central Europe, I would take such a statement at face value. On a subjective note, I see such answers as cowardly, misleading and non-educational regardless of cultural environment. “We regret to inform we don't have an opening for you” would be much more productive while remaining very polite.

@MrVocabulary What if the PI does want them, and wants them to stay in touch in case money became available?

@AzorAhai-him- That is exactly how I understand this message at face value. If it is anything else, then a different message should be uttered.

I hope that professors who say "keep in touch" when they actually mean "no" are not the same professors that complain about receiving too many emails...

@wimi ... There is definetly some overlap there.

If I'm not interested in a candidate I'll just say I've got no positions. The fact they want to stay in touch is encouraging. I can't invent positions when I don't have the funding yet.

You should interpret it as it states. For all practical purposes there are no current positions for you. Why? Because you are not as competitive as the people for which there are positions? Because there simply are no more slots available this cycle? Because the faculty is too polite to outright say no?
Who knows. For you, it means there are no positions regardless of the rationale. Perhaps next cycle there will be more options and you will be among the top of the cohort, so you should definitely apply if you are still on the market (this is true of any position, not just this one that this particular faculty communicated with you about).
What would I do with this information? Move on. Find somewhere else. You are best served just moving on and finding another place rather than waiting around for the stars to align.

This won't be quite so discouraging as the answer of Intelligent-infrastructure.
Don't wait around for something to develop with the professor. Pursue all other possibilities just as you would if you had not contacted them.
But, if nothing else develops for you in the meantime, contact them in the future with in enquiry and an updated CV. If their institution/group has regular admissions schedules, then sync your contact with that schedule, contacting them early in the next cycle. Otherwise, try again in a few (4-6) months and ask about opportunities.
The reason for just a bit of optimism is that a "new professor" may need some time to get set up to where they can take on students. But one of your other possibilities may bear fruit making contact unnecessary.

Very short answers to your questions:

How to interpret being told that there are no current PhD openings but I should "keep in touch" for potential future opportunities?

The only interpretation you can draw is that you applied when there is no opening.

How often should I check on the possible vacancy?

Regularly check openings in your field of interest, not just this particular one. Apply when you see an opportunity. Do not focus on this prof.

What additional actions can I take in this regard?

Treat this case as if you have never received a response.

Often taking a student is subject to grant funding. If I have no funding for additional students and I am busy, I may not carefully look at your CV and just tell you the truth: "I have no funding at this time, but may be interested in the future if I do obtain funding."
I also often receive emails from students who don't seem to have any idea of the kind of research that I do and don't seem to have a background appropriate for this research. I'm more likely to dismiss these emails out of hand (just delete them or give them a very quick response). Did you make clear that you are interested in a particular aspect of this professor's research and make clear that you have a background that would be useful in their research field? Unfortunately, you may need to make your email stand out from the spam.

To answer the second of your questions: If you are really keen to work for this specific professor, keep checking back for job ads every month or so. At least in Germany, universities did not have fixed "hiring cycles", but professors would post job ads as funding became available - unless, of course, they already had a candidate lined up for the position, in which case it would be filled without ever being posted.
And to answer the third of your questions: There really isn't much you can do except wait. There is no position now, and most (german) professors I have met would post any openings online if they were able to hire a new PhD student, but were not able to "create a position" if they did not have funding readily available (or at least, they wouldn't be willing to do this for a "random" applicant, but only for a really good student they already knew).
I agree with the others, that this reply is rather boilerplate and does not mean that there is an opportunity for you to seize or that a/the vacancy will be published any time soon, and that it's best to not focus on this specific place, but to start looking for other options.

The email is a cue to move on.
This professor presumably knows the institutional or agency deadlines for funding and the admission landscape so if they were interested they should have been explicit about the timescale, i.e. something like “I don’t have funding or space for another student right now but if you get back to me in a couple of months the situation may have changed”.
It is also IMO telling that this person did not suggest you apply for admission.  Something like “I encourage your to apply as this could lead to funding opportunities” would be more hopeful that the boiler-plate reply you have received.


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Should I reveal my slides bit-by-bit when giving a presentation/lecture?
In the comments on this question, there were a two opposing opinions (anti, pro) on the technique of revealing slides bit-by-bit, rather than all at once. The argument against doing so was that revealing slides bit-by-bit is "micromanaging" viewers' attention and that some people prefer to have access to all of the information on the slide before starting to process it. The argument in favor was that revealing a whole slide at once gives too much information, making the talk difficult to follow.
What are the pros and cons of these two approaches? How should I choose which one to use? Are there recommendations from authoritative sources and/or supported by reliable evidence? I'm mainly interested in technical presentations in science or mathematics, including both lectures to students and research talks to peers. There may also be diversity issues (dyslexia, ASD, etc.) that are relevant.
I think this question may be closely linked with the issue of how much information to put on each slide. If you have a slide that just consists of a few short bullet points, then I agree that there's not much point in revealing them one by one. But for technical presentations, one often has slides that have more information than one can reasonably take in at once.

This was one of several questions asked here but none of the answers there seems to address this particular question.

It's common in slides from math-text-publishers to have Q&A slides where there's a question to consider, and then an answer that appears on a click when the presenter feels the time is right. Hopefully answers here at least consider that use-case.

I use \pause in Beamer. I try to break slides up where natural breaks in thought are or before something potentially confusing or abstract to give the reader a momentary break to collect their thoughts. Here's an example of a talk I gave a couple years ago: https://www.fields.utoronto.ca/talk-media/1/25/93/slides.pdf . This was a short talk, so it's a bit more jumpy than the way I do classroom notes, but it's not too far off.

Please don't just read what your slides say aloud.  As a fast reader this is most likely one of the easiest way to lose interest.

Have you not yourself attended many slide  presentations, that the that the gaffes of other lecturers don't stand out to be avoided. There are broadly three approaches… Bit-by-bit; all-at-once; in batches. If I had your Question I'd look up what lectures were upcoming in my institution then either just go along to a dozen or so, or perhaps whittle the numbers down by first asking the authors about their approach, and weeding out the people whose explanations don't suit you…

You have to compromise between the three following aspects:

Every change/transition on your slides demands some of the viewers’ attention. Mind that this is purely about the change, not the content that is eventually revealed or there from the beginning. It is easy to underestimate this as the presenter, since changes you have control over are much less demanding and you do not need to follow your own speech in parallel. This is particularly bad for people with attention disorders who may be severely distracted by every visual change.

Whenever you reveal a new slide, it takes some time for the viewer to process the content to the extent that they can orient themselves on the slide and can follow your talk again. The time and mental strain of this process increases superlinearly with the amount of content on the slide.
Keep in mind that humans can only have a handful of things on the top of their brain at once and half of that is already occupied by things other than your slides. When somebody sees a new slide, they first have to break everything down into processable chunks. When the number of things they visually distinguish exceeds the number of free processing slots, processing of your slides becomes considerably more difficult.
Greying out some content (as suggested by another answer) only mildly ameliorates this: While greying something out is a visual cue that it can be ignored for a while, the viewer still has to process that cue and the greyed-out content is present and thus distracting all the time.

Managing the reveals distracts you from speaking and otherwise affects your talk, usually in a negative manner, e.g., by making you read your slides and dropping gestures and similar. In particular, while I have seen quite a few talks with quick bullet-point-wise reveals, I have not seen a single one where the speaker did not stumble over this, i.e., mistime a reveal or lost their flow of talking.

My general rules of thumb are therefore this:

Only split slides if revealing the entire slide at once is visually overwhelming and splitting considerably ameliorates this.

However, first consider whether there is any need to have the information you present on the same slide to begin with.

Do not split a slide if you do not spend at least twenty seconds on either side of the split.

A good example of this if you have two plots with a shared axis where you first explain the first plot (spending twenty seconds before the split), then the second plot (spending twenty seconds after the split), and then explain how the two plots relate to each other (thus having a reason to have both plots on the same slide).
If Points 1 and 3 of the above are in conflict with each other, you are almost certainly doing something else wrong, e.g., not properly explaining a plot or having useless stuff on your slides.

I upvoted since I think there's a lot of good advice in this answer, but I'm not sure I understand the first bullet point: if you give a blackboard talk, the content of the blackboard changes all the time. According to your first point, wouldn't this imply that a blackboard talk extremely distracts the audience?

@JochenGlueck: During a blackboard presentation, there is only one point of visual events: the speaker. There, everything happens extremely synchronised: The blackboard only changes where the speaker moves and the speaker talks exactly about what they are writing (hopefully). On top, the area where something changes is always covered by the speaker. By contrast, a slide transition is either sudden (for a viewer focussing on the slides) or happening out of focus but drawing attention (for a viewer focussing on the speaker).

Good point, thanks for your reply!

"Whenever you reveal a new slide, it takes some time for the viewer to process the content to the extent that they can orient themselves on the slide and can follow your talk again" - key point: they often don't listen (or don't listen well) during that time. So either you awkwardly stand there in silence for a few seconds while most people take in what's on the slide, or you keep the presentation going and have quite a few people only register half of what you say.

@NotThatGuy: It cuts both ways.  If you show too much at once, people will be reading your slides (instead of listening to the presentation).  Ideally the slides and spoken presentation match closely when a slide is initially revealed so that it doesn't matter where the audience is focused.

@JochenGlueck In my own experience it does imply that, and this is exactly what happens - except in this case it is even worse.  Not only do the audience have to read what they've written as they write it, but also reading handwriting is always harder, so the audience's ability to pay attention to the presenter is even lower.  And to make this worse, the time the presenter spends writing will always directly reduce the time they can spend talking about the subject.  This is a good example of why blackboard talks are so ineffective as a teaching method.

@Graham: My experience seems to be opposite to yours. I perceive both research talks and lectures based on slides to be considerably less effective than blackboard talks (for a number of reasons - but one of them is that it's much easier to follow things that are developed in real time in front of you rather than just presented as one complete big piece).

I agree with most of this but in my experience "Only split slides if revealing the entire slide at once is visually overwhelming and splitting considerably ameliorates this." applies to the vast majority of slides.

I like to use beamer with \setbeamercovered{transparent}, as in this talk for example.  Then the bits of the slide that I haven't got to are visible but greyed out.  I think that this has the advantages of both the options mentioned in the question.
In more detail: the linked talk was prepared using LaTeX with the beamer package.  The preamble starts like this:
\documentclass[9pt,xcolor={usenames,dvipsnames}]{beamer}
\usepackage{beamerthemesplit}
\usetheme[headheight=0pt,footheight=0pt]{boxes}
\setbeamercovered{transparent}
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}

The fourth line says \setbeamercovered{transparent}; this is the option that ensures that some parts of the slide are greyed out rather than being completely invisible.  Transitions between different states are created using a mixture of the commands \pause, \uncover and \only, which are explained in the package documentation.

I rather think this has all the disadvantages: You bombard the viewer with a comparable amount of visual clutter like when revealing everything at once and you have frequent changes on the slides drawing attention.

I agree with @Wrzlprmft. I prefer the \pause approach in Beamer. Slightly related to the topic at hand: this is an example of a talk I would likely tune out during because it is an assault of information. It is better to declutter a bit and have a few more slides than to bombard the viewer with a wall of text.

@Wrzlprmft One main disadvantage avoided (of the standard bit-by-bit approach) is that it avoids the sensation of "spoon-feeding" by only giving the information in small bits. The two disadvantages you mention are there, but they're both mitigated: the clutter is more organized because there is a clear focus point, and the individual changes are less drastic.

I find the "wall of text" comment odd.  Traditionally one would use use a literal wall with four or more large blackboards containing far more text in total than one can fit on a single slide, and that is very often preferred by both presenters and audience in situations where it is practical.  Mathematical arguments are just unavoidably complex, and it makes things easier if you can see everything simultaneously and not have to remember it.

@CameronWilliams What do you mean with "the \pause approach"? Depending on the value you pass to \setbeamercovered, it can do both (invisible or grayed out). I suggest you avoid this term.

Why not put each of your revealing sentences on a separate slide? Receivers now have to balance between reading paragraphs and listening to you. You don't want receivers to start re-reading from the top while you're explaining.

@Tvde1 That's a bizarre suggestion.  The talk consists of a sequence of closely linked, complex ideas.  To understand each line, you need to relate it to things that have been said previously.  When I give the example at the bottom of the first slide, I certainly do want the audience to look back to the general statement of which it is an example, and indeed I will probably point back to that general statement when I am talking.  It would be impossible to follow the talk if all previous lines were invisible.

I'm in academia for 10+ years and I can work with LaTeX, but it's not at all obvious to me from your answer or this sub-site what is \setbeamercovered supposed to be. Consider expanding your answer. Is that LaTeX? Is that some script for making slides?

@MrVocabulary I have added some explanation

I also agree with @Wrzlprmft. Using greyed out (slightly visible) text is extremely distracting to me as a listener at slide talks. I just can't help being drawn to looking at it and never understood why anyone uses that. When I make a slide talk, anything that I don't want the audience to see on a slide yet is kept 100% totally invisible.

Note that greyed out text may be way less readable when projected (by a mediocre projector on a whitish wall …) than on your monitor – and hard to read text is very distracting.

This is a personal view, but with long experience behind it. I think the answer should be different for things like classroom lectures and conference presentations.
For classroom lectures, I suggest that you give the students access to any slides a day or two in advance. This permits those who have the inclination to look them over prior to the lecture and think about questions. It also permits them to print out the slides and annotate them during the lecture as a form of note taking. The purpose of such a lecture is learning and this can enhance it.
A conference presentation, on the other hand, is a kind of performance. Few people (some) will take detailed notes during the talk and the flow can be important. Also, such lectures are normally given to those with a lot of field experience already, so insight is more valuable there than detail. A friend of mine was brilliant about using things like PowerPoint to present very dynamic presentations that didn't actually need a speaker to present commentary. The presentation was complete in itself. I never had such skill.
But, consider both the purpose of the lecture and the nature of the audience. The best solution may well depend on those factors.

Good point that one should clearly distinguish between conference presentations and classroom lectures (although I'd add that, from my experience back then as a math student, I would really strongly advise against using slide presentations in lectures, except for a few very particular use cases).

@JochenGlueck Oh god. Slides in a MATH class?! Might as well just tell students to read the textbook and not come to class.

@DKNguyen: Fortunately, it happened only very rarely in math or physics classes (once, if I remember correctly). It did, however, happen during two computer science courses that I tried to take while I was a (math) PhD student. I dropped both courses after a few weeks because the endless slides essentially made me fall asleep.

No. What you should do is refrain from using your slides as speaker notes. Your slides should have 2 purposes: 1) to pique your audience’s interest in what you’re about to say and 2) to help them remember what you did say.
Compare these 2 slides:

Which slide would result in the audience spending time reading instead of listening to you, the presenter? Which slide would tend to make them more interested in your presentation?
Note: This isn’t a lesson on good slide design. I don’t think it’s arguable the second slide is better than the first. It is. It’s also not arguable there are more improvements we could make to the second slide to make it even better. The point I’m making here is to not put so much information on your slides that they’re effectively useless.
Now to the original question: “Should [you] reveal [your] slides bit-by-bit when giving a presentation/lecture?” That’s up to you. I said “no” initially, but it’s really up to you. It’s neither an absolutely good technique nor an absolutely bad technique. For presentations I deliver, I use that technique more often than not. In the example above, it may be advantageous to reveal first only the title, then the Positive Gz Effects, then the Negative G. Effects. It just depends.
Information on the slides from FAA Advisory Circular 91–61, February 28, 1984

This. I was waiting for an answer along the lines of "if your slides bombard people with information to the extent you need to manage their attention, make your slides simpler"

One issue with the "keep the slides minimal" approach in this answer and in @stanri's comment is that its feasibility strongly depends on the topic of the talk. For instance, I regularly give and attend research talks in pure maths. The audience in such talks expects to see theorems, and for most mathematical theorems it is impossible to convey the assumptions just orally, so one has no choice but writing them down. Of course, this does not mean that one should overload the slides with a lot of information - but a slide as concise as the blue one above would be impossible for most theorems.

You could combine these two slides: start with the basic version (just the topics) and with each point you explain add the explaination from the first slide. in this way the resulting view of the slide contains much information, which can be helpful if seen afterwards, but no visitor has to much information on first sight of this slide.

@JochenGlueck I see your point, and I agree somewhat. However, I think the presenter is usually in a position to print the theorem etc. on a handout rather than include it on the slide.

@JochenGlueck I agree that one cannot always be as concise as in the example, but even a theorem can often be shortened to make the slides more readable. If they are standard and not relevant for the parts of the proof presented, then writing just "under some standard technical assumptions" is perfectly fine. Conversely, if the assumptions are involved and non-obvious, then it is often better to discuss them on a separate slide and reduce the theorem to "Under the previous assumptions". Too many people have the bad habit of blindly copying the theorem statement directly from the paper.

"I don’t think it’s arguable the second slide is better than the first." this seems rather close-minded.

@aquirdturtle yep. I agree.

Giving a talk is absolutely about managing your viewers' attention, and perhaps micromanaging it.
Every viewer has their own listening goal and learning style. But you have to give the same talk to everyone at once. So you more or less have to keep the audience's attention and understanding in sync with each other. At each point in the talk, you should have a plan -- not for controlling an engaged audience's attention, but for offering clear guidance on how they should direct it.

If you are speaking a key point, they should mainly be paying attention to your words. The slide's visuals should assist without distracting.

If they are reading text on the slide for more than 2-3 seconds, or thinking about a deep concept, or reading a plot carefully, etc., you should probably be mostly silent. Any comments should assist without distracting.

So the key principle is do not ask the audience to split their attention. People will split their attention different ways and nobody will get the complete picture.

Don't reveal a large detailed slide while speaking continuously. People will try to read it and tune you out, or give up on reading it and not get any use out of it.

Don't reveal portions of a slide rapidly while speaking continuously. Every transition takes people more time and attention to process than you think. People will miss what you're saying, or fall behind.

In general, going slowly and pausing gives people space for both autonomous thinking and following your cues.

Quod licet Jovi, non licit bovi.
Some people are good enough at presentations to make otherwise-bad approaches succeed brilliantly. Steve Jobs' slideshows broke every rule and were amazing. Doing this takes perfect timing and meticulous digital choreography, as well as a heaping helping of inspiration. And it's usually brittle: if you break your rehearsed flow (e.g. for questions), it's hard to get it back.
If you have any doubt whether you're that good, assume you aren't and stick with the basics. The benefits of fancy techniques are marginal, especially compared with the benefits of good fundamentals.
If you need to ask on here whether you should do it, the general answer is "no".

That said, if you have a specific use-case where you are confident it will be helpful (something like successive overlays on the same data), AND you are confident you can pull it off, it's a fine technique to use occasionally.

I think you want the dative "Jovi" and "bovi".  Probably also "licet".

@AndreasBlass oh all right…. (Thanks!)

The central point seems to be that someone like Jobs can break every rule and it still works great, but that this doesn't apply to everyone. Precisely on that I cannot find anything. Searched for steve jobs presentations broke every rule (and similar) on DDG and can't find any such article. Lots about bad management, but the articles about Jobs' presentation "secrets" just report common wisdom: little text on each slide, make good headlines, visualize, etc. Works for everyone. I think this core point in the answer is something that could use major clarification or backing up with a source.

@Luc your comment is well taken, but I don’t think I can provide a satisfactory answer. Jobs was so successful that his idiosyncrasies get presented by clickbait articles as good practice, and they just aren’t. For example, less text on a slide is definitely good. But Jobs took that to an extreme: single-word slides that flashed quickly up to emphasize his speech. Way, way more slides per minute than is good for most use-cases. Etc.

@Luc if you are Steve Jobs, and just as importantly, have Apple’s production infrastructure behind you, you absolutely should look to him for sales inspiration. But if you’re flying solo and building a presentation to convey technical info, Jobs is the wrong model. (Not just picking on Jobs either; get good enough and you transcend some rules in a lot of arenas. Bruce Lee said the best martial arts style is no style; he didn’t mean that amateur flailing beats disciplined style)

There is no one right answer to this, because presentations are so different from each other in purpose and content.  Rather, what can be answered is, at least in part, how can you tell which approach fits your presentation?
First question is: is the content critical to understanding the presentation?  Could someone have you on audio only and still get the gist?  If they could, then hopefully your content is relatively minimal and distraction-free, aimed at giving people who are more visual learners some signposts to help them along. Non-critical information lends itself better to the reveal-slowly approach, while critical information is better to leave up the whole time as different viewers will have different timing needs.
Second question, how much information is on the slides?  Information dense slides can distract the reader from hearing the audio, as many people don't listen as effectively while they're reading.  On the other hand, information light slides may be quickly consumed and lend themselves better  to being up on the screen at once to avoid distracting the viewer with movement - unless that movement is helpful for signposting.
Third question - do you plan to release the slides to the public?  Slides that will be released to the public should be created in a way where they are useful without any animations.  As such, design them from the beginning to work in the all-at-once approach.  Many users will view in a format that doesn't support animations (or doesn't support it easily) like PDF or still images, and instead will want to just see one particular slide to get information from it - even if there is animation support they won't appreciate the time it takes to scroll through the animation.
In the business world, I think you'll find that slides tend more towards the "animation" side, because the content on the slide itself isn't as important - the speaker is more important.  In academia, in particular things like Math or Physics, the information is much more critical on the slide - the equation, the proof, that sort of thing - and as such lends itself less to doling information out in small bits.  I tend to find that the first question is the deciding one for me most of the time, as a result.

One aspect I've not seen mentioned yet is that an important factor is whether the points are naturally sequential or not. Stepwise revealing works best if:

The points have a natural ordering such that it is useful to have digested one before moving on to the next
Each step is "meaty" enough to warrant at least 10-20 seconds before the next point is revealed
It is meaningful to have consecutive steps on the same slide (see Wrzlprmft's plot example)

Block revealing works best if

The points are an unordered list, ideally of minimal-text bullet points (see afwing's example)
The entire list can be taken in as a single glance and the eye doesn't actually have a sudden wall of text to track through
The points are not narrative or entirely self-explanatory (again, keyword bullet points help here) as you don't want to lose your audience because people are simply reading ahead in your own presentation (they can read faster than you can speak, after all)

The third option, when you have large, non-bite-sizeable points that are however not a natural sequence, is just to dedicate a slide to each (perhaps after an introduction where you explain that you will be showing several examples and their overarching connection) - much less visual clutter and better focus on a single concept at a time.

I agree with most of the points presented. The slides are NOT your notes and if giving the slides out to the audience is of any value to them, there was too much detail in the slides. The slides help guide you through your presentation, enabling you to add, remove, or rearrange talking points without have to memorize (and forget) the changes, which also lets you customize the presentation for different audiences - but you still need to know the material without need notes, the slides are cues for the presenter.
For the audience, the slides gives them something to focus on, gentle reminders of what you have said or are about to say, and also a visual of new or confusing terminology so they don't have to ask you for clarification. But the slides should not tell the entire story, in fact, they should whet the appetite for your presentation. There should be no value in handing the slides out to the audience.
As for the reveal technique, that depends on the presenter, the audience, and the material. I've presented to certain groups multiple times and learned that there are "hecklers" (people who disrupt your presentation with any motive, good or bad) that will ignore your order of presentation and interrupt you during bullet #1 with a question about bullet #6. For that group, I reveal one bullet at time. Other times, I'd reveal the entire list just to prevent individuals from asking "What about X?" which is bullet #6.
If you don't know your audience, follow your gut, develop your style of delivery and run with it. If you choose to reveal bullet-by-bullet, learn how to expose the entire slide at once in case there is a revolt. In the end, you want the audience to appreciate your presentation without having to battle them, but you also need to get your message across and maintain control of the presentation or you will have chaos.

It depends on how you structure your talk. A slide deck designed to not have animations would be prepared in such a way that slides are easily navigable to begin with. The ultimate example of this is a paper handout - there is a wealth of techniques around organizing static text on a page so as to make it readable. If you bluntly add animations like reveals to this, it would be like trying to read a book and seeing one word at a time.
Conversely if you design a talk with revealing in mind, the slides are probably too confusing when you get the full version "in your face". So simply removing the reveals would lead to a confusing, overly busy presentation. To give another analogy, imagine that instead of watching a video you had an array of every frame.
I think your first step should always be to figure out what your audience likes. Are you able to tell if they like reveals or not? How have they reacted to past presentations? If you have an audience who hates reveals, it's pointless to use them regardless of their merits. They'll be primed to dislike your presentation just on that very fact. Why stack the deck (hah!) against yourself? Just give them what they want.
If you're not aware of any clear audience preference, it's a pros vs. cons type situation. Basically you pick the problems you want to have vs. the ones you want to avoid.
No reveals

Your slides can't be too complicated - you really need to stick to "one point per slide"
Lots of points with corollaries or tangents is probably not good - it will confuse the audience
The deck is easier to manage - one page is always one slide
Timing is easier because you have fewer time points to remember (just the slide changes)
Because you are probably thinking of something like "x minutes per slide", you have more leeway in sometimes going a bit over or under time for an individual slide, so you are more flexible on time (good if eg. audience likes to interrupt with questions)
Interruptions are generally easier to handle, especially when people ask you to skip a section or go back to past slides
Printing slidesheets is more straightforward and doesn't use as much paper

Judicious reveals (a few, but not too many)

You can get away with slightly more complicated/convoluted points in each slide - it's still a good idea to make sure every slide has one point, but you have more leeway
Managing the slides is a bit harder (not much harder, because you wisely avoided "a lot of reveals") since you have more frames and have to deal with the reveal logic and duplicated content on top of everything else
Timing is more critical - you have only seconds per frame, so if you go over (or end up starting late!) it easily derails the whole timetable you had
Going back or skipping slides is more annoying and distracting to the audience (since they see you flipping through animations, sometimes stopping at the wrong frame)
The presentation is hard to keep track of. With programs like powerpoint, you can't see at a glance how many steps an upcoming slide will have. If you go the Latex route and make each frame an individual page in the PDF, you now end up with things like 100 pages for a 20 slide presentation. Audiences tend to glimpse the large number as you set up and start panicking.
Printing is annoying - either you just accept needless duplication or you have to somehow print a subset of pages every time

Why not a lot of reveals?
I would say realistically you are picking between "no reveals" and "a few reveals".
The extreme of the animation spectrum would be to make a whole movie that you talk alongside, like a science documentary. Without even getting into pros/cons, making a movie would obviously be too impractical for just one talk, and it requires a lot of specialized skill.
Similarly for reveals and other animations, the more you use them, the more overhead it adds to the work of preparing the deck. Lots of animations makes sense if your talk will have a wide audience - like a TED talk that you're sure will go viral and get watched millions of times. But not if it's a one-time thing for a few hundred people.

If you have a slide that just consists of a few short bullet points, then I agree that there's not much point in revealing them one by one

I have the exactly opposed opinion. If you have a few short bullet points, you can reveal them one by one to keep a "thought path" for the viewers.
If you have more details on the slide (which I do not like but sometimes you have to) then I warn the audience beforehand that the slides are a reference, that they will have them and that I will just use a tiny part on them. In such a case, when you switch your slide, everyone is not frantically reading.

I think an important distinction to make here whether short mean refers to time or word count. If you are talking minutes about each bullet point, revealing them one by one is usually reasonable, even if every bullet point is only one word. However, if you are talking only a few seconds about each one, I consider it  a bad idea for the reasons outlined in my answer.

@Wrzlprmft: thanks for the clarification - I meant preliminary "short in time" (but also "short in content" as the words should be short so that people do not spend time reading though walls of text)

I will usually avoid doing a sequential bullet-by-bullet reveal, and that's because I try to avoid my slides and my talk saying exactly the same thing.
Now, I'm aware that there's an accessibility benefit in conveying exactly the same message in two different forms (written and spoken), and if that's what you want to do, then there's an argument for keeping the two streams synchronised, so people get the message in both forms at the same time.
But personally, as a listener I find talks where the speaker reads the slides boring; and as a speaker, I hate being constrained by my slides because it eliminates all spontaneity. So I like to use slides that complement what I'm saying rather than repeating it verbatim. I might talk about general principles and have a slide that gives a concrete example: I will say "and there's an example of that on the slide", and give people a few seconds to read the slide, while not actually talking about the example at all.
So it's a personal thing, and it depends greatly on how closely you want your spoken words and your visuals to duplicate each other.

This may be style-dependent.  My own style  is such:  I sometimes like to give a presentation like a mystery-plot, and not have 'spoilers' for the big conclusions.
However, in general, a rule of public-speaking [e.g. from "Toastmasters"] is to:

Tell them what you will tell them (intro / contents)

Tell them (body)

Tell them what you told them (summary / conclusion).

It's hard to see how one can avoid 'spoilers' in such a scenario!
As to partially revealing what is on a slide, if one uses this technique, use your verbal words to correspond with it, so that it makes sense to the audience.  I.e. when new info is on the slide, start talking about it.  This would then make the new slide-info into a "I'm talking about this now" marker.
The more important the presentation, the more one should stick to the fundamentals, as per Fectin's (and possibly other people's) answer.

There are two issues here:

Your slides should only have about as much text as a notecard, with just as much respect for grammar
The appearance of text on the slide shouldn't be distracting.

I find that if you have 1 down you rarely need to have individual transitions for elements of your slide so 2 is a non-issue.  A notable exception being question/answer patterns.
For an extremely pathological case: don't use the feature for individual transition animations for bullets on a slide.  It is very distracting and many students stop using it even in high school.


text:
Do research groups welcome students from other universities who want to contribute to research to strengthen their research profiles?
During my BS degree, an undergraduate colleague mentioned that she was working with a research group from another country, possibly French. It wasn’t an internship, and I assumed she reached out to them to volunteer her contributions. Do research groups offer opportunities like that to students, outside of formal internships? If yes, what’s the usual protocol for approaching them? I imagine they receive many such inquiries, so do they mainly consider exceptional students, or is there more to it?

This is probably going to vary country to country and place to place. Here in the UK there are very strict rules around unpaid internships and volunteering, and it would usually be illegal for a research group to agree to accept help from an undergrad, irrespective of their motivation, without an official, and paid, internship position, as all people providing labour under the direction of another person needs to be paid at least the minimum wage except in a very narrowly defined set of circumstances.

First, in order to be accepted you need something to offer. You probably don't need to be exceptional, but something beyond the mundane. "Welcome" student participation may be too strong in most cases. And, you need a motivation beyond strengthening your own research profile.
Second, you need a way to make contact in a way that won't be ignored. Research groups are busy, often too busy, as they likely have other responsibilities. Many "cold" emails are likely to be ignored and immediately trashed when they come from students at other institutions.
One way that is at least a bit more promising is to have a professor make first contact on your behalf. This is best when they know someone in a research group as well as knowing what it is that you have to offer, even if it is just a willingness to work hard. It is harder to ignore an email from someone known, or even someone unknown whose reliability can be assumed.
And if someone else says how great you are it has more weight than you saying the same thing.
Third, do some research so that you know you are a good match for their needs. I wouldn't try to join a French group not knowing the language, for example, or a physics group not having at least a few of the elementary courses (and maybe one or two advanced courses). You want to be seen as probably having a net positive contribution to a group, even if you will be doing some low level, low priority, things.
Good luck. There are no guarantees. In essence you are asking for some sort of mentorship. And mentoring is an added task for people who do it consciously.

Well the motivation is that i obviously wanna pursue graduate studies .My interests lie in early universe cosmology and high-redshift astronomy and i did contact local research groups but that kind of research is not happening in my country. It's mostly high energy physics here. Since my BS thesis was on CFD , i'm wanting an experience very close to my field of interest. What would be a mature way of emailing a group? Should i mention my skills/what i can offer and let them decide the way i can contribute  OR should i be very specific and tell them the area i wanna work on ?

So, it depends on what your main goals are here. Most PhD students need help to do their research (usually a lot of work that might not be as exciting as doing research but a good way to find yourself in a published paper), and most labs have some budget to hire undergrad students to assist them. It is mostly a case of knowing your research interests and which labs might have a space for you.
During my master's, I had one student approach me with the exact same idea, and after talking to my supervisor, we agreed that he would be part of the project. Mind you, he didn't receive a dime during the project. It was mostly a side project for him, but in exchange for his help, I had to teach him everything about my research topic and also programming (mostly the packages we used) and how to do some things I needed him for. Again, this was not exciting research work he was doing, but he ended up being part of our published paper, which he used afterwards to get into his master's program.
I would say that if you want to find a position like this, it is best to contact PhD or Master's students since they usually have more time and are the ones who need help. Postdocs and professors will probably ignore your email or not know if there is an actual need for an extra set of hands.
Most labs (at least in the UK) have a website with their publications. That would be a great place to start. Find titles that interest you and read their work. If you still want to work with them, try contacting them. Most post-graduate students I know also appreciate helping people pursue their research interests.
Good luck to you!

I don't know why this was downvoted. I think undergrads working closely with master's students, all under the supervision of the professor running the group, makes a lot of sense.

I don't know either, and that is what happens in my PhD program and during my master's. Most undergrad students look for experience to improve their applications, and most post-graduate students need extra hands. Maybe people don't like that this is unpaid work? Or it might be specific to my field.


text:
I'm not interested in working with this potential advisor. What to tell him? Or should I reconsider?
I met with a potential supervisor and initially he was nice and helpful. Although he tried to make me alter my thesis, something I wasn’t keen on because I love and breath the topic. He told me to go and read more. I have done enough reading about the topic and it’s time to set the topic then read more about it to unfold it further. I wanted his consent on the topic at least before I invest more time reading in case he rejects everything.
I left with loose conclusion, not sure about his impression about me, the topic or if he’s interested to supervise me.
I saw him in a mutual class the next day and he was hostile about my research questions. He made me feel so stupid and worthless. Is this a normal behavior of PhD supervisors?
What should I do?
Is it polite to cut ties? What’s the protocol in this situation?
I don’t want him to be my supervisor, he doesn’t seem patient at all.

Difficult to answer (French system is quite different, I understand you are in a US-like system, correct?), but I would always advise against being supervised by someone one is not comfortable with. There are always so many hurdles in a PhD, you need to get along with and have confidence in your supervisor.

Really hard to judge without seeing the situation. What you label as "hostile" may have been merely your personal feelings towards a fair cold response by the other part. My main advice is, if you want to find out more about your potential supervisor prior to signing any contracts, discuss all your doubts openly with current and specially ex- lab members.

BTW please edit your question to match with the post title. At the title you ask one thing, and at the end of your post you throw a completely different question. I am marking this as "unclear".

You will need to be more specific about what your potential supervisior actually said and did. He is not the owner of your feelings.

So, the original meeting was fine. Then, you tried to have an "extra" meeting directly after or during a "class" the next day - was he prepared for that or was it "off the cuff"... ie did it even match what was in the class?

"I have done enough reading."  As a doctoral student, you can never do enough reading on your subject.

I also don't really see what the question is here or what you would like to know. You seem to have made up your mind already: you don't want him to be your supervisor. If you still want to go for a PhD programme, invest your time and effort into finding a professor you would like to work with and that would like to work with you.

Given that the supervisor has more experience than you, it may be best to follow his advice. Don't let ego get in the way of improving your work.
I wonder if your second interaction as described might be the result of his feeling that you were rejecting his advice without considering it.
On the other hand, it is good to have an advisor you are comfortable with. Whether it is possible or dangerous to change supervisors depends on the particulars of your institution. Since you say "potential supervisor" it would be a good time to evaluate your options.
But in general, once you have an advisor, it is good to take their advice, for strategic reasons if no other. You want to finish successfully in a reasonable amount of time with good recommendations. Fighting with your supervisor achieves none of that.

What should I do? What’s the protocol in this situation?

Find a different supervisor. Since you don't have an advisor yet, this is a good time to look for someone whose interests and personality are better aligned with yours.
If you find someone else, then you can inform this guy "thank you for considering me, but I've decided to work with Prof. X."
If you don't find someone else, then you will have to learn how to work with this guy, including finding a topic of mutual interest. As Buffy says, this might be a good experience for you to learn from him -- but it also might not be.
In any case, I wouldn't formally  "cut ties" with this guy, and certainly not before you have someone else lined up. For that matter, continuing to openly talk with him and his current students might help you come to a higher-confidence decision.

I think two things are very important for a "good" Ph.D. journey: a collaborative working environment, and an advisor who would truly care about your research.

"Potential supervisor behavior.. Risky or Normal?" "What should I do?" "Is it polite to cut ties?" "What's the protocol in this situation?"  I can't see how your answer answers these questions.

I am answering those questions but suggesting what he or she should look for if any changes have to be made.

"he was hostile about my research questions. He made me feel so stupid and worthless"
I would be honest and tell him in a very polite, but direct manner your feelings.
(Don't say HE was hostile, but what the effect on YOU was, i.e. you experienced pressure, felt stupid and worthless.)
Maybe it was a misunderstanding that you can both clear up.
Or he will admit to a mishap and apologize.
You will see.
In any case, I would recommend to trust your heart/gut feeling.
If you don't feel like you can work with him, and it's possible to find another supervisor, why not change ?


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A PhD in Informatics vs CS?
I just had a conversation with an adviser who mentioned that there is little value in a PhD in informatics (specifically biomedical), when compared to a pure CS PhD. I have a background in computer science now, and am looking to stay in this field. However, my adviser makes the argument that to truly bring about innovation in this field (or really any interdisciplinary one) one needs to be grounded well in the basics of one of the pertaining fields. What is the truth to this, and would I be able to get this with a PhD in informatics?
EDIT: Sorry, forgot to include the location. I'm from the United States.

Where are you from?  I have a friend studying "doctorat en informatique" in Europe, but there "informatique" is the literal translation of "computer science" into French, which means they are the same. Just saying...

USA, sorry about the confusion

What should be included to make this post more specific?

It depends on where you are and more on the details of the degree. Many other places than France use some variation on Information *, rather than Computer Science. Denmark for one. Others as well. In the US an information science or informatics degree is more often closer to a management degree than a CS degree.
However, details matter. Algorithms, Languages and Compilers, AI, and such will make it a CS degree whatever its name.
However, if it lacks those but has courses such as Information Processing or Transaction Processing or Decision Support Systems it may be not CS but something related.
Such courses as Database Management Systems could be in either, though a CS degree will focus more on the theory of databases and such things as Entity Relationship modeling.
In the US at least it is a bit confusing. But the general idea is that a CS degree is more focused on theory and an IS (Information Systems) degree is more (but not completely) focused on practice.
Careers can be built with either degree.
However, I'm surprised that anyone would think biomedical information systems is somehow a lesser art. There are many very serious issues that still need to be resolved in such systems and such study should cover such "hard" topics as security and encryption. But, details matter.
On the other hand, your advisor is correct in that to make progress in an interdisciplinary field you should start with a firm grounding in one or the other. There will still be a lot to learn, but the grounding in one will help you focus on what you need from the other.

Thank you for the response! In a related note, a lot of my discussions seem to have centered around coursework. How important is that when making this decision, considering the most of the PhD is focused on research.

@vsocrates, the course list will also give you some idea of what the professors are interested in and what sorts of research they do. It is just an easy way to determine that without needing to examine a lot of professor's publications.


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Importance of teaching as a PhD student to go into academia
How important is teaching as a graduate student if I want to then pursue a career in academia. A top program I have been admitted to does not require teaching and I will be fully funded by being a graduate research assistant. Will it hurt my prospects of getting a tenure-track position if I have little to no teaching experience?
I am aware that to get a tenure-track position at a top program, a postdoc is almost always necessary.
--edit-- To address some of the points below, this is for graduate school in the US, with the desire to stay in the US if I were to pursue a tenure-track position.

Many departments, including mine, pay attention to applicants' teaching strength, both for postdoc positions and for tenure-track positions. I'd advise you to get some teaching experience as a graduate student, even if you're fully funded without having to teach.

Which countries are you interested in? Please indicate. (Note that many universities do absolutely not care if you are able to teaxh, but claim the opposite.)

A lot depends on the discipline.  For example, in mathematics, teaching experience is far more important than in some other science disciplines.

If this is the US or in a place with similar traditions, then nearly all academics teach. Some more than others and some only at advanced levels, but generally, we teach.
If you are good enough to be hired primarily as a researcher at an R1 university in the US then the hiring decision won't hinge much on your background as a teacher, but for most other academic jobs it will be a consideration, perhaps an important one.
So, it is a good thing to get some experience with it, though it is time consuming the first few times. Post doc positions don't necessarily provide any teaching experience, though some do.
Observing your own teachers gives you only a bit of the knowledge you need to put a course together, deliver it, and keep a bunch of students happy.
But all universities have a complex mission, and teaching the next generation of scholars is a big part of it.

If you are good enough to be hired primarily as a researcher at an R1 university in the US then the hiring decision won't hinge much on your background as a teacher — Unless it does. I have seen teaching experience used to break ties between faculty candidates with comparable research records.  (I work at an R1.)

@JeffE, yes, of course, but it was probably other considerations that got the candidates to that stage. Young tenure track folks at R1 places are hired primarily for their research potential and a hope that they will be adequate or better teachers. At small liberal arts colleges it is pretty much flipped.

This depends by area of study and geography. In the area I did my Ph.D. (pure math), most new job candidates have taught (i.e. been the primary lecturer) for several courses, though the importance of that varies on the type of institution they get their job at. In the applied area I have pivoted to, many applicants have no teaching experience at all; some have been TAs in a course or two. In my wife's area (social sciences), having some teaching experience is frequent enough to differentiate you as a candidate, but not the norm.
Rather than the usual "tell us more about your area and we'll tell you" approach, I'll put it differently.

Approach it empirically. Look up 5-6 junior faculty in your field whose career path you would like to emulate. Find their CVs online. Did they have teaching experience prior to their 1st postdoc (or other post Ph.D. position)? What else is interesting about their CV?
Think about flexibility. Regardless of whether you have to, wouldn't you like to try whether you like teaching and whether you're good at it? In the case you pivot to a nonacademic career (which is increasingly common even for people who think they're going to become academics), wouldn't it be a good experience to have on your resume?

Finally, consider the specifics of options you have. Some "teaching" opportunities for Ph.D.'s are awful; underpaid with lots of busy work and very little independence. Others are super. And there are periods during any Ph.D. program when you need to put your head down and read, or do demanding empirical research, or just write; and there are periods where, let's face it, you are pushing your cognitive limits and need to take breaks anyway, and there's no reason you couldn't fit in teaching (and learn some valuable time management skills at the same time). So if you have the privilege that teaching is not a necessity but a privilege, be choosy of the specific opportunity and timing when to do it.

In my experience on mathematics faculty hiring committees, it's quite common that a CV will not list any teaching duties (or perhaps say something like "Teaching Assistant 2014-2016" that doesn't tell you what duties were involved.  Most applicants provide additional information about their teaching experience in other parts of the application.

Take this from another angle, the comments about this issue by Richard Feynman. Presumably somebody with a foundation-building Nobel in physics should be able to write his own ticket. If he did not want to teach, he could just go sit in his office and think about nearly anything he wanted to.
But he wanted to teach. Indeed, he made a lot of effort to try to teach his students to a high standard.
For him, teaching was something that filled the gaps when his research was not producing huge gratifying results. At least I'm doing my students some good, even if my research is frozen. It helped his attitude and his morale. And that would help him through those dry periods that everybody gets.
So look at teaching as something that can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience.


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Can industry experience make up for undergrad courses?
I am an undergraduate applied math and statistics major and plan on applying to PhD programs after graduation. My research interests are in machine learning, cv, etc.. And do research in the stats and CS department in ML/DL. I am thinking of applying to PhD CS programs, but have only taken 4 CS classes in undergrad, but I have had two internships with Amazon as a software engineer.  Can my experience in industry make up for the lack of CS classes as an undergrad?
I obviously want to get into the best program possible, but worried that my lack of CS classes might hinder my chances of getting accepted.
edit: Not a duplicate. Not worried about weak grades, gre, research, etc.. I am just wondering from a graduate admissions perspective will they look negatively on less CS classes even though I have research and industry experience in CS.

@RichardErickson I am not asking because of weak, grades, gre, or research. I have research in CS and strong skills. I am wondering if grad school admissions will see having less CS classes as a negative even with research and industry experience.

Can you credibly link what you did in your industrial internships to the subject you'd like to potentially do a PhD dissertation in?  For example, if you want to do a PhD dissertation on something about machine vision, did you do machine vision in an internship?

Best way to find out is to write a short and polite email to a likely supervisor, asking them.

While not every place will respond positively, I don't see a huge problem in the US. But you will need to write your application materials so that people look at your "special case" positively and find strong evidence that you will likely succeed. You will be facing a lot of stiff competition at good places by people with a more standard and easy to judge set of qualifications, so you need to find a way to stand out.
Your current majors are useful in your proposed study, of course, even if you are missing some CS things.
So, don't stress the lack of additional courses in CS but the possession of skills related to the program that you want to join. Your academic record is what it is, though you may have time for some additional courses, but your other activities may, in the eyes of a reviewer, compensate for that and even give you an advantage. It is all, or at least a lot, about how you present yourself and your skills.
It might depend, of course, on which particular CS courses you took and on the kind of things you did in the internships. But like anyone, you have to make it easy to answer the main question: "Is it highly likely this person will succeed?". If you make it obvious that the answer is yes, then you have a shot. It will also be helpful if you have some ideas, even if only partly formed, on the kind of thing you want to study. Fairly specific. Fairly detailed.

Rather than getting three academic references would the OP might benefit from getting a references from a technical leader at Amazon?


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Can I copy the "background" and "related work" part of my published paper?
For example, I want to propose a new algorithm for an existing problem, and I already have published several papers about this topic, they share exactly same background, is it OK for me to copy the "background" and "related work" part from my published paper?
The background contains some already well-studied techniques, in order for the paper to be self-containing, they should be briefly introduced (instead of just being cited).
I don't see the meaning that I have to express the exact same thing in a different way for every new paper

Related, possibly a duplicate : https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69734/is-this-type-of-self-plagiarism-wrong

There are a number of reasons, besides the obvious legal reasons, why this is a bad idea:

If the papers are similar, the referees might be the same. Getting a feeling of déjà vu while refereeing feels very bad. Experts analyze a paper in terms of how it is different from the existing literature. If it cannot be separated from this literature, things get muddy.
Your previous write-up was probably not yet perfect. A researcher is, at least partly, paid for writing papers and is, therefore, a professional writer. Use the chance to improve your writing.
Even if what you wrote before is perfect, it would only be perfect in the context of the questions addressed in the previous paper. Even if you are talking about the same algorithms and the same papers by other authors, they will relate differently to the present contribution of the current paper. A well-written paper is not a badly fitting collection of parts like Frankenstein's monster but tightly integrated. Work on the coherence of the paper.

+1 for "use this as a chance to improve."  That aim is a good way to minimize the drudgery.

Another legal reason for publishers requiring you to rewrite this material is that the copyright holder on the previous paper (which is most likely the publisher, not you!) might object to another publisher violating their copyright on the recycled text.

I don't believe it appropriate to copy/paste large portions of verbatim text.  Nor does it seem appropriate to rewrite what you have already written.  (Plus, this is really hard.  In fact, on a paper I co-authored one of the referees pointed out that a paragraph was lifted almost verbatim from our previous work.  We decided to rewrite, but the lead author of that section gave it to me to re-write.  It is just hard to revise yourself.)  There are two options as I see it:

Quote yourself.  One big damn blockquote.  And cite it.  (Duh).
Write a sentence or two and end with, "For a complete discussion of (topic), see (your previous brilliant work which discussed the topic more fully).

As a third option, can I reject your premise entirely?  In the end you need to ask yourself why you need to include this.  To quote your question:

The background contains some already well-studied techniques, in order
  for the paper to be self-containing, they should be briefly introduced
  (instead of just being cited).

If the techniques are so well-studied, a scholar in your field will surely recognize them.  So all you may need to do is provide:

Name and Citation
Reason you need it to solve this problem (as opposed to previous problems you have solved).

My two bits. One, the background is meant to set the context for this paper. So, even if the basic idea or concept is similar to previous research, it can still be written differently - and must be written differently - to suit the purpose of this paper. Two, writing it afresh usually provides a new and relevant perspective to the same idea or concept.

Go ahead with the same Introduction, Methodology, Related works sections. What do you need to use some different technology?! If you are really researcher you don't have a time to move from one scientific problem to another. And what about Future works section? If you wrote that you will continuously tuned your algorithm and just go to the Travel to Mars subject then you are poser. Just go with another Result, Conclusion and Future works. That is not self plagiarism. People that understand new algorithms development will understand a movement in a science.

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