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Is it common to study mathematics without any computer programming? Why would this be considered acceptable?
MATLAB vs. Python in industry at Operations Research SE contains the following statement:

I am a beginning PhD student in math, and I would like to focus on optimization. I am learning programming for the first time [...]

How common is this situation?
When I got my degrees in mathematics, computer programming courses were compulsory, and many math courses assumed that we already knew how to program. For example, in graph theory, we wrote programs to solve shortest-path problems; in optimization, we wrote programs to solve linear programming problems; in statistics we used APL.
That was as an undergrad student, 45 years ago, using multi-million dollar computers. So I don't understand how people today, when computers are so ubiquitous, can make it to PhD level mathematics without ever being exposed to programming.
What happened?

"There are more bachelor's programs in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."

I am not sure how your question relates to the citing quote. Maybe this is a misunderstanding. “Linear programming” is a usual name for the mathematical field of linear optimization and has a priori nothing to do with computer programming. Actually it predates it (in its modern form).

@StephanSturm, right, ditto for "dynamic programming".  But if we couldn't implement the algorithms as working computer programs, it was a good indication that we didn't really understand the underlying mathematical principles.

For what it's worth, at this time (mid 1970s) an introductory programming course (specific language was PL/I) was required for a mathematics degree (might have only been for a B.S. degree, however, and not for a B.A. degree) at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), as well as a "baby numerical methods" Fortran course for a (any, I believe) physics degree (the Fortran course was specifically designed for physics majors and taught by physics faculty; the PL/1 course could be substituted with permission from the physics department).

Likewise, the college-algebra text I taught from as a TA in the 90's had BASIC programming exercises in each section. That clearly went away, I've seen lots of algebra-level texts since then and never seen programming exercises since that time. My best math-major students in the last few years hate programming, and I can't understand it.

@Dave L Renfro: Indeed, when I got my BS, the university didn't even have a computer science department or degree.  All the theory courses were under the Math department, with various practical ones (like Fortran) under Physic, Engineering, and so on.

There was zero mandatory programming in my undergraduate maths degree 35 years ago at Cambridge University. (Which at the time didn’t even have a computer science degree that you could sign up for — you had to start some other subject and then switch to computer science after your first year.)

@MikeScott In my time there was a computer programming project which was "optional": it gave you extra credit, but there was no penalty for not doing it other than not being able to get those marks. I believe this is essentially still the case.

@jamesqf: This was also the case for the university I had previously taken a lot of undergraduate mathematics courses at while in high school (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), but even at that time UNC-Chapel Hill had a Ph.D. program in computer science, and my teacher for that PL/I course was a graduate student who completed his Ph.D. degree in Spring 1978.

I have a Masters in Mathematics & Philosophy (four-year joint honours degree) which contained roughly the 'pure half' of the mathematics-only course, and never did any programming. In terms of qualifications I would have been in a position to apply for a mathematics PhD at the end of that.

My dad does research in Physics and when I was a child, in the 70s, I think he and all his colleagues were doing Fortran on some mainframe (my skills at the time were to try to draw pictures with characters on the terminals). Even though this was at a Uni science lab and they focused on theorical physics, everyone seemed to be able to program in Fortran.

This isn't general enough to be an answer, but as a datapoint, I got a math degree in the '90s from Caltech, which is considered a pretty prestigious school, in the USA, and no programming was required (neither CS courses nor math courses with programming content), although I took some elective CS on my own initiative.  And for what it's worth, most of my programming since then (actual coding and debugging, not just casual use of something that's Turing complete under the hood) has probably been in TeX.

I also read Undergrad Maths at Cambridge, matriculating in 2007, at that point the course had a mandatory programming coursework section ("CATAM") - maybe 15 - 20%? But there was no expectation whatsoever that you had any prior experience with programming - you were given a programming guide that walked you how to write the (extremely simple) code necessary, from scratch.

@MikeScott :wave: :)

Being able to do simple computer programming was much more important for engineers and scientists 45 years ago than it is now.
Doing statistics and other analysis on non-trivial amounts of data used to require programming. Spreadsheets, data visualization programs, and similar tools have become ubiquitous along with computers, greatly reducing the need for custom programming.

45 years ago, it wasn't possible to use a computer without having a programming frame of mind.  Every use case for a computer required some programming on the user's part.  Computer literacy included some basic programming.

@DanielHatton While one can effectively program in a spreadsheet, there are many calculations that are much simpler and easier to write, well within the reach of non-programmers who are comfortable with mathematical notation.

@DanielHatton if being Turing complete was a good criterion for what’s considered programming, you’d have to also say the same about PowerPoint and Minesweeper, among others.

@DanRomik :  But programming in PowerPoint requires the use of advanced features that most people don't use; programming in spreadsheet software is much closer to normal usage (even if most users don't use anything more advanced than SUM).  And programming in Minesweeper is not even possible in most apps; you to be able to lay the mines.

@TobyBartels well I don’t know about you, but my programming pipeline consists of PowerPoint code whose output is fed into a combination of custom Minesweeper and Game of Life machinery I’ve created, with some Excel macros for postprocessing. I do agree the Excel part is the easy part, but where’s the fun in doing only easy things?

It's probably fairly common.
For the United States, a good source of data on undergraduate math programs is the American Mathematical Society's Statistical Abstract of Undergraduate Programs in the Mathematical Sciences in the United States.  In their most recent report, dated 2015, you can find in Table SP.18 (page 67) some data on curricular requirements in four-year math degree programs.  You can see there, for instance, that among PhD-granting universities, 26% didn't require any computer science courses for any of their undegraduate mathematics majors.  A further 19% required it for some of their majors but not all.  There are separate figures for masters-granting universities and undergraduate colleges which are not dramatically different.
The numbers may have changed in the past five years, but I suspect not by a lot; changes in curriculum requirements usually involve a lot of bureaucracy and happen slowly.
So I suppose that the people who set curriculum at those institutions simply don't share your opinion of the importance of programming coursework, or feel that students can make their own decisions whether to take it as an elective.
(Whether or not those institutions are acting wisely is certainly a reasonable topic for debate, but this site is not the place for debates.)

Not requiring taking a Computer Science course is very different from having a degree program without any programming requirements. All the degree programs I am familiar with in math/physics include programming requirements but do not require the students to take CS classes.

@user2705196: How are those requirement implemented?  Exams, projects in other courses, etc?  For US undergraduate programs, the most common way to implement requirements is to require specific courses, and computer programming courses are generally listed under "computer science" (even though I agree that in a strict sense this is inaccurate).

@user2705196: As counterpoint, I will say that my own undergraduate degree, and the programs at the institution where I currently work, both have programming requirements that consist of requiring students to take one or more specific classes, which are designated as CS XXX.  Students who already have adequate skills may be able to earn credit for those classes by completing a special project or exam, but this is an exception.

I think it might be a US vs rest of the world case. As one of the other answer states, this might depend on local customs and culture. I can definitely see CS requirements to be one way of doing it. But an "intro to programming" class can certainly be taught by the math dept as part of the math program. And yes, another way is that various classes (such as nl-dynamics, linear algebra etc) simply use computational tools that the students have pick up as part of those courses. This way strikes me  as a pedagogically very useful way of doing things.

FWIW my department (math & stats, in Canada) teaches a required first-year "intro to mathematical/scientific programming" course (in Python); students can also fulfill the requirement by taking corresponding courses in the physics or CS departments.  We used to have a looser requirement following @user2705196's description above: they had to have taken one or more of the courses that had a programming component (usually MATLAB or R).

Reading the other answer I think that this is very much dependent on the country.
In Germany this would be rather rare. At least all TUs (technical university, e.g. TU München, TU Berlin,...) have mandatory programming courses very early in their math curricula. Holds for regular math degrees. There are even more applied programs (under different names e.g. "Technomathematik") with even more programming courses. All math programs I know of have some programming courses in their curricula.
Apart from that: Using computers to do math is incredibly helpful for all kinds of mathematics! Especially for research in mathematics (not restricted to "applied math"). Doing a sanity check on a newly derived inequality, obtaining and testing conjectures, doing number crunching to get optimized constants, or using computer algebra to do tedious calculations are just some examples...

About your last paragraph, that would really depend on the field. In my research, I used GAP a few times to find some examples in finite groups, but in hindsight, it would probably not have taken that much work to work out similar examples by hand. I don't recall ever testing a conjecture using computer algebra.

Yeah, all kinds is too strong. It is an active research area in and around higher category theory to develop ways in which to talk to computers about the subject at all, for instance via homotopy type theory.

I did some checking via Google of requirements at some prestigious universities. As far as I can tell, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia all do not require programming classes as part of the major. These departments all take a very theoretical approach to the field, and I suspect most departments are more practically minded.

Regarding the last clause, I think you would be surprised. I have never seen any evidence, in exposure quite a number of American undergraduate math programs, of any interest in anything practical at all. The practically minded can sometimes take applied math degrees, but more often will simply major in computer science or engineering.

Math undergraduate programs are generally horribly behind when it comes to usefull skills. Had I graduated with a BS degree and only followed the guidelines given by academics I would have been mostly void of any practical ability.

If by useful skill you mean: in-depth of knowledge in logical puzzle type problems, computational complexity of algorithms that no one has used in the last 50 years (and are practically irrelevant anyways), and a whole bunch of unrelated trendy buzzwords such as Kubernetes, AWS and Flask, then yes.

Look up the starting salaries for people with degrees in CS vs Mathematics and make your own judgement.

Having been in industry, I completely agree with the answer. Partly the reason is the argumentaion "The  goal of university is not to prepare for industry", to which a partly agree.

My bachelor's degree (1966) is in physics, and one of the requirements was to learn some Fortran programming. I promptly forgot all I had learned about Fortran because I never had any use for it. I have, on rare occasions, used Mathematica, Maple, Gap, but most of the computations I need can be done in Excel.
Nevertheless, I think it would be good to teach programming, especially to the weaker math students --- the ones who argue when you tell them (in more polite terms) that their "proofs" make no sense.  They're much less likely to argue when a compiler tells them "syntax error", and they're more likely to (eventually) learn how to express their thoughts accurately.

The students who don't learn anything from their abstract algebra course except how to multiply permutations and decompose them into cycles also don't learn anything from their programming course.

I totally agree with your observation that people who are (yet) incompetent in proving just need a compiler to force them to accept the fact that they are incompetent, and thereby opening the door to truly learning what is 100% precision (and hence rigour).

@AlexanderWoo: Then their programming courses are lousy.

@AlexanderWoo: I don't believe your statement. Do you have a source for that?

While it is occasionally helpful to know some programming in mathematics, it is not really mandatory.
I did my M.Sc. in mathematics and could not make use of my "hobby" in the field. I helped a post-grad student of my advisor (at least she claimed my calculations were helpful) with a basic GAP algorithm, but that's all.
One should accept the fact that computers lack abstraction that is necessary for mathematics. At least for now. Neither ATPs (automated theorem provers) nor algebraic computation platforms -Maple, GAP, etc- are close to being useful except on occasion.
I should probably note that I am talking about abstract algebra here. Some other fields do enjoy great utility and it makes me jealous.
That being said, I find it quite odd that in 2020 there are people (as in any single breathing, living person) who doesn't know how to program at all. Except those living in a third world country like me. Wait...
It feels like they are proud of their ignorance. May Turing bless them.

I think it is common to study mathematics without having done any computer programming. I base my opinion on the fact that when we were in school, most of us did not learn about history by writing programs.
So, if history classes are fine without computer programming and mathematics classes are fine without computer programming then it is reasonable to conclude that mathematics classes should be fine without computer programming.
Mathematics is the study of patterns. It is also about abstract concepts, and not reality.
I think that computer programming is mostly about patterns. So studying mathematics should help with understanding how to program computers.
So I think that studying mathematics without computer programming is OK. However, it would have been better if you had done some computer programming first.
The main reason to learn computer programming or mathematics is not so much for the practical applications, which are usually small. The main reason is that they help you think better.


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How to explain missing grade on transcript
I am an undergraduate mathematics student in the United States. I'm applying to many REUs in a certain topic. My only coursework in this topic is a graduate-level course I took last year. However, for some reason, none of the students in the class have received a grade. The professor who taught it has a history of turning in grades long past the deadline, and it's very difficult to get her to submit even after consistent reminders (this is the first time it's run this close to the deadlines).
Suffice it to say that the missing grade is not due to a poor performance or incomplete coursework (as far as I know), but just because the professor hasn't graded the final exam yet. Chances are the grade will not be posted before REU applications are due.
So, what is the best way to explain the blank spot on the transcript in my REU applications without sounding accusatory or sketchy? I feel like blank grades have a hint of "plagiarism/cheating investigation pending" or "incomplete coursework" that could tank my application if I do not explain it correctly and in a place that is easily noticed by application readers.

I suggest that you ask the department chair to write a letter explaining the situation. You could then submit that letter along with your REU application.  (The chair or the dean should also be vigorously discussing the problem with the professor, but I suppose this has already been tried without success.)

@AndreasBlass, this is probably an answer.

I think you might be entitled to a formal complaint about the situation. There might be some hope that the department head will force the professor to finalize the grades.

Andreas, Boaty - two good points, please consider moving them to the answer box.

If the suggestion of Andreas Blass doesn't work for you, then include a note somewhere saying that the professor is late in assigning grades to the class as a whole and that questions about that should be directed to the chair or the dean. Give an email address for that person as well as the name.
You don't need to accuse the professor of anything and there are several valid reasons for grades being late, whether they apply here or not. But the administration can verify your claims and should be willing to do so.
Just state the facts and point to an authority who can verify them.

Transcripts do not indicate pending investigations (and in some places that might be illegal).  You do not need to worry about that.
Incomplete grades are indicated on a transcript as incomplete.  They are not indicated by blank spaces.
The only possible explanation for a blank grade is that the instructor did not assign a grade.  There is no benefit to pointing out this fact - basically you are pointing out that your instructor is irresponsible, which implies you were not taught responsibly.  The best course of action is to not mention the blank grade.  This at least leaves open the interpretation that the instructor was prevented from submitting a grade for reasons beyond their control.

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Should I e-mail my professor after completely blanking on my final exam?
I had a final exam today in my dynamics class. I took the exam with Adaptive Services because of my medically diagnosed ADHD, Anxiety, and OCD (among other things). I have been studying since Thanksgiving break and felt pretty confident going into it. I was even in the library just this morning teaching my classmates how to do things before the test.
Well, as soon as I was handed my test and opened it, I completely blanked looking at the first question. I was luckily that I had the extra time, because I started remembering things slowly, but before I knew it the 3.5 hours have already passed and I was out of time. I ended up getting 3/5 questions done (don't know if they were right), and made progress with the others so I am hoping the partial credit will be enough.
This is already my second time taking the class; I had to withdraw last Spring. I really don't want to be forced to take this class again: it is very time consuming and rigorous, it is a prerequisite for all my other classes (so if I failed I cannot move on), and, the main reason, I know the material.
Unfortunately, I really don't think it will be enough. I am devastated. I have been having a lot of trouble with my university lately, and I have strongly considered dropping out after last Spring. Failing this class will probably be my tipping point. I don't want to drop out, but I can barely afford it to begin with, failing the class could cause me to lose financial aid, and I can be far more productive doing something else than retaking a class I already have a strong understanding of.
I am wondering whether emailing my professor might be a good idea. I don't want to come off as defensive or making excuses. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best test taker, I am lazy when it comes to school work, I don't get the best grades, etc. so I fear that it will look like an excuse to my professor. I just want to say something along the lines of:

Dear Professor, Thank you for a good semester, I enjoyed your class but I am nervous of how the grade on my final will come back. I have been studying very hard and felt like I had a good grasp of the material going into it, but as soon as I sat down and looked at the first question I blanked. Over the course of the exam, I was able to work some stuff out but I don't know if it is enough and I'm afraid it won't be. I am not expecting any type of compensation or anything, but I wanted to bring this to your attention incase there was anything that could be done. Thank you, happy holidays.

Do you advise sending this mail?

In general when contacting anyone, it is a good idea to begin by stating very clearly to yourself what you hope to get out of the communication. What do you hope to achieve by sending this email?

Do you only have one chance to take the exam per semester or is there a possibility to redo it in case you get back a negative result?

How much contact have you had with this professor during the course?

Sending an email to your professor is fine. It also sounds as if you are doing your best, understand the course well enough to at least pass, and are not making excuses or asking for undue favors. Your professor will know this as well and will be much more willing to help you out because of that.
As @DreamConspiracy points out, I'd state more clearly what you hope to achieve by sending this email to your professor. This might be something like: "Is there any way for me to retake the exam in case I get a failing grade?"
If you are worried about losing financial aid, maybe you want to also contact the financial aid office. How are your ADHD, Anxiety and OCD implemented in your aid package?

I disagree with the other answers. I would not send this mail (or any version of it).
To rephrase your request in a deliberately harsh light, it is effectively this:

I know I probably failed the class, but could you pass me anyway?

Of course the professor will say no. And they should. Tests may be an imperfect measure of knowledge, but that's what is used. It would be highly unfair of this professor to sneak you extra points or to give you a re-do that no one else had.
Further, I do not think your medical conditions play any role in this. If the accommodations that you obtained were insufficient, you should have changed them before the exam. (Consider trying to do this before your next exam!).
On the other hand, I realize there is a good counterargument: what do you have to lose? Maybe you'll get lucky and he'll be willing to push you over the top. Only you can decide if you're willing to do this despite the above points: personally, I find it so distasteful that I would not. If you decide to do it, consider talking to him in person rather than sending a mail.
Either way, open and direct communication with the professor throughout the course is a good idea. Even if he fails you, it might be worth asking for a meeting to get advice about:

whether he recommends that you retake the class (versus changing majors or dropping out)
what to do differently if you do retake the class
whether there is any way he can approve you taking more advanced classes despite your low grade in this class

Although there is nothing wrong with contacting your professor, there are a few preliminary things you should bear in mind before sending this email:

Unless there are alternative assessments still outstanding, once final exams are complete, it is usually the case that the only thing left for your professor to do is to mark them objectively, take account of any formal applications for special consideration, and give you your grade.  If you are not applying for special consideration it is unlikely that there is anything for the professor to do other than mark your exam and give you the resulting grade.
If you are seeking additional opportunities to redeem your bad exam performance, you should say so explicitly.  It would be useful to first consult the course outline, and see if there is any basis in there for the professor to give additional assessment.  If the assessment structure of the course is fixed, it is unlikely that you will be given any additional opportunity for assessment (unless you repeat the course, which would let you re-take all the assessment again).
Failure of a course may be a big deal to a student, but it is a completely mundane and unremarkable event for the university and its teaching staff.  Universities deal with student failure all the time, and they have procedures in place to deal with students who fail one or more of their courses.  If this occurs in your case, it is likely that the university will just follow their normal procedures (e.g., requiring you to repeat the course, etc.).  In terms of wanting to know "anything that could be done" it is likely that what will be done is just to mark your test as normal, give you whatever grade you earned, and then apply the normal procedures in the event of failure.
You do not need to explain or apologise for a bad result on an academic assessment.  Professors see lots of student assessments, ranging from excellent results to dismal failure.  Professors are aware that students vary in their command of the course material and their general ability in examinations.  They also know that there are lots of reasons for a bad exam performance, so they will not automatically attribute this to an absence of effort.
Lastly, I note that some other commentators are suggesting that if you play your cards right, your email might make your professor "willing to help you out".  I would hope that your professor would not show you any favouritism, and would apply the assessment requirements of the course equally to all students.  Since you are not making a formal application for special consideration, and you have not identified any basis for an additional opportunity for assessment, there is a possibility that your email might be interpreted as seeking favouritism (despite your denial of this).

These are some things you should bear in mind, and you may wish to adjust your proposed email accordingly.  As I said, there is nothing wrong with contacting your professor in this case, but just be aware that your fate may already have been sealed.

To answer the stated question: Yes, I think it would be a good idea to email your professor, and to do it before any results are published.  That will let them know that you are serious about the material as much (or more than) the grade.  It wouldn't hurt to tighten the wording (as others have said) to be specific about your goal.
Something else that I think you should do would be to contact the Adaptive Services and see if your accommodations are appropriate.  Maybe even ask one of the fellow students you were working with to be a "reference" to show that you knew the material.  Not being a special education specialist, I can't tell you what accommodation(s) would be appropriate, but this seems to me to be a case where the accommodations in place are not allowing you to be able to showcase your abilities.
Tying this back to communicating with your instructor, are you better at verbalizing your answers?  If your anxiety is more pronounced when dealing with paper, (and less so when having face-to-face time), perhaps trying to arrange a time to speak with your instructor will give you a chance to highlight that you know the material, and can communicate it, just not easily through paper.  If you can chat with your instructor, and they can see that you know the material, they may be more willing to 'round' any numbers that need rounding.
In other words, the instructor may be able to justify to themselves that your performance on the written test was not a good display of your knowledge, which enables them to justify giving you a better grade than the test score would indicate.  I don't know the details of how scores turn into grades for this class, but, if a curve is used, many instructors are willing to give a bit of 'forgiveness', if they have a good relationship with the student, and the student can otherwise show their mastery of the material.

While checking in on the appropriateness of accommodations is a good idea, it is not retroactive, so won't affect this situation.  Also, I don't know about other teachers, but I can't imagine any circumstances in which I would accept another students' voucher for someone's understanding of the material as any sort of substitute for acceptable exam performance.

@LSpice , I was suggesting that the other student could be a reference to Adaptive Services as a piece of evidence that the OP was able to communicate knowledge verbally (in case it has not been considered that verbal accommodations might be something to consider).  I should have been more explicit.

Contact your mentor / advisor / tutor either before the results come out or after - they should be able to advise you within the parameters of the institution.

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Is it reasonable to do a second master's degree just for the letters of recommendation?
I have a master's degree in theoretical physics. I want to do a PhD and start a career in research.
The problem is my letters of recommendation. I had a horrible relationship with my master's supervisor, who was also my undergraduate supervisor. I ended up graduating, but with no publications and no thesis. He will not provide a letter. I've already asked other professors: some said no; a few did agree, but they don't really know me. My field is very theoretical, so getting a job and asking my boss for a letter does not seem like it would be helpful.
The only thing I can think of is to do a second master's degree with the specific goal of forming relationships with professors who can write me letters of recommendation. Does this seem like a reasonable thing to do? I'm scared about getting too old or failing again at the thesis.

There's no such thing as too old for cosmology (or any) research! I mean that seriously: there's a student in my department who started her PhD in her mid-fifties (after a previous career in IT). Age is no barrier (or isn't in countries with laws against age discrimination, anyway).

Would anyone else from your MSc department be able to write you a letter? How about from your Bachelors? If you can get a couple of good letters, try applying for both MScs and PhDs at the same time. If you get into a PhD, no bother, if not, you will hopefully get the second MSc as a fall back.

I edited your question to see if we can get some late answers. If you've already reached a good outcome in the mean time, feel free to answer your own question -- could be helpful to others in future.

I can share my experience. I completed my graduate program online so I only had one recommendation from my masters program. I then had two recommendations from my work experiences. I was accepted at my 'goal' university and awarded a fellowship that covers tuition and provides a stipend for  living expenses. When I spoke to the chair of my department about how/why I was awarded the fellowship, he said that the most important admissions requirements were GRE score and GPA. He said that recommendation letters are often not even read. They become of interest if there is a debate about accepting a student. He also said that recommendation letters have lessened in importance because no one trusts them anymore (due to lawsuits and everyone's fear of writing something that could be questioned.) They DO read your writing. So any essays or proposals that you are asked to write are important.
I do not know if this is accurate for all universities. I did serve on an admissions committee at a private school for many years, and I would agree with his assessment. We dealt with such large numbers of admission candidates that we only read recommendation letters for a few cases.
You could always apply to both PhD and masters programs, but I definitely wouldn't let recommendation letters prevent you from applying immediately to PhD programs.

Interesting. What field? This is completely opposite to mine.


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1 month pregnant and offered a postdoc: when to disclose pregnancy?
I work in bioinformatics (almost no lab work) in Europe. I have been offered a Postdoc position in California and just found out that I am pregnant. What should I do? Should I disclose my pregnancy this early considering that I don't even have a second heartbeat yet and miss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Or go ahead with the job? will it give me problems during delivery and in the foreseeable future?

A quick search turns up (among other things):https://work.chron.com/disclose-employer-pregnant-3494.html

You should be aware that government-mandated support for those who have recently given birth is quite minimal in the US relative to most places in Europe. Not sure about California and with a temporary post doc job vs permanent position, but unless you learn otherwise you should expect that there is no paid time off. Your insurance may cover parts of care while pregnant and delivery, but you should plan for at least $5000-$10000 in additional out of pocket expenses even after your insurance pays for part.

You should read your employment contract and university policies, then consider your personal preferences.

@BryanKrause A postdoc in the USA with zero paid time off would be highly irregular, but probably legal.  Paid time off probably will not be enough to give birth unless you can afford to have someone else take care of the child.

You should have received health insurance information with your job offer.  Read it very carefully.  It could say almost anything.  It is certain to be confusing.

Also check housing costs.

@AnonymousPhysicist Zero time off would be unusual but so would paid maternity leave. Something like 3 weeks paid vacation is....not similar to European family leave. I guess my comment was not clear that I was talking about benefits related to pregnancy and childbirth specifically. I doubt anyone can afford infant child care on a post doc salary.

You should consider moving this question to Law stackexchange. You have gotten some useful comments here. There is virtually no maternal leave in the US unless your employer grants it. Medical expenses might not be provided at all or there might be quite reasonable provisions in California, if only charity care. You might also need legal advice from an American immigration lawyer in California. Ask your prospective employer for a referral to an immigration lawyer.

Hi, I am going to recommend you ask this question in a group more suited to getting advice and experiences of women in academia. The Facebook groups “Tenure-Track Moms” or “Academic Mamas” would have lots on this.

I think your main concern should be trying to determine if you would be ok with an American maternity leave. Don’t worry about effects on the employer of your leave- work can be managed. Note that normal jobs in California have 12 weeks maternity leave. You should look at the web site of the university where you have the offer or ask for a referral to the HR department (tell the PI you want to “get clarity on taxes and benefits for international students”) to understand the specific policy for post docs.

In addition to all the other comments here: moving to a new country can be hard, and it takes time to build friendships and develop a support network. You should probably think carefully about the realities of caring for a newborn, and whether your circumstances would give you sufficient support if and when you need it.

@BryanKrause Hospital costs for labor & delivery really depend on the insurance (and hospital etc).  With my university insurance (not CA but in the US), at ~10 years ago I think we had to pay a total of about $500 for a birth with no complications.  For a more accurate estimate, the OP should find out what the insurance plan(s) is(are) and inquire with the insurance company.

@Kimball Agreed that OP will have to look into it beyond what general advice anyone here can offer.. I'm mostly concerned that someone not familiar with US healthcare may not realize what the range of scenarios includes here as it may be quite different from where they live now. Costs can also change a lot in 10 years, and an uncomplicated birth is only the best case scenario.

Another note on maternity leave in the US. I’m not sure about California, but the US Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) only covers employees who have worked for their employer full time for at least a year. These employees are able to get (reduced) paid leave for at least 12 weeks after having a baby. Unfortunately this wouldn’t apply to the OP, and is the only help I’m aware of that can come from the federal government. California and the university may have other systems in place to help though. You are not however required by law to disclose your pregnancy.

The 1 year vesting point is really important.  For example, at my university: "Paid parental leave is available to all staff employees at IU who are in non-temporary positions of 30 hours or more per week and have been continuously employed in a benefits-eligible position for at least 12 months before the date of the birth or adoption of a child."

@NoahSnyder The 1 year point may not be particularly relevant for post docs if they are considered "temporary employees" which I'm pretty confident I was as a post doc; in that case, from the passage you quote the benefit never vests even after a year.

I was confused because I was looking at the staff policy not the academic appointee policy. You’re right that postdocs are excluded.  They can only take unpaid leave.

There is also a citizenship question.  Country of birth matters a great deal for the citizenship of your child.  In Europe it varies, but if they're born on US soil, they're a US citizen, full stop.  What that means for you is up to you.

Since you really need some advice on this, let me jump in. The comments are all worth considering but don't answer the question.
Yes, in the US, medical care is good, but financing for it is poor. Very poor compared with some parts of Europe. University employment normally comes with medical insurance that is "fine" by US standards, but maybe not by European standards. The numbers are shocking for unexpected medical expenses. Unrelated to reality, in some sense.
Parental leave is poorly supported here, though California is one of the better parts of the US for such things.
I don't think (but don't know) that there is anything in the law that requires you to disclose a pregnancy, but nothing that forbids it either. I doubt (but don't know) that an offer could be withdrawn if you reveal a pregnancy. I certainly hope we are beyond that, and California is one of the better places for such safeguards.
Let me suggest that you at least consider talking this over with the PI and get their advice on what is best and what your options are. In particular, it might be an option to delay the postdoc for a year. You might also be able to get, from the right PI, assurance that they will do "whatever it takes" to make it work out. Not everyone will be as accommodating, so there is some risk, but you need information as much as anything and they might be a good source of it.

First, I would recommend checking what the local law says about informing an employer about the pregnancy. Second, it is a good idea to check with the HR of the university what benefits you are allowed to receive while on the specific postdoc contract. When you have all this information, you can think about the options which would fit your family best: either take the job or maybe it just would not be possible to financially support this.
In general, my advice is to think about yourself, first of all. Explore, plan and decide. If you decide that you can make and accept the offer, don't worry about disclosing this information asap. It's your private matter. You can inform your PI either when the law requires or earlier if you feel it like that.
Good luck!


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Question about follow up from faculty interview
I recently interviewed at a R1 institution in the US. I also had a follow-up meeting with the dean of faculty a week after all interviews had wrapped up. After another week I got an email saying that they were still in the decision making process but were still actively considering my candidacy and that the chair of the department would reach out to me when they had more information to share. I wanted to know if the fact that the department chair would be the next person to contact me is a good sign? Is it common for the department chair to give rejections or do they more commonly come with good news? At the end of the day it's probably impossible to know for sure but I'm just curious if anyone has any insight.

When I hire, managers up the chain approve the selection, but I call the successful candidate.

The new version of this question is much better, but it substantially changes the question, invalidating the existing answers. I recommend you post the new version  in a separate post (note, one of the buttons above allows you to see all previous versions of the question, so you can get the "good version" of the text there). I'll go ahead and close this one out.

Where I work the chair is expressly forbidden to contact the candidate to avoid tangled lines of communications.

The reason this question is getting downvoted is that it isn't really a question about the functioning of academia --- you are just asking us to guess the outcome of your job application based on tenuous and minor social cues.  No-one here has the power to go inside the mind of reviewers of job applications and make inferences based on tiny social cues like this, so in answer to your question: we have no idea if that is a good sign or not, but it is probably just an irrelevant sign.  More importantly, this site does not exist to reassure panicky job applicants who lack the patience to just wait for an outcome like everyone else.

I understand the points you're making, but I did ask a question about the functioning of academia. I specifically asked if anyone has any insight into the role the department chair plays with regards to the offer process. All I wanted was to know if anyone had any insight. And while yes, I am trying to gauge something about the status of my application, I did not ask you or anyone else to "guess" the status of it. I'm sorry you did not like my question, but the purpose of this site is to ask questions about academia, and you do not have to answer them. A simple downvote would have sufficed.

Thank-you for the explanation.  Typically we regard it as desirable to augment downvotes by an explanation if people have time for this; if the explanation can also provide an answer to the question, all the better.  That is usually considered beneficial insofar as it assists readers to undertand why a post is being heavily downvoted, so that they can improve future questions.  You seem to understand my critique well, and while we disagree, I hope this answer is helpful in undertanding a possible reason that this post is receiving downvotes.

Thank you both for your follow up comments. I agree with you that the original question was too ambiguous, probably because of my initial excitement. I've edited the question to be more explicit in its meaning as well as more general to appeal to a larger audience than just myself.


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How to survive in the academic world: focus entirely on top-tier results, or spend effort on lower-tier results to boost h-index?
During my fourth year as a postdoctoral researcher in computer science at my university, a position for an assistant professor opened up and was available to be filled by one of the local postdocs. We were only two candidates for the position and both completed our PhDs in the same year. However, during the interview process, the selection committee mentioned that my citation count (around 200) and h-index (8) were significantly lower compared to the other candidate.
In the past, I had worked with an exceptional professor for my PhD who emphasized the importance of producing high-quality, original research papers that could only be published in top-tier venues, even if it took a long time to get them published. I have continued to follow this approach in my research, focusing on developing novel ideas and publishing them in prestigious journals and highly selective conferences.
In contrast, my colleague has co-authored a large number of papers with numerous people, but a majority of these papers are surveys or discuss the challenges and issues surrounding certain topics. As a result, my colleague has garnered around 3000 citations and an h-index above 20.
I did not anticipate that the selection committee would necessarily favour me over my colleague, but I did expect to be seen as a viable candidate and for the selection process to be based on small, distinguishing factors. However, based on their criteria, it seems that I have already been eliminated from consideration before the committee has even reviewed my resume.
I am wondering if the strategy that I (and my PhD supervisor) have employed for research and publishing is flawed. Should I start writing survey papers, which have a higher likelihood of being published and cited, in order to improve my citation count and h-index? Alternatively, should I prioritize getting my name listed on as many papers as possible, even if it means compromising my contribution and the quality or originality of my research?
I want to clarify that I did not mean to imply that I am better than my colleague or that I believe myself to be superior. I was simply comparing a specific aspect of our research, the h-index, which played a role in the selection process. I explained the reason for the difference in our h-indices, which was mainly due to the types of publications we have each produced. I have a great deal of respect for my colleague and consider him to be highly competent. I would have been just as pleased if he had been selected, but not because of the h-index criterion. We are colleagues and I will continue to support him. However, my research philosophy differs from his, and I was wondering if this would hinder my progress.

Some answers-in-comments and other discussion has been moved to chat.

There are two separate points here.
First:

However, based on their criteria, it seems that I have already been eliminated from consideration before the committee has even reviewed my resume.

It may well be that, irrespective of h-index etc, the committee had made their mind and the h-index is just a convenient excuse.  Choosing a candidate depends on multiple factors, many of which are extremely subjective or self-serving.
Next, ask yourself: do you really want to spend the next 35-40 years working in a place where
“developing novel ideas and publishing them in prestigious journals and highly selective conferences” is not a priority?
By your own admission it seems you would be a bit of a misfit at that place.
You should think thrice about taking a job at a place where you are unlikely to thrive: this could lead to 35-40 years of misery, and could stunt your research development. Of course it is possible with a good network of collaborators to still prosper in such an environment by delicately balancing sheer productivity and visibility, but it seems your current unit has revealed their cards and what they want is not really what you want.

First of, realize that you are currently drawing a lot of conclusions from a single data point. In this one specific job search the committee valued the number of publications and h-index higher than the quality of publications. This is not enough data to determine that your (or your supervisor's) strategy is flawed. Moreover, there is no "strategy" that guarantees success at any specific hiring - different hirings are done by different people, who value different things, and nobody (not your advisor nor anybody else) can tell you with certainty what exactly a specific committee will look for.
That said, in practice what candidates usually need to be successful is a healthy mix of number of publications, strong publications (as proxied by "competitive venues"), and a reasonable citation count for your field and career age (what is "reasonable" depends a lot on the field, but I have to say in applied CS an h-index of 8 would indeed be seen as rather low after 4 years of postdoc). Nobody gets hired onto a good position by publishing 50 borderline-spam papers, but today you will also find it difficult to get hired if you publish substantially less than your colleagues (even if those papers that you do publish are all very strong). How precisely the different dimensions will be weighted will be up to the committee.

One word of warning, not really specifically for OP since I don't know your CV, but generally for those that rely on "quality" to demonstrate research excellence. Doing less but "excellent" research is not a good strategy if that excellence is not easily visible or objectifiable. If you plan on banking on excellence, these excellent papers (a) need to objectively be very strong (it's not sufficient if you find your work much better than the work of competitors, the wider field needs to see it in the same way!), and (b) they need to appear at absolute top venues and garner visible interest (citations may be one way to achieve this, but public discourse etc. could be another). I have met candidates who told me that they don't understand why their really strong papers don't count for more, but upon reviewing their CV I found that all of this work was either unpublished or published at mediocre venues and was effectively uncited. At this point you are banking on a hiring committee detailedly reviewing your papers to determine that they are actually very good, and with dozens (or, in some cases, hundreds) of applications this is a very, very long stretch.

What is a reasonable H-index after in applied CS after 4 years of postdoc?

I don't know, in my field I would typically expect something between 10 - 15 for an average hireable candidate after a few years of postdoc. But that doesn't mean that we never hire people with 8 (or 20+, for that matter). I think you are looking for absolute metrics that simply don't exist - if you have 8 and your competitor has 20, and the committee cares about that stuff, it's not great for you. Next time you may have 8 and your competitor has 10, and the difference is basically noise.

No am not looking for absolute metrics because I have been taught not to care about my H-index and only focus on doing proper research work. I am asking because you said that 8 would indeed be seen as rather low after 4 years of postdoc. According to your answer, I am supposed to find a balance between working on high-quality papers and increasing my citation count and h-index. However, I don't want to be obsessed with it. This is the reason for my question.

"find a balance between working on high-quality papers and increasing my citation count and h-index" That's in a nutshell of what I tell my mentees, yes. "Not caring" about anything is generally a risky strategy, since you will meet people that do care about that. Doesn't matter whether that's citations, funding, teaching, service, etc. etc. You can't make everybody happy and excited, but it's good to try to be at least around the average in everything (and very good in some selected things).

Saw this here: "Be aware that many EU institutions are signatories of DORA (sfdora.org) and as such pledge not to use raw numeric metrics in hiring decisions".

Random anecdata: both my current and my previous supervisors have an h index of ~15 after several years of being a full prof. Both are in the broader area of applied CS/math/signal processing.

@apkg I wonder at how many of these places this "pledge" has actually changed their decision making, and how often it is pure white-washing / marketing.

One major realization for me was that high-quality work is good at communication, not just obtaining great results. You may do Nobel prize-worthy work only for it to be ignored and forgotten for decades, if not eternity, if you fail to communicate it well.
We do not have a particularly good way of predicting a candidate's performance. Evaluating a body of work is also hard, especially when it comes to recent papers. But if a candidate has one citation on a paper published 5 years ago in a fast-moving field, this was not an impactful publication, most likely. If they were way "ahead of their time", the communication part of the job was done poorly.
Management boils down to running on a treadmill nonstop: you produce results to acquire more resources to produce better results and acquire even more resources and... Well, if you put too little effort in resource acquisition, it is hard to get very far. Pragmatically, a big part of professorship is enabling others to do great work and attracting funding. Producing lots of low-quality papers is unnecessary; but it is pretty unrealistic to survive without chest thumping altogether - and you won't get higher up the ladder. Like xLeitix says - if your h-index is 8, but all these papers have 100+ citations, you still have a strong case. If they all have about 10, why are you convincing the committee they are absolutely outstanding while you should have been impressing your peers in a broader scientific world instead?
Similarly, a part of the perception here is an inability to turn results into something tangible. You may perceive it as salami publishing, but the powers that be are already planning the resource allocation for the upcoming year. If you want a slice of the pie, you better keep reporting in.
It is what it is. Do not think of promoting your work as something inherently at odds with producing good research - it is another part of the job, it takes time and energy, a lot of both, in fact, but you just fail to get through otherwise. While your progress is apparent to you, it is not the case for other people: to appreciate it fully, they would have to do a lot of work that you do, and that is just infeasible most of the time. This outreach does not necessarily have to be achieved by the means of publishing lots of survey papers, but you still have to convince people your research is useful to them. And by the time you are in front of a committee, it is a bit too late for that.

@Trunk Thank you; I had to revert an edit (since I was speaking about management in the most general sense and not specifically the research management). I have amended that sentence; hopefully, it makes more sense now.

I believe you need to reevaluate both your and colleague's papers/research output.
Starting with the most obvious, his top 20 papers got 20 citations each. Dividing your 200 citations among at least 8 papers means your average paper got about the same number of citations as his minimum, yet you have half of his good papers. If your papers are really that good, why does nobody bother to cite?
Perhaps, what you are missing is marketing of your papers. How to do it is another matter where I unfortunately cannot help much. Maybe all you are missing are better (more attractive) titles. Or perhaps what you need to do is rethink your strategy - one possibility is having more decent-but-not-great papers. This approach has two benefits over your current approach of "only the best" (with the obvious cost of spending time on that). One benefit is that people can cite any (or even more than one) of your papers, boosting your total citations and other bibliometric scores. Instant improvement to meaningful score. Second and perhaps more important benefit is that someone will read your ok-ish paper - and see that you cite your own great paper, making them read it - again, leading people to read and cite your best papers.
Second problem I have with your characterization of being singled out - you are effectively saying colleague's papers are meh as they are just surveys or only show issues/challenges - but some of the most important papers in many fields are those that show currently mainstream strategy is fundamentally flawed and can't work. Yes, review papers get more citations often for less work and that stings and stinks. I would hope that committee does read few best papers of top candidates to account for that. If they did, perhaps they weren't as impressed by your top papers as you are.
Here, the best way forward would be to find his top few publications, and select your top few publications, and ask someone for his informal opinion. Perhaps your supervisor, though it would be better if you could find someone impartial. It is always the best to judge papers with fresh and unbiased set of eyes. Almost everyone thinks his own research is better and more important than it really is (as judged by the whole society).

I want to make it clear that I did not intend to present myself as superior to my colleague. I respect his work and do not think poorly of it or that his papers are meh. I don't know how you got that from my question.  2), the number of citations a paper receives does not necessarily reflect its quality. It is well-known that some papers are more likely to be cited due to their visibility on search engines or other bibliographic indexes.

I did not make any statements about the number of citations my papers have received. I simply pointed out that survey papers tend to be cited more frequently than other types of papers, which is a logical observation. 4)( some of) the papers are good because they are accepted at venues where the acceptance rate below 10%.    While I may have concerns about the review process in academia, I still believe that acceptance at such venues is a credible indication of a paper's quality.

@Trunk One way of marketing is having more papers that also serve to boost your own visibility - people will notice another of your papers and cite the really important one. Another might be posting on Linkedin/Researchgate/FB/... But in general I have no idea how to approach this marketing thing so I didn't elaborate more - I am primarily observing that if he isn't getting citations it might be that despite quality, papers are not noticed enough.

@Meistro 1) I see, sorry for tone in answer. 2) means that you likely need to market your papers more to improve - say selecting more attractive title could help you? 3,4) I agree, but I don't think that can account for all the difference in bibliometrics score. Besides, your 8 papers with say 20 citations each don't quite scream "wow, groundbreaking" to me. This is a standard of a good publication in a high-tier journal - nothing to scoff at, but something that doesn't amaze.

From my reading of OP I think the issue is not (or at least, not only) about the quality of papers, but the number of authors. Obviously it is a lot easier to get an H-index of 20 by making small contributions to many papers than by making major contributions to a few, yet the latter is IMO more impressive.


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How to raise concerns about plagiarism when the corresponding author has passed away?
After I left graduate school, my advisor (the corresponding author) and another person (the first author) published a paper with a lot of data from my master's thesis. I was not even acknowledged, and I feel this may constitute plagiarism. Normally I would reach out to my former advisor, but unfortunately, they have passed away.
So: how should I proceed? Who would deal with issues and questions pertaining to authorship and plagiarism in this circumstance?

Is there a reason not to contact the other author?

I moved some information from the comments into the main post. The issue here seems to be plagiarism / authorship dispute, not a conflict of interest, so I have updated that reference as well.

Does this answer your question? Deceased author and conflict of interest statement

I don't understand the duplicate votes. The linked question is about who can sign a conflict of interest form on behalf of a deceased author. OP's situation is nothing like this.

If there is fault here, it is probably due to the former mentor. You can contact the editor of the journal in which it was published and/or the remaining author.
In fact, it is probably a good idea to contact both, raising your concerns. But you don't have the option of contacting the corresponding author as is obvious.


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Do I need to take GRE Maths Subject Test to compensate for bad undergraduate GPA?
I have a Bachelor's degree in Statistics from a reputed Indian college. I struggled during my Bachelor's and failed many classes and retook exams. My CGPA is 6.18/10. My Master's grades are good though, amongst the top.
I plan on applying for Biostatistics/ Statistics PhD programs in USA this fall.
I do not have any publications or internship experience. My research experiences are my two dissertations for BSc and MSc and a solo project I did and presented in a well-known international conference during my Masters.
There is no GRE test for Statistics. So, the question doesn't arise. My peers haven't taken any GRE test for Maths either. But since, my undergrad grades are low, will my Math Subject test score compensate for it? I was planning on taking the test till now but it is becoming too expensive for me and I don't think I'll be able to afford it. Do I still have a good chance to get into a top university without taking the subject test and with my current profile?

Any course which does not take the MATH GRE will give 0% weightage to the Math GRE. If it does take it into consideration, it will not be the only thing which is considered. How much it weighs in your profile is something which can be specifically said.

As highlighted in another answer, if GRE MATH isn't a pre-requisite for that particular university or college, then it won't help you much.
But there is something which you can do to compensate for the low CGPA. You're from a field which has a really high demand right now, all over the world and including India. If you can get into one or two short-term internships then it will be brilliant. Not only it will boost your CV but you can also have some illustrious points in the Statement of purpose that you'll be writing.

Internships would have been good but it's too late right now. Currently, I'm busy with GRE and TOEFL preparations and then, I will become busy with applications. The international conference I presented at was just yesterday and that research took several months for me.


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When should I begin publishing?
I am finishing my Master's degree in Mathematics and will be enrolled in a PhD program in the U.S. starting from fall. In my country (Russia) we have thesis as a mandatory requirement for all degrees (including BSc and MSc, not just PhD). I hoped that my Master's thesis would be good enough to be published, but my advisor says it is not (I derived some new results, but they aren't very generic and groundbreaking). My Bachelor's thesis was not published too.
My question -- is it bad to have no publications prior to PhD or is it normal to begin publishing only during PhD years? In my view no publications is understandable for BSc students, but I'm not sure about MSc. The question is not about admission (I was admitted to a couple of decent programs this year), but about general timeline and expectations from students in sciences, especially from Master's degree holders.

Publish when you have something useful to show.

Possible duplicate of Master's thesis results used to publish a new research paper?

This is a completely different question from the earlier one.

yesterday .....

It's OK. It is often hard to publish in (pure) mathematics without having done some PhD-level study and people are aware of that.

In mathematics in the US, it is normal to have no publications prior to beginning your PhD.  In my experience, hiring committees will even tend to discount publications from before your PhD program, unless there is evidence that they are significantly more substantial than the typical REU fare.  Most US mathematics PhDs never do a master's degree, and most who do don't produce a publishable master's thesis, so people also won't generally notice if your master's thesis wasn't published.
As you imply, though, you absolutely should begin publishing during your PhD program.

More accurately: Hiring committees tend to ignore incremental / uninteresting publications, regardless of when they were written or where they were published, but they do pay attention to significant results, regardless of when they were written or where (or even whether) they were published.

@JeffE: Agreed, but my point is that hiring committees in mathematics (being made up of apes, after all) are more likely to assume that pre-PhD publications are incremental / uninteresting.  (The implication for job / graduate school applicants who do have significant early results: make sure your letter writers sell those results!)

My experience on this (Europe, physics department): I started my PhD last year, up to that point I had coauthorship on one publication (This dates back to my bachelors degree, I was a research assistant on a project that lead to a publication). Fellow PhDs in my current group have either one or no publicatiion as coauthors from their masters programme.
To cut it short: In my field it would be quite uncommon to have your 'own' papers (as in first author, not sure if a journal would even accept such a submission) before you finished your masters, coauthorship depends on how keen the supervisor is on publishing results (and how well the overall research on that topic is progressing, my thesis was connected to a PhD's research, as those results could be published I got coauthorship).

In the UK (chemistry) it is uncommon to publish during the masters and this does not usually matter when applying for PhDs. As you have already been accepted for a PhD, I would not worry at all - this will be the period where you publish.
I myself, found some new results and disproved a theory but the supervisor did not feel the need to publish it. The decision can be driven by the supervisor or impact of the work.
On the other hand, masters students in China are usually expected to publish and this will greatly help them when applying for PhDs in foreign countries (at least in the UK). I have not known a PhD student in the UK without a publication from their masters. This is not only limited to China, of course.


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What is an online publication?
While using a search engine for student theses I noticed a footnote at the bottom of page saying

After a thesis is published on the HSE website, it obtains the status
of an online publication.

So what is precisely an online publication and how it differs from a "real" publication or a preprint? Can you include it in your CV? Is it going to be treated seriously?

This is very field-specific. In my field (computer science), we don't care if and how your thesis was published. If you want credit for your thesis, you need to publish an associated paper in a peer-reviewed conference or journal. In contrast, in book fields (like history), the publisher of the PhD thesis might be very important.

While of recent vintage, HSE seems to be very reputable. "Online publication" means that the paper appears on a web site, rather than in print. Whether the site will be maintained in perpetuity or not is a possible issue, but probably not a problem in this case. Online Publication might also mean not yet in print rather than never in print.
But yes, you can include such a thing in a CV and from a reputable publisher, such as HSE, it will be taken seriously.
A "preprint" might be something published by its authors, rather than by a publisher, though some publishers also provide preprints. But having the mark of a publisher, and perhaps its reviewers, makes the validity of the publication clearer.

At the suggestion of Paul Garrett, let me add. Normal publication (both print and online) involves the review of the paper by a few experienced professionals in the field. They normally make suggestions for improvement for the paper and it is only after some revision, small or large, that the editor/journal will "publish" the paper.
"Preprints" are normally done either without or prior to this review. If the author "publishes" the paper, then likely there was no review. The intent of preprints from reputable publishers is to give early access to ideas while the review process proceeds.
When done by authors, as is typical in math, while there is no "imprimatur" of a publisher and its reviewers, the nature of the subject tends to make it a bit risky for an author to put up junk as a preprint. This might be different in other fields that have different standards of truth and value.
But it is the review itself, along with the reputation of the publisher that gives "lasting value" to a publication. I'm assuming here that HSE uses a typical review process prior to "online publication". If not, then it would be full of "junk economics" lowering their own reputation.

In this context I suspect that "publication" here may be used in the broader sense of "a publicly available work" rather than the usual academic sense. (Cf. similar usage from other institutes 1, 2. 3)

@jnanin, I thought of that also, but then it becomes essentially worthless as a concept. Anyone can build a website and "publish" whatever they like. There is no "status of" implied by that.

Given that the students can choose not to make the thesis publicly available at all, I think the "status of online publication" can simply mean there is a public version of record of the thesis. The site also uses the verb "to publish" in this sense: "Summaries of all theses must be published and made freely available on the HSE website. The full text of a thesis can be published in open access on the HSE website only if ...".


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Why would a PhD adviser ask to be removed from the "Acknowledgments" of a paper?
I have two papers. In the acknowledgment of the first one I thanked my adviser for his mentorship and there was no problem. When I finished my second paper and I sent it to him to review, he replied back with bunch of comments, mostly reasonable. But one of the comments was that he asked to be removed from acknowledgments where I thanked him again for his mentorship. He wrote, "I am not happy that you never listen to advice! please remove this", where by "this," he meant the part in which I thanked him. Why would he do that? What is the meaning of this? What are the possible reasons for such a comment? After several years of hard work and collaboration I am somewhat hurt by this, please help me to get better perspective.

I don't think any of us can know based on a single sentence. Why don't you just ask your adviser?

I'd guess, from the fact that he said, literally, that you never listen to advice, that he feels that you never listen to his advice... In particular, that paper may not be compatible with his viewpoints/opinions on things, so he'd not want to be associated with it. "Fair enough..."

@WolfgangBangerth I can ask him and I will, but I need to get a better perspective beforehand to be able to communicate with him properly. I am in the final stage of my PhD and under a lot of stress, such a conversation can go wrong easily if I do not prepare for it. For instance if I lose my temper, even a little, it will be bad for me. I want to know what are the possibilities and sleep on it and hopefully be in control when talking with him.

@paulgarrett This is a possibility, but it seems to be very unlikely, because this work was done over a long period of time and he could change its direction at anytime.

Hm. In light of your last comment (that your advisor could have changed its direction at any moment over a long period) makes it hard to see a way that your advisor is being reasonable. Sounds like a childish tantrum... and, well, we do not know effective methods to overcome such things... My sympathies.

Well, it could just mean your supervisor is having a bad day, or that after so many comments or revisions, you are still making the same mistakes.   I would ignore him/her.  I'm also aware that students 'ignore' my advice some times because they have no idea what I am talking about.  Maybe your supervisor does not know this.  Then again, you could be intentionally ignoring his/her advice.

@paulgarrett "there, there" and leave him alone until it subsides.

I believe that usr1234567 is right: the remark about never listening to advice might refer directly to removing the ACK. Generally, I think such an acknowledgment is really weird and I would definitely want it to be removed! I think the advisor told you to do so when revising the first paper, but you forgot about it, or the advisor forgot to tell you, but thinks he did.

Is the advisor also a co-author? If yes, he/she is simply thinking that the acknowledgment is redundant, because the best thanks one can give is having someone on board in the authors'list.
On the other hand, if he/she is not an author, it means exactly what is implied: he/she does not want to be associated with your paper in any form. But he/she is still fullfilled his/her duty (giving you a feedback and comments on the paper), which I sense you consider negligible: instead, it is the best you could have, as well the fairest thing to do, being your advisor while disagreeing with your ideas.

If I would be an advisor, and not a co-author for whatever reason, even if I endorsed the paper, I would not like to have this acknowledgment in the paper. I simply think it is inappropriate.

@cag51 Why are questions like this not closed here? The situation is specific to the OP: I don't see how this QA would be useful for future readers. Yet next to no context is provided about the OP's unique situation, so not much advice can be given other than the glaringly obvious: OP should be talking to their advisor, not to random strangers. This is exactly what one answer says, while the other is just making guesses (a typical indicator that the question should be closed, at least on most other SE sites). I don't understand why so many questions like this are accepted on this site.

@Szabolcs - this question has 4 close votes, so it may yet be closed. We wouldn't mod-hammer something this borderline, but you can open a post on meta if you want to discuss with the community at large. I think the tricky thing with these questions is that there is an answerable part (what are the possible reasons one wouldn't want to be acknowledged in a paper), an unanswerable part (is my advisor mad at me), and a borderline part (how should I approach this conversation with my advisor).

Note that journals generally have restrictions on who should be acknowledged. For example, here is the one for Physical Review: "Acknowledgments may not recognize those who helped in preparing the paper; editors who handled the peer review of the paper; those who contributed general encouragement (family, friends); or those who provided services that were not directly part of the research. Acknowledgements may not include a dedication or a memorial." In any case this is definitely something you should discuss in person with your advisor.

By acknowledging his mentorship, you’re saying “this person gave me helpful advice and guidance, which I followed”.  He’s telling you, quite explicitly, that you do not follow his advice and guidance.  So, quite understandably, he feels that the acknowledgment is at best insincere; and at worst it suggests that your paper reflects the advice and guidance that he has given, which one presumes it does not.

The meaning seems pretty clear as far as it goes: he thinks that you do not listen to the advice he gives you on your papers.  If you are a student and you acknowledge your advisor, that makes it look like the advisor has "endorsed" or "signed off" on the results of the paper.  It seems that your advisor thinks that the version of the paper you will submit is not one that he would have endorsed in this way.
This sounds like a nontrivial breakdown of the student/advisor relationship, so I suggest that you meet with your advisor in person and try to smooth things out.  If applicable, tell him that you thought you were pretty receptive to his advice, and ask for specific avenues for improvement.

And, thinking more, it could be that your advisor "bit his tongue" (meaning didn't make a criticism) for a long time, hoping that you'd "catch on", or, "finally hear him". So his reaction might be a delayed one, finally exploding, after waiting/hoping for a long time that you'd "finally" change something in line with his remarks. The manifestations of continuous phenomena are not necessarily continuous (cf. "catastrophe theory").

Not sure I agree with the suggestion that the OP should “tell him that you thought you were pretty receptive to his advice”. Maybe I missed that in what the OP posted.

My paper is solving a specific open problem and my adviser suggested the problem, and I came up with a mathematical proof for it which seems to have no errors... things everyone saying makes sense but still I can not see how one can be upset with an outcome like that

+1 for the answer, but the OP should think ahead a bit: a strong letter of recommendation would be nice to have going forward and that is not necessarily assured at this point. I hope it works out and it probably will.

@EdV: I said "if applicable" about this part.  Here I am just going with the idea that if the OP is surprised at this feedback, it would be good to present as "I'm trying to be receptive to your advice; let's try to figure out why it's not coming off that way" rather than "Yes, I am not that receptive to your advice because...".  (Roughly: when in doubt or confusion, try both assuming and projecting goodwill.)

No problem: your advice is good. But the important thing is that this “failure to communicate” could be anything from “Cool Hand Luke” to a tempest in a teapot over-reaction from an advisor. They need to have a real air-clearing talk.

@EdV How one should have an air cleaning talk in this specific case? is better to email or talk in person?

@EdV I have to add we never had "Cool Hand Luke" or anything like that, I showed this person a lot of respect and any argument was about work

I was my (chemistry) department’s grad program director for three stints, so my advice in things like this is have a face-to-face talk with your advisor. For what it is worth, I had a grad student who usually ignored my advice. It annoyed the hell out of me until I decided to just go with the flow. That worked fine in the end. So just talk in person and best of success!

@EdV Air cleaning talks are best had in person or, at least per video conferencing. Email is dangerous, unless you are an excellent email writer who can convey precisely the right message.

@CaptainEmacs I fully agree. No way I would recommend e-mail: nothing, in my opinion, beats looking people in the eyes, seeing their body language, etc.

If much of your communication with your adviser has been in writing, something you could consider before having a face-to-face meeting is to show your correspondence to a trusted friend, who can give you their honest opinion about whether you have missed any social cues or misinterpreted how your collaboration is going.

Ask the advisor. I could image different things:

He is angry with you, as you might have published stuff with his name attached and he did not consent.
He might think that he asked you to remove the acknowledgement last time (I would always do so, so I would assume similar in such a situation) but it remained.
He thinks that the acknowledgement section is not the right spot to have a general thank you for your advisor. I would share this view. Either he has contributed enough to become a co-author or he is out.
It was meant as a joke you are just not getting it.

Make sure to clarify this, as it might be or become a strain to your relationship.

the first point is highly unlikely, since OP states "and I sent it to him to review", but the second point and the third are spot on.
OP, please clarify regarding the first point.

very much disagree with the third point.  It is normal to thank reviewers in the acknowledgement section, and they did pretty much the same thing the supervisor did in this case - offer (hopefully) constructive criticism.

i thought it was a joke too! but if it were a joke then it would be pretty unclear and a tiny bit unprofessional i think

@EarlGrey The first paper that is already published contained the same acknowledgment. So this might be the reason of the advisor being unhappy.

@DikranMarsupial Might be a cultural or field-specific thing. In Maths, Physics, and Computer Science I never saw the author acknowledging the supervisor. For reviewers it happens, but like 1/10 of the papers.

@usr1234567 I think the reason it rarely happens is that PhD students rarely publish a paper where the supervisor is not an author (I work in CS).  I would have thought there is something a bit amiss if there is too little contribution from the supervisor not to warrant co-authorship.  There is something even more amiss if their contribution doesn't even warrant an acknowledgement!

@usr1234567 In Math it is extremely common.

Edit and disclaimer: As was explained to me in the comments, the practices described below are not acceptable in the math community.
Why are you not listing your PhD supervisor as the last author of your paper? I am in physics, and last authorship is a big thing. The last author is traditionally designated for the supervisor or the group leader.
The number of last author publications is also separately tracked and plays an important role in obtaining tenure, permanent positions etc. as it is a measure of how well you have supervised your students. Even second-last authors are tracked by our library system, often daily advisors are listed as second-last authors.
If you had any serious discussions with your supervisor about the content of the paper at all, he should be in the author list. Maybe the math community has different standards, but a PhD student putting their supervisor into the acknowledgements would be considered something between a faux pas and an insult in my community.

Math has wildly different standards here.  First, in pure math at least, all publishing is alphabetical and there's no notion of first author or last author.  Second, most students are funded not by their advisor but by teaching.  Third, the traditional convention (which may be changing somewhat, and which I think should change), is that advisors do not coauthor their students PhD work (even if they contributed enough to merit coauthorship!) unless the student failed to contribute meaningfully towards the project.

Thanks, I considered deleting my answer, but I think a disclaimer is sufficient and keeps this discussion online.


text:
Can degree be revoked for misbehaving with professor after graduation?
One of my professors misbehaved with me. So after graduation, I wrote him a strong and humiliating mail. Can he get my degree revoked?

This is very dependent on country and institution. It should not be so; but we must face the facts that we can't answer this kind of question for all students everywhere.

Yes, the linked question is our "collective wisdom" about degree revocation (and that page correctly notes that revocation is extremely rare). But we cannot judge individual cases or predict probabilities; sorry we can't be more helpful.

It is unlikely that he could do so, but it can't be ruled out universally. Basing a degree revocation on an email would seem to be beyond the pale and not legally supportable.
Don't however, make a point of publishing the email lest possible slander law comes in to play. If they want to retaliate against you and are unscrupulous, then they have other ways to do so by trying to affect your reputation. But that is independent of any email you sent.
Bad people behave badly.