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Double Majoring in CS and Math for a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science?
I'm a undergrad in CS and Math. My plan for college and beyond is to double major in Computer Science and Math, go to industry for a couple years then get a masters in Comp/Electrical engineering. From there I'll go for a PhD in Computer Science, focused on Theoretical Computer Science.
My questions are:

How many B's and below (in core CS/Math classes) are dealbreakers for grad school committees? Is a 3.0-3.6 harmful for acceptance to (good) grad schools?

For the above question, does industry experience help or hurt apps even with "low" GPAs?

I've done research with various professors in fields from engineering, physics,mathematical biology, and even sociology/anthropology - with only one research experience (so far) in computational biology (However, most of the research has involved CS concepts). Would this various research hurt or help my app?

From the GPA format, I trust you are in the US (and applying to grad school in the US)? Also, you may want to specify that GPA range a little more precisely; there is a huge difference between a 3.0 and a 3.6.

Yes I am. I'm reckoning to aim to stay within that range. But lets say I get a 3.3, worst 3.0

By the time you get to the PhD application you will have had plenty of time to build a cv that demonstrates your interests and abilities. So don't overthink this - just enjoy do the best you can.

Depending on how many semesters you have left in college, and what PhD  program (e.g. top ~30 or not) and post-PhD career (academia or not) you're aiming for, I might have to disagree with Prof. Bolker.
Math and CS PhD applications in the US are extremely competitive and your GPA matters a lot.
That being said, I hear there are ways to make up for a low GPA by e.g. publications and excellent recommendation letters, but I should say, I doubt I've ever come across a classmate/friend/collaborator who's gotten in (top 30) without a good GPA, so at best it is a rare event and hard to pull off

I think it's better to leave the answer to a prof who's been on admission committees. But to the best of my knowledge, TCS PhD positions are mostly occupied by younger students with strong undergrad background, rather than those with industry experience. In the US, I heard from my professors that an MSc makes sense only if you can't get in with your BSc (e.g. your undergrad GPA isn't good enough or you didn't have enough courses).
Keep in mind, you also have options outside of the US, and as far as I know, in some countries they care a lot less about GPA, but you most probably need a masters.

Also, you probably can do TCS through CS, math, or electrical eng. The three tend to have noticeable differences in terms of their admission criteria. e.g. my impression is:  math departments put more emphasis on your coursework (i.e. serious math courses with high GPA), in electrical you're more likely to be able to make up for low GPA with publications/conferences and you might even need those. CS is mixed. Funding and admission process also tends to be different. ("between me and you", math is also generally a more "ageist" field, so you might want to be younger when you start you PhD)

wait, you can do TCS in EE? @nara

I must say, if you're a freshman, or even sophomore perhaps you should just ignore everything I wrote for now, and just take Prof. Bolker's advice, and come back when you're a junior.

@wonderinghuh yes you can do TCS in EE. I think you'll probably be a part of a smaller minority than you'll be in math or CS, but that minority exists. Based on my exposure, mostly in graph theory, information theory, coding theory, etc.
If your interest is in model theory, logic, category theory, etc., maybe not (I don't know of EE groups working in those areas, but my exposure to EE, or those subjects, is quite limited)

I'll answer assuming that this is for the US.
A few B's is fine, but in you major(s) you want almost all top marks. A GPA near 3.0 will not be favorable to graduate admissions. Most of the competition at top grad schools will have GPA's at or above 3.7. And there will be a lot of competition.
Industry experience will do nothing for you for a career in TCS except at a very few companies (Google, IBM, Oracle). The kind of "research" you do most places is focused on products, not knowledge, just the opposite of graduate (and faculty) research. And being away from academia for a few years can hurt in other ways. You want letters of recommendation from academics (primarily) who remember you. You don't want to get too settled into a life style that requires high income, as you generally need to give that up at least for the years of grad study and maybe beyond. Academics can expect to earn around half of what industry folks do at the same career stage.
Actual research of any kind as a student will be helpful, but you are mostly describing applied research, not "pure" or TCS. Still helpful, though, as not all undergraduates have an opportunity to do any research. Even better if your name is on a few publications. You don't need to be "first" or "sole" author for this to be beneficial at this level.
Your first paragraph, however, suggests a sort of scattered approach, rather than a tightly focused one. That could be a consideration depending on what your overall career goals are and what real specialization you eventually want to pursue. Note that EE and TCS can be quite close or very far apart.

thanks for the write up. What do you mean scattered approach? Yes, TCS and EE doesn't usually compliment, but for my research purposes it does. Also when you say my name on a couple of publications, does that mean I have to publish with a prof? What if I publish in journals that are non CS/TCS (or even STEM, but apply STEM topics)?

If you do research with a prof see if you can work a publication out of it. At the undergrad level don't worry much about the venue as long as it is reputable. And note that your "research purposes" need to align with those of a university. At some EE and TCS are in different departments, even different "schools" within a university.


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Part time research assistant - post bacc?
I would like to know if I can be a research assistant, part time, after college.
I'm thinking about getting into academia, but I want to work first and make some money.
I'm in STEM, but want some hands on experience in sociology/anthropology. This is before going to grad school in either sociology or anthropology (I have my reasons for doing STEM first)
Would:

a professor accept me as a part time RA? I'll be working a industry job part time too, but the pay hit wouldn't worry me so much.
how would I approach a Sociology/Anthro professor for research post-grad as a part time RA? I do have some core Sociology/Anthro courses I have done, so I am not going in blind.
How can I request I get paid?

Thanks for the advice

Based on your earlier question, I'll assume this is for the US.
Note that most RA money is for support of doctoral students. In some "hard" sciences there might be low level "tech support" positions available, but might not be called Research Associates/Assistants. But they mostly do routine work rather than research. It would give a person access to researchers and, perhaps, the opportunity to talk about research, but the work would likely be routine.
However, I doubt that much of this is available in the social sciences or humanities, where funding is relatively scarce in any case. RA is largely a funding source for doctoral candidates.
If you had some special skill that is in short supply and a professor had a specific need for that skill, then you might have a hope. But just "some courses" isn't enough.
Field work might be open to a part timer with few skills. But you would be under the close supervision of someone else farther up the chain. You wouldn't have a lot of opportunity for independent action.
If you want a career in academia in US, you need to get into a doctoral program. Making some money isn't the right path in the short term and if you get a funded position as a doctoral student then you should have sufficient funds to get by, though not with an extravagant life style.

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What does the phrase "loci citati" mean in citations?
In this 1929 paper by Stone, the 3rd citation is given as

J. Von Neumann, loci citati; and an unpublished paper which is to appear in Mathematische Annalen, cf. Göttinger Nachrichten, 1927, pp. 1-55, footnotes 12 and 27.

I can't seem to find out what exactly "loci citati" means in this context and when/how it is expected to be used. More recently, this phrase was also used italicized in the 2nd section of a  2012 paper by Znojil:

The well known Coulomb – harmonic oscillator correspondence has been
studied in [8]. In the role of a formal postulate it helped us to fix the physical
asymptotic boundary conditions which would remain, otherwise, ambiguous
(Ref. [12] and previous loci citati should be consulted for all details).

The previous citation in the first paper combined two works by Weyl and Von Neumann, in case there is some sort of reliance on other citations for it to have meaning.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loc._cit.. I think that in these LaTeX times it is no longer seen in maths papers.

This is a Latin phrase meaning "in the place cited".
I'm no Latin expert, but it doesn't seem like there's much significance in these phrases; they just redirect you to the given reference.

Going way out of my comfort zone here because I don't actually speak Latin: I believe, "loci citati" is plural, so it means "in the places cited". (My backyard Latin knowledge would suggest that "locus citatum" would have been singular?)

Going by my knowledge of Latin (few years in high school), “Loco citato” is ablative singular while loci citati is nominative plural. Looks like loco citato is the most popularly used one.

In secondary school, we learned to use "loc. cit." without worrying about which case or number it abbreviated. (But the use we made of it matched ablative singular.) Now that I'm a mathematician, I no longer need it.

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A group project was made without me, what should I do?
I'm currently working in a group of two where I and another person is supposed to compose code for an assigment we recived. This worked well in the beginning, as we discussed various solutions and tried to understand some concepts of the code language we used.
However, during the weekend I get a message telling me that he has made the entire thing from start to finish, with the reason being that he learned the concepts best that way.
This makes me both sad and angry, and it feels like he is abounding me simply because he got the hang of it before me.
I have no idea how to proceed. I wanted to help, I really did but he gave me no opportunity to. He still calls it "our" project, and it will be handed in as such, but it will be painfully obvious I had no part in it.
I did not laze around, I did put effort into solutions and such, but not even those was visible in the final code.
So, should I confront him, contact my teacher, or just accept the situation?

This is not really on-topic for this site so is likely to be closed. You haven't said when it is due. But you need to think about what you are sad and angry about and try to resolve those. For example, if it is about the fact that you haven't learned, there is nothing stopping you from continuing your efforts and trying to implement it yourself. You say that he has used a different solution approach, try coding up yours. You can learn even more if you both look at both approaches - which is better and why? Maybe some of yours can get into the project after all.

@JenB For my edification, can you briefly explain why this is off topic here. I am only an occasional visitor here but this seems similar to other material I have seen here.

FWIW, in my experience, the majority of students would be more than happy with their partner doing all the work unprompted. Guess your partner was so sure about this he just didn't even ask. I wouldn't go too hard with him.

@Neinstein They will only be happy until they see their exam scores and realize they didn't learn the material because they didn't do the work.  And regardless of whether they're caught, it's still an academic violation at most schools to submit work with names of students who didn't contribute according to the rules, which usually require equal contributions.

@NicoleHamilton I don't disagree. Yet, this is how things are. Most students love to be lazy without (direct) consequences, even the good ones occasionally.

@Neinstein That's not been my observation at Michigan, but Michigan is a very competitive school.  More to the point, this student is not happy to be lazy.

I suggest "… he has made the entire thing from start to finish, with the reason being that he learned the concepts best that way…" is at best irrelevant and most likely, nonsense.
Further, what might "abounding me" mean?
Beyond that, you need to be able to explain how that was "our" project, and should be handed in as such…
More obviously, you need to explain how it might be obvious you had no part in it, and how that might matter…
I suggest you both confront him, and contact your teacher…

@RussellMcMahon I would have said it depends too much on personal factors such as the assessment requirements of the project and the relationship between the collaborators. But it appears others don't agree with me since there's no move to close it.

A "group assignment"... for your "teacher"?  Is this a high school class?  Academia SE is focused on graduate, post-graduate, and faculty members in academia - high school questions are off-topic.

public school teaching grades 7-12 considered "academic"?,  Just how high is "higher education"?, Why is Academia only for higher education?

I am a little bit sympathetic to your partner.  Group projects where everything is done together often move very, very slowly. If a project seems to be stalling, it may make sense for an individual to make a big push. Even if the project wasn't stalled, it is easy for an individual to start working on something, get "into the zone" and make a ton of progress, and then they want to get it totally finished so that it is off their plate. That said, I am also sympathetic to you: your partner did unilaterally change the terms of your partnership, and now there is no straightforward way for you to contribute useful work.
Is there any room for improvement in your partner's work? Is there any additional work that could further extend the project's scope or depth? If so, then there may not be much of an issue here; it is not too late to make contributions.
But if your partner's work is good and there is nothing else to do, then I think your next steps depend on context a bit. Do you get projects like this every week, or is this a one-time, end-of-semester project? In the former case, a discussion with your partner is in order, so that you both have clearer expectations for next time. In the latter case, it may be a matter of chalking this up under lessons learned: at the beginning of a project, you need to "partition" the work as much as possible so that you both have agreed-upon responsibilities, and you can both make progress asynchronously. Partition early and partition often!
I would hesitate to discuss this with the instructor. It seems like there is no real problem for the instructor to solve -- and if there is a problem that can be solved, you should first discuss it with the partner before complaining about the partner to the instructor. That said, I might adjust this part of my answer depending on your instructor's personality: even if there is nothing that the instructor needs to "do," some instructors are very good at giving advice and offering alternate perspectives.

You have my very rare downvote. If a project is assigned to two people and both can gain credit or demerits from it then there MUST be a degree of cooperation - even if it is going over the solution together and agreeing to accept it.

Hmm, I thought I specifically said that OP should either find places to make contributions (second paragraph) or else review the work and agree to accept it as-is (third paragraph).

In group projects, managing the group is often an integral part of the exercise and one student unilaterally taking over the project and not co-operating should be penalized for having done so.  Neither student is maximising their learning opportunities here, but it sounds like only one had a choice about it.  This is especially true for software projects.  For university assignments, a good student often can do the whole thing themselves, but they need to gain group working skills for an industrial setting where they can't do that anymore as the project is too big.

@cag51 Fair enoughish. I'm fairly disturbed by the general feel I got from the response - very largely not your fault  - I had something similar happen to me long ago in a corporate setting - it was not "important" and only a peripheral activity but the actor went out of his way to lock in his solution as the sole one - which he had no right to do.
I cannot now undo my vote unless the answer is edited. Alas your grammar, spelling and general content look too good to change much :-). Your last paragraph feels to me to lean towards leaving things be - with some risk of negative consequences.

Thanks for the steady response. I'm much more active some other SE groups and one doesn't always get a calm response, even to positive input :-).

I disagree completely with your advice not to discuss with the instructor.  If one partner has already finished the project without involving the other and is preparing to submit with both names, what's left to discuss with the partner?  This is a problem the instructor needs to aware of if it's to be sorted out.

Hmm. I thought I specifically said that discussing with the instructor might be worthwhile "depending on the instructor's personality" as "some instructors are very good at giving advice and offering alternate perspectives." But, I always advise trying to resolve matters directly before involving third parties. In this case, it could be that the partner was well meaning (they reduced OP's workload, after all) and this can all be resolved with a friendly conversation. Or maybe not -- in which case escalating to the instructor may be unavoidable.

@cag51 It would be helpful if you could explain how you think it could be resolved by talking with the partner who's already finished the entire project.  This is why I asked, what's left to discuss with the partner?

Best case, the partner may say something like: "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you would be unhappy about this. It won't happen again. For this time: I think my solution to [this part] isn't very good -- maybe you could take a stab at improving it."

Given this is an academic exercise, I think it's entirely justified that the OP feels they lost their opportunity to learn, and the partner failed at the point of the exercise.  That's critical to discuss with the instructor - both to see if there's another option (for example, if they could be offered a different exercise or a different partner), and to give the instructor feedback.

I want to accept this answer for some reasons. Firstly, I did contact him, and indeed seems like he simply got into it and finished it in basically one single go. However, he made it clear that it was our discussions and such which led him to the solution. Yes, even tho my code was not in there, I've still aided him. Secondly, the code was not finished, and some bugs remained, and he let me help this time! In the end, I did not contact my instructor as things are now working fine between us. It was a misunderstanding, it seems, which is now solved.

@NicoleHamilton: "what's left to discuss with the partner" <-- review and acceptance of the result for submission. Certainly the OP would not want the partner turning in a low-quality result that will get them both a bad grade, so OP at least needs to review the partner's work to determine whether it's acceptable. This is not as much involvement as would be ideal but it's still a learning opportunity.

@RussellMcMahon Bit it seems there was a lot of co-operation. They discussed possible solutions, they learned language concepts. Coming up with a good strategy is often the larger chunk of work. If you know what you want to do and are doing, the actual implementation is easy. it seems that the OP contributed a lot to the project. Projects are far more then just the code that results.

As someone coming from the other side of the fence, I second the sympathetic sentiment to the finisher. Especially in an undergrad program, it's not uncommon to have some students being "overqualified" for the project. In that case, it's very tempting for such students to do the next steps, as "it's obvious", and many undergrads don't see helping others to learn as part of their learning objective (I do, so it helped me to not do next "easy stuff" and leave it to my partner - often with lots of restraints when they do it slowly or in a non-optimal way, and try to guide them in the process).

@DirtMixedWater As a side comment, I will note that it is very common as you gain experience programming to get into "flow" or "the zone", and there are single days where I get as much done as in an average two weeks. You will also probably have this experience at some point. It is, unfortunately, not predictable.

I would add this to @NicholeHamilton 's excellent answer.
Code always benefits from several sets of eyes. Consider taking your partner' solution, reading it carefully and improving it. Things to work on:

Is every feature properly tested?
Is there a design document that sets out the strategy and the reasons
for that strategy?
Is the overall structure sensible? Are there modules/functions that
should be separately coded?
Is the code formatted and commented so that human readers can
understand it?

These are all questions that the two of you should have thought about together, but since he wrote all the code, you can suggest to him that you do this part. Be sure that your instructor understands your significant contribution when you submit the project.
You will both learn a lot from this exercise. The least of it will be you understanding what your teammate wrote.

Seconded. This is software engineering 101. Coding isn't 100% of a software engineer's job; some of it is quality assurance, some of it is code reviews.

In most cases where students are allowed to work with partners on assignments, the expectation is that they will share the work equally.  In part, that's so that both will learn from the experience. (If you haven't done the work, how will you pass the exams?) But also, in academia, if you turn in work with your name on it, the expectation is that you will have contributed and that anyone else whose name is on it also contributed.  If you didn't contribute, that's generally considered an academic violation (for both of you.)
But yours is not the first partnership that's ever gone off-track. You should talk to your instructor.  You can bet they've seen it before and that yours is not the first case they've had to deal with. They may be able to help you find a different partner, if not for this assignment, at least for future assignments.  But it's also possible you may be stuck working on your own.  Either is a better outcome than turning in work that's not your own and not learning a thing from it.
One of the most important determinants of all your outcomes in life are all the other people in your life.  When you have a choice, it matters who you choose.  This particular partner was not a good choice.  Talk to your instructor.  Good luck.  I'm sorry you're going through this.

Do you consider discussing possible solutions and their merits as contribution? It seems OP had lengthy debates about what works and not and how to solve the problem with their partner. They partner then only provided the implementation. In my experience, the implementation is usually the smaller part. I often end up needing more time to plan & understand a problem then writing code. So yes, while this is a step they should have discussed before, it doesn't seem like Op contributed nothing -- they contributed important knowledge.

@Polygnome I don't consider it equal contribution.  Nor it is likely to be an equally helpful learning experience.  Students who let their partners do all the coding rarely do well on the exams in my experience,

A, and perhaps the, key issue is that you must be certain that you will not be disadvantaged or marked down by accepting what has been done.
IF this is a formally shared project where you have academic responsibility for the result and can receive credit or demerits as a result then it is utterly essential that you engage with your partner over their actions. What happens next depends on the outcome of these discussions.
Again - it is essential that you discuss this.
If a project is assigned to two people and both can gain credit or demerits from it then there MUST be a degree of cooperation - even if it is going over the solution together and you agreeing to accept it.
If you agree to the solution then you MUST understand the solution and be able to replicate it yourself.
If this fails, then you MUST tell your partner what you are going to do and then go to your supervisor and discuss what is happening.
It may be to your advantage to largely accept your partners solution, but you MUST have a proper share in it. Failing to do so is an academic failing and may cause you major demerits.

I used to be a student, then a teacher and then left academia.
Student perspective: if this was a project you were not particularly enthusiastic about - rejoice. If you really wanted to do it then, well, shit - you would have had a good time. But you have some free time now to ace that tough exam the day after.
Key point: make sure you are comfortable with the outcome:

whether the output is good enough, a good rule of thumb is "would I have done it better?"
how you will address this group assignment in front of the TA. It would be less than optimal if your colleague said "I did it alone and DirtMixWater brought pizza and beer" (though it depends on the TA)
what did you miss in terms of learning. There are some projects I did I would like to forget but they still haunt me and I would have paid with my body to have it done by someone like in your case.

Teacher perspective: a good TA will immediately see who did what. The work does not have to be balanced, I had teams where one was the lead thinker, another one the lead doer, and a third one the lead entertainment/food/drink supplier. And it was great, each of them did their role very well (and, counterintuitive, the third one is important in the real world).
You should be careful if you plan to lie to the TA, it will be obvious. See above the point about clearly agreeing on who did what.
Outside of academia perspective: it does not matter.

If your partner decided to code on their own and it went smoothly, and they found it "better to learn the concepts that way" to the extent of making it hard for you to contribute, chances are you're capable of the same and will also learn as much.
As discussed in other answers as well as comments, learning to behave in teamwork, be it communicating with others or adjusting yourself, plays a key role in these group assignments throughout your college life. Depending on the situation, this may or may not be the hill you want to die on. Working alone or finding other partners are never as bad an option as it may seem.
Talk to your instructor and explain the situation. Since you mentioned you had discussions with your partner and you (plural.) had disagreements in your approaches, it's reasonable for you to come up with your own implementation (code) and submit that as yours.

@Roland Depends on the course policies.  For example, at Michigan, the major design project (aka Capstone) courses always require students to work in groups.  But every other CS class that allows students to work with partners also allows students the option of working alone.

@Roland Dissolving the group and working independently could be the result of the application of soft skills.

@Roland  I disagree. You won't be able to just integrate any clump of people later in your career; you need to learn to dissolve dysfunctional groups, too. (Not to mention fire people, when necessary).

@Roland That doesn't mean one has to push themselves into putting a dysfunctional team together. It's neither productive nor beneficial, be it to the individuals or to the organization as a whole. The ones who don't have the power has the right to call in relevant management in that cast.

@Roland You can quit.

@Roland Learning when to quit is another kind of wisdom. There are plenty of chances to "learn teamwork and conflict resolution", and giving up on insisting is one of the outcomes that one must learn and face.

@Roland: Group work anywhere below senior project level is a sign of a lazy instructor, not the sign of a well designed class. Most groups are dysfunctional because the nash equilibrium says so. I've been through too many group projects. You write "I start with teaching my students teamwork and resolving conflicts." yet my experience is this does not happen. Nothing is done until the end when trying to assign individual grades.

So, should I confront him, contact my teacher, or just accept the situation?

Let me first summarize my view of the situation. You and your partner were both given a total amount X of work to split among you. And he, instead of doing X/2 and leaving the other X/2 for you to do, did the whole of X himself.
Is that a bad thing? Well, yes and no. Although it certainly suggests some negligence and selfishness on the part of your partner in that he did your part of the project without any consultation or consideration for you, it is also impressive in a way. He did twice the amount of work he was expected to! So while I do not mean to suggest that your feelings (sadness, anger etc) are invalid, some of the other answers suggesting that your partner is a bad partner and someone unworthy of fraternizing or collaborating with seem misguided to me. In fact, I think your partner has the potential to be a rather awesome partner and collaborator in the future, once he is made aware of his immature behavior in connection with the current project and reflects on it a bit. Honestly, I don’t think that will be a hard lesson for him to learn, assuming he is not an inherently selfish person.
About the current project, I think there is a likely solution that will be a win-win for everyone: you, the partner, and the instructor. You and the partner should talk to the instructor, explain what happened, and ask for suggestions for broadening the scope of the project to roughly 3X/2. This additional scope could then be your part of the assignment, which hopefully will have as much value for you in terms of the learning you can derive from it as the original assignment. Ideally, during this conversation your partner should apologize for his lack of consideration and for putting both you and the instructor in an awkward position. I’m reasonably confident the instructor will be happy to accept such an apology and not penalize either of you for this situation.
Of course, to make this happen you will have to talk to your partner. I wouldn’t describe this as “confronting” your partner as that sounds rather adversarial. You should simply explain to him how his behavior has deprived you of a valuable learning opportunity and the satisfaction of doing an interesting assignment, and suggest how to move on from there.
If this arrangement works out, everybody will benefit, and I think you and your partner stand to get an excellent grade for doing a project that is well beyond the scope of the original assignment. I can’t guarantee the instructor will cooperate, but it’s not clear to me what else they could do that isn’t clearly penalizing you for something that’s not your fault. Anyway, good luck, and I hope things turn out well!

Since many assignments in computer science classes (as this appears to be) are autograded, there is generally no opportunity to "broaden the scope".  An assignment is what it is.  If this is a large UG course, the last thing I'd want to deal with as an instructor is creating a one-off variation.  My answer as an instructor in cases like this (which I've faced any number of times at Michigan) is simple:  If you can't work as partners, we'll split you up.

@NicoleHamilton thanks, good points — perhaps I misjudged the probability that this will lead to the nice outcome I described. Regardless, my practical recommendation remains the same: both of them should talk to the instructor (as you also suggested), the partner should apologize for his lack of consideration, and they should ask for instructions on how to proceed. And I think it’s unfair of you to characterize what happened as “you can’t work as partners”. There is no evidence that OP did anything to cause this situation (although that’s a possibility of course).

I think it's unfair to suggest I think the OP did anything to cause the situation. But however it occurred (and it does appear to be the sole fault of the other partner), the result is the same:  They're not working as partners in keeping with the usual expectations that they will share equally in the work. When this has occurred (once/twice a year) in large (1000+ enrollment) classes I've taught with co-instructors, we have always split up the partners.  Obviously, every instructor is free to make their own choice, but this was always ours.

"And he, instead of doing X/2 and leaving the other X/2 for you to do, did the whole of X himself." That narrowly focuses on code. But OP did provide a lot of knowledge. They said they discussed possible solutions with their partner before. I think it is short-sighted to only look at who wrote how many LOC to decide how much they contributed.


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PhD Application Status after interview
I appreciate the prompt reply.
I sent out my phd application in epidemiology to NYU , but got short listed to interview the department of social and behavioral sciences at NYU, because they sensed my application fits this department better.
I did an interview, and the chairs of the social and behavioral department were so happy with my interview and asked me if i was happy with the shift in the departments for my application.
Two weeks later, (today) i receive an automatic reply from the NYU portal saying that I was rejected from the phd in epidemiology department (one that i have not been interviewed for!)
What should i do! I am so nervous!!!!!

Why do you think that an automatic reply about being rejected by the epidemiology department (which was presumably sent out to all people who applied minus those people who were shortlisted, so in particular this set of people includes you) has any connection to your application's status at the social and behavioral department?

If you would be happy in the new department then keep following up with them. The other one is apparently closed to you. The rejection by one department is unlikely to have any effect on the other.
But, until you get an actual acceptance, keep other options open.
You seem to be still under consideration by Social and Behavioral Sciences and will be told of any outcome when decisions are final. Anything else would be improper. If you are feeling uneasy, you could ask them for an update.

If you are rejected by Social and Behavioral they will tell you specifically. So, yes, you have hope. Some folks there seem to think you are a better fit in one or the other. I would probably wait to seek reasons for the rejection until you have a happy outcome somewhere. Departments can be very independent.

You haven't been rejected by the new department. I don't understand the comment. Do we misunderstand each other?

If the PhD program in epidemiology decides they will not be taking you on as a PhD student in epidemiology, the proper way for them to communicate that to you is by sending a "rejection email". This is far more polite for them to do than to say nothing to candidates they will not be accepting. Why should they only let candidates on a short list know? Every applicant needs to know their status. The epidemiology program doesn't have any involvement in who gets accepted as a graduate student in a different department.

But you didn’t set out to apply for Social Science. There are big differences between it and epidemiology. I am puzzled by the school’s action to pick majors for applicants. It is very odd; and if that’s a new way for school to reject applicants, then it’s a pretty slick one.
I hope you examine your passion and career goal for epidemiology, and have applied other schools. Social Science did not grant you admission either. So I think you would be well advised to look at other school with Epidemiology program.


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MIT Mechanical Engineering PhD with No Funding
I was accepted to the MIT PhD program in mechanical engineering. In my admission letter they wrote that, "it is imperative you find an advisor as soon as possible, and definitely before the program begins in August." They further go on to state that I will not have funding if I can't find an advisor.
I have never seen a PhD program do this... Even most other programs at MIT guarantee funding for at least 1 year with no research obligations to an advisor to allow students to take courses, attend group meetings, and settle into a lab.
Does anyone have experience with this specific program or programs with similar funding structures? Will they really write me a check for tuition if I can't find a lab? I was so excited to get admitted to my dream school but now I'm terribly sad... I'm switching fields from math to mechanical engineering and I broadly know what I'm interested but there's no way I could commit to a lab without taking some mechanical engineering courses and attending group meetings. I feel like I'd need at least a year to figure out which lab I want to join. I don't have external funding through something like NSF. Any advice on what I can do?

The standard advice is not to attend graduate school in science of engineering without funding.  However, that's not usually an issue at MIT; most departments at MIT do indeed guarantee funding for doctoral students for some number of years.  In fact, demanding you find a funded position with a professor before the start of the semester seems really hinky.

I think you should ask this question after you've tried finding an advisor.  If you cannot find an advisor, you don't have a project, so no degree.   I think MIT is just asking you to get started on the first step of your degree.

They want you to look for an advisor, not necessarily a lab. Putting a math student into a mechanical engineering lab in the first year may not be a safe thing to do unless you have been previously trained in a lab. So, they advise you to get an advisor first before they can fund you.

It sounds like the funding will come through the advisor via grants. What you can do is find an advisor, as they say. Otherwise huge expense.

It sounds like they want you to find an advisor before you start; yes, if you for some reason don't do this but still try to attend you can expect a very expensive tuition bill. I would not recommend this.
If you can find an appropriate advisor who will fund you, that seems like an okay arrangement. It's certainly not ideal. My graduate program did something somewhat similar with "direct admit" students who would join a lab before starting, rather than the normal 1 year rotation to choose a lab. This was especially common for international students, and for people already working in labs as non-student employees. This allowed for students to be admitted without needing to compete for the small pot of money available to fund rotating students their first year (which for funding agency reasons was also restricted to domestic students).
The big difference with your scenario is that in the one I describe, the lab was predetermined at the point of acceptance. Effectively the process was "these students we are going to accept and fund for a year; okay, we have this other pot of students that qualify for the program but we don't have money for - hey professors, anyone like someone here enough to pay their bill?"
If you're not comfortable with this arrangement or can't find a lab you fit with before the program starts, then you should not accept the offer. I probably wouldn't, personally, even if I did find a lab this way, unless I already had a specific person in mind; it's a lame offer. However, it can also be an opportunity, and you'll have to weigh your decision against your other options.


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Why would a German state-funded PhD training program exclude master degree holders from applying?
I have come across this iGRAD-Plant PhD program for early career scientists in plant biology, which is a joint effort of the Heinrich Heine University, Research
Center Jülich and the Graduate Program in Genetics at Michigan State University (USA).
It is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), as International Research Training Groups 2466
Network, exchange, and training program to understand plant resource allocation (NEXTplant). The DFG is entirely state-funded.
It differs from the usual German graduate school program, as far as I know it, in multiple ways:

As an early career scientist program, it allows bachelor graduates to be admitted to a PhD program.
It comprises of a 1-year qualification period followed by a 3-year doctoral research period. During both phases obtaining a M.Sc. is possible.
It denies students holding a master’s degree from entering this program.

Point 1 is unusual for the EU, but usual for the US. Gaining a M.Sc. during your PhD studies is also not uncommon in the US. However, even in the US programs, I have never seen any admission bans on master degree holders.
Stackexchange questions here and here suggest that having a master's degree might devalue your potential as a budding researcher. Earning multiple PhDs is also not commonplace in Europe, with most PhD programs excluding any PhD holders.
In this program aimed at young researchers with greater potential, the opportunity to start a PhD program as a bachelor graduate is already quite uncommon in Germany.

Why would this PhD training program explicitly exclude master degree holders from applying?
Would this be considered discriminatory against master degree holders?
Is this kind of early career scientists PhD program commonplace somewhere else in the world?

As for your question 2: Of course it discriminates against master degree holders, by definition. But master degree holders are not a protected group in any jurisdiction in the world, so it is perfectly legal to discriminate against them.

The "1-year qualification period" in point 2 may be intended as a substitute for what would be done in a masters program, so it would be inappropriate for students who have already gone through such a program.

800 euros per month during the qualification year is not that bad, to be a student, but then the position paid at 50%-65% is a terrible offer. That would explain why they do not want Master's degree holders: they would run away to a better paid position in very short time.

A reason to exclude Master's degree holders is if the international graduate school is planned  to only accept those with a Bachelor's degree as highest academic degree.
The money for this graduate schools comes from the DFG, which has a set of rules regarding what can be applied for. This document lists what can be applied for in the scope of the module "Research Training Group". Point 1.4 are "Qualifying Fellowships" that are limited to one year and intended to be used for those with a Bachelor's degree already (which, somewhat surprisingly, is only written in the German version of the document).
So in their grant/training group proposal, this module has been applied for and it got funded by the DFG. Now, money for these qualifying fellowships cannot be used for other purposes, such as financing those that have a Master's already, without the DFG agreeing to change of fund usage.
However, for everything that is applied for, there needs to be a compelling (scientific) reason for why the DFG should fund this. If they now fund a substantial number of doctoral candidates/students that already have a Master's degree, the original reason written in the grant application can easily be questioned later. This is not great when trying to get grants in the future (such as for a second funding phase of a graduate school).
Of course, they could just return some money for the DFG for unused qualifying scholarships. But if they planned the graduate school in cohorts with joint activities, the members of the training group then do not do their work in a synchronized way - some students will still be in their qualification phase, while others already started their three-year core research phase. This may interfere with the scientific concept of the graduate training group.
Finally, returning money to the DFG means that some overhead funds also need to be returned, so from the point of view of the university, they are then wasted (but the taxpayer certainly doesn't mind).

I am quite certain that the taxpayer won't get that money back...

This is a general answer from a US person but it attempts to give perspective on such things and some of the thinking behind them, though not from a specific German perspective.
The normal doctoral program in Germany requires a masters at entry. The aren't open to those with with only a bachelors. This turns it around.
But the general principle here is if the funding comes from a governmental agency, then they probably want it well spent and not wasted. The structure of the program likely includes those things that other students would learn within a masters and the resources for that would be wasted on those who already have those skills and that knowledge.
It may be that the program is highly structured without a lot of options, so it is open only to those who are most likely to benefit from it.
In the US, most doctoral students enter with only a bachelors. Those with a masters aren't closed out, but follow a different path and the path isn't highly structured in general. Take some advanced courses, pass qualifying exams, write a dissertation. A masters student on entry may be ready for the exams so their path is shorter from that point. But this wouldn't be possible in a highly structured program. Your point 2 suggests that there is a lot of structure.
For those with a masters in Germany, the normal path to a doctorate is still open. They just choose this as an alternative and don't want to dilute it. I suspect that it is an experiment to see how students in such a program will turn out compared to the normal path. So, the system in general, isn't discriminatory.

I disagree with In the US, most doctoral students enter with only a bachelors. This is field specific. For example, natural resource programs such as  the Fisheries Program at the University of Washington usually expect an MS degree to get into PhD programs.

@RichardErickson, I stand by the statement. Not every such program is like that, but the majority are. Most are able to earn a masters along the way. Some places all you need to do is ask, others you write a small "thesis". I'd guess the program you point to is relatively small, compared to, say, math or cs. A bigger deal in Washington than some other states, of course.


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Does the link to an arxiv article change if I update the article?
As the title says, I am submitting a preprint to arxive. If I have a copy of the link to the article, does the link change when I upload an updated version of the same article?

If the link doesn't include a version number, it will always point to the most recent version of the article. It is also possible to produce links that point to specific earlier versions (but I've never done that).

Thanks. How would you get the link that points to the most recent version of the article?

@Morcus: It's the default. There's just no "vX", where x is the version number, at the end.

You can produce both links that include a version number, and links without one that point to the most recent version. The link names are quite explanatory; for instance (from one of my articles):

https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.06459
https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.06459v1
https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.06459v2


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Thesis focus and fellowship focus divergence
I am currently halfway through my first year of a multi-year PhD fellowship. After the first year, you must re-apply to be awarded the remaining years. I am currently undecided as to whether or not I would like to reapply.
The fellowship research objective is somewhat tangential to my interests and basically ends up being a situation of theoretical/algorithmic (my interest) vs application/data-analysis (the fellowship). I feel that as a result, my primary research progress is suffers in order to either transfer the my work to the fellowship's domain or to have an additional project that satisfies the fellowship in addition to my thesis work. While this wouldn't be an issue if I enjoyed the additional work, I am realizing that I have no interest in the fellowship research objective, which makes it difficult to digest the literature and also to perform related research. On top of all of this, I aim to finish my PhD as quickly as possible (two-body problem related), and am worried this fellowship will delay my progress.
My main question for this post is how much value is it to have a multi-year fellowship on your CV as opposed to just a single year? Would it be better to stay in the fellowship and try to change my research as little as possible to satisfy the fellowship requirements or would it be better to lose the remaining fellowship title and funds in order to have less of a distraction from my interest-area?

You don't mention funding as an issue. Does the fellowship support you financially?

The fellowship covers most of my funding, but not all. At the same time, I still have at least 3 semesters of funding left from the department. I don't think I will need additional funding after those semesters, I believe our PI is supposed to support us for at least until our 4th year or something along those lines (I'm in my second year).

The usual purpose of a fellowship is to permit you to get a doctorate. If it doesn't contribute to that, and causes a delay, then I see no advantage in it at all. With few exceptions, having a fellowship on your CV is a small and temporary advantage. The more important thing, driving your future is the quality of your research and, in the short term, the regard your advisor(s) have for you.
You haven't mentioned any advantages other than a hypothetical "does this look good on my CV". It probably does, for a while, but not at the expense of finishing, especially given your other constraints.
This was long ago, but I never felt any advantage from fellowships that I held other than the money that permitted my study. And they were free of restrictions other than the general field.


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Potential grad school advisor and GPA for admissions
Does your GPA matter if you already have a potential research advisor in the wings?
I ask because I realize that I may struggle when applying for graduate schools. It looks like I will do a masters after undergrad, but I will apply for a PhD in the future nonetheless. I have read that if you reach out to a potential advisor, and they agree to advise you for graduate school, the requisites of grad school admissions are largely redundant. Is this true?

Where did you read such a thing (which is false)?

Where is this happening? And the field might matter also, especially if outside the US.

Oh, I apologize. I remember reading it somewhere (might have been a CS prep guide for admissions into graduate school?) but I do realize that they may have been mistaken

A summary of my answer here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/192702/63475 would be that, for the US, having a supportive advisor (supportive = will pay your costs) will allow qualified students to be admitted to a graduate program that is only unable to admit them otherwise because the program doesn't have enough money.

It does matter. An advisor can strongly encourage an admissions committee to accept you, but the ultimate decision belongs to the committee. That said, it also varies a lot from country to country, and from institution to institution.
For instance, Canada tends to be on the harsher end about this, and you can get rejected even with a supervisor batting for you if your GPA is below their required minimum. I know two people for whom it was the case, and in both cases their GPA a bit over 3.0 on a 4.0 scale, while the programs wanted 3.3 minimum.


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Concerns when applying to a Mathematics PhD with a physics degree
I'm a physics graduate from a Southern Asian country interested in starting a PhD in mathematics in a US institution. I have some concerns about the lack of Analysis and Algebra honors level courses in my profile. Following are some information about me.

After graduation, I'm unofficially attending some upper level mathematics courses in a university. It seems possible I won't be able to finish courses before Fall 2023 deadlines.

I have one year graduate level experience in differential geometry.

I have some research experience in mathematics.

I think the lack of a one year sequence in Analysis and Algebra might have an adverse effect in my application. One possible solution might be to get LORs from the professors doing my courses but that would make too many letters.
Can you suggest some methods to improve this situation?

Also Mathematics PhD after M.Sc. Physics and How can I effectively switch fields from physics to math post-undergrad? and How to become a mathematician with a physics bachelors degree?

You can always submit more letters than required.


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When to start drafting a paper?
I am a second year Molecular Engineering PhD student and I am a ways away from having enough data to publish, but I know where I want my research to go and I have a good idea of the data I'll need to gather to get to that point. I've been told by at least one professor that you should start drafting a paper fairly early on in the research process, and I think doing so would at least help keep the research focused. On the other hand, I can see how starting the writing process too early could take time away from active research. It could also be limiting if research objectives ever need to change.
For those who have already written and published papers, when is the appropriate time to start drafting? How early is too early?

Yesterday. Even better, the day before yesterday.


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What tool is better for journal-quality plots: matplotlib or Matlab?
I make my plots in Matlab and they turn out looking reasonably good. However, I'm contemplating porting to more open-source tools and hence, I wish to make use of Python's matplotlib.
My priorities are:

Making beautiful, professional, journal-quality plots as vector-graphics to be imported into a LaTeX document
Being able to modify almost all aspects of the plot

I mostly make scatter, line and Box & Whisker plots.
Given these considerations, which among the two tools: Matlab or matplotlib is better and should I port to Python-matplotlib?

The tool you know and use is the best tool.

That seems eminently opinion-based given that you can do everything with both tools.

For simple plots, you can use matplotlib2tikz, which gives you native TikZ/PGFplots code.

There is not much difference between them since matplotlib has tried to emulate the matlab design of figures. However, matplotlib has evolved a bit more giving you additional choices (e.g. seaborn), but you have to learn how to use them.
If you are using LaTeX, then save and embedd the figures as pdf files and  use pdflatex for your latexing. This is the standard way of using LaTeX at least in Computer Science. Both tools allow you to create pdf files from figures.


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How can I find academic conferences similar to one I already know i.e. ASPLOS?
There is a conference that my supervisors and I have agreed to submit a paper to however, I am looking for alternative conferences (ASPLOS) that are similar to it. When I search the conference on ACM, I cannot find a "related conference" tab so I cannot be sure what conferences are related to it. My paper intersects the topic of software engineering and systems. Do you know of any conferences related to it ASPLOS or related? Or how to search for related conferences?

The easiest to search for related conferences is to look at citations of and for articles published in ASPLOS. This will give you access to papers, many of which might have appeared in ASPLOS itself if the authors had submitted there. Scholar Google will make this simple. You pick something to start with that is close to your putative submission. Another way is to look at people who are regular ASPLOS authors and look at their CV, though of course, even good people get rejected for ASPLOS.
ASPLOS is a bit peculiar and it is of course quite prestigious. The best alternatives will depend on the content of your paper and you should keep this in mind.


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Websites for amateur scientists
Are there any online sites where amateur scientists can post
ideas and results, including Latex equations, allowing discussion,
feedback, critiques etc.?
For years I’ve built up a moderately technical system of ideas,
quite possibly "Not even wrong", but seemingly connected with
the nexus between cosmology & black holes and slightly touching on
a core entropy equation in string theory.  It reproduces one
Planck probe result (age of the universe) and the M-sigma
relation between SMBHs and stellar velocities, for example.
I can’t really send this stuff to actual theorists, since I’m an
amateur and for all they know, I’m one of those cretin crackpots
out to disprove Einstein.  Of course, professional journals are
entirely out of the question.  Very frustrating.
Thanks for your time, Gene

What do you want from that site? Should experts read it? Should it be for all disciplines?

@user111388 Primary goal would be to amateurs share their ideas with each others and with experts.

@peterh: for sharing with each other, maybe reddit? I saw there is eg a "Collatz conjecture" subreddit (this is a famous math. conjecture for which a lot of laypersons claim to have a proof). But experrts will there be probably not.

@user111388 Reddit is an internet forum, I think some more serious would be useful. I am thinking on some latex/pdf sharing like a science journal.

@peterh: Are you the questioner? I really doubt a science journal like that exist - it would be flooded with shit immediately and nobody would read it.

@user111388 No, but I think this question is useful. Of course, some type of quality control should exist. Note, various scientists are also complaining about the flood of shit in the pro journals, and particularly that these mislead funding decisions.

@peterh: Sure - but an amatour journal would be 10000x times worse. There is a good motivation for reading pro journals - unfortunately not for such a journal.

@user111388 I think quality control could happen on a way that everybody can choose what he considers shit and what not. Then, you would see a point value calculated by the votes weighted by people voting similarly as you. On this way, collatz conjecture proovers would be happy on each other, and your votes would help you to find the quality content.


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Optimal approach for committee selecting faculty
I'm on a faculty search committee in a large department at a large university. We can typically recruit 4-6 new faculty per year. We would like to recruit the "best" faculty available each year, regardless of their focus. Best is highly subjective, so we have a search committee to help rank candidates.
Here's the problem: our field has several sub-disciplines. If we were a math department, this would be something like algebra, geometry, topology, applied math and combinatorics. Faculty on our search committee tend to rank people in their sub-discipline higher, and others lower. This is likely due to a mix of faculty finding their own field most interesting and important, leading to bias in rankings, and also an intentional desire to recruit people to their own area to get more good colleagues.
The result is that our largest and noisiest areas usually win, so we keep recruiting people in these areas. It would actually be even better if we could recruit people into areas where we aren't currently as strong, to improve the breadth of our department, but these candidates seldom have advocates.
Is there a good game-theoretic approach to ranking or voting for candidates that would help us find optimal candidates regardless of their sub-discipline? Our faculty, generally, are of good will and want to do well for the department, so if we can give them good guidance I'm hopeful they might follow it.

There is no 'optimal' way that everyone will agree with. However, getting broad agreement that more diversity in areas is needed will help. Then perhaps not allow members to vote for candidates in their area. Or intentionally set aside 1 or 2 positions for acknowledged under-represented areas.

If you're recruiting four to six faculty members per year shouldn't you (maybe not you personally, but your department) have a decent idea of where the shallow coverage in sub-disciplines is already, and you hire to that end?  I've only been involved in this on the student end, and at only one institution (so I don't think I can really answer, merely push back against the idea that you should be sub-discipline agnostic in a comment) but this is how it always seemed to me:  "This year we're interviewing for a Graphics professor and a Machine Learning professor."

Can you request current faculty members recuse if the candidate works in their area, or scale their ranking somehow?

Just count the rankings from some area with the weight inversely proportional to the number of people in that area (or you may want to use some more or less aggressive discounting function than $1/x$). That is a universal rule that applies to anybody in the same manner, so it seems fair to me but, depending on the choice of the discounting function $g$, it will enforce some small or large amount of balancing automatically assuming that the area of the "truly best" candidate is random enough. You can play with the corresponding probability problem yourself before suggesting some particular $g$.

It seems like identifying "gaps" in domains of faculty expertise needs to be done separately from ranking candidates. And it seems like this should be done by department leadership, not by hiring committee members. If you categorize applicants by domain, the committee can rank and identify the "best" candidates in each domain. Presumably, you would then prioritize interviewing the best candidates in the under-represented domains.

Yes. The issues are distinct so separate policies are indicated. Welcome to the site.

Better yet, chose the subfield and then appoint a committee of faculty in that subfield to hire the next faculty member in their area.

@BrianBorchers, yes, or at least get advice from such faculty fed into the committee. That might work in a more collegial department than the one the OP seems to suggest, though. I've been at such a place.


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Including an old publication in a CV for a PhD
I am applying for a PhD as a mature student - I took a 20 year gap between my undergraduate degree and studying for an MSc. My undergraduate dissertation was published as a paper (with me as second author). It has some relevance to the PhD although not the same topic, and obviously a little dated. Should I bother listing it on my CV or is it too long ago and will just look like I am trying to fill space? I am hoping that my MSc dissertation will also lead to a paper but that is not complete yet, and I have no other publications.
Thanks

I personally would list it.  My resume' (usually for non-academic purposes) is WAY longer than people say it should be (I'm old, this happens as one ages), but it has served me well in getting several jobs (and making it even longer LOL.).  Just my opinion.

I would definitely list it, I've just completed a PhD myself as a mature student. In Australia you normally cannot get directly accepted into a PhD program, usually you need to do an MPhil/MRes first as preparation. The exception is having completed a masters with a substantial research component. Having done a Masters by Thesis 20 years early with a couple of published papers certainly helped my application (despite being in a different field to my PhD).

Yes, you should list the publication since it is relevant experience for your application. However, I recommend you to be prepared to answer questions about your role in the paper and its content. It is usual to discuss previous publications when you are interviewed for academic jobs.

Of course, this is part of your profile as a researcher!

If you were the second author of a published paper as an undergraduate, that is a significant achievement, even if it was twenty years ago.
Yes, list it.
(I say this with experience to back it up:  I had a similar gap between undergrad and PhD, and I listed a publication from very early in my career in industry, quite irrelevant to what I later wanted to pursue during my candidacy.)
Folks like us are not common, but neither are we so rare that the people reading it will be confused.

Yes, absolutely. Listing your prior publication will increase trust in that you will be able to the same during your PhD studies. Writing and publishing is a skill that you will definitely need during this journey, and while it's possible that after 20 years you are out of practice, you still have the background that you can tap into. This, to me, is important.
A lot of students initially struggle with this, so providing evidence that you possess this skill and have experience will likely be a plus in the evaluation. In addition, you are likely competing with a lot of other applicants without this experience so this will potentially set you apart.
I agree with previous answers that you should be prepared to discuss your role in the


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How to Develop a Daily Habit of Critical Thinking and Writing During PhD?
StackExchange community!
I'm currently in my third year of a PhD program focused on geometrical fluid dynamics. As my research often involves complex coding and theoretical work, I face frequent periods where my code doesn't run as expected. During these times, I want to maintain productivity and continue intellectual growth.
I'm considering developing a daily habit of critical thinking and writing to enhance my problem-solving skills and give purpose to my days, even when the coding isn't going smoothly. I’m looking for effective strategies to integrate this into my daily routine.
Here are some specific questions I have:

What are effective techniques to incorporate critical thinking and writing into a daily academic routine?
How can I choose topics that will be intellectually stimulating and relevant to my field?
Does anyone have experience with balancing this kind of reflective practice with intense technical research?

I'd appreciate any advice or insights from those who have navigated similar challenges during their PhD or in their professional careers.
Thank you!

Your questions seem inconsistent with your problem. Why not just focus on getting the code correct?

Please also try to focus on one question instead of several in one post. The second one in particular may be too field-specific to be a good fit here.

@Buffy: My read on this is that the OP’s work involves extended stretches of detailed low-level technical work, and that they have correctly identified that broader intellectual thinking can suffer during these times of intense focus, and are looking for advise on work patterns that support maintaining their higher-level thinking.


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Can I fail the entire year of M1 if I fail a class in france?
I am having a very bad experience in my first year of an MSc in France and have problems with a particular professor, so I might fail his class. Will failing his class make me fail the entire year? Can I apply again for another master's program if I fail this one?

I think this depends on your institution rules, but masters' degrees are usually not like that "all or nothing". I expect that they give you an opportunity to recover from a failed class.

Also, for each diploma in France (e.g. each mater's degree) there are written rules ("modalités de contrôle des connaissances", MCC) describing how you can validate or compensate credits. These rules often partly refer to guidelines defined at the university level.


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PhD student's authorship - clarifying contributions in publications between two supervisors
As a theoretical physics PhD student, I work under the guidance of both a main supervisor (M-S) and a co-supervisor (C-S) who is based in a different research organization and is consulted occasionally for computational expertise. While my main supervisor is actively involved on a daily basis, I previously encountered a situation during the publication of a paper where my M-S insisted on including my C-S as an author, despite no substantial contribution from the latter. The co-supervisor only reviewed the final draft with comments unrelated to the scientific content. Now, with a new drafted paper that is deemed significant by seasoned professors, I anticipate gaining recognition in the scientific community. Despite my M-S's excitement, I am hesitant to add anyone who hasn't contributed substantially. I prefer to include only my main supervisor as a co-author in this new paper, fearing that discussing this with him will result in a similar insistence on including the co-supervisor, who can not grasp the highly advanced and technical nature of this specific work. I also worry that excluding him may strain our positive working relationship.
I need advice on how to approach this delicate matter and make the best decision for my academic and professional standing.

I think in your junior position you are not well-positioned to battle against longstanding authorship norms, whether or not they are ideal.
The previous example you describe does not sound like the most blatant case of gift authorship; generally I agree with you that it sounds like authorship is not warranted here under the guidelines I am most familiar with, but it's also true that the contribution of C-S was more than zero. If there is a spectrum between having extra authors that don't quite deserve it versus omitting authors that do I think the omissions are costlier to academia than the extras.
If you're worried about "diluting" your contribution by including additional authors, I don't think you should be worried about that. At least in my field, the norm would be for you to have the first authorship, and after that it doesn't matter if there are 2 or 3 or 4 or 12 authors, you're still the primary author among collaborators.
I would recommend:

preparing the manuscript with authorship assigned as you feel appropriate,

if your M-S suggests adding C-S, I would gently express your concerns about including an author who did not contribute substantially to the specific manuscript as well as asking your advisor for advice about how to avoid any possible acrimony,

if M-S insists on including C-S, I would at a minimum insist that they also review, edit, and approve the manuscript which I feel is a light ask, and unfortunately even if that situation is not ideal I think you can have a good conscience that you've done the best you can while deferring to your advisor (whose job it is to advise you on academic norms like authorship), and

when you have a position of more power in the future (e.g., a tenured position) you can be an advocate for more stringent authorship conventions in your field.

Research is not always about respecting written and unwritten rules, but also about working with people who may not follow these rules. In this case, it depends on what can happen if you don't mention the third author. From the point of view of scientific ethics, you should include only those authors who had some contribution, but from the point of view of the political (or power situation) in your workplace, you have to consider it.
In this case, I would recommend that you discuss it with the supervisor and, based on his reactions, consider whether you can refuse his request. If you are starting with him, it would be a good idea to get to know him more and see if you can afford to have your own will, or if he is an uncompromising superior who will severely punish disobedience. This can never be determined in advance, but his reaction to a discussion on this topic can indicate to you how he would behave. At this point you may help yourself and study personality types - secondary literature is enough. And the same you can discuss this with your C-S.


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Being a coauthor of a retracted paper should I mention it in my CV while applying for a PhD? I want to be transparent would it affect my PhD chances?
During my Masters Thesis project I helped two of my batch mates with their project who worked in a different lab. It was related to analyzing micro-array datasets from NCBI deposited data. Since, I already had some experience in analyzing datasets I helped them in preparing a workflow and teaching them the background of the different tools and how it works and monitored them during initial phase of the work. But the work was not complete at the time of thesis submission. So, after submitting our thesis they continued their work and I didn't play much role in final part of their work. One day I got a mail from a journal that the work was going to be submitted and asked me to confirm that I am one of the coauthors of the paper. I was very happy at that time that I was given an Co-authorship(4th author). I didn't ask for the final version of the manuscript that was being submitted to proof-read for myself before submission which i regret a lot right now. Also I was not informed of the choice of journal that the manuscript was submitted. After publication, issues in the manuscript such as, tortured phrases and off topic journal were mentioned in pub-peer. Finally the paper was retracted.
I hate myself for not proof-reading the manuscript beforehand and not being critical voicing my concerns. It has been many months since then but i am at home afraid to apply for a PhD which is my dream. I understand that as a co-author I was short-sighted which i regret and such a thing would not have happened if I didn't have an easy going attitude.
I want to apply for a PhD abroad and it would be really helpful if someone could give me advice on how to mention the retraction in my CV and how to tackle this issue. Would it affect my chances of getting a PhD?

Being the author of a retracted paper certainly isn't going to help and has some likelihood of harming your chances. If you mention it expect long discussions about your participation, authorship, and the reasons for retraction.
Literally, after retraction, the paper doesn't exist in the scientific literature, so it seems ethical to omit mention of it (caveat below).
It might be, however, that your participation in the project gave you some important skills that might be worth mentioning.
Some retracted papers are different of course: those that result in actual harm. That is different from low quality of the research leaving results in doubt. Those harmful papers are difficult to escape whether you list them or not. You might, in that case, need to explain the lessons learned from the failure in order to advance a career, though that doesn't seem to be the case here.


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Need help in preparing for first meeting with PhD supervisor
I have recently received a reply for PhD application from University of Alabama, USA. The PhD supervisor had replied with Thank you for interest in his group. He then asked me about availability for Teams meeting and encouraged me to submit application at the same time.
Now, I am trying to figure out how to prepare for Teams Meeting with him and as I am preparing for Fall 2025 admission, so what type of questions will be asked from me and how to convince him for my Fall 2025 availability with funded opportunity? Is he willing to accept me as his student?
Note : The area of interest is in Power Electronics in Electrical Engineering.

Sorry, this is a question far to specific an the inidividual to be answerable here.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5864/how-to-prepare-and-what-is-discussed-with-professors-at-a-phd-interview-session here a related questino

I don't understand what he meant by submitting application at the same time? Do anybody understand?


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Should I be worried that I might not be interested in the exact type of research my supervisors do?
I started a PhD program this September and I keep having doubts about whether or not I can achieve what I want being in this program and working with my current supervisors. I'm in the differential geometry group and I'm still learning semi-simple things, and haven't started a project yet. But from what I've seen so far, I think I'm more of a "visual" person if that makes sense- By that I mean I enjoy thinking about shapes and how they change, and if something like that is involved I'm motivated to do calculations. But without the motivation, calculations seem mostly dry and pointless to me. I always knew the first part (about enjoying thinking visually) but not the second part (that without this I don't feel motivated to do calculations.)
I know that it's possible to work in differential geometry and still enjoy some "visual" thinking, but the problem is that my supervisors' research involves mostly calculations. My fear is that I'll have to do more or less what they do, and not be able to deviate toward the stuff I enjoy more. So I guess one of my questions is: is that really the case? I worry that it is because at some point they will suggest a specific topic/question for me to work on which will turn into my PhD thesis and later career. (I know that in US PhD students have a year or two to figure stuff out before finding a supervisor, but I'm in Canada and here you pretty much have to chose what area you'll be working in before applying to the program.)
And if it is possible to deviate, is it actually possible to "make it" in a specific area if you don't have an expert in that area to guide you? By "make it" I don't mean winning a Fields medal or anything, just graduating from a PhD program and being able to do future related research.
I know that I should definitely talk to my supervisors about this but I'm afraid they'd say "leave the program then" because they kind of warned me about this (but I was too clueless to know what they mean back then.)
I would appreciate any advice on what I can/should do, especially if you've been in a similar situation.

Nearing 40 years since my undergraduate degree and I’m still finding cool new things to be interested in and contribute to using knowledge and techniques picked up over the decades. Frankly, you don’t know yet what you really like, but seem to have one good tool you like. You want a toolbox full of tools to have lots of fun!

@JonCuster Thank you for your comment! I think my current understanding of academia, at least in math, is that there are all these "clusters" of mathematician doing different types of math, and once you plant your roots in one, it's very hard/nearly impossible to leave and start over in a new cluster. So I'm worried that if I start in a cluster that's not right for me, I would get stuck there. I understand your point about the tools and agree that I don't know what I really like yet, but will I ever figure it out being in the wrong cluster?

Don't let short term thinking dominate your long term interests. A doctoral program should actually teach you things you don't know rather than just confirm the things you already know (and love). Yes, you may have to put your geometric thinking a bit toward the back of your mind for now, but it would be a mistake to give it up. It will probably provide insight to the more computational things you are finding in the work of your advisors.
My field was analysis (classical real) and the insight I gained from a deep and visual understanding of real functions helped with the details. "Wow, a function that is continuous everywhere but nowhere differentiable. Wow." "Wow, a function that takes every value in every neighborhood of zero. Wow."
Yes talk to your supervisors. Yes, keep your geometric intuition. Get the doctorate behind you and get yourself into a tenure-able position. Now you can refocus on the geometric if you like. It might even be an advantage in your teaching if you can communicate that insight.

I didn't know there is a function that takes every value in every neighborhood of zero...would you mind providing a reference? (one not too complicated if possible)

(1/x)sin(1/x) is all you need @DavidRaveh, Wow. It actually takes every value infinitely often in every neighborhood of zero. Double Wow.

Wowwwwwwwwwwwww

Yeah. It sort of slams into the y axis. It also gives insight into non-analytic complex valued functions of a complex variable. Something I  find hard to "visualize" there.

@DavidRaveh no, Wowwwwwwwwwwwww Wowwwwwwwwwwwww!

@David Raveh: Way more wowww... is a function from the reals to the reals that takes every real number value in every (nondegenerate -- here means more than one point) interval. See Is there a different name for strongly Darboux functions? In fact, such functions (which I believe are identical with functions having a dense graph, but maybe I'm overlooking something in this "drive-by" comment, while I'm in the middle of something else) can be fairly nice/simple in a certain sense.

@Buffy Thank you for your answer! My worry is that I might either go crazy or not be able to finish the program if I'm not working on sth I'm interested in. I did my master's in a field I didn't like and it really did a number to me both physically and mentally, so I really don't want to repeat the same mistake with PhD- but I have no idea what to do, now that I've already started a program. I know there are tons of options: Find an exchange/visiting position in another university in a field I like more, find another mentor to work with along with my current supervisors, reapply, etc.

@Buffy But each of these have little possibility and I'm kind of overwhelmed by the number of things I can do as each create branches of other possibilities an so on. Also, I'm worried that if I stay here and do my thesis in this field that I'm not that interested in, then I won't be able to do the type of research I want afterwards, because postdoc positions depend on your phd thesis and I'll be in a cluster of people working in this field and it will be nearly impossible to leave the cluster and go to another one.

Yes, it is a dilemma. In extreme situations, consider changing programs. It might cost you a year and has no guarantee that all will be better, but it worked for me in other circumstances. I do think, however, that you are over emphasizing the bad, at least a bit. Someone who knows you better can advise about that.


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Does whistleblowing make me unemployable?
I am an undergraduate who is particpating in my university's scholarship program, where we are given financial aid in return for volunteer work such as cleaning the buildings and preparing big school events.
While cleaning a room I discovered certain material that indicated severe violations of ethics in multiple levels.
The moral thing to do is to report my findings but I am worried that this would hurt my prospects in the academic and professional ladder.
I am the only one that cleans the place where the damaging material was found so I would be easily tracked down if the involved professors wanted to get revenge.
Will institutions and corporates be unwilling to hire/accept/promote me when it becomes known that I am a whistleblower?

You may be able to report anonymously. Look into the procedures for the relevant regulatory committee.

@BryaKrause I think the worry is that even if they report anonymously, "I am the only one that cleans the place where the damaging material was found so I would be easily tracked down if the involved professors wanted to get revenge."

What country are you in?

What is the nature of the ethical violation?

I think in some countries, revenge by the involved professors would be prohibited. I don't know whether this is relevant to you or how it works in practice.

Too vague for making it an answer, but I wouldn't think it makes you unemployable. Some people who hired are just not interested, some may even like it, and then many may not know. But it is true that there is a risk that it may affect your chances in certain places where people are friends with the professor in question for example. It's hard to say how high the risk is though. It depends on what kind of person the professor is, how much influence they have, where you later apply etc. You may also meet people who do not like this professor and may rather like that you came up with this.

I wish I had an answer for you. I might venture one if I knew a lot more about the situation (information you should probably not provide). But do let us know here what happens ...

What is "financial aid in return for volunteer work" other than "work"?

@Ambicion Direct tuition assistance rather than wages

@Ambicion Tax evasion. Though possibly a legal variant of it.

I do definitely think that demonstrating strong integrity should be something valued in both academia and in industry. But being low-income myself, I understand a need for both caution and tact in being in vulnerable position. Along with considering anonymous methods of reporting and looking into the legal framework on potential professional retribution, I'd consider more immediately whether a) there is documentation that specifically links you to cleaning that room, b) if not, how much time could you wait before reporting for others to forget who you are/where you were that day, c) whether involved professors would even be able to access information that links you to the room, and d) whether the academic environment you are in actually enforces strong academic integrity. Use these considerations in how you approach resolving this, maybe even identify faculty with strong academic integrity and would likely support you (broaching the scenario with caution of course).
Honestly, you shouldn't have to deal with these additional considerations and jump through these hoops. You should be able to safely report when something like this happens. But academia is just like any other workplace, which means there will be some unprofessionals despite status. I wish you all the luck in doing the right thing.

This is complicated. Even if you anonymously reported, it will be known later who reported. So, I don’t think being anonymous would help. However if you report carefully, you may not face consequences given that ethics violations reported are severe enough that university fire professor involved. If you report to more than one level of higher authorities (such as dean or even higher level than that but not just the immediate boss of your professor) with all evidences that you think are ethics violations, that will force them to take action as well as keep you anonymous until the professor is fired. Once professor is fired, it doesn’t hurt you because fired professor won’t be in the position to hurt you. If you report misconduct to only the immediate boss of the professor, that may become counterproductive as well depending upon how much influence and power (such as grants, relationships, tenure, and others) the professor has in the department.

No.  Most employers want to hire people who like rules.  Rules protect employers from litigation and fines.  Many employers require employees to report certain kinds of misconduct.
If you make people with guns or polonium angry, that might make you risky to employ.

we are given financial aid in return for volunteer work such as cleaning the buildings

Sounds like the ethical violation was wage theft.

The last sentence seems unnecessary, calling a work-study program wage theft seems a little extreme.

@cag51 US federal work study always pays at least minimum wage.  If it's "volunteer" it's not work study.

The quote says that this "volunteer" work was done in return for financial aid.

@cag51 That's not actually what it says.  It says it was "given" for "volunteer work" which is not how minimum wage laws work.  I prefer to believe the asker rather than apply my expectations to change their words.


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Paraphrasing when citing
I'm wondering the benefit of paraphrasing when citing in a scientific journal. The same stuff in different clothes? Some people say that it shows that the author has understood the text which he is citing. That is hardly true if one just uses synonyms and changes word order. Which then can also lead to less precise text.
Secondly, do I need to paraphrase when citing my own publications?

The purpose is to make your article read more naturally and smoothly. If you use direct quotations every time you cite, your article will sound strange and be hard to read. It will also be full of quotation marks or blockquotes.
Obviously you do need to make sure that what you write is precise. Sometimes you have to use the same phrase as in the original because it is a technical term.
Yes, even when citing your own publications, it is better to paraphrase rather than give a direct quotation. But in this case direct quotations might sound less unnatural as they are written by the same person.

By direct quote do you mean text which is inside quotation marks? I have never seen them in scientific texts in my field.

They are not that common in my field either, but they do exist. They play a role when the exact text and not just the meaning is important, e.g. when quoting a law. In qualitative research they are very common.

@Mastomaki Yes. If you are repeating what someone said in another publication, you have to either give a direct quotation, in quotation marks or shown as a blockquote, or paraphrase.

Did you ever play the game "telephone" when you were a kid? A group of kids sits in a circle, one whispers to the child to their right, who then whispers what they heard to the child to their right, and so on. When it gets back to the first kid, it's often completely different.
You can also do this with synonyms, taking a synonym of a synonym of a synonym can lead to amusing results.
I think this is the problem with paraphrasing longer quotes. If you are using only a brief notion from the paper, fine:

In his dissertation, Flom said to use condition indexes to measure
collinearity.

But if you are interested in more than a sentence or so from a source, I'd lean towards using the exact language, with quotation marks (or block quotes, as appropriate)  and a cite to an exact location. Then any confusion is due to the original author, not you, and anyone who is really interested can go and find the rest of the piece.
It's true, as Toby544 said (+1) that too much of this can make your prose seem stilted. (Do you see what I did there?)  But a) Academic language, compared to (say) a novel is known for placing more emphasis on precision and less on readability and b) In most contexts, you don't need to cite too extensively. I can think of some contexts where you do, but they are unusual.

You can also do this with synonyms, taking a synonym of a synonym of a synonym can lead to amusing results. --- I often did a variation of this when I was young (roughly ages 8 to 12) with my family's 1967 World Book Encyclopedia. At the end of an article, for example the entry for "Atom", there would be a list of related article entries. I'd pick one of those, go to it, then pick a related article at its end, and so on. In the mid 1970s when calculators were first making an appearance (continued)

in schools (I was in high school at the time), I got an SR-50A sometime late 1975 to very early 1976 (which I still have, along with its manual), and I noted its superiority over the lesser calculators that a handful of others at my high school had in that you could push the square root key 10 or 12 times, then the square key the same number of times and wind up with the same displayed number you started with, (continued)

but if you subtracted it from a new entry of the same number, you'd get something like 3.7 x 10^(-12) (due to internally using 13 (?) digits but having a 10-digit display). Another game I sometimes played when internet language translations first came out (late 1990s) was to type in something from a book (or just copy/paste some text from an internet web page), successively translate to different languages a lot of times, and maybe every two or three times translating back to English to get a sense of how far off it was getting.

About the game of telephone, the point for academic research is that when you cite something you should always look up the original source. Trace it back and check what it actually said. If you cite someone who cites someone who cites someone, the facts are likely to become inaccurate. There are several questions on this site about this.

The purpose of citing is to make clear that a particular statement is not your contribution, but the contribution of the person's being cited. So the question of paraphrasing is secondary. Typically, the flow of the text would require some sort of paraphrasing in order for your text to be understandable, but sometimes a direct quote would do a better job or just the statement in isolation is enough.
If I read an article, I do that because I want to know the content. I could not care less about the author. I am not judging you to see if you understand an article or not. Instead, I am judging the argument you are making. It does not help me to know if you got it right by accident or because of deep understanding; right is right and wrong is wrong.
Things are different when you are a student. It is the job of the instructor to figure out if you understood something, so now your understanding does matter.

Sounds like the OP is definitely a student. One that still hasn't learned that in your own words is actually useful; you're supposed to rewrite it from memory, not with a thesaurus in front of you... unless this is English class, then who cares. - "I could not care less about the author." +1. (how is it possible to have that opinion and +40k on Academia? ;)