text:
How do academic minors work?
How much in practice would someone minoring in a subject end up knowing about the subject as opposed to somebody majoring in it?  How much extra work does it take to get a minor?

You always have so many "?" in your question. I always try to use at most 2 in any question.

@Pikachu피카츄 Are you suggesting writing longer sentences or creating more threads?

I tend to structure a question this way (paragraph1) ... (paragraphn) summarizing my situation or what I know + ending with 1-2 questions. So it does not look like there are so many questions

Vote to close as "Need more focus"

Just split your blob of questions in separate questions. Then try to answer each one of these separate questions. Then come back to SE:Academia asking for answers. And then get the first and last of the questions presented here closed because they are based on personal opinions.

Please define useful: +5% in the starting salary? some additional technical knowledge? some insights in another topic?

@EarlGrey Useful as in any of the following: improves you chances of finding a job; makes it easier to perform your job; increases you salary; helps career growth.

I am not sure why you want to ask every question as a separate thread but if you insist here you go: I have moved the usefulness aspect of my question to a different question.

I don't understand the question. Can you not find the answers in the program booklet? It should spell out exactly what is needed to get a minor, as well as exactly what is needed to get a major; comparing the two then answers the question.

I am asking in general, not for a specific program

On one hand, I'm sorry to see the downvotes, these are straightforward questions that our site benefits from having.  On the other hand, I agree that you should really show more research effort. Even this site already has some posts about (for example) college minors; showing that you've read those and didn't understand something would probably help your questions be better received here.

How much in practice would someone minoring in a subject end up knowing about the subject as opposed to somebody majoring in it?

Things vary of course. But a minor is maybe 5 classes whereas a major is 10+. So, about half as much. This can be useful if you only care about certain parts of a subject -- get a chemistry minor by taking physical chemistry + inorganic; you can skip organic and biochem.
It's also sometimes true that if you major in science and minor in certain humanities subjects (or vice versa), you can cover almost all of your gen eds this way. So some people can get a minor "for free" by choosing classes strategically.
As for how useful this is in practice: probably not much. It's a good way to document an interest; i.e., anyone can say "I'm interested in writing," but having a minor in writing shows that you mean it. And of course if your minor means you take more classes than you would have taken otherwise, then you'll know more stuff, and that is usually good at some level. But I suspect that few hiring or admissions decisions would have gone the other way but for the presence/absence of a minor.

My understanding is that a minor could be very useful to augment your major. Such as a programming or an economics minor to augment ... I was actually trying to figure out how it might work and I was thinking of chemistry as an example: if you wanted to take physical chemistry I assume you would need to have taken thermodynamics and differential equations. And for differential equations you would need calculus I and II, so unless you need  take those classes for your major would your minor turn into a giant undertaking? Or is that how it is supposed to work?

Also, is a "minor" any different from simply doing things you like in a particular field i.e. where does it actually say that you have a minor? AFAIK the diploma doesn't mention your minor nor does you transcript specifically spell out that you minored in something?

The transcript may say it. You can also put it on your resume / CV. As for physical chemistry: my memory is that it required only univariate calculus. Thermo and separation of variables were covered in the course, and the multivariate stuff was simplified or skipped. But many chemistry majors are not mathematically inclined, so even this level of rigor caused considerable angst. Students probably wouldn't do a minor that involves physical chemistry unless they already had the math background; as you say, a fresh-off-the-boat literature major would need many prereqs to succeed.

So would the transcript outright say it? Because in the other case, I can't see how you can prove it.

Often yes. The process for proving a minor is the same as for a major, a certificate, or any other formally-issued credential. And saying you have a minor when the university didn't actually issue one is fraud.

There are at least two reasons to minor. One is to get some background in a field complementary to the major: say, chemistry for a biology major. Math and philosophy might actually go well together.
The second reason is just because you have an outside interest in something: literature for a biology major.
Some people get a minor because the required courses at a liberal arts college already contain most of it any way, so, why not. My philosophy minor was like that.
Some people take more than one minor. Actually double majoring is also possible many places.
The requirements for a minor might be approximately half of what they are for a major and might include a few upper level courses.
Some people just want a broad education. This has been true since the Renaissance, I'd guess.

Background on the US undergrad system.
A bachelors in the US is almost always four years, doable by a few in less and a few other students requiring more if they have difficulties.
Things are measured in "credit hours" and a credit is (most, not all places) about 15 hours of instruction, or an hour a week for fifteen weeks. Courses vary in how much they count, with three credits being typical but with variations in every program. Labs might require two hours per credit. Some courses are just one credit. There is no standard, but the above is common.
Students take about 15-16 credits per term for 8 terms (semesters), so the requirements for a degree are around 8*15 = 120 or so credits, maybe a bit more.
A major is usually a bit less than 60 credits and the rest of the courses/credits are general education requirements: history and such in a chem major.
So, it doesn't take "four years" for the major, but four years for the degree. But the prerequisite structure of the courses implies that the major courses are spread out with two or three taken per term.
A minor, on the other hand might be 30 or so credits, but the prerequisite structure spreads them out, but perhaps ten courses of 3 credits each taken over 8 terms, or 4 years. Some of the courses in a minor, indeed some in a major, might be required for a bachelor's in any case. So, science is required for many (most?) degree programs and so a chem major can do those in chemistry and get some of their "major courses" by taking the entry level science in chemistry.
Squeezing in two minors in addition to a major is a bit hard, as are double majors. It probably requires overloads and hard work. I once successfully completed 21 credits in a term where 15 was the norm. But I tried 20 in the following term and had to drop one as it was too intense and wound up with 17 that term.
Note that in both the major and in the gen ed requirements there is room for some choice of courses. They aren't rigidly prescribed. Some requirements are just to come up to the total successful credit hour requirement. So, using these options you can take courses in your minor or your major or (for some) whatever you like. There is a lot of flexibility. So, two student math majors might overlap in only the core required math courses and the core required gen ed courses, normally taken early on.

A few places like Dartmouth are on a quarter system with four quarters spread over the entire year. Most students there study for three of the four terms/quarters. The individual terms look different but the totals come out to be pretty equivalent. It is just in how you slice the apple. Since the summer quarter is just like the others, it makes better use of campus facilities overall. Faculty likewise normally teach in only some of the quarters, but when I was a visitor there (long ago) the standard was four courses per year.

"The requirements for a minor might be approximately half of what they are for a major and might include a few upper level courses." How much is that in practice? Does it include the gen-eds? Surely it doesn't take an extra 2 years to complete, right? How much more coursework would someone with a minor take compared to someone without one?

I like that from this answer it is clear that minor >> negligible :)

@EarlGrey, I personally value my philosophy minor quite highly. It was a good complement to math.


text:
Should I give up on academia after failing my qualifying exams?
I failed two of my PhD qualifying exams (STEM) and will be mastering out from the program. I do not want to give excuse for myself but I feel like a lot of it comes from my bad relationship with my advisor who makes some things impossible for me to control (he was also on the committee for my exams) no matter how much I work.
As for my academic profile, I got all A's in my graduate coursework except for a B which comes from the only class that I took from my advisor. I also have two first-author papers at reputable journals and some other papers like conference paper. I am wondering whether should I still continue academia as although I am still interested in research, I am concerned that I have received a bad record from my current program which will affect my future prospects in academia. For instance,

How should I explain my failure in my qualifying exams?
Why did I not have a recommendation letter from my advisor?
How should I explain my situation to previous recommendation letter writers to write for me again for the next application cycle?
Should I apply for a lower-ranked school this time round since I am now seen as a more risky investment?

If I could explain my above situations wisely, I may try applying for PhD programs again. Although this experience is very disappointing for me, I will be much more prepared this time and will be more wise in terms of which lab I should join.

I know from personal experience that you do not need to give up!  I also mastered out of a PhD program (in mathematics), but then successfully entered another PhD in mathematics program, and completed the PhD (and am now employed in academia!)
I did not explain my failing when applying to new schools- there's no way to really tell if you "mastered out" or if you were just getting a masters degree (at least in my case - double check this).  I did state that my previous institution was "not a good fit," but that the potential future institution would be for ::insert reasons here::.
For my one letter writer that I reused - I simply said it was not a good fit for a program, but that I had researched and found institutions that I felt were a better fit.  No questions asked!
I did not have a letter from an advisor - but in my case I didn't really have an advisor.  Our advisors were assigned after passing the qualification exams.  I did get a letter from one of my professors from coursework at that institution, as well as a professor that I was a teaching assistant for (to focus on my teaching skills).  I also used one letter writer I had used previously (who I had published with).  Again - I did not give an explanation in my applications (I think having some letters from the institution I was at helped even though it was not an "advisor")
It would not hurt to apply to lower ranked schools, but don't limit just to those.  I applied to a variety.  I still graduated from an R1 institution with a PhD.
Long story short - you really can still do it, if you have the passion.  Do good research on good programs that fit your interest.  Don't be afraid to look for a new advisor at your new institution if your first one doesn't seem to be helpful.
Best of luck!

Thanks! Were you doing research at your first institution and did you get a recommendation letter from him? This is my main concern as I need to get good recommendation letter from my department, just not from my advisor.

I was not - but I had done undergraduate research and that was the letter writer I reused the second time.  Do you have other co-authors that are not your advisor?  Could look there for a research letter.

Yes I do. My concern is that they will question me as to why I did not have letter from my current advisor.

I suppose that may depend on the field - but I do not necessarily see this being an issue to be concerned about.  Your transcript should not state your advisor's name on it, as far as I know.  Of course, if it is more typical in your field to have an advisor you are actively researching with before passing qualifying exams, then maybe it would come up.  You could just say, only if asked, that you felt that you worked more closely with a different collaborator than your advisor, and so thought their letter would be better.

Lots of people have good, satisfying careers without a PhD, including careers in research and development, especially in areas where there is a lot of industry/government research. Masters and even bachelors degrees are sufficient credentials for entry-level jobs in those areas.
Most people who earn PhDs these days also continue in one of those careers, rather than one in academia, because there are simply far more PhD graduates than there are long-term academic research positions. Of those who stay in academia, many are in positions where the primary duties involve teaching rather than research.
No one can really advise you on what you should do next, but I think it's worth considering whether attempting another PhD will make the rest of your life better or not. If you do try again for the PhD, it'll be helpful to have some recommendations from people that have more support for you. Really, though, you need to think about why a PhD is your goal long-term and whether a PhD from the institutions you are considering will help you achieve that goal.

I do want to get a PhD long term though. My concern is how do I show my research potential to future schools as I won't be getting recommendation letter from my advisor. This is my main concern as PhD admission committee seems to take past experience in another school as a crucial metric to evaluate their future success

@newbie125 You say you have published quality papers and now have a masters degree. Run with that. And, yeah, most of the things you could have done are things you should have started long before failing out of your current program. You can't go back and fix that now.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to handle a missing author on an ECCV paper submission after the deadline?
We recently submitted a paper to ECCV (European Conference on Computer Vision), but realized after the submission deadline that one of our significant contributors was omitted from the author list. ECCV's policy states no changes to authorship are allowed after submission. However, this person made substantial contributions to the work, including coding (with Git history as proof) and ongoing project communications, with every kind of proof that you can think of.
Given the importance of ECCV in our field and the extensive work required for acceptance, are there any circumstances under which conference organizers might consider adding a missing author? What are the potential consequences of requesting such a change? How should we proceed in this situation to ensure proper credit while adhering to conference policies?

You ask if there are circumstances in which conference organizers might be willing to add an author.
That's too general a question. You want to know if the organizers of this particular conference will let you do this.
Ask them.
Clearly state that the omission was an accident - essentially, a typographic error - that you are not retroactively awarding authorship for a questionable contribution.

Thank you very much, will do! It would be also helpful for me to know if other conferences have accepted in a similar situation, that might help me to how to communicate with this conference in particular.

@Danialz You're welcome. Come back and let us know what happens.

You can ask the conference or program chair, but your only ethical option might be to withdraw. The policy is up to them. The ethics is up to you.
Explain clearly the importance of adding an author and that it is in no way gift authorship.

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


text:
General Evaluation of Credentials
I just received news that I've been recommended for admission to a Ph.D. program(!!!) and that I will receive an official offer letter once the graduate office has conducted an evaluation of my credentials. Since they haven't asked me to take any steps, I assume that they are just checking that my transcripts are accurate, etc.? I am a U.S. citizen who only went to college in the States. When I look up this topic, I only find information on international students. They've asked me to confirm in early April, so I assume that their grad office already has all they need to evaluate?


text:
I inadvertently conveyed acceptance of an admission offer when inquiring about funding
I was accepted to a fantastic [U.S.] program last year I was surprised to get an offer from but because they didn't offer me any funding and my life was still in a whirlwind due to the pandemic, I deferred. I reached out about a month ago reiterating my happiness in being accepted and then I asked whether I could be reconsidered for funding. This is the part where I messed up. I said that I was looking forward to working with their faculty, which they took as planning to enroll. They responded by saying that they were happy to hear that I was enrolling for the fall, and they also cc'd one of my POI. When they responded, I realized that I hadn't chosen my words well.
The program itself is exactly what I am looking for in an MA program, but I really need funding to make it work. If had received any last year, I would have probably figured out how to move to that city and started the program on a part-time basis.
The bigger issue, if you haven't guessed it, is that I applied to a few other programs this cycle with the hopes of receiving funding. My question is, I haven't signed or submitted anything, I have only sent that email saying that I was interested in being considered for more funding. I'm guessing I should just let things be, and I honestly don't know if I will be accepted to any of those other programs.
Now I'm really worried that I've inadvertently committed myself and will be in a tricky situation if I do get a funded offer. Do grad programs take such statements to heart, or do they understand that grad applicants tend to change their minds about a million times in the process? I also would hope that graduate programs would be understanding of the fact that students want to avoid creating huge debt for themselves?

So you were able to "defer" the offer last year without making any commitment? Are you sure? "Deferring" an offer normally means accepting it with a negotiated start date, not just leaving the offer on the table for a year....which could explain why the faculty thinks that you are planning to enroll.

I really need funding to make it work

Be direct and honest about this. If you can only attend the program if funding is available, there's no need to be cagey about it. Either there is funding available for you and the program is a possible option (pending your other applications), or there isn't funding available and it isn't an option for you.
Don't just let it sit. You should respond, take responsibility for the confusion that you were accepting admission (not necessarily because it's your fault, it's just the polite thing to do), and clarify that while you are excited and happy to be accepted, you are asking about funding opportunities because without funding you will be unable to attend.
Now, generally US masters students are not funded. There are exceptions, and if you require it then it only makes sense for you to pursue those occasional exceptions, but usually available funding through TAships and RAships are held for PhD students. Training PhD students is seen as somewhat of a public good, as it's part of training the next generation of academic researchers. Training masters students, on the other hand, is seen more as part of the individual education for those students to take jobs with higher salaries outside of academia. Therefore, it's expected that masters students will pay their own way as an investment in future earnings.

This is a genuine mistake, so send an email as soon as possible to explain the misunderstanding. Admission committees are fully aware that MA programs cost a lot of money and that many people couldn't enroll without funding.
As soon as you are clearing the misunderstanding quickly enough so that it is not a burden for the admission committee, there should be no problem.

Thank you for your response!


text:
Campus interview at Ivy: a good or bad sign that shop talk stopped?
I recently interviewed at an ivy, and think it went really well… the job talk was a little weird. A 2nd year student wanted to fight about a really basic term, and that took up like 10 mins of Q&A.
But the faculty present acknowledged the oddity and said their students can be like that sometimes. We all laughed about it afterward. On the other hand the faculty asked great questions, and i answered their questions well during the talk.
My real question has to do with the dinner after the talk. It felt really relaxed, everyone had two drinks and there was a lot of jokes and laughing and story-swapping. A few of them followed up on my thank you email yesterday, and one search committee member even gave me a book to take home… however, nobody asked me anything else about my work or teaching at the meal… I feel like that’s a really good sign or a really bad one (ha!).
I know that it’s no use dwelling on it, but if someone can weigh in on whether the dearth of shop talk at dinner is a good or bad sign, I’d be exceedingly grateful.

Your experience with the dinner after the talk sounds perfectly normal to me. An on-campus faculty interview is a bit of a two way street. Your CV, job talk, and probably the bulk of time in your 1 on 1 interviews probably gave them a good idea about your research and a bit of your personality. This was likely more about them selling themselves to you.
When I was doing these interviews, the dinner was a way for the candidate to get to know the department faculty as people. Realize that not only are these people considering you as someone they might work with for the next 30+ years, but that you too will be doing the same. We wanted the candidate to be able to relax and not have to be "on" after the full day of interviewing and questions, but also be able to get a sense of the faculty as a community.

however, nobody asked me anything else about my work or teaching at the meal… I feel like that’s a really good sign or a really bad one (ha!).

I personally would take the fact that you and they could have conversations without it being just shop talk as a good sign and an indicator that they might be somewhat more well-rounded as people. However, if you are someone that wants it to be all-work/research with your colleagues all the time, then you'll have to think about the fit for yourself.

Thank you! This is really helpful!


text:
How long for notice after first round interview tenure-track
I applied for a tenure-track assistant professor position in the US, was selected as a semi-finalist and had my first round of interview. The next step is that they will choose around three finalists to be invited for an on-campus interview. Does anyone have an idea how long it would take to be notified after the first-round interview in case one is selected as finalist? Thanks!

Could be anything from a few days (unlikely) to a few weeks. Other interviews, time to consider, lobbying, who knows.

You should mention your field, the country, and possibly the type of institution as the answer will depend on these aspects.

The department will be assembling all input from anybody who has anything to say about the visiting applicants.  From there, probably a committee will meet and try to make decisions about who the "finalists" are, or possibly, the chair may decide alone.  Tentative choices may or may not need to be preapproved by a dean.
My suspicion is that much of this is probably handled within two weeks to a month, maybe six weeks.  Since faculty slots are so competitive, nobody wants to lose a top candidate because they're moving too slowly.
The candidates who don't make the final list may not be notified of that until a candidate signs a contract of employment, or maybe even never.
Frankly, I feel that department probably overshared about their process.  At many private universities, this process is not carved in stone, and could change (though for some public institutions, the process may be proscribed in code).  For example, let's say after the first round, the whole faculty agrees that one candidate clearly floated to the top. There's really nothing keeping that department from starting the brass tacks discussions with that candidate, and not inviting anyone else if it looks like the candidate may accept the job.  In fact, I'd say there are real incentives to doing so.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't let their description of their process change your process at all.  You interviewed, and you gave it your best shot.  Now, if you're serious about finding a job, you simply keep looking and keep interviewing, not worrying about whether you're going to be a finalist in some school's process.  If they invite you, or even if they offer you a position, continuing to interview might put you in a better negotiating position, or some options about which job you accept.

That would depend entirely on the process, your place in the line, and how strictly rules are followed. For example, if someone else and you are selected for final candidacy, but they still need a third finalist which they could not identify in the current set of interviewees, the time might be quite long. Another example would be that you did not make it into the group of three, but are the runner-up. If they have a strict process, they will not tell you no because they still might want invite you, but of course they cannot invite you now. If you are applying from abroad, certain rules need to be followed in order to extend you an invitation, which could further delay the process.
On the other hand, you might have already received an invitation by now.
If you are given an offer by someone else, then you have ample reason to contact them about the timing.


text:
PhD supervisor is getting too involved in my Postdoc, which is supervised by another academic close to him. How to diplomatically draw a boundary?
I had a rocky relationship with my Ph.D. supervisor. He has a my-way-or-the-highway style of supervision and was a relentless micromanager, so much so that I feel I "own" very few of the ideas that went into my thesis. I had several research hypotheses, which I developed with one of my master's supervisors, but he managed to steer me away from them via a combination of manipulation (“Why Don’t You?… Yes, But…”, "Great Idea! But it'll be better if [insert his idea]", "I never said...") and demoralization (80% of his feedback drifted into personal attacks rather than addressing technical matters). He also had very little respect for deadlines and lacked overall transparency. This experience wasn't exclusive to me. Several of his previous students filed complaints and most of them relate negative opinions about his supervision (Why didn't I do more to change the situation? In short: I lacked the confidence to do so at the beginning of the Ph.D., and, by the time I had the confidence, I was so far that I decided I would see it through, deliver the thesis, and move on).
My Ph.D. and PostDoc supervisors met when they did their respective postdocs in the same lab. They work on similar topics, respect each others' scientific opinions, and collaborate from time to time. I'd say they are "professional friends"; i.e., they share an amicable relationship in the academic realm while their personal lives remain personal. Logically, given this context, my Ph.D. supervisor played a gatekeeper role in my landing of the postdoc (and, even if we had a rocky relationship, getting the postdoc means he was willing to recommend me).
My current relationship with my PostDoc supervisor is much more even and respectful.
However, a few months into my PostDoc, it is starting to look as if my Ph.D. supervisor is too eager to get himself on board my project, something I do not want.  Since my PostDoc and Ph.D. supervisor have worked together in the past, his involvement may be normal to some extent, and there is a part of me that would be ok having his input as long as it constitutes an opinion and I am the one "owning" the project. The problem is that, since a few communications, my Ph.D. supervisor has started to write overmuch asking for updates and giving unsolicited suggestions/orders of analyses, some of which I am not interested in performing. As a safety check, I discussed the analyses with my PostDoc supervisor and he agreed they do not fit into the project (I did not reveal it was my Ph.D. supervisor who proposed them and my PostDoc supervisor was clearly not informed about my Ph.D. supervisor's communication). He's even started to bypass my postdoc supervisor when communicating with me.
In one of his most recent emails, he unequivocally implied I "owe him" my current position and that he expects something in return - to have a say in the project and co-authorship, I suppose. I still haven't reported this to my PostDoc supervisor, because I am uncertain about the best way to do it.
Finally, it must be noted that my Postdoc supervisor is at a better-ranked university, has more funding, and, overall, has achieved a more prominent profile than my Ph.D. supervisor. The PostDoc is part of a "high-profile" project in the field. This could explain my Ph.D. supervisor's eagerness to get himself on board with the current project.
Given that my two supervisors are friends, but also given the difficult personality of my Ph.D. supervisor, what would be the best way to address that I want my Ph.D. supervisor to have less input in my PostDoc project? I want to navigate this situation as diplomatically as possible, as I fear my Ph.D. supervisor could retaliate in some manner.

How much scientific/research grant interest has your current advisor in getting involved with your past advisor? If it is small, you are overplaying the importance of your past PhD advisor in your landing the postdoc position: they may have had good words for you, because you did a good job.

The past is past, let it go.
You do not need anymore your PhD advisor, but it looks like they need you to get involved in the current activity of your PostDoc advisor.
Additionally, the two advisors may have met during their PostDoc, but from that they followed different routes.
Sure, your current PostDoc may have asked to your PhD advisor "Hey, how is biomath doing?" but you are inferring too much:

Logically, given this context, my Ph.D. supervisor played a gatekeeper
role in my landing of the postdoc

A PostDoc is a contract to perform some research, is not a volunteering activity nor an exchange of favours between old Postdoc pals. You could possiblly be a trading card only if your current postdoc advisor is strongly interested in working together with your former PhD advisor. It does not seem the case.
Have a nice but empty and passive reply to your PhD advisor mail along the lines "Interesting suggestion, I will consider it" and always cc your current PostDoc advisor.
Do not let your old advisor drag you down. Now you are peers, they deserve a peer treatment.


text:
What tool to use for the online analogue of "writing lecture notes on a blackboard"?
A math lecture typically works with the professor explaining something, and at the same time writing her theorems on the blackboard, without any Powerpoint slides. When the blackboard is full, its contents are quite close to what should be in the lecture notes.
I think this has advantages over Powerpoint slides, besides being easier to prepare: One blackboard may contain 45 minutes of information, and a reader may look at all the previous information at their own leisure during the talk if they forgot something (or decided they want to prioritize understanding a certain part of the lecture).
How can I approximate this experience in an online lecture? Ideally, I imagine something like this:

The audience opens a link to something that looks like a PDF/Word document
While I hold the talk, I click my mouse and this makes the next (prepared) sentence appear in real-time for my audience and me,
In the end, when everything is revealed, those are the talk's lecture notes.
I may still point to certain places of the already-revealed lecture notes during the talk.

Is there a tool that allows for something like this? The best I can think of is using Google Docs and copy-paste, or similar.
(Update: The talk was held to a group of academic quantum information theory researchers [I had actually misunderstood who the audience would be], and the subject was some research of mine related to that subject. I was interested in functionality that would allow me to approximate the experience of a person writing on a blackboard --- either involving writing live, or clicking to make new statements appear.)

Welcome to Academia StackExchange! Could you be a bit more specific about the intended audience and the setting of the lecture? Maybe you could also briefly point out your background? (Many mathematicians use the LaTeX beamer class for the purpose that you describe, but you seem to be unfamiliar with it - so it might help to briefly mention your background.)

Hello, and thanks for the welcome! The intended audience is a group of academic/mathematically-sided ML researchers, the setting is an informal seminar talk in which I will present parts of https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04606 (not using LaTeX for it was a mistake that is in the process by being corrected) and hopefully have a discussion about whether it can be pushed further.

I am aware of, though not familiar with, the beamer class - but to my understanding, it is used to produce "Powerpoint-like PDF files" like this one. This is not what I want: If I present such a PDF file by sharing my screen, every slide would only be shown for a few minutes, and if a reader/I wants to point to a previous definition/theorem, I need to scroll a lot and it becomes a mess.

In contrast, I want to "present lecture notes", such that the audience is able to scroll through all of the previously explained things at their own pace during the lecture --- just like a student in a math lecture would be able to look anywhere they like on the blackboard, not just at the things written down in the last few minutes.

A blackboard in a lecture hall is usually very wide, and the audience is far enough to have a global view of it. A computer screen is often not so wide, so it may be a problem.

Related questions on matheducators.stackexchange: Suggestions for virtual blackboard?; Teaching math long distance?; Transitioning proof based math courses online?; How, now, shall we teach math online?

And How shall we teach math online?; How much does it cost to develop an online course?

Eddie Woo on YouTube is mostly teaching school kids, but his presentation style might be worth looking at: he's great.

@DuY: You should edit any relevant clarifications into the question itself, to make sure all the relevant info is in one place. :)

In the opening sentence you mention your teacher "writing theorems on the blackboard", but in the example you pose you want to "click to make (prepared) sentences appear on the digital blackboard". Which functionality is it you are interested in? Some answers below seem confused as to what you want to achieve.

Conceptboard is very good for this kind of a la minute, off-the-cuff, and all-at-a-glance use case.

Updated question, thanks for all your answers :)

Alright, you might not like this.
The question "How can make the experience of an online talk similar to the experience of a blackboard talk on-site" has the same answer as the question "How can I make streaming a movie online similar to the experience of watching a play in the theatre?":
You simply can't.
A movie is not a play and a screen is not a theatre stage. Both media have their advantages and pecularities, but they are too different to replicate the typical movie streaming experience on a theatre stage or vice versa. Same for an online talk and a blackboard talk.
(You might be able to rescue some of the blackboard spirit if you just give a blackboard talk and stream it via a camera and a microphone. But it will still not be the same experience, and it only works at a reasonable level of quality with the right setting and equipment, which you might or might not have available.)
You say you like blackboard talks (so do I), so let's see what makes this medium so well-suited for math talks; we can check for each point to which extent it can be replicated online. A (probably non-exhaustive) list of relevant points is:

Pacing. Writing things on the blackboard limits the speed at which we can discuss material in a talk. Many people seriously need such a limit (as you can see by checking what they do if they use slides, where no such natural limit exists).
This can be replicated online by writing by hand on a tablet computer instead of using text that has been written before.
Alternatively, you can use a medium without such a limit (for instance, slides), but force yourself not to put too much material in it. This is absolutely possible if one is really committed to do so.

Temporal synchronisation of speaking and writing. When you write something on the board, you will typically talk about what you are writing right now or about what you have just written.
Again, this can by replicated online by writing via hand on a tablet.
It can only partially be replicated by using pre-written text that is revealed piecewise as you give the talk. This solution is imperfect (and requires much more work to prepare, in particular if you want to do it really well, i.e. not only reveal things from left to right and top-to-bottom). It should be noted, though, that some people do not like such overlay mechanisms (link 1, link 2). Some other people though (including myself) get seriously annoyed if such overlay mechanisms are not used (e.g., not using them has typically the consequence that I am, as a member of the audience, unable follow which points the speaker is currently talking about. Using somekind of pointer to resolve this does typically not work well, in my experience.)

Geometrical synchronisation of speaking and writing. At a blackboard, the speaker will often be physically close to the written content they are currently speaking about, and increase the distance now and then during some elaboration that is not written on the blackboard. A good and experienced speaker can use the distance to the board to direct the audience' attention and to modulate the "density" of the presentation (e.g., move away from the board and insert a number of less technical sentences now and then in order to give the audience time to relax mentally a bit).
I see no way to replicate this online.

Using gestures and movements to keep the audience engaged. One great things about blackboard talks is that somebody is really moving at the blackboard. Personally, I find myself much more motivated to listen carefully if I see that there is something going on phyiscally and in three dimensions.
This cannot be replicated online. Putting your camera on during the talk, so that people can at least see you talking, is probably better than nothing, but very far from the experience in a lecture hall or seminar room.

Ability to correct a mistake. If you write something on the blackboard that turns out to be wrong, you can easily correct it.
This can be replicated online be some media, but not by others. Generally speaking, writing things on a tablet computer by hand gives you the opportunity to correct things. Whether pre-written text can be fixed on-the-fly depends on the details of the technical solution that you use.

Keeping large parts of the text available during the talk. This is a point that you mention as very important in your question. I'll argue that it actually consists of two important points:
Availability for the audience: As you say, somebody in the audience can just look at another part of the blackboard to recall what, say, "Assumption 1" was. The main point here is that it typcially takes very little time (and thus distraction) to look this up.
I claim that this can be replicated online only to a very limited degree. The only thing that you can probably do is, as you have already suggested, to send the entire document to your audience before the talk.
I think there are two major caveats, though: (i) Looking something up in those notes will often be more distracting for someone in the audience than it would be one the blackboard (because they might have to scroll through the document, and if they use only one screen, then this will cover the talk itself while they do so.) (ii) I strongly suspect (without having checked empirical evidence for it, though) that people are more easily distracted during online talks anyway, and this adds yet another distraction.
Availability for the speaker: This refers to the possibility that the speaker can refer back to results, assumptions, properties, formulas, and so on, from previous parts of the talk.
At the blackboard this is possible since everything (or much of it) is still there; it is also easier to follow since the speaker can move (phyiscally) to the point of reference and point there also physically, for instance with their hand or a stick (just in case that somebody finds the idea of a stick "old-fashioned": if something is located to high for your arms and you have the choice between using a stick or a laser pointer - please use the stick, it is so much easier to follow than those tiny points of light.)
I'll argue that - and that's the part that you might not like - it is not possible to replicate this online.
Going back in slides is, as you have already observed, extremely confusing. If you use slides, don't do it.
If you use a longer document - say, one which you write by hand via the talk - and scroll down during the talk, you might try to scroll up to refer to something that you have written earlier. I have done so in the past now and then, but my impression was that it does not work well during lectures for students - and it does not work at all during research talks, since the density of the material is typically much higher there.
So the situation is from my perspective as simple as that: if you give an online research talk, you are not allowed to go back (no matter which technology or software you use). If, say, "property (a)" is no longer on screen, you are not allowed to refer to it; instead, you have to put it there again (either by writing it by hand again, or by revealing a prepared version of it). This is the only way to ensure that many people in the audience will be able to follow you.
(In case that this seems like an exaggeration: no, I'm dead serious - Don't go back!)

Bottom line. An online talk is not a blackboard talk, and you won't be able to generate the same experience for your audience.
So rather than trying hard to achieve something which is not possible (with a high risk of messing it up), I suggest to choose an online medium which you think is most suitable for your presonal way to give a talk, and then adjust your talk such that it works well with that particular medium.

I like lots of parts of this, but let me suggest something to handle "availability for the audience": Use a tablet to write on an online document, to which you can provide your audience a link so that they can scroll it separately. I like miro.com for this and have given many lectures this way; I know other people who like google jamboards, creating a new board as they fill each one.

I do agree with the guidance that you, the speaker, are not allowed to go back and must restate things in place. What I am pointing out is ways to let the audience go back, if they want to check an old point.

This is a well-written answer. The one thing I starkly disagree with is the don't-go-back-in-slides dogma. I wouldn't want to make that a planned part of the talk. But, at my institution we have only very small boards, such that an hour's talk might easily refill it 5-6 times. Being able to go back arbitrarily with slides in response to student questions (whether in-person or online) has been a huge boon.

Regarding the third and fourth point, these two can be replicated by writing on paper and filming that, instead of e.g. using a tablet, as this will put the hand itself in the frame to mark position and gesture at things. To be fair, I have never seen this tried in a live lecture context, as the setup is probably a prone to have technical issues, but there are some math explanation videos on youtube that use this style to great effect.

For "Geometrical synchronisation of speaking and writing" you can also zoom out the writing to make it an inset or as an aside, then make the speaker camera the main display.

@mlk I vaguely remember one of my lecturers in undergrad writing on overhead projector slides instead of using a blackboard, which bears a lot of similarity to that idea, and from what I remember it worked reasonably well

@llama In secondary school we had a couple of teachers do this exclusively, having overhead projectors with rolls of "film" attached that they could scroll up and down. Very neat.

You can also use a whiteboard app/program that you can write on with a tablet. Some programs allow students to also join and scroll through the "whiteboard" in real time, and seems easier to scroll through than a document. Also, you can just move over to the other part of the board where you were before with just a swipe. I used this for teaching a class, and it does work. Specifically I used Microsoft Whiteboard, but there are other similar apps/programs out there that do basically the same thing.

Your description sounds close to the kind of videos produced by the Khan Academy for teaching students. This video, for example, opens with a prepared view of something (a plot of a function) but then, starting around 18 seconds into the video, the teacher begins to write on the "board".
They are probably using a graphics tablet as the user interface for the pen/pencil style of writing.

Thank you for that link, but my setting is a live lecture, not a prepared YouTube video - so I would like the reader to have access to a larger quantity of information than fits on one screen.
I think the solution that I'll probably use is to scan the writeup I have and OCR it as far as it makes sense, share the entire scan with everyone in the beginning, and then just scroll in the notes and share my screen.

@DuY: I don't have time right now to right a full answer, but I would strongly recommend not to scroll through a document in order to present a talk. I've seen this a number of times (while I was out in the audience, either onsite or online) and in most cases it turned out to be a really bad experience.

Thanks for that hint... If you have time: Were these documents specially prepared for the lecture? I'll be careful that I don't need to "wildly scroll around", but the formatting is so that pressing the "down key' once corresponds to what would be one more bullet point in a slides presentation.
I'll maybe try the google docs copy-paste thing then. I would just really like to recreate the writing-on-blackboard experience, I personally don't like slides very much either (being in the audience).

You could present a live YouTube video lecture, with annotations on a blackboard or whiteboard, but you would need a production crew and at least two cameras. You'd probably have to practice the presentation with the crew as well. I'm sure this is impractically expensive for you, but there are YouTube channels that do this.

It's not mathematics, but I use OneNote for writing my notes on the screen and displaying it.

Does not answer the question, cf. the following: "While I hold the talk, I click my mouse and this makes the next (prepared) sentence appear in real-time for my audience and me". The asker does not want to write on a digital blackboard in real time.

@FerventHippo The OneNote I use does precisely what the OP asks: approximates the experience of writing on a white board. The “click” can be approximated by simply scrolling to pre-prepared content. But that seems counter to the start of the question.

I did something similar, using Microsoft Whiteboard with a touchscreen laptop and pen. Benefit of this is that other users can join and see/scroll through/save the screen in real time (which OP wanted their students to be able to do)

I find a document camera combined with pen and paper is a good way to create a naturally paced writing experience in an online lecture. It allows you to use any kind of writing tools, such as differently coloured pens, a ruler, etc., and in my opinion tends to look better than most methods for handwriting input to a computer.

Does not answer the question, cf. the following: "While I hold the talk, I click my mouse and this makes the next (prepared) sentence appear in real-time for my audience and me". The asker does not want to write on a digital blackboard in real time.

I'd argue it does answer the question in the title about "the online analogue of writing lecture notes on a blackboard". The mouse-click method was given as an example, and in my opinion it would be a rather inadequate replication of the blackboard experience. But people may disagree about that, of course.

Tactile tablet with blackboard app
If you have a graphic tablet, there exist apps specifically to emulate a blackboard. These can be linked either to a video-projector, if you ever need to teach in an amphitheater that has a video-projector but no blackboard, or to a video-conference call.
Usually, these apps are designed so that you can "turn the page", which has the same effect as erasing the blackboard, except the previous blackboard is saved, and at the end of the class you have a multiple-page pdf compiling all the blackboards you've filled during the session. You can distribute it to the students.
Jupyter notebook
Prepare a Jupyter notebook before the class. A Jupyter notebook is a document that can be opened into your browser. It consists in a series of cells; each cell can hold either markdown, or latex/mathjax, or python code (or code in some other programming language).
You can prepare the cells in advance, and leave some cells blanks to fill them during the class.

The markdown is super useful to have structure, with titles and subtitles, enumerations and bold.
The latex is super useful for all the math equations.
Both latex and markdown work almost-exactly like on stackexchange, so you will feel at home.
You can use pre-written python code to graph functions, plot probability distributions, and a lot of stuff.
You can also include pictures.

The reason I like Jupyter notebooks so much for math class is that they give the perfect balance:

You can prepare the document in advance;
You can edit the document live, in front of the students;
At the end of the class the document is available to the students; they don't even need to install Jupyter on their computer, if the server you use can handle Jupyter notebook. Even github handles jupyter notebooks, so you can host the document on your github and the students will be able to read it without installing anything on their computer.

When I prepare the document in advance:

At the beginning of the document, I use latex's \newcommand to define shortcut that I know I will need to be able to write latex fast during class, such as $\newcommand{\P}[1]{\mathbb{P}\left( #1 \right)}$ if I'm doing probabilities or $\newcommand{\N}{\mathbb{N}}$ if I'm doing arithmetic;
If I have exercises to solve, I will prepare the text of the problems in advance, and leave blank cells for the solution;
I'll prepare the titles and subtitles in markdown.

Sharepoint access and a copy of Microsoft Word for everybody could do that.  So could Google Docs.
Both systems provide simultaneous viewing of a document being edited.  And both provide equation objects you can add to the document which take a modified form of LaTeX math syntax for keyboard entry.  It might take a lot of practice to get fast enough to do a lecture but it's sound enough to use for notes and coursework in my experience.

How can I approximate this [black board] experience in an online lecture?

There is a low-tech answer to this question that is not covered in the other answers.
Place a webcam in front of the black/white board.
This way you can more or less keep teaching as you normally would in the classroom if you had a group of students in front of you. I did this in my teaching throughout the pandemic with great success, and it is now my go-to for online teaching. All the points listed in @Jochen Gluecks answer are retained in this method. I therefore do not agree with their assessment that You simply can't.
I teach language and linguistics, so my requirements may be slightly different from those in mathematics.
Some things I learned from experience with this method:

You need a high resolution camera. Otherwise things you write on the board will not be clearly visible in the image. I use the built in webcam on my MacBook Pro. Colleges that have tried this with laptops with lower quality webcams have had problems with the resolution. My university has cameras at the far end of some lecture halls for this very purpose, but they are too far away with too low resolution for things written on the board to be visible, so I ended up not using them.

A decent every-day bluetooth headset will do. I use my Bose QC3 that I bought for listening to music. The sound quality of the microphones is not fantastic, but it is good enough. The wirelessness allows me to move around as I would in a normal lecture. I have also used the inbuilt microphone on my laptop (MacBook Pro), which works  well provided that the laptop is on the table in front of me.

Place the camera/laptop at about chest height in front of the board. This gives the best framing and perspective. If I can't adjust the height of the table in front of the board I simply put a chair on the table with the laptop with the webcam on top of that. This also allows you to have a (somewhat) natural view and emulated eye-contact with the students in the zoom room. (Natural interaction with students and the reading of their reactions is the bit I think you really cannot fully compensate for. I often ask student to exaggerate body language by nodding and using thumbs up and the like for me to read it better, but it still of course is not the same thing.)

I like to build presentations using LaTeX and the beamer package.  The result is a PDF that, when viewed fullscreen, looks just like a normal slideshow.  You get an incredible level of control over the output, though.  I build mine where content is progressively revealed as I'm talking.  I probably hit the spacebar every 5-10 seconds to reveal the next bullet point in the list or the next step of an equation.  That gives a more chalkboard-like feel, where it's more like the slides are recording what I'm saying and less like I'm reading the slides to the audience. Besides progressive display of a page, you can also have page elements appear and disappear, highlights and colors can change, etc.  Since the output is a PDF file, you get all the advantages that format brings (your last two bullets).
There's a question on the LaTeX user's Stack Exchange site that demonstrates how to do it.  It's a bit odd the first time you try it but once you get the hang of it, you can build some very impressive-looking presentations.

In my experience, slides and beamer are awesome for presentations. But terrible for teaching.

While re-iterating Jochen Glueck's exhortation to "embrace the medium" of online lecturing, it is worth noting that since this medium is novel, the technology is evolving.
Thus, you may wish to keep asking for and looking for features that give you and your audience the engagement that is being sought.
In particular, multiple mechanisms for keeping the material available for the speaker and the audience are possible.

Links: One can use hyperlinks. How such a link works depends on the software used to create it and the software used to display it. The actual display could merely pop-up as a small box on the screen almost like one would walk to the relevant place on the board and point out the relevant portion. Alternatively, the link may directly go to an earlier slide. Such a mechanism does not exist in Google's Jamboard (for example), but one could ask them to create it!

Audience access: As David E. Speyer has mentioned there are tools that can make slides available online for the audience, even as they are written. In one talk I attended, the slides were "minified" and placed at the top of the screen still (more or less) legible. This successively reduces the available screen space, which may also be a good way for the speaker to realise that they are "using up space and time"! Again, it would be nice for such a feature to be added to various tools that are currently available for online talks.

It is also very technically feasible to have a large spatial plane where the lecturer can write and the students can zoom and pan around to refer to earlier scribblings - exactly in the manner of students moving their eyes around an array of blackboards. The question is merely whether a software vendor will produce such a solution, and expressed demand for it makes that more likely.

@John I often use Xodo for online lectures and one can make a "blackboard" with a large writing area which one can move a "window" around in as you have suggested. However, as of now, I don't know how to share it with the audience in "live" mode.

If you are quite tech-savvy, you can achieve the desired effect in a RevealJS presentation with the Chalkboard plugin, run from a touchscreen-enabled PC. Combine this with the Multiplex plugin to allow viewers to follow on their own devices, and author the presentation in Quarto to add on LaTeX rendering and, if you're mad enough, responsive cells coded in Python or Julia.

The most effective online lectures I've seen (actually some of the best lectures of any sort), have had the lecturer standing behind a glass or plexiglas screen. As they spoke they wrote on the screen. But wait! Won't the writing all be mirror reversed for the audience? No, it was all perfectly legible.
At first I marveled that the lecturer had taught themselves to mirror write in real time. Then I realized that the producers had simply mirror transformed the video in post-production.
It may sound like a cheap trick, but I thought the end product combined the best aspects of recorded talks and live talks. I had the ability to stop and rewind at points that seemed unclear and I could time shift viewing to a time that was convenient for me. It provided the engagement of a live chalk talk while avoiding the perennial problem of the lecturer talking into the board and loosing eye contact with the audience.


text:
Finish incomplete degree before returning to school?
I left a Masters' program (philosophy) nearly a decade ago, after completing all coursework (and doing well in it), but without having completed a thesis, partly because I wasn't in line with my department's approach, and partly because of a life change (having children).
Lately I've been considering pursuing an advanced degree in philosophy again.  Am I correct to assume I would need to start by finishing up my long delayed thesis?  It isn't the easiest thing to do outside of an academic program, but my old department has indicated they wouldn't be entirely closed to the possibility of me completing it, even at this late date.  Conversely, would it be possible for me to just start fresh, even with the incomplete degree on my record? (I'm still not much in line with my former department's approach.)
Note: There are some similar questions here, but I don't think they address the advisability of finishing the old degree first.

Re: "nearly a decade," many institutions in the United States have a ten year rule for transferring credits.  Act fast!

@BobBrown I'm less worried about the credits, and more about whether having an unfinished degree in the same field is a demerit in the admissions process.

Yes, it will weigh against you, but the farther in the past it is, the less will be the weight.  After some period, the weight will be negligible.  Briefly address your life change in your application letter or statement of purpose, but don't make a big deal about the incomplete degree.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that would stopping you from starting over fresh in this case - you can retake every course, restart your thesis, etc. if you so desire. (That being said - I'm not an administrator.)
That being said, it's also probably worth your time to get a copy of your old transcript (if possible) and talk to any prospective universities about transferring old credits. It may or may not be possible for every course, but I'd be surprised if absolutely zero of them transferred.
The advantages to this approach are numerous, to say the least:

It's most likely cheaper.
You'll almost certainly complete your degree faster.
You can skip ahead to the parts of the program that most interest you without having to worry about prereqs.

As always, however, you'll have to check with your institution of interest as to what their specific rules/procedures are. Beyond that, I imagine it's hard to say with any certainty what to expect.
That goes for returning to your old university too -- they'll know best what your first steps will be.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Dislike PhD project
I'm a few months into my PhD, but I'm finding that I'm not interested in the my project. I joined my research group with a masters in electrical engineering. I wanted to do research that incorporates electrical engineering and biology, but somehow I ended up with a project that is exclusively biology. A I'm worried that if I continue down this path, I'll end up stuck in a career I don't like. I've talked to my adviser about my concerns, but he made it clear that I must work on my current project. Here's what I see my options are:

Finish my PhD with the project I currently have and switch fields immediately after
Try to switch research groups
Quit school and get a job

Eventually I would like to work in industry developing medical devices. How feasible is it to reach this goal from where I am now? I'm also interested in hearing from people who were in a similar situation I am in now and what they choose to do.

"When you do your Ph.D, make sure you do something that you love, because you're going to be sick of it after doing it for five years." Paraphrased from a Master's advisor I had. I wish I had followed his advice more literally!

@ Irwin, What happened if you don't mind me asking?

Eventually I would like to work in industry developing medical devices.

Did you tell your advisor this when you had your discussion ? Did your advisor tell you why you need to stay on this project ? It's possible that they had a better vision of how this might help you with your long term goals, but it's also possible they aren't really thinking about your goals.
I've had students who had strong opinions about what they wanted to work on, and did NOT want to work on what I suggested. They always won, and that's how I think it should be. But it took time for me to understand their reluctance to work on my project, and it helped immensely when they came to me with their own project ideas.
So I'd suggest you think about a project that you'd prefer doing, and go to your advisor with that idea. Hopefully it's not too far removed from your advisor's expertise (otherwise they'll have a hard time - well - advising).

"they came to me with their own project ideas" sometimes (may be the case here) the ideas of the students (or supervisors) don't matter at all, there is funding to do one thing (possibly decided by politicians) and that's pretty much it. You can work on your ideas in your spare time, if you get to have such a thing.

I did mention that I wanted to work on medical devices. He gave me a few reasons why my project will help me, but I don't agree with his reasoning. I'll try suggesting a different project, but the trouble is my adviser has funding for this specific project and since we're a small group, I don't think there's a lot of room to move around. Still, I have a few ideas related to his previous work, so I'll give this try.

Funding is always a constraint, and you do have to realize that. If your advisor has a grant to work in certain areas, then it will be difficult for him to support you to work in completely different ones. This is one of those things where compromise can actually help.

Before I try to answer, I think it's really difficult to advise on such a major decision without knowing you and your situation. Personally, the best advice I can think of is to seek out a senior researcher who is unbiased, who knows the area, who knows your context and who can talk you through your decision.
But based on what you've said, since you are early in the PhD process and since your reason for wanting to switch seems genuine and not a temporary disillusionment (i.e., your PhD project is in a field you are not interested in and that's not going to change), you should probably try to apply to other PhD positions, keeping your current position until you find something better (or at least see how difficult it would be to find something better).

I've talked to my adviser about my concerns, but he made it clear that I must work on my current project.

Also, need it be said, you should take the advice of your supervisor with a pinch of salt: they are biased and will want you to stay in the PhD, even if it's not in your best interest. You don't need to work on the current project: you can always quit and go somewhere else.

A good advisor will want what's "in your best interest." If you think yours is a good advisor, you should take his advice seriously (although of course you can still disagree with it).

@ff524, agreed yes.

First, and foremost, this is your PhD. Not your supervisor's.
The question that you choose to address in your PhD needs to come from you. You might take guidance on this from your supervisor(s), but if you don't own the problem wholly, then I doubt you will have the drive to survive the slings and arrows that will come your way during your PhD, including the general malaise that hits almost all PhD students during their thesis. If you are working on a problem in which you are not fully invested, I doubt you will succeed.
You've done the right thing in bringing your concerns to your supervisor. If he is resolute that you must continue on a path that you don't feel sufficiently in control over, or which is not addressing the question you seek to answer, then I suggest you switch research groups - or indeed find a suitable job for the time being.
Regarding the job you mention - medical devices - I suggest you make contacts with the recruiting agents for a number of firms and get their feedback on the general qualities that their successful hires have. Try and identify recent hires yourself and introduce yourself, asking them for a little about their training. This will give you a good idea of how to proceed with your own training.
You might find people on this website to offer advice, however I think that their answers might be off-topic for this question.
Best of luck.

"If you are working on a problem in which you are not fully invested, I doubt you will succeed." This depends on your definition of success, you can finish a PhD on an uninteresting topic with a good track of publications, but would that be success? Maybe for someone who wanted to do that.

+1 for suggesting to get in touch with firms to find out the qualities they would like in their future hires

Now this is just my opinion and it worked for me. Per Steve Martin in the movie "Mixed Nuts", "In every POTHOLE, there is HOPE" (if you re-arrange the letters and so on).
I was faced with a similar situation. I sought out the challenges of the project I disliked and tried to, as dispassionately as possible, look at the aspects of the project however small that I would consider working on. I did exactly that. Yes, I had to construct a convincing argument for my adviser as to why focussing on a sub-aspect of my project whilst not losing track of the bigger chunk would be useful for me and the project. Yes, I did have a quasi-supportive adviser and an quasi-supportive department chair who wanted me to succeed since the "greater good" of my public university was at stake.
Since you have already "talked to your adviser", you may need to wait it out for a semester or so before you broach the subject matter again. i.e., if you find aspects of the project you like (time can change our perspective).
If you don't... perhaps you would need to cut and run to another research group or university since your professional life would be at stake.
So in summary, those are the two options that I had:

Focus on a sub-project of the main project. Link that to the success of the main project and work in that direction. Worked out for me! I am happier with my contributions to the field.
If things go from "bad to worse", cut and run to another group/univ.

Subplot: Yes, per Badroit's answer, you should generally heed your adviser's er... advice. Since they would generally look at the greater good and the bigger picture. But you would know best about his/her personality and you may need to use your gut feelings in such situation.
Good luck! Either way, it will be a character building exercise which will also provide you with interesting technical skills and temperament which are the subtle skills necessary for success in industry or academia (or so I am told).

I'm a few months into my PhD, but I'm finding that I'm not interested in the my project. I've talked to my adviser about my concerns, but he made it clear that I must work on my current project.

"A few months in" is still very early in a doctoral program, so it shouldn't be too early to switch research groups. If your adviser said that you "must" work on your current project, I assume that means, "If you're going to keep working with me, you'll have to work on this project." (It's not too unusual for an adviser to balk at the prospect of advising a student who wants to start a new project, particularly if they don't feel they have sufficient expertise or interest. Some research efforts take months or years to get underway, and students can't expect every faculty member to put aside what they've been working on just to accommodate a new student's whim.)
I would start looking around your school to see if there's another research group working on something more closely related to your interests. If not, you've left out a fourth possible option, which is to transfer to another school. If you're not even a year in, then it may not be too late to switch, particularly if you can find a faculty member who is working on exactly the kind of work you are hoping to do.

You present three options:

Finish my PhD with the project I currently have and switch fields immediately after
Try to switch research groups
Quit school and get a job

Let's take a closer look at each of them:

"Finish my PhD": This is what you are doing now. This is the default option, the base with which you have to compare everything else. Be aware this is not a particularly easy path.
"Switch research groups": Do a quick search, can you find something? Because this option only makes sense if there is some research group to switch to, where it's possible to switch (being admitted, it's not like saying hi and crossing the door...), where the advisor is not a jerk/moron/whatever, where it's possible to do the research you want to do (it could be the same or even worse). We don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. Search, get information. It's not easy, IMHO, but you may have skills for this, I've no idea.
"Get a job": what kind of job are we talking about here? How interested are you in doing a PhD? (the one in option 1 and the one in option 2), would it be a dream job in what you want or simply something to earn some money? how much money? Again, search.

Try not to invest/waste more time in searching than what you need to make a decision, in either case, you have already decided (by default), you are in option 1, you have not enough information to make a specific decision and the clock is ticking. Any of those three options could be a life-saver or a death-in-life depending on specific details (but most probably it will not be any of both, there is a lot of room in between).
Good luck.
PD: I know people that have started a PhD on a different topic after 3 or 4 years of working on a different topic. People that have started a PhD after years in industry and paying the loan for the house (big deal). People that have quit a PhD after 2 or 3 years. People that have published the thesis as a (free public) book, so that it's there in the record, but have no made the defense (and probably never will, because there is a limit in time for that).
In short, this ((academic?) life?) is not like the rails of a train where you make specific decisions that cannot be changed (ever), is more like a sea you sail, think about it in a more open way.
Also, shipwrecking is possible, as well as going adrift, getting lost, etc.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Suspicious referee report, are "suggested citations" from a paper mill?
Our paper contains a small bit of application of graph theory to something related to biophysics. A referee claims that we should mention other applications of graph theory to biophysics in the introduction. The "keywords" he gave us are actual titles of papers, and all but one has one common author. They are also not really relevant (which we pointed out), not really the important ones in that field (there are other, earlier papers doing very similar things), and this we have pointed out. He still insists, that according to him "as an expert", more references should be added. Now, I checked the guy who wrote those papers, and he had 60 papers in the last three years, is a professor somewhere in the middle east, and has no publications before those. Is there some way to check if the papers he want us to cite do not simply come from a paper mill?
(Note, that this is a theoretical topic. I cannot check, e.g., measurements for having the same noise.)

One would think that pointing this out to a competent editor would suffice…

Possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/99745/how-to-deal-with-an-unreasonable-reviewer-asking-to-cite-irrelevant-articles though I'll let the community decide whether the emphasis on a possible paper mill (rather than someone just boosting their own work) warrants a separate Q&A.

@BryanKrause There's also Inappropriate reference requests from Journal reviewers. I don't think we have a question on "how to identify articles from paper mills" yet, so while this question currently appears close to an X-Y problem, editing it to further emphasize that aspect might be useful.

@Anyon Indeed, that one is probably better.

Do you actually cite the earlier papers that are more important in the manuscript??  This isn't clear from your post, and it might make a difference as to your options

@Scott Seidman Yes, we do. The "keywords" the referee gave us are exact titles of papers that apply (a rather distant part of) the same branch of mathematics to two topics, one of them can be added as an outlook paragraph, that there is this activity (but it is really a stretch to call it related), and in that case, there are many other works, and I think one of them got the same results earlier as the one "recommended", and the other is clearly unrelated. One of them even contradicts previously published results in the same field, and does neither cite them nor comment on them.

I've experienced this as well, it's really frustrating.  Bear in mind that the editor makes the decision to accept or reject, not the reviewers.

I don't think it's up to you to show that the papers are from a paper mill or anything else to a standard that would convince a court beyond reasonable doubt.
Like Jon Custer states in a comment, a competent editor will understand this request is problematic and, like you, will find it worrying that these papers all share this suspicious author.
I'd write a note to the editor, separate from a response to the reviewers, raising your concern. It probably would have been best to do this in the first place but you can still do it now.
It's up to the editor, not this reviewer, to decide the fate of your paper. If the editor is also insisting on these additions, I'd question the editorial quality of the journal and likely resubmit elsewhere. If you're absolutely convinced of the quality of this journal, then it may be worth escalating above the editor.

As an added note, while OP suspects that the reviewer is this professor in the middle east but may be wrong on this, OP actually knows who the editor is and can therefore check whether the editor is involved with these papers in any way.

@Bryan Krause Yes, we have written a note to the editor. We have also added an outlook section now, demonstrating that there is plenty of activity in (somewhat) related fields, to satisfy what he wanted (references from 2022, 2023). We do not cite his unrelated papers. At least now we have recent references (which was his complaint), and still we are not giving in to extortion of citations to not-so-good and not-too-related papers. The journal seems to be a decent one. I'll check if the editor has anything to do with the topic, but I do not think so.

@quarague True, I am guessing. On the other hand, the other two referees consider that we have cited what is relevant. Also, what other motivation can someone have to try to make you cite unrelated research, than being the author and needing citations.

@arpi: Being a friend/colleague/supervisor/student of the author and wanting to get them citations.  I know, it's not a substantially different motivation.  Just pointing out that if the editor sees the common author of the papers is not the same person writing the review, it doesn't prove the citation request is valid.


text:
I have received a reply from a potential professor. Is this a positive one?
I am applying for a PhD position. The potential professor replied to me as below. Was it a positive one? I tried to arrange an informal interview with her but was rejected. I really like this position but, in my opinion, her reply was ambiguous.
"Thank you for sending your application. Your profile looks interesting. We are currently selecting candidates so I will add your application to the pool of applicants.
We hope to reach a final decision end of April. I will recontact you shortly after."
Edit: She told me the shortlist would come in mid-April, so I won't wait a long time LOL. It's time to apply for other positions!

It kind of reminds me of the classic "cannot recommend him too highly."

There is no clear subtext in this message. Read it at face value - you are not obviously unqualified, you are considered for the position, how far up in the list you are you will learn once they made their decision in a month.

Her reply was neutral, neither positive nor negative. She probably hasn't made a serious attempt to evaluate your qualifications yet, and she is implicitly asking you to refrain from further contact for the time being.
My advice would be to wait, and not press the matter further until you hear from her again. In the meantime, you may want to apply for additional PhD positions.


text:
What should I prepare before a second meeting with my potential professor?
I am applying for a PhD program and received a second interview invitation from my potential supervisor. She said she would like to discuss the potential direction of the project and my ideas for this project. My background isn't a perfect match with this project, so I have been working on the basic knowledge of this field (which is neurology). Before this interview invitation, I sent some emails to her to discuss some possible applications of the project, but all my questions were really general (for example, the project works on A, and I asked her if we can combine A and another therapy, B, together to expect an additive effect). However, most of them were less relevant to the main objective of this project, I asked them because I thought there could be more usage of the therapy A.
Do I need to come up with more specific questions about this project? How do I have impressive ideas for something I'm not familiar with?

"How do I have impressive ideas for something I'm not familiar with?" You don't, that's why she in all likelihood isn't expecting you to have "impressive ideas", but simply to "discuss the potential direction of the project and your ideas for this project".

@AdamPřenosil So the more important thing is to express my thoughts, even they could be dumb or useless?

There is a lot of space between "dumb or useless" and "impressive". You should be able to have some coherent ideas about what you want to do, but that doesn't mean you need to be trying to "impress" anyone. See the answer of cheery.beach for more detail.

She invited you for a first interview, so you look good on paper. She invited you for a second interview, so she liked what she saw. All good news. In my experience, a second interview is to evaluate how good of a fit you are to her lab, and to possibly assess what kind of projects you are capable of handling. Bring ideas of possible projects, and show flexibility in terms of tackling projects which are a little outside of your experience. You've already shown that you are a good scientist (hence the interview invitations), now show that you are also a good colleague and collaborator.

Thank you! I am more relaxed now, and I know what I should do.


text:
Is there any way to find Donald Knuth's undergrad/master's thesis?
Just what the title says. As far as I know, Knuth's undergrad thesis was so good that the faculty at his university decided to honor him with both an undergrad degree and a master's automatically.
I wonder if this thesis is available for the public to see. I suppose students at Case Western have full access to it, but I'm unfortunately not one of them. Is there a way to get access to this thesis?

Do you have a reference that says there was a thesis? I've seen that Case Western awarded him B.S. and M.S. together, but no mention of him having written a B.S. thesis.

It's not listed on his C.V. - PDF version and there's nothing in Case Western's library catalog.

What about emailing Knuth, the secretary of CWU's CS program, or their library?

It is impossible to email Knuth directly, because he stopped using email in 1990 http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html I would approach the library directly.

@ff524 I don't know if there is a thesis but I'd suppose so. Isn't it necessary for graduation in all universities?
As it's impossible to email Knuth and the time it takes to even get him to read the snail mail is too long, I'll try contacting CWU's library then.

@Teckizt Isn't it necessary for graduation in all universities? - nope, not necessarily at B.S. and M.S. level.

Finally, I contacted CWU's library and was told by an archivist that Knuth indeed graduated from the Case Institute of Technology with a BSc and an MSc simultaneously in 1960.
However, he didn't need to present a thesis. It was not a graduation requirement at that time.
What a shame!

No problem :) I was dying to know the answer!

The faculty voted to give him a Master's degree not because he presented a great undergraduate thesis (there was no such thing, as you said), but because he had been taking mostly graduate (Master's) courses, and doing well at them. (In a recent interview he revealed that it was because he found the graduate courses easier… but whatever it was, it was sufficiently unusual that the faculty had a special vote and did things this way.)


text:
what is the usual time to start applying for jobs and other positions during a phd?
I have started writing my thesis ( just yesterday:) ). My advisor asked me to submit it in one or two months. Now am wondering should I start applying for jobs at this time period. I plan to talk about this with my advisor. But I thought of other opinions as well. Please share your experience also.

Just want to confirm. You started writing your PhD thesis yesterday. Your advisor asked you to submit it in one or two months?

No, it is sort of almost done. I have been writing it for past few months. My advisor gave a final deadline yesterday.

Yes, you should start applying for jobs.  You should have started several months ago, since it can take time to find a job, and after you do it may still take some months before the job actually starts.  This depends strongly on what kind of job it is.
Of course, if you are looking for an academic job in the US, the interviewing season is roughly November-March, so you want to time things around that.  For industry jobs and academic jobs elsewhere, there is not usually a particular season to focus on.

Is it OK that a PhD student work during his first or second years of PhD? I mean, on the contrary to what is asked above, the student work alongside his PhD research and education; not after he is done with his degree.

@Parsa that question has many answers, some of them long, depending on the kind of work.  Perhaps you should post it as a separate question.  Also see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1103/what-part-time-jobs-are-suitable-for-phd-students?rq=1 and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/708/is-it-possible-to-work-on-extra-activities-start-up-project-during-phd?rq=1.

I agree with @DavidKetcheson. You should be able to get some sense of the "lead time" on jobs of the sort you're interested in by browsing current adverts: what is the typical "start date"? For competitive academic positions, this might be as much as a year ahead.
However, there may be strategic reasons to delay, accepting the risk that you can't start working (and earning money!) as early as you wish. For example, you might feel you're likely to be able to secure a much better job if you publish a particular piece of work before going on the job market. There's also the issue that job-hunting can be a time-consuming business: plenty of people decide that they'd prefer to concentrate on completing their thesis first, and then focus on finding a job. I don't think this is an a priori unreasonable approach to take, particularly if you're in a system where there is some significant amount of "dead time" between submitting your thesis, and having the defence.
Regardless of the approach you take, you should certainly be looking at job adverts now, to get a sense of what might be available, and what people are offering/looking for.


text:
Doubt regarding uploading Tables and Figures for the accepted manuscript
The instructions of the engineering journal I submitted to (IEEE transactions on wireless communications) says this regarding the final submission of figures and tables

Please upload the Originals (masters) of the tables and figures (in separate files, one
  figure per file). All graphics material submitted for publication must
  be original drawn figures in .eps format, with each figure submitted
  as a separate file. Figures exported from other formats (e.g., PDF,
  PowerPoint) will not reproduce well in print. Appropriate fonts
  include: Symbol, Helvetica, Arial, Times New Roman.

What do they mean by "originals (masters) of the tables"? Does it mean that I should submit each table also as a separate file? If so, in which format?

Have you asked the production staff?

In my opinion, the guideline regarding tables is outdated, and one can safely ignore it. If you submit your manuscript in LaTeX, put your tables in the main text. This is a current mainstream in (STEM-related) journals, and it is good to delicately push IEEE towards it. In case if they insist on doing this the other way (which I seriously doubt), you can address the questions to their production team.

How outdated are you talking? LaTeX/TeX were around long before electronic submission.

@StrongBad The guideline clearly dates back to the days of  paper mail submissions (just replace "separate files" with "separate pages").

The guidelines aren't very precise, but this is what it means:

Submit your tables in separate files, one table per file, but only if the tables are floats (which virtually all tables should be anyway). The placement of these tables will depend on the journal's typesetting of the text in your document. They are very unlikely to end up where you put them in your text anyway, so it makes sense for the typesetters to insist they don't appear in the text in the first place. It's typically enough to put all tables at the end of the document, with one table per page. You can do this with the endfloat package in LaTeX. If the journal really insists that tables should be submitted in separate files, you can use the standalone package. I sincerely doubt that tables need to be submitted as .eps files. Tables are text, not graphics, and your guidelines only say that "graphics material" need to be submitted as .eps. Submitting them as .pdf should suffice. The typesetters will create your tables from scratch anyway.
Figures are another matter. The typesetters will not alter them at all, they will simply insert them into the document in the place deemed most appropriate. You need to create your figures as .eps files and submit them as separate files. If the software you made the figures in doesn't include .eps as a native format, use tools such as ps2eps (if your software includes .ps as a format) or pdftops (if your software includes .pdf as a format) to convert your figures to .eps.

The typesetters will create your tables from scratch anyway. -- This is news to me. None of my tables have ever been recreated by the IEEE typesetters.

@user11192 That's weird, because how would the journal then make sure that the font type, font size, and linespread match the body text?


text:
Where can I find referral for my post-graduate application?
I'm currently in the midst applying to do my Master's degree in a university in UK. It is a distance learning course and I am a full-time working professional. The application requires me to name 2 referee and they should be someone who knows me in an academic or professional role.
I am feeling a wee bit uncomfortable to let my supervisor and boss know that I am intending to pursue Master's degree due to the fact that they value productivity more than academic qualification.
Furthermore, I was somewhat an 'inactive' student while doing Bachelor's degree. I've never participated in any organization or published any publications.
As such, is there any avenue where I can find professional referee who will be willing to look at my application and endorse my application?

The people you work with who are not your supervisor and boss (peer coworkers) also know you in a professional role.

I recommend convincing your supervisor that you will be more productive after further academic training, and then asking them to be a reference.  The alternative is to pursue your degree in secret, which is a really bad idea.

As such, is there any avenue where I can find professional referee who will be willing to look at my application and endorse my application?

It can't just be based on the application, since the purpose is to provide additional information and personal impressions.  It's possible in principle to hire someone, but it's a bad idea in practice.  I see it on rare occasions in the U.S., maybe once a year or so.  Someone will have a letter of recommendation from an "educational counselor" or the like, who was hired to advise them on their graduate school applications.  These letters are almost entirely useless.  There's only so much information they could provide in principle (since the letter writer has no special expertise in the subject area and doesn't know the applicant particularly well), and the little they could say isn't particularly trustworthy due to the financial conflict of interest (they are hired to get people into graduate school, not to provide an unbiased evaluation).
As ff524 pointed out in a comment, you can ask colleagues other than your supervisor.  This is not quite as good as your supervisor, since they are not in as good a position to evaluate your work (and the admissions committee will assume that you asked your friends), but it's better than nothing and might be good enough.
Another possibility for getting an academic letter is to take a single class now, as a special student rather than enrolling in a degree program, and to ask the professor for a letter once you have impressed them with your class performance.  However, this could be time-consuming or expensive, and there might not be any suitable classes available to you.


text:
Is it okay to include a simplified and easy version of a result already proved?
I am preparing to write an article. For that, I got an easier proof of the already published result. My result is very simple to prove. Is it ethical to include this result in my
article after citing the other author's work that we are improving their result?
Kindly help. Thanks a lot.

I find your question unclear. Do you have a simpler proof of the full theorem or of some special case? (You write "easy version of a result".) Is your new proof a main result of the article that you are preparing, or is this an application of another new result, a proof of a result that you need in the article, or something else?

It is extremely common, and has been so for over a hundred years. It isn't clear why you think that it has an ethical dimension to it.

Yes.
New proofs are always good and of scientific value, and may be of significant use and interest in their own right.  In some cases they are even worthy of a paper of their own.  As an example, just recently on MathOverflow I saw Zhi-Wei sun mention that a result of his currently has 6 proofs from 6 different papers and sets of authors (including his own and himself).

I may be wrong on this, but it would seem the ability to prove the same thing from different approaches is the easiest way to bridge the gaps between multiple fields. I've heard of many problems that are solved by saying "well if we convert this problem into that problem, and solve it in that space, and convert it back, we can solve our original problem" - and things like this are the building blocks for beginning those transitions. Again, I'm not a mathematician, but it seems reasonable to me!

It's better than ok, it's usually a Good Thing to do, since:

It helps readers understand what the more complex result means, or what its significance is, by considering a simpler-to-perceive case.
The simpler result is often powerful enough to be used itself - even if not for the specific use the original prover of the complex result had in mind.
The simpler result can sometimes be established with a different, simpler proof, which may be of independent interest. Alternatively, if the proof is similar, the simpler result's proof helps understand the more complicated proof of the more complex result.
Simpler results are often simpler to keep in mind.

Of course there's the question of your submission page limit - devoting space to a simpler results means condensing or removing other parts of the text, but that's something to decide based on the specifics of your article.

I agree with the two previous answers that publishing your simplified proof is good. Simplified proofs often lead to improved results; some of my own papers began with the idea that I can simplify a known proof but then developed into applications of the simplification, yielding new results. You might want to check whether your simplified proof can be easily extended to yield more than the original result.


text:
A cv with or without passport photo while applying for postdoc
I am a Ph.D student from mathematics background and about to submit my thesis in a month or two. I am thinking to apply for postdoc position. Shall I send my normal cv or the one bearing my photo? Thanks for the help and suggestions.

This is culture dependent.  In what country will you be applying?